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Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Wed Mar 20, 2019 3:20 pm
by Sectopuppy
I was really excited to finally get Heat on my Goliath, but now I'm crying tears of regret as my Heat Goliath consistently does less damage to robots than my Pathfinder's.

Heat seems almost futile when targets often have 12DR or more. Best case scenario in that situation is like +2 damage, which my Pathfinders get anyway with VPT, which also applies to bio targets. So the premise of taking a Goliath for anti-mec purposes is made redundant as Pathfinder's do the same damage, but are much stronger against everything else. H&R by itself is universally superior, you can troll everything with it, especially mec's.

Heat was the sole justification for building a Goliath. The rest of the ability tree kind of sucks tbh. So I feel like I'm stuck with a mec that doesn't do anything particularly well. I also feel like the tree is really poorly designed. Heat was supposed to be the Goliath's saving grace, but to me it seems like that is not the case.

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2019 10:21 am
by szmind
HEAT is applied AFTER DR. So when out of initial 15 you get 5 after 10 DR, then HEAT is applied only to this 5, not to initial 15. I used to always build Goliath full-tank build. Marvelous performance (until a bunch of Muton Elites with HEAT ammo show up). If you feel "cheated" by mechanics or description simply use console command "GivePerk" on tactical layer to "re-spec" your MEC. You only need to dig out correct ID's for the perks of interest. E.g. GivePerk -90 will remove HEAT ammo perk from your MEC while GivePerk 139 will give you Repair Servos. Just Ctrl+F in DGC. If you skip adding a perk in place of removed one you will have selection opened when back in strategy after the mission.

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2019 11:35 pm
by Sectopuppy
Thanks for the reply. Interesting that Heat is only scary when the enemy has it thanks to their seemingly never ending base damage upgrades. I no longer take Heat on anything as for me it seems to have been nerfed into non-contention. Shredder ammo on assaults with H&R is proving to be a much better option. No perk investment, apply it only multiple targets each round and get the same results on Mec's and better results on bio targets.

Even the tank spec Goliath seems pretty garbage. The tree makes it so you can't actually build full tank. It's hindered even further with the pitiful DR ratings on Mec suits. Why would you try to tank with 1.5-2.5 DR when the enemy Mec's can't even tank with 12 ?

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Fri Mar 29, 2019 7:00 pm
by szmind
Hmm, I remember my Goliaths regularly tanking 5-6 DR with their absorbtion field, damage control and shock-absorbent armor. And with repair servos and engineer with arc thrower (as support) they used to come back from numerous mission barely scratched. Truly - their performance is much better than what one could expect by perk-tree studies.

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Sat Mar 30, 2019 1:28 am
by Sectopuppy
It sounds like your saying 5-6 (situational) DR is impressive and that it's a good trade-off for losing 6 mobility 1 item slot and a lot of offensive capability. You need to get them into point-blank range to be able to get those high DR numbers. My Goliath regularly gets hit for 5 damage from a sectoid. I guess my point is, the level of mitigation isn't consistently high enough to outweigh the benefits of using a purely offensive Mec. Pure offense will continually prove to be the best defense unless this changes. Can you use Goliath's to win the game, sure! Are they even close to being as optimal as using PF's, no, not even close.

There should be some incentive to use them beyond "I'm bored of using the same cookie-cutter build"

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Mon Apr 01, 2019 4:56 pm
by szmind
The OP was about Goliath's build not about "best MEC class" :) Hence my sharing of the view. I would not argue on advantages of offensive classes over the defensive ones. It is a matter of play-style after all. Perk trees are fully configurable - I have even seen a tool on nexusmods (recent release) that provides a nice GUI for that purpose (no direct DGC.ini editing).

Re: Heat ammo not really doing anything ?

Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2019 1:32 pm
by Flanker_27
I've seen that tree as well and it's quite convenient, I'm still discovering the game and it has helped me understand (a little) how these perks work.
And don't worry, it's a constant fact in wargames that any weapon that's awesome in your opponent's hands is a wet firecracker in yours :lol: after years of suffering, I decided to rather work on ways to parry weapons that I fear on the battlefield while practicing the use of what I feel more convenient in relation to my gaming style.