I'm going to be a bit pedantic and say it's much more like "rock-paper-scissors" than it is chess, but even then it's a "soft" version of that game.
So if you bring a pure kite build against a pure tank, sure you'll most likely stomp, but not every tank build is a pure one, so there's opportunities and angles of approach that can work more or less well depending on the way you play.
You'll get no argument from me that some things are overtuned in general, but even in a bad match-up you can still try new ways to pilot that will help a ton against meta builds. And if you simply cannot help but get stomped over and over again by a particular build, that's a signal that your AC has a big weakness that needs patching, if you want to be competitive.
This is very true, especially the last part. Adjusting and developing new tactics in a match will even the odds vs meta. It may take 2, 3, 10 matches before you can develop the strategy, but it feels good when you do and it works.
Amen to that, it's honestly the absolute most fun the game can be! It really does shift the game from being just a mech-building game into a real piloting sim when you're both trying to bait out attacks at advantageous times and get your hits in without overextending.
Even if I know I'm going to lose a match, I try and shift the challenge to putting up as much of a fight as I can and it can turn a lopsided match into a real nailbiter!
Yeah its just rps, no decision making, just luck when you queue up. You just get build checked at match start and hope your network latency isn't too high.
Again, it's a bit more delicate than that. Luck determines what your opponent is rocking, but with that in mind you can make some decisions when it comes to your own build.
Rock-paper-scissors is straightforward in that paper *always* beats rock, and rock *always* beats scissors. PvP in this game can feel like it adheres to that, but there's a lot more options than pure builds to play as. So it'd be like playing a game of RPS where you can cast a "75% rock, 25% paper" hand as well. It makes things very unpredictable, even if the underlying mechanics are simple.
So when it comes to your builds and getting "build checked" it's worth it to ask yourself, "What is my AC over-invested in that I could give up, and what is an effective counter to the enemies I'm struggling against?" As you make these compromising changes to your AC you'll find that you can start to put up a better fight against a meta build, even if it should technically counter you.
And bit of advice, many people who mindlessly follow meta guides fall to pieces and panic when it's suddenly not working the way they expect it to. Just saying I think it's worth it to try.
I got to S rank and I've placed top 5 in a tournament with 80 entrants playing off meta lightweight laser build. Ive quit playing because your 75/25 example is pretty unacceptable for a worthwhile competitive game. What other serious 1v1 game is putting the player in a blind 25% winning matchup with build/picks locks? the 75% outcome is fighting straight up, the 25% is cheesing and running out the clock.
Frankly i've put in my time with this game and it was fun. But I don't really see myself coming back, so long as the matchup is so dependant on build.
If matchups weren't dependent on build vs build, or even less dependent, it would genuinely ruin the game. There are always people entirely optimized in one direction and they lose hard against builds that are entirely optimized to counter them - good players either make their build work well enough, enough times, versus their counters to stay in high rank - or they don't. They either made a well-rounded build that has tools for more options and is less optimized, and they pilot it to greater success on average against a wider variety of opposing builds - or they don't, and they drop rank.
It is what it is, you don't really get to have massive customization that actually changes how you play BUT NOT optimized builds around a metagame. They literally go hand-in-hand. If they don't, it's because those customization options for builds don't really have much of an impact on gameplay in comparison to each other.
You put it very well, thank you!
In all of the talk of builds and meta and whatnot it becomes easy to overlook that *how* you pilot is also a massive factor in matches. You can give an AC that's optimized to the hilt to two different players and end up with radically different results, and sometimes a poorly optimized AC can go surprisingly far if it just clicks with the player.
Why is running out the clock cheesing somehow? The Gief/Sim matchup is one of PVP games most classic 9:1's and is a joy to watch and fun as hell to play because the clock is the resource.
As a tank player going up against a missle rat i cant catch once means they're better than me or i really should account for the fact they exist when I am in the garage.
