You fool, you clicked. Or you’re on mobile? Judas H, sorry man … but here goes.
Are fixed multis viable in PvP?
The first thing is the definition of ‘viable’. Let me quote Cmdr Derath (once the game’s most famous PvP-er), his quote as slightly modified by yours truly:
“Build to fight the best and you will beat the rest.”
To me, ‘viable’ means something that will beat the top quartile of PvP-ers reasonably often. Like, something you could take up against a mainstay guy of a PvP League team, with a perfectly decent chance of success.
‘Viable’ does not, to me, mean something you could use to splatter the wannabes. Anything can be used to do that. Beating down the weaker or even average members of the PvP herd can be done with fixed multis or frankly with cytoscramblers or even in self-nerfed fun builds like bi-weave hull tanks or, incredibly, even shieldless.
But if we mean fighting a proper meta-Lance with a proper pilot and a shield that either has Mj like God or regen like God … no, fixed multis are not viable.
I should know, I have 10 of them. When 3.0 dropped I got back in game and made 5 x OC fixed multis and 5 x LR fixed multis. The OC are great in PvE or against big ships but near useless in high-end PvP due to the ToT required. The LR, 3200 mps multis are hilarious in PvP and up against an FAS they are basically murder. He’s lucky if his shield comes back up twice before he’s dead. But even they are not really a thing in a serious duel. The problem is that they lack any burst damage, require near-continous ToT and hence clamp down your own evasion.
To give you an example, in a friendly FdL v FdL duel against the mighty Cmdr deZpe (one of the best meta-Lance duellists in the game) I, using my full fixed multis, was proud to make deZpe use most of his SCB’s. Before I lost. That’s as good as it gets with fixed multis, against the best: you lose. Albeit, with honour.
I should have known better than to bother making 10 of the darn things after my Courier beat BreakfastMelon’s 6 x Enforcer Asp. BreakfastMelon was one of the best shots ever seen in this game and if he couldn’t hit enough with fixed multis, nobody can.
Before going on, actually this is a good point to recommend the channels of deZpe, Yamato2012, L’Intouchable and Alexander the Grape, if you want to see what you’re up against re meta-plasma. But note that these guys are not ‘top 10%’ they are ‘top 0.01%’ so you don’t have to be able to beat them to have a health W-L record against the top 10% and certainly not against the top 25%.
Then, how can you beat a serious PvP-er using plasma, or plasma’n’rails?
There are two ways to win such FdL v FdL duels reliably. Sadly, both come with more cheese than any healthy person should consume in one hour, let alone over thousands of hours.
Cheese Tactic A: Gimbals + Evasion
Taking advantage of hit point inflation and the near-infinite TTK in a 1v1, Cheese Tactic A relies upon a predominantly or fully gimballed build. OC multis or phasing pulses are both strong choices although the latter are hellishly boring against strong hulls. Cannons can be helpful but will need frequent reloading.
By using at least 80% of the time FA-off plus lateral thrust, perma-boost and predominantly 0-4-2 pips, enemy chaff (if even present) will eventually be exhausted. Even 30 chaff uses provides the enemy with only 300 seconds of coverage, which even paced intelligently means he will be out inside 10 minutes. With practice and, in particular, learning to match evasion to the enemy’s movements (i.e. imagining seeing his reticle through his eyes, not just moving randomly) you will keep yourself alive for the given time without even using reverse thrust once (reverski is, in fact, unhelpful to this tactic, which mainly depends upon continuous forwards and side thrust plus perma-boost).
Once the enemy is out of chaff he is swiftly annihilated. The dispersal special will not save him unless on a gimballed cannon as nobody in game can apply it frequently enough with plasma to make much difference in a skilled FdL duel and it only gives 5 seconds uptime followed by 5 secs immunity.
Although not totally unskilled (the evasion takes a long time to get right, if fighting the skilled) this variety of Cheese relies entirely upon the OP aimbot. Hence there is no shame in losing to it, and not much honour in winning with it.
