https://www.reddit.com/r/walkingwarrobots/comments/g6nmul/countering_max_plasma_ao_mings/
I'm resurrecting and combining these threads to discuss how to counter max plasma Ao Mings. For me, personally, they are extremely frustrating when you face them on the battlefield.
A clanmate asked other clanmates who have max Ao Mings (in our Discord channel) recently how to counter them. Here is a summary of the discussion with some direct quotes and some lightly edited by me to help with the flow which I found insightful. Some of them are obvious, but I still think it's good to mention them. If it's in quotes I cut and pasted it directly. Credit to Ogre from the forum, and Summoning, Nakamori, and Brain Damage from my clan:
As reference, Close Range = 350m or less; Medium Range = 600m or less; Long Range = 1100m or less
- If you are in your bots, take cover and do corner shooting to distract them or disrupt their flight path; come out of cover and unload when they are engaging another target (personal experience: Ao Ming pilots are human, and they may get annoyed by the "mosquito" bothering them, and spend time trying to slowly hunt you down which gives your teammates a chance to take a beacon or do damage)
- Maxed Ao Ming pilots are "scared" primarily by another max Ao Ming, Arthur, Ember / Glacier Ao Juns, any other high firepower bot with Cryo
- "When I see rotating Leeches or Phantoms, I already know their strategy and after few seconds I get them by flying over etc."
- Three or more Ao Juns will significantly hurt a Titan
- "If you put you Leech in harms way... even with ability activated.. it will go down quickly and not do ton of dmg to the person you are Leeching. Use cover & PS, but ability won’t help you in Leech."
- "If possible spawn an Author close but not under a Ming. They can hit over your shield if you are to close....a couple Au Juns do good Damage with Avengers, Embers, Glaciers. But must plan on a good landing spot. 3 Juns won’t take down my Ming (Lvl 126 w/ 2 max Armor mods) on first run alone. If an Author is beating me up with machine guns at same time, my health drops much quicker... especially if Jun lights me up with Glaciers."
- "2 Enemy Mings in the air will dictate my distance from the fight. I’ve seen this with other experienced pilots of Mings too. They will wait until their weapons are charge and health restored before engaging another high level Ming at About 590meterz and then retreat to 625 or so to reload weapons."
- If a Ming is engaged with another Ming look for the weapons to be in reload (or burst is done)...it is more vulnerable.
- Invest in more MR and LR weapons; the more mechs in our hangars that have 600m+ range, the less advantage a plasma AM is going to have and the less impact they will have against your team.
- Another issue here is that while closing distance on the AM is one major counter against it, if that player's team has bots in control or protecting the Ao Mings, the enemy team can't get at them. I experienced this when facing WE R (u/wunhundread clan). It was a full squad on squad battle. After they regained a 3:2 beacon advantage they launched 3x max Ao Mings, 2x Nithtingales, and a Ravana. It was excellent coordination and they beat us handily.
- "Kinetic builds such as Tempest and Molot will do pretty good at suppressing fire against the plasma AM. At max range (800m), although these guns can hit AM, they will only slowly whittle at it, then they can self-heal. The optimal range of these kinetics is 400-500m to really do more severe damage. So personally, I myself would only choose them if I was either intending to merely play a suppression role, or mounting these weapons on something like a Bulwark. Pulsars, Wasps, Hussar Marquess, and LR energy or kinetic cannons will be more devastating than Tempests. Weapons that allow you to close to 600m, hit and retreat will do pretty well but you risk being hit, so timing and positioning will be important to reduce exposure. I would say, based on my experience, is the best mech for Pulsars, Wasps, and Hussars against plasma AM is Spectre because AM can't hit a stealth bot. Marquess Pursuer maybe. And definitely Dragoon Bulwark and Dragoon Ao Jun! Imo there are two particular things that will work best as anti-plasma AM: Weapons that can hit hard from beyond 600m; A Plasma Arthur"
Other thoughts / comments?