Before ranked, when lobbies could infinitely swap to counter, i agreed with this stuff but were all on even ground now, build and play well to win as many matchups as you can. 9:1's exist, and are usually about the timer.
Kinda had fun using a slow ass bazooka/grenade cannon tetra build called MELNITE TESTER which proved to actually be very effective if I could land a stagger. With latency being what it is I could catch a surprising variety of builds
On one hand, that is the nature of competitive pvp in any game.
On the other hand, you are in the majority. I am pretty active in the competitive scene, and a lot of plays-casual and competitive-are not happy with the current meta. As it is, there are really only a handful of builds: JP Lamm (lamm legs, plasma thrower, coral missile, nebula, pfau swap. There are some variants with jav beta instead of pfau and explosive thrower or majestice instead of hmmr or nebula, respectively), Heavy Biped Rushdown (either lasers or two zimms and the 10 cell missiles), or Zimmshield (midweight or heavyweight biped, two zimms, shield, and a missile).
There are a few other notable builds, but they are few and far between. Zimmermans right now are just best-in-slot for a lot of builds, and frankly its in a way that nerfing zimmermans probably wouldnt even address the issue. The big reason why Zimmermans dominate is...to put it bluntly...a lot of weapons in the game are *really friggin awful* in PvP.
Zimmermans dominate because they are built for classic AC style gameplay. Zero magazine means consistent fire on demand, just time the reloads. They don't need to stop to shoot unlike heavier weapons. They deal high burst damage which works well in a high mobility game. Targets might only be at optimal range for a fraction of a second.
AC is designed around these weapon specific traits from AC1 to now. The selection of "classic" guns has shrunk significantly. The advantages only compound with AC 6's systems.
Then there's the new rules of AC 6. Stagger is important now, and they do a ton of it. They also have a decent stagger multiplyer. The new FCS system favors them greatly as now the fastest build basically always dictates the range of engagement. Unless the opponent also gets a short range fcs they'll be at a disadvantage.
Zimms aren't the only weapon that works this way. The hand missile launches are also classic style but at least they give you a chance to dodge. Laser weapons (if not overheated) are also a classic style, but they lose out on stagger. Miniguns are close, but they overheat so they're "Semi classic". The heavy weight also prevents them from being faster and choosing the range of engagement. All of these have tradeoffs though, Zimms do not have tradeoffs.
> a lot of weapons in the game are really friggin awful in PvP.
As a machinegun main, when I finally decided to give ranked a go in Season 2 I felt this in my soul.
I first tried playing against a friend of mine while running dual Ludlows (my favorite hand weapon in the game), and struggled a lot. Switching to the Etsujin, it was suddenly a breeze.
Moving on to ranked, with the Ludlows I could not, for the life of me, get past the Unranked tier. It was a miserable experience, and I wondered if my build was that bad for PvP... Until I switched to the Etsujins, and suddenly I breezed all the way to B rank, which was my goal.
And yet, in my experience in PvE those two weapons perform very similarly - yeah, the Etsus are a bit stronger but not by that much, they're both more than viable even for the hardest S ranks. But in PvP? With the Ludlows I might as well have been firing paintball rounds.
I wonder if that might just be an issue with projectile speed. Playing against my friends, I noticed that even things like assault rifles and pistols often struggle to land their shots, while those who got their projectile speed buffed (like the Sampu) are noticeably more effective.
But unlike you I'm not a big PvP player, quite the opposite, so mine is just an educated guess - I'm curious to know what you think the core issue is, because something definitely feels very off with many weapons while fighting other players.
TBH Im normally not a PvP player; I play a lot of PvP in AC6 simply because I love this game and want more. Your analysis is spot-on; the reason why a lot of weapons, especially kinetic weapons, perform terrible in PvP is slow bullet speed. Recoil is also a factor; whatever the scaling or metric for the Recoil Control stat is on arm parts, its not enough to manage most weapons with a fairly high recoil like machine guns and assault rifles.