If you wish to see this Cheese in action there are some vids on my old channel. Another Cmdr who is highly successful with it is Xpressive (by which, to be clear, I don’t mean he can’t do other stuff. He’s highly successful full stop!)
If I ever get back in game I have promised to let Cmdr Yamato2012 see if he can be the first duellist to beat me, FdL v FdL, me using this tactic and him using skill. But even if I do, and he does, it wouldn’t really prove anything because like I said earlier, he’s in the 0.01%. The tactic would still be OP as all hell so far as mortals are concerned.
Cheese Tactic B: Long Range
This is perhaps even more unpleasant. Using constant pin-ball boost-reverse, predominantly 4-0-2 pips and predominantly hit scan long range weapons (SP rail, FC rail, phasing pulses, thermal vent beam all strong choices) the Cheeser aims to fight between around 3 km and 5 km throughout (between 5 km and 6 km even with mini-gimballing the accuracy can suffer against smaller profiles and also there are constant >6 km intervals, harming DPS).
Only the very best plasma users are able to counter this tactic successfully and even so have to take heavy unavoidable damage whilst constantly forced to approach and then attempt to match the ‘pin-ball’ movement to keep close and/or to get three efficient PA’s off, firing often without or contrary to their reticle, during the pass.
Once outside 1.5 km there is no method by which efficient PA’s can be made to hit reliably, as the firer cannot control what happens after the trigger press. Hence a skilled (note, ‘skilled’, not any fool) reverskier will make sure they nearly always miss. Focused / Long Range PA’s as favoured by Alexander the Grape offer a big improvement to mid-range hit rates but at a heavy price in Distro draw.
Cheese Tactic B combines well with specials such as drag, TLB, force shell and thermal cascade, all of which in different ways inhibit the movements of the ship forced to chase, albeit to have sustainable DPS most of the Cheeser’s weaponry will need to be hit scan.
The tactic relies upon OP reverski, OP 4-pips-ski and OP long range, which with its lack of fall-off combined with 6 km effectiveness and mini-gimballing basically kills Elite’s combat model dead. When I was in the Season 1 PvP League rail team, our rails did next to no damage unless we got inside 1.5 km (rails’ vanilla fall-off began earlier in those days). Range control was an integral part of the skill. All gone, now.
However, as with Cheese Tactic A, ‘B’ is not just used by the unskilled. One very skilled practitioner is Cmdr Dangerous.com
Now, there is a third way but it doesn’t qualify for my earlier definition of ‘viable’. Crimson has mentioned it. Still, here goes.
Tactic C: Gimmicks
Ah, the one trick ponies. Ramming. Frags, mines, torps. Or my personal favourite (I must make a compilation lulz vid if I ever get back in game), double or triple Pacifiers with rapid-fire mod plus screening shell. The latter can even kill sleepy fully-kitted PvP-ers dead before they understand what’s happening, their FdL crushed by a solid wall of sustainable DPS mega-death.
There’s no shame in being caught out once. I mean, even Cmdr Smokeweez, one of SDC’s very best back in the day, got torped. Also, we all got rammed once, back in 1.2 or 1.3 perhaps.
But really, these things just don’t work at the level we’re aiming at. I have never lost a fight to ramming, frags, mines or any other gimmick post 2.1, literally never. If you google ‘Fraggy McFragface’ you’ll see that I was an early populariser of the full frag build, so I know how good ramming and frags are.
And, how bad they are.
So, no Cheese, no gimmicks. Keeping it real, what beats plasma?
Nothing. Or at least, I don’t know of anyone who has found a full-fixed method of regularly beating seriously-flown meta-FdL’s, in an FdL v FdL 1v1.
If anyone can link a channel, I would be extremely grateful. But please, don’t link someone culling the PvP herd. You can do that with anything, it’s off-topic. I want to see a channel in which someone, full fixed, beats meta-FdL’s flown by proper PvP-League level pilots, our hero using full-fixed, no long range and no plasma. But, sadly, I don’t think there is one (?)
