Welp. This has been the first MWO tournament that I truly enjoyed. I don't know about you guys, but the emphasis on the mediums and the resulting medium profileration considerably improved the game for me. Couple that with a lot of people ditching their pugstomp groups for solo-play and this weekend I experienced probably the craziest games I've seen in MWO. Most of the matches were incredibly close, with known faces racing to get kills and farm damage.
I've seen a team with no heavier than 65 ton mechs beat a team with 6 assaults. I've seen incredibly close games where my team of 3 players stripped of weapons resorted to shutting down in a Skirmish game, in order to win by overtime against an uncatchable Raven-3L. I've seen very creative builds, unlike other tournaments where small pulses and SRM2's where used to their potential. MWO is a beautifully balanced game when you actually give players incentive to try different things.
Me? I knew I'd go for Trebs as soon as I saw the announcement. I've pretty much perfected my jumpjet brawling technique with my Trebuchets, I wasn't expecting much resistance . . . and oh boy I was wrong. It was a very close race until the last point.
I started with my tested "That crazy flying Trebuchet" build, though I quickly realized it was really hard to get kills with it even though I could do tons of damage. I then swapped one of mediums with an LPL/PPC and ditching the SRM6, which proved to be more lethal but also unbearably hot. It was also at this point that I realized in order to win this tourney with a Treb, one has to farm damage since getting kills is really hard. I quickly swapped to very heat efficient 3xML+3xStreaks build with 300 Streak ammo. Which was incredibly bad at finishing off mechs, but it could farm a lot of damage with those streaks. I used this build up until the end with great effect.
When I hit 2000's I realized it was not about builds or skill anymore, but about getting lucky with the arty/airstrikes. I could consistently pull 600+ damage with lots of assists, but the real advancement came when I could land those perfect arty on a blob, propelling me easily to 900+. This is also when I stopped playing, since it wasn't about perfecting the playstyle anymore but grinding enough games to land that "perfect" arty with a game long enough to go through 300 Streak ammo.
When I stopped playing last evening CET, I was first, but I woke up to the 4th place. Which is fine. I played about 8 hours in total, which is also not excessive.
For further tournaments, I just wish they disable artillery/airstrike damage. It brings a huge random variable into play(as if dropping solo isn't random already).
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