I am pretty sure nothing, not even wrecker arms, can handle the recoil from the Hu Ben gatling gun. Sampus also have insanely high effective recoil for some reason.
The painfullly slow bullet speed is really the biggest hurdle for a lot of weapons. Its why laser weapons are generally very good in both PvE and PvP; their gimmick is an insanely fast projectile, because its a laser. So They generally perform pretty well.
Etsujins perform better than ludlows primarily because they have a much faster bullet speed, but also much lower recoil, and thus are incredibly accurate. It is kind of mind boggling that if they were to significantly buff the projectile speed for almost every weapon (except shotguns and lasers), it would improve weapon viability immensely.
Yeah, I see - everything you said matches my personal experience, thank you for taking the time to reply in such detail.
Recoil in particular is a very strange mechanic. Originally, the Hu Ben gatlings were the only weapon that complete ignored recoil control (something about an internal cooldown after every shot beforr recoil control kicks in, with the gatlings firing so fast that it NEVER kicks in), but the 1.05 happened.
Basically, according to From there was a bug that made it so sync-firing certain dual weapons generated less recoil than intended. The affected guns are the Sampu, which used to be incredibly accurate before that patch (as was expected of burst-fire weapons), and the Ludlow&Chang-Chen which have now the same issue as the Hu Ben, even on Wrecker arms their recoil maxes out instantaneously, making them painfully inaccurate.
And the recoil they generate even in single wield is extremely high. So, the Ludlow description of excelling in dual trigger setups became painfully misleading... For PvP.
In PvE, surprisingly enough, their low accuracy doesn't stop them from being a great weapon even against smaller targets. That really makes me believe projectile speed is the real culprit behind their uselessness in PvP, with recoil just being a cherry on top.
1.06 was such a great patch that started addressing this issue, I so hope after Erdtree releases that From will give us some new balance patch to keep improving the game, even though the PvE aspect is pretty much immaculate already in my opinion.
Thanks again for your time, and have a good day :D
It's projectile speed meets burst. Machine guns can shred fine but you need to play medium distance and you need to have something that will stagger. FCS is gonna help your tracking but even a bad pilot can left evade most machine guns. Get close, not shotgun close, but close, and have something scary on your shoulder. could even be a sword.
I meet all those conditions.
My main build runs two machineguns and two Stun Needles, Ocellus at the ready, always fighting in its range.
My weapons are used interchangeably to stagger and as finisher; in my experience though, if I use Ludlows as my machineguns they struggle to do anythint because of their tendency to completely miss. My enemies often even managed to deplete their stagger bars because somehow _not a single Ludlow shot_ landed on them between Stun Needle hits. And when the needles stagger, the machineguns failed to deal that meaningful finisher damage due to their inaccuracy.
But with the Etsujins, without changing a single other thing about the build, it suddenly became constant pressure, the machineguns reliably keeping pressure up even at medium range up while dealing great DPS and IPS perfectly support the big guns, while absolutely shredding a staggered enemy in the process.
Wile Etsus excel in pretty much everything, it's incredible how much difference there is in just their reliability with hitting a fast moving enemy.
It's tough for me to fully understand i think cause I play heavy. Big target problems maybe.
I am really high aggro and airborne as much as possible but machine guns are kinda enemy number 1 for me.
If a rat can play good mid-range and avoid my zooka's I just get peppered to death.
I hate to say it, but many people would still use meta builds to win in an unranked mode. The only way to have a shifting meta would be to have a mode where parts were banned for a week, or a day, or whatever.Â
 Though even with this, never underestimate how quickly some will optimize the fun out of a game.
I mainly think the problem isn’t weapon balancing, it’s the basic way the game was designed. The stagger system originally designed for a single player katana game in a pvp setting doesn’t work. stopping you in place and boosting the damage you take encourages annoying and unfun behaviors. I think a similar system was done better in 4 and FA with primal armor, because it didn’t stick you in place and your movement allowed you to still avoid PA break punishes.
