How I learned to stop worrying and embrace another meta

NOTE: League points are now awarded based on "honor" instead of damage.  This post is no-longer relevant.

TL;DR:
If you want a consistent positive experience and don’t intend to spend hundreds of dollars or several hours a day playing; here’s my best advice: Avoid adding more than two hanger slots. Choose fast and/or durable bots over bots with many hardpoints. Upgrade your bots to 9 before you raise your weapons above 5. Do not exceed the firepower of a stock Leo or Griffin. Upgrading is a one-way ratchet. If your goal is Meta-Hanger suitable for Master/Champion, this advice is not for you.  [note: still running 04/05/2019, no major changes]


Extended Version:

Most of the advice you’ll get has its roots in War Robots 2016 Hanger-Based Match-Making: Get 5 slots before you start spending money on bots and weapons. Griffins are an excellent choice as they have 4 hardpoints and good mobility. Leos are good a choice as they have 4 hardpoints and good durability. Get some Orkans and Tarans as soon as possible and possibly before your fifth slot. They are “the best” non-component weapons in the game and still relevant at pretty much all levels of play.

The problem with this advice is that Leos and Tarans and Griffins (Oh my!) matched with decent pilot skills will outclass most of what you’re likely to see in Silver and Gold Leagues but are completely outclassed by component gear at almost any level of play.


If you follow the standard advice, you’ll enjoy some success as your Leos and Griffins pound your bronze and silver victims into rubble. Your high-damage victories will inflate your league score to a point where [to stay relevant] you can either spend money, spend time tanking, or learn to enjoy getting your back-side handed to you. If you have better things to spend your time and/or money on, but still like War Robots and want a way to play, here are some suggestions for a durable positive playing experience.


Your first and best defense against getting wrecked by Component gear is to avoid it by NOT advancing into higher leagues. The league system is designed to promote you based on your relative damage. The higher your relative rank, the faster you are promoted. If you want reliable matches, you can’t optimize Relative Damage. On average, you want your peers to have a significant advantage in damage-output over you. Instead, you want speed, durability, and tactical flexibility. Your competition is a full five-slot hanger of 8/8 Griffins and Leos. You want a hanger that can compete with 8/8 Griffins and Leos while putting out relatively less damage than same. To that end here are some principles for building your hanger:

1. Pick a threshold damage amount that your hanger will not exceed. Start conservatively. My first run at this exercise was to limit weapon levels to 5. That hanger is currently in Expert. Weapon levels are not a meaningful limit until well after you’ve been promoted into component-gear territory. I recommend using Cycle DPS. The specific Cycle DPS is arbitrary, but I use the equivalent of two Orkans – level 6. No bot in my three-bot hanger deals more damage than two level 6 Orkans. My rational is simple: this is less damage than a stock Death-Button Griffin or Thunder-Pin Leo, but enough damage to kill either of those bots with good piloting. Whatever number you choose, this number is what will ultimately determine the League at which you stagnate.
   
2. Limit your hanger to three slots. On average, adding a 4th slot will increase your damage output by 33%. Adding a 5th slot will increase damage output by another 25%. The extra firepower and longevity translates directly into higher relative damage in your matches (and league promotion).
   
3. Upgrade survivability, speed, or flexibility before you upgrade absolute damage. Any upgrade will increase your damage output, but an increase to speed, survivability and flexibility won’t impact your relative damage as heavily. Anciles and Ecus become useful here and upgrading your bots before your weapons is absolutely preferred. Anything that helps you live longer without directly increasing damage is golden.
   

With allowances for Team Death Match, if you want to be relevant in the fight, you need to be able to get beacons, contest beacons and defend beacons. With the above limitations in mind, here are some recommendations for building out your hanger:


You need a beacon capper. In the short term, a Tulumbus Cossack is a workable capper, but as you move up in bronze and silver, the best choice here is a Gareth. A Gareth with a Pin and Tulumbus can kill most other beacon runners you’re likely to face. The shield gives you a great deal of survivability, and you can level the Pin/Tulus quite a bit to stay threatening without exceeding Cycle DPS limits. A Stalker is a workable alternative, but because its durability is based on hiding, it’s not as good at applying pressure and holding contested beacons. I’d stay away from Gepards and Jesses as their main advantage is increased fire-power.  If you're willing to spend a bit, a both Striders or Lokis are perfect for this roll.


You need a brawler. This bot needs to be able to take punishment - a tank in the MMO sense. In high leagues, everything dies too quickly for tanking to be a viable strategy, but in low leagues you can build an effective tank out of just about any medium or Heavy bot with a heavy slot (for an Ancile). A Golem is my preferred choice here. It levels faster than most other viable choices, and can carry an Ecu, Ancile, and Punisher T. A Punisher is just about the ideal weapon for a tank: you can hurt things beyond 350m, but damage ramps up the closer you get. Long exposure time is less of a liability when you’re sitting behind an Ancile, and the Golem is a great corner-shooting platform. Excluding component gear, your long-term goal here should be an Ancilot, so the time and Ag spent leveling the Ancile to ridiculous heights is not wasted. Several pilots (self-included) have had good experiences with a Raijin in this role.


For the third slot, you can double up on the capper or brawler roles or go with something mid-long range that’s more support oriented. (or omit the third slot entirely until you are comfortable with the effects it will have on your league).
  I use a Raijin with and Ancile and a Zeus.  The single Zeus can be leveled to relevance (just under the Cycle DPS limit) and the Anicle-protected Raijin can serve as a tank if your team-mates are willing to use the cover you provide.  Just try to avoid stepping on toes.  Or head.

