A few people asked me for my opinion on this matter which I shamelessly replied with "let's see". Nerfs/buffs are very polarizing issues in the community, so I'd rather wait and see what happens before calling names and asking for refunds. Though while replying to a post on MWO Reddit, I just had to say what I think in genreal. Here we go:
I have not presented a solution, because I agree with the course PGI has taken. They chose to make the Clan 'Mechs equal to the IS 'Mechs, but in a different way. Instead, their actions led to the rise of laser vomit meta on very capable Clan chassises which completely dominated the IS. They just couldn't nerf the Clan tech considerably due to the very negative backlash from the community (just like this case), so they chose to buff IS to compensate, which lowered TTK and changed the feeling of the gameplay a bit.
Now, even after three quirk passes, they saw that the TBR/SCR/DWF is still simply better than anything the IS can field ton per ton. Instead of buffing IS with a fourth wave of quirks this time and risk creating even more ridiculous outliners like the FS9-S or the STK-4N and lower TTK even more generally, they chose to directly deal with the problem and chop the DPS/trade edge SCR/TBR has on the IS 'Mechs. Which I completely agree with despite the cries of "SELL THEN NERF". DWF and HBR will surely get a similar nerf in the near future.Are the individual nerfs are good or bad? I don't know unless I play a while with the new patch. Is the direction PGI has taken correct? In my opinion, yes. It will suddenly make more sense to bring a Nova or a Summoner over a TBR/SCR in certain situations and this pleases me due to more variety on the field. The community will undoubtedly find something else to exploit, but they will also have bigger flaws than the SCR/TBR. These nerfs are on the magnitude of nerfs that killed the poptarts(and sold a shit ton of Dragon Slayers for 1+ years) and they had even less flaws than these.
Is the timing of the nerfs curious? Does PGI wants to sell more Wave 3 'Mechs? Shall I we start chargebacking our Wave 1 preorders? I don't think so. If Wave 3 'Mechs prove to be out of whack as well, then I wouldn't be surprised if they also get negative quirks after a few months. Plus, don't forget it took them one full year of balance changes (and still failing) to make this decision. This was the last resort and they did it.
The thing is, the balance is always fluid. You should never expect to buy a 'Mech and expect it to stay "the best", because PGI clearly doesn't want anything to be the best. Their strategy is to keep everything on an even level and that means huge balance changes once in a while once they run out of options. If you're angry that your Timber is getting nerfed, instead think about how many more 'Mechs have been made more viable and your TBR will still be good, just not "the one".
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