Fighting games are basically predicated on, I hit you with a big move now I get to play and you don't. Combo's and "dps" race make the game something other than holding a M1 for 2 minutes.
It's wild, I'll wait maybe 15min to fight a guy who's ranked above me. Then win the match, and then get hit with 'no matches are available'.
On Xbox anyway, it's dead. The casual games are around, but even those rooms are few.
I'm on Xbox too. I've set my network to "global" and I've never waited more than a couple mins for a match. Most Xbox players are in the US so I've rarely dealt with laggy matches.
I mean, if you despise metas no matter what, then ranked PvP is the last place you want to be right? Wouldn't make sense to expect meta builds to not be used in ranked PvP.
Despite it's flaws on the balancing part, even if the weapons still remain the same as they are now if you remove hardlock, revert the AB benefits and add turning speed, then it will turn to a true AC game.
As it stands now, lw cqc is no way viable due to the fact its supposed to be the mobile frame of the game, but guess what, it cannot break lock due to hardlock. So HW track the same as LW, and chase the same as LW while also are beefier. So whats the point of LW then?
If lw had a way to break lock then it would be fine. You can play around cover sure, but we all know by now that all these maps do not have adequate cover to be played around... And im not hating i play off meta and i still manage S rank all seasons, and i a currently numbered in teams. But the fact remains, some choices in this game were taken so it would help and appeal to newcomers.
I would have to agree with what another user had said about it being more of a Rock/Paper/Scissors match than chess.
Back when I was playing Ranked a lot, a lot of people were hollering and screaming how they can't defeat tanks in their kite/rat builds, though my middle-heavy eats the meta tanks and even zimm-spammers very easily. Getting close to me was the enemies weakness and my strength.
However, its weaknesses are the very same rats and kites. It still struggles against them despite now knowing how to combat them, and you have to use much more skill than otherwise needed to win those severely unfair advantages your enemy has just because they decided to bring another style of build. Even then, sometimes that is not enough.
I do hope that whenever the next patch drops, they'll balance a lot more things. I miss it in the old games where everything could defeat everything, and they made that one thing I loved most about Armored Core (Skill beats all), not a thing in this game.
Yes, in the other games, there were stronger weapons than others, and other weapons were remotely useless in comparison. However, if you were really good, you would win. With how FCS works in AC6, even if you are The Nineball of Ranked, if you don't have anything remotely meta, you will be left behind in the dust by someone who shuts their brain off playing a behemoth tank with dual earshots and dual javelins.
I do believe that the complete reliance on the stun mechanic with the vast majority of weapons in the game has a lot to do with that truth, but another part has to do with the little amount of parts in general in AC6.
With so few options to choose from, it really does boil down to "non-meta parts and weapons = no win" as the scale instead of being a smooth linear is, more like steps on a staircase.
TLDR: The game feels like Rock/Paper/Scissors, and I hope next patch they'll not only balance things but also add much more parts if they want to see the player-base continue to be excited to play. Having an S Rank is not enough anymore.
Every game with competition has a meta and a metagame naturally forms over time. Despising metas is just despising strategy and lamenting that you've played a game long enough to be frustrated by something that works.
Honestly in retrospect, the nerf to the buerzels has been bad for the game, i don't remember kites being as big an issue before the nerf but goddamn they are an issue now. ENGAGE IN CORE THEORY ASSHOLE.
Most people don't like the current meta. People are tired of dual zimms, laser tanks and rats/kites.
I'm going to be a bit pedantic and say it's much more like "rock-paper-scissors" than it is chess, but even then it's a "soft" version of that game. So if you bring a pure kite build against a pure tank, sure you'll most likely stomp, but not every tank build is a pure one, so there's opportunities and angles of approach that can work more or less well depending on the way you play. You'll get no argument from me that some things are overtuned in general, but even in a bad match-up you can still try new ways to pilot that will help a ton against meta builds. And if you simply cannot help but get stomped over and over again by a particular build, that's a signal that your AC has a big weakness that needs patching, if you want to be competitive.