Why this works, and the gift of variety its brings:

Virtually any Match-Making system will have some min/maxing wedge that you can use to your advantage. The clearest analogy I can draw is the weight classification systems in boxing and wrestling. You would always rather be at the very top of a given weight category rather than the bottom of the next category up. In both of those sports, a weight advantage is a major competitive advantage.


In War Robots, the current Match-Maker and League system is driven almost entirely by damage done in the match. That’s your weight classification. The impact of capturing and holding beacons and the killing of enemy mechs has a much smaller (and in many cases no) impact on your league score, yet half of the Au rewards (and overall victory) is based on which pilot got the most beacons. If you cap your potential damage, you limit your ability to move up in League Score. If you improve your survivability (e.g. leveling your bots, Anciles and Ecus) you improve your ability to take and hold beacons while minimizing the upward pressure on your league score. If you cap your damage, over the long-term you are effectively capping your opponents damage, and that brings with it the gift of variety.

If your goal is maximum damage, there are relatively few narrow builds that are possible. Once you cede the damage race, new possibilities open up: A stock DB Griffin has a Cycle DPS of 4,422, but that same damage potential can be reached with a single level 8-10 Punisher-T (Depending on size of target and Range). Mount that Punisher-T on a Golem with a high-level Ancile and your relative damage will be (on average) comparable. However, outside of the Griffin’s jump, you are faster than him, better at corner shooting, and much, much, more durable. And the Match-Maker doesn’t care about the inequity of your max-level Golem with uber Ancile and level 8 punisher facing a stock DB Griffin because your relative damage is comparable. Even better: because you took 16+ seconds to hose him down, there’s a good chance one of your team-mates will have decided to join in (thus mitigating your relative damage).


I’ve always liked the aesthetic of the JDF spider bots, but the Raijin is particularly enjoyable in a damage-capped hanger. A Level 12 Ancile can absorb stock DB Griffin Fire for just over a minute, while a Level 12 Zeus will fry the Stock Griffin in less than 45 seconds (30 if the Raijin can hang out in Bastion). No surprise that a high-level bot can beat a low-level bot. The point is the Match Maker will allow this sort of thing because your league-score modifier is based on relative damage, and that Level 12 Raijin with Level 12 Ancile and Zeus has equivalent durability and damage output of three stock griffins used in succession. Your three bots are equal to his 5 bots, so everything is even. If your response to this is “Mord, that’s’ freaking crazy, “ well yes: It is. The current Match Maker is a Bork-alypse. It also follows rules, and all you have to do to work them is give up chasing the top three damage rankings.


A couple of quick FAQs

This thread is over a year old, is it still relevant?

As of October 2019, the theory still works but the specific examples are a bit dated. In my experience, you can field just about any 2-3 bots as long as you respect your DPS(cycle/continuous) limits.  The exceptions are the meta-bots like Ares/Ao Jun.  In both cases you have to include their in-built weapons in the DPS cap.  The resulting DPS  is usually much to high to fit under the cap:  A level 9 Ares with Stock Orkan/Pinatas would have a cycle/continuous DPS of 6,097 - that's about 250% of the two level-6 Orkan equivalents I recommended.


If you’re not placing top three, how are you earning any Au?

Beacons and Daily Tasks. I do occasionally still place top three in damage, and KoTH ranks based on time spent sitting on the active beacon. In the long run, I get far more gold in this environment than I do in Expert+ where the competition is running Dash bots (so no beacons) or component weapons (so no top-three placement).


If you’re not focused on damage, how aren’t you short of Ag?

I am unaware of any definitive formula for Ag awards, but I believe current consensus is Damage Dealt + Beacons + Kills + Critical Hits – Repair costs (based on critical hits taken and number of your bots destroyed). Fewer more durable bots reduces repair costs. In the short term I could probably get more Ag by inflating damage. Half a million damage is easily doable with a full DB Griffin setup in bronze and silver, but those numbers get cut in half for a F2P (Ag/WSP/Au) pilot facing leveled component gear in higher leagues. I’m not seeing a material difference in Ag gains.


Doesn’t it take forever to kill anything?

If you’re used to jumping in, unloading a salvo and watching your opponent eject, then yes. My highest Cycle DPS weapon is a level 6 Punisher-T. A full clip is 94,600 Damage. That’s a clip and a half for most of the Griffins I’m facing. Two clips for a Leo. Somewhere between 15 and 30 seconds. On the flip-side, its takes quite a bit to die too. [note: currently useing a 1640 Cycle DPS limit]


What about tankers?

I do occasionally see (and report) allies and opponents with high level bots and weapons in low leagues that have excess Champion trophies from hitting >5000 League Score in a previous season or more than 1,000,000 max damage. Not many though. Its somewhat harder to separate simply bad players from tankers when equipment levels are 8-10 and there’s no obvious tell like max damage or excess Champion trophies. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt. Setting a low cap on Cycle damage does a pretty good job of dealing with this. Anecdotally, Pixonic appears to have been decent about getting tankers out of Bronze. If I identify a Tanker on the field, my normal response is to go get an adult-beverage and relax. Happens infrequently enough that I stay sober.


...

If you’ve been running a low-league hanger and have any additional insights you want to share, I’m all ears. I enjoy the game I started playing a little over two years ago, and don’t like the direction Pixonic has taken it. Over the last six months I’ve found the lower leagues to be qualitatively better than the giant cluster Expert and above has become.


Cheers!