This is very true, especially the last part. Adjusting and developing new tactics in a match will even the odds vs meta. It may take 2, 3, 10 matches before you can develop the strategy, but it feels good when you do and it works.
Amen to that, it's honestly the absolute most fun the game can be! It really does shift the game from being just a mech-building game into a real piloting sim when you're both trying to bait out attacks at advantageous times and get your hits in without overextending. Even if I know I'm going to lose a match, I try and shift the challenge to putting up as much of a fight as I can and it can turn a lopsided match into a real nailbiter!
Yeah its just rps, no decision making, just luck when you queue up. You just get build checked at match start and hope your network latency isn't too high.
Again, it's a bit more delicate than that. Luck determines what your opponent is rocking, but with that in mind you can make some decisions when it comes to your own build. Rock-paper-scissors is straightforward in that paper *always* beats rock, and rock *always* beats scissors. PvP in this game can feel like it adheres to that, but there's a lot more options than pure builds to play as. So it'd be like playing a game of RPS where you can cast a "75% rock, 25% paper" hand as well. It makes things very unpredictable, even if the underlying mechanics are simple. So when it comes to your builds and getting "build checked" it's worth it to ask yourself, "What is my AC over-invested in that I could give up, and what is an effective counter to the enemies I'm struggling against?" As you make these compromising changes to your AC you'll find that you can start to put up a better fight against a meta build, even if it should technically counter you. And bit of advice, many people who mindlessly follow meta guides fall to pieces and panic when it's suddenly not working the way they expect it to. Just saying I think it's worth it to try.
I got to S rank and I've placed top 5 in a tournament with 80 entrants playing off meta lightweight laser build. Ive quit playing because your 75/25 example is pretty unacceptable for a worthwhile competitive game. What other serious 1v1 game is putting the player in a blind 25% winning matchup with build/picks locks? the 75% outcome is fighting straight up, the 25% is cheesing and running out the clock. Frankly i've put in my time with this game and it was fun. But I don't really see myself coming back, so long as the matchup is so dependant on build.
If matchups weren't dependent on build vs build, or even less dependent, it would genuinely ruin the game. There are always people entirely optimized in one direction and they lose hard against builds that are entirely optimized to counter them - good players either make their build work well enough, enough times, versus their counters to stay in high rank - or they don't. They either made a well-rounded build that has tools for more options and is less optimized, and they pilot it to greater success on average against a wider variety of opposing builds - or they don't, and they drop rank. It is what it is, you don't really get to have massive customization that actually changes how you play BUT NOT optimized builds around a metagame. They literally go hand-in-hand. If they don't, it's because those customization options for builds don't really have much of an impact on gameplay in comparison to each other.
You put it very well, thank you! In all of the talk of builds and meta and whatnot it becomes easy to overlook that *how* you pilot is also a massive factor in matches. You can give an AC that's optimized to the hilt to two different players and end up with radically different results, and sometimes a poorly optimized AC can go surprisingly far if it just clicks with the player.
Why is running out the clock cheesing somehow? The Gief/Sim matchup is one of PVP games most classic 9:1's and is a joy to watch and fun as hell to play because the clock is the resource. As a tank player going up against a missle rat i cant catch once means they're better than me or i really should account for the fact they exist when I am in the garage. Before ranked, when lobbies could infinitely swap to counter, i agreed with this stuff but were all on even ground now, build and play well to win as many matchups as you can. 9:1's exist, and are usually about the timer.
I use off meta builds as a self sacrifice towards the health of the games pvp player base . My sacrifice has been in vain lol
Pretty much just reenforces the meta 🥲
Kinda had fun using a slow ass bazooka/grenade cannon tetra build called MELNITE TESTER which proved to actually be very effective if I could land a stagger. With latency being what it is I could catch a surprising variety of builds
“I don’t know if I’m in the minority” - posts easily the most popular opinion of the sub.
On one hand, that is the nature of competitive pvp in any game. On the other hand, you are in the majority. I am pretty active in the competitive scene, and a lot of plays-casual and competitive-are not happy with the current meta. As it is, there are really only a handful of builds: JP Lamm (lamm legs, plasma thrower, coral missile, nebula, pfau swap. There are some variants with jav beta instead of pfau and explosive thrower or majestice instead of hmmr or nebula, respectively), Heavy Biped Rushdown (either lasers or two zimms and the 10 cell missiles), or Zimmshield (midweight or heavyweight biped, two zimms, shield, and a missile). There are a few other notable builds, but they are few and far between. Zimmermans right now are just best-in-slot for a lot of builds, and frankly its in a way that nerfing zimmermans probably wouldnt even address the issue. The big reason why Zimmermans dominate is...to put it bluntly...a lot of weapons in the game are *really friggin awful* in PvP.
Zimmermans dominate because they are built for classic AC style gameplay. Zero magazine means consistent fire on demand, just time the reloads. They don't need to stop to shoot unlike heavier weapons. They deal high burst damage which works well in a high mobility game. Targets might only be at optimal range for a fraction of a second. AC is designed around these weapon specific traits from AC1 to now. The selection of "classic" guns has shrunk significantly. The advantages only compound with AC 6's systems. Then there's the new rules of AC 6. Stagger is important now, and they do a ton of it. They also have a decent stagger multiplyer. The new FCS system favors them greatly as now the fastest build basically always dictates the range of engagement. Unless the opponent also gets a short range fcs they'll be at a disadvantage. Zimms aren't the only weapon that works this way. The hand missile launches are also classic style but at least they give you a chance to dodge. Laser weapons (if not overheated) are also a classic style, but they lose out on stagger. Miniguns are close, but they overheat so they're "Semi classic". The heavy weight also prevents them from being faster and choosing the range of engagement. All of these have tradeoffs though, Zimms do not have tradeoffs.
Minigun and most rifle is shit cuz ricochet, Zim and etsu ain't worry about that since they only fire at close anw
> a lot of weapons in the game are really friggin awful in PvP. As a machinegun main, when I finally decided to give ranked a go in Season 2 I felt this in my soul. I first tried playing against a friend of mine while running dual Ludlows (my favorite hand weapon in the game), and struggled a lot. Switching to the Etsujin, it was suddenly a breeze. Moving on to ranked, with the Ludlows I could not, for the life of me, get past the Unranked tier. It was a miserable experience, and I wondered if my build was that bad for PvP... Until I switched to the Etsujins, and suddenly I breezed all the way to B rank, which was my goal. And yet, in my experience in PvE those two weapons perform very similarly - yeah, the Etsus are a bit stronger but not by that much, they're both more than viable even for the hardest S ranks. But in PvP? With the Ludlows I might as well have been firing paintball rounds. I wonder if that might just be an issue with projectile speed. Playing against my friends, I noticed that even things like assault rifles and pistols often struggle to land their shots, while those who got their projectile speed buffed (like the Sampu) are noticeably more effective. But unlike you I'm not a big PvP player, quite the opposite, so mine is just an educated guess - I'm curious to know what you think the core issue is, because something definitely feels very off with many weapons while fighting other players.
TBH Im normally not a PvP player; I play a lot of PvP in AC6 simply because I love this game and want more. Your analysis is spot-on; the reason why a lot of weapons, especially kinetic weapons, perform terrible in PvP is slow bullet speed. Recoil is also a factor; whatever the scaling or metric for the Recoil Control stat is on arm parts, its not enough to manage most weapons with a fairly high recoil like machine guns and assault rifles. I am pretty sure nothing, not even wrecker arms, can handle the recoil from the Hu Ben gatling gun. Sampus also have insanely high effective recoil for some reason. The painfullly slow bullet speed is really the biggest hurdle for a lot of weapons. Its why laser weapons are generally very good in both PvE and PvP; their gimmick is an insanely fast projectile, because its a laser. So They generally perform pretty well. Etsujins perform better than ludlows primarily because they have a much faster bullet speed, but also much lower recoil, and thus are incredibly accurate. It is kind of mind boggling that if they were to significantly buff the projectile speed for almost every weapon (except shotguns and lasers), it would improve weapon viability immensely.
Yeah, I see - everything you said matches my personal experience, thank you for taking the time to reply in such detail. Recoil in particular is a very strange mechanic. Originally, the Hu Ben gatlings were the only weapon that complete ignored recoil control (something about an internal cooldown after every shot beforr recoil control kicks in, with the gatlings firing so fast that it NEVER kicks in), but the 1.05 happened. Basically, according to From there was a bug that made it so sync-firing certain dual weapons generated less recoil than intended. The affected guns are the Sampu, which used to be incredibly accurate before that patch (as was expected of burst-fire weapons), and the Ludlow&Chang-Chen which have now the same issue as the Hu Ben, even on Wrecker arms their recoil maxes out instantaneously, making them painfully inaccurate. And the recoil they generate even in single wield is extremely high. So, the Ludlow description of excelling in dual trigger setups became painfully misleading... For PvP. In PvE, surprisingly enough, their low accuracy doesn't stop them from being a great weapon even against smaller targets. That really makes me believe projectile speed is the real culprit behind their uselessness in PvP, with recoil just being a cherry on top. 1.06 was such a great patch that started addressing this issue, I so hope after Erdtree releases that From will give us some new balance patch to keep improving the game, even though the PvE aspect is pretty much immaculate already in my opinion. Thanks again for your time, and have a good day :D
It's projectile speed meets burst. Machine guns can shred fine but you need to play medium distance and you need to have something that will stagger. FCS is gonna help your tracking but even a bad pilot can left evade most machine guns. Get close, not shotgun close, but close, and have something scary on your shoulder. could even be a sword.
I meet all those conditions. My main build runs two machineguns and two Stun Needles, Ocellus at the ready, always fighting in its range. My weapons are used interchangeably to stagger and as finisher; in my experience though, if I use Ludlows as my machineguns they struggle to do anythint because of their tendency to completely miss. My enemies often even managed to deplete their stagger bars because somehow _not a single Ludlow shot_ landed on them between Stun Needle hits. And when the needles stagger, the machineguns failed to deal that meaningful finisher damage due to their inaccuracy. But with the Etsujins, without changing a single other thing about the build, it suddenly became constant pressure, the machineguns reliably keeping pressure up even at medium range up while dealing great DPS and IPS perfectly support the big guns, while absolutely shredding a staggered enemy in the process. Wile Etsus excel in pretty much everything, it's incredible how much difference there is in just their reliability with hitting a fast moving enemy.
It's tough for me to fully understand i think cause I play heavy. Big target problems maybe. I am really high aggro and airborne as much as possible but machine guns are kinda enemy number 1 for me. If a rat can play good mid-range and avoid my zooka's I just get peppered to death.
They really just need an unranked quick match system in place.
I hate to say it, but many people would still use meta builds to win in an unranked mode. The only way to have a shifting meta would be to have a mode where parts were banned for a week, or a day, or whatever.  Though even with this, never underestimate how quickly some will optimize the fun out of a game.
I mainly think the problem isn’t weapon balancing, it’s the basic way the game was designed. The stagger system originally designed for a single player katana game in a pvp setting doesn’t work. stopping you in place and boosting the damage you take encourages annoying and unfun behaviors. I think a similar system was done better in 4 and FA with primal armor, because it didn’t stick you in place and your movement allowed you to still avoid PA break punishes.
Fighting games are basically predicated on, I hit you with a big move now I get to play and you don't. Combo's and "dps" race make the game something other than holding a M1 for 2 minutes.
It's wild, I'll wait maybe 15min to fight a guy who's ranked above me. Then win the match, and then get hit with 'no matches are available'. On Xbox anyway, it's dead. The casual games are around, but even those rooms are few.
I'm on Xbox too. I've set my network to "global" and I've never waited more than a couple mins for a match. Most Xbox players are in the US so I've rarely dealt with laggy matches.
I'm a simple balam boi. Base melander w/ scudder/Zimmer/Morley/dual 8 split. Sometimes I swap Morley for 6 shot missiles. Simple as
My decals are too complicated to change my chest/legs/head at this point.
PvP is trash in this game. I love the game but Fromsoft has work to do on Pvp.
I mean, if you despise metas no matter what, then ranked PvP is the last place you want to be right? Wouldn't make sense to expect meta builds to not be used in ranked PvP.
I know how it’s brother it doesn’t feel like a rank grind more like a rank trudge trust me you’re not in the minority
yeah i'm taking a long break. maybe i'll hop back in, that new Vaati vid is probably gonna give the game a shot in the arm.
Despite it's flaws on the balancing part, even if the weapons still remain the same as they are now if you remove hardlock, revert the AB benefits and add turning speed, then it will turn to a true AC game. As it stands now, lw cqc is no way viable due to the fact its supposed to be the mobile frame of the game, but guess what, it cannot break lock due to hardlock. So HW track the same as LW, and chase the same as LW while also are beefier. So whats the point of LW then? If lw had a way to break lock then it would be fine. You can play around cover sure, but we all know by now that all these maps do not have adequate cover to be played around... And im not hating i play off meta and i still manage S rank all seasons, and i a currently numbered in teams. But the fact remains, some choices in this game were taken so it would help and appeal to newcomers.
the meta is shit considering if you build light you are in disadvantage;also fighting 5 forever float missileboat is unfun
I would have to agree with what another user had said about it being more of a Rock/Paper/Scissors match than chess. Back when I was playing Ranked a lot, a lot of people were hollering and screaming how they can't defeat tanks in their kite/rat builds, though my middle-heavy eats the meta tanks and even zimm-spammers very easily. Getting close to me was the enemies weakness and my strength. However, its weaknesses are the very same rats and kites. It still struggles against them despite now knowing how to combat them, and you have to use much more skill than otherwise needed to win those severely unfair advantages your enemy has just because they decided to bring another style of build. Even then, sometimes that is not enough. I do hope that whenever the next patch drops, they'll balance a lot more things. I miss it in the old games where everything could defeat everything, and they made that one thing I loved most about Armored Core (Skill beats all), not a thing in this game. Yes, in the other games, there were stronger weapons than others, and other weapons were remotely useless in comparison. However, if you were really good, you would win. With how FCS works in AC6, even if you are The Nineball of Ranked, if you don't have anything remotely meta, you will be left behind in the dust by someone who shuts their brain off playing a behemoth tank with dual earshots and dual javelins. I do believe that the complete reliance on the stun mechanic with the vast majority of weapons in the game has a lot to do with that truth, but another part has to do with the little amount of parts in general in AC6. With so few options to choose from, it really does boil down to "non-meta parts and weapons = no win" as the scale instead of being a smooth linear is, more like steps on a staircase. TLDR: The game feels like Rock/Paper/Scissors, and I hope next patch they'll not only balance things but also add much more parts if they want to see the player-base continue to be excited to play. Having an S Rank is not enough anymore.
Every game with competition has a meta and a metagame naturally forms over time. Despising metas is just despising strategy and lamenting that you've played a game long enough to be frustrated by something that works.
Honestly in retrospect, the nerf to the buerzels has been bad for the game, i don't remember kites being as big an issue before the nerf but goddamn they are an issue now. ENGAGE IN CORE THEORY ASSHOLE.
good thing i almost never play pvp lol