1.3 Ability Theorycrafting (post-stream)

[Doctor Machete]

I would partially agree with this. It's extremely hard to justify not taking both for anything remotely mobile.

That said, what exactly is the purpose to bulwark other than to buff assaults/heavies? Granting them additional percentage armor buffs without requiring movement makes the most powerful mechs in the game more powerful.

Assaults already had 50%DR any time they wanted with BW, now they are forced to look for cover and in some maps there is not much of it. Light & meds couldn't afford to stay still but now, while they play the way the always played they can benefit from both evasion and BW. Also extra 10% maximum evasion can help a lot, going for 75% -> 85% or 85%->95% is a lot better than 30->40% or 40->50%.

In proposed 1.3, bulwark is a must have for literally all mechs as it provides a 20% damage reduction (when not in cover it should be activated via vigilance). Since all mechs should run this, the benefits are directly proportional to the armor on a mech. That means that assaults benefit the most from this ability.

I don't think so. There isn't cover all over the place and sure, you can use Vigilance but that costs very valuable morale that could be spent in Precision Shots which would help to regain morale immediately by helping (a lot) to kill a mech much faster. Light & meds don't need morale to keep their defences up most of the time while an assault do, unless you turtle in cover, but then you can't get so much evasive bonus and you are limited in tactical options.

"What the new bulwark does, is essentially make all pilots take guts 5 and grants all mechs a bonus 20% damage reduction."
- Not that simple. It's conditional unless you want to spend morale for it or brace without firing.
"For movement to be worth leaving cover, you need a minimum of 4 pips of evasion (5 to actually be better), in practice, you should almost never leave cover without vigilance."
- If you do that then you're sacrificing morale for PS, which many times you would want to do just after jumping and many times with more than one mech. Do you really think you'll be using Vigilance each time you jump out from cover?
"If cover is sparse, most movement will simply be move/jumping from one end of the cover zone to the other to generate pips. This movement is not strategic its simply making sure you can run back and forth in a forest to generate pips."
- Sometimes, sure, but you can't always do that. Unless you sacrifice a lot of firing opportunities or get into a worse position by jumping just to get a few extra pips. Are you going to stop firing to do that? I doubt it. Many times you'll be forced to not move at all or only a little in order to remain in cover and fire from a good position with a good angle.

Bulwark's most egregious failing was that it was a static defence (which is what 1.3 is designed to address), followed by Bulwark pilots tending to get more injuries.

I don't think that was a failing, only that it was too big of a bonus, nothing more. Why a static very defensive play style should not be played?. IMO just keeping BW mechanics as it is in 1.2 but nerfing the DR from 50% to 25% plus cover would have been enough. And if not you nerf it again to 20%, and so on. So instead of making BW less attractive so people don't feel is much better than evasion the solution was to obliterate it and create a brand new skill.

And I like the new changes to BW but also I don't like them at the same time because I don't understand the reasoning behind static gameplay is not admissible when the game actually was released with it.

Evasive movement is at best a 10% reduction in expected damage. Bulwark in 1.3 is a 20% reduction thats far more reliable. There is no case where you should pick Evasive over bulwark even for light mechs.

For a light mech a net damage reduction many times won't do a difference at all, although sometimes will do. But if you can go from 80 to 95% evasion then we are speaking, and that extra evasion can work in any map and most situations, while 1.3 Bulwark won't unless you spend morale for Vigilance instead PS.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

I'd argue that both Bulwark and Sure Footed have issues relative to the other two tier 1 abilities because they straight up enhance things that you already want to do.

SF makes you have just more evasion, as long as you generate any evasive chevrons.

Bulwark makes you have just more damage reduction, as long as you have any source of damage reduction.

This contrasts very strongly to the situationally useful multishot and sensor lock abilities. Now personally I'd make all of the abilities very powerful and tempting rather than nerfing down bulwark (and if you nerf just bulwark we're probably going to be having the same argument about SF instead)

The only "nerf" to Bulwark is that it's now tied to Vigilance/cover. On the numbers, making it stack with evasion means it's actually better than 1.2 Bulwark when you can get it to proc.

 

[Camicon Dachass]

If we all agree that it's a problem that high tonnage mechs are incentivized, why does the mechpilot skill progression add massive percentage damage reduction bonuses that only act to further incentivize heavier mechs.

I don't see that as I problem. Heavy and Assault 'Mechs carry more armour and firepower than Mediums and Lights. This is a game about giant BattleMechs beating the crap out of each other, Heavies and Assaults should be incentivized.

The problem is that late-game provides players with few opportunities (or reasons) to field lighter lances of Lights, Mediums, and the odd Heavy, because the contracts we get throw waves of Heavies, Assaults, and 80 ton crawlers at us. That's a contract/OpFor composition problem.

 

[Icewraith]

Pre-1.3 and the defence skills were equivalent and mutually exclusive: Evasive Move is equivalent to Bulwark but you can't use both. Now, Bulwark is better than Sure Footing (by a couple of percentage points) but you have the option of using both.

Doubling down on your defences was not an option you had pre-1.3. outside of Morale abilities, so being able to do so now is a straightforwardly more powerful tank setup than anything we had in 1.2. Compare various best case scenarios involving a 4/6/4 mech:

1.2: 5 chevrons+cover/Bulwark +- 50% damage mitigation over a round.
1.3 4 Chevrons+Bulwark+cover: 64% damage mitigation dropping 6% per shot after first (55% total damage mitigation after 4th shot, 40% thereafter)
1.3 Sure Footing (5 chevrons)+Bulwark+cover: 70% damage mitigation dropping 6% for each shot after the first (58% total damage mitigation after 5th shot, 40% after)
1.3 Sure Footing (5 chevrons)+Bulwark+cover+guarded: 80% (!!!) damage mitigation dropping 4% for each shot after the first (72% total damage mitigation after 5th shot, 60% after)

1.3 Bulwark on its own is roughly 10% better than old Bulwark, while also reducing the number of pilot injuries, all while assuming your tank is being focus fired by an entire lance. Add in Sure Footing and it's 16% better, again, assuming at least a lance worth of fire, while also now giving you an easy way to clear stability. Add in Vigilance and it's 44% better.

That's a big ass bump to tankability that has no parallel in 1.2. It comes with trade-offs, you miss out on both Master Tactician and Breaching Shot, but I know for sure I'm going to have at least one of those pilots in most of my lances.

As for there being some skill setups that are more niche, yeah, it's a thing. Doesn't mean that there aren't people out there who swear by those niche skill setups: I didn't enjoy playing an Outrider (because I really enjoy the punch-counterpunch of straight evasion gameplay and so don't Bulwark much, but also don't have a natural feel for Ace PIlot), but plenty of people out there do. Similarly I may use Master Tactician a lot myself, but I've also done just fine using mechs with Breaching Shot instead. I'm also not a fan of heavy LRM setups because I happen to be the sort of person who *does* math out my attacks for fun and LRMs are straightforwardly useless for that: don't make the mistake of assuming your play is how everyone else plays, I can guarantee you they don't.

You couldn’t benefit from Bulwark and Evasive Move at the same time, but that doesn’t mean they’re not complementary. Bulwark/Ace Pilot is/was superior at delivering firepower while soaking damage.

Once you’ve made contact, reserve everything to last round. Jump Tank forward into cover, Vigilance if you’ve got a good shot at anything, Brace if you don’t. Get your extra chevron from EM. Any Assaults that still have to move waste shots/slock on your chevrons, anything that gets through is DRed. Your other mechs can open fire with relative impunity on anything that tries to shoot your tank.

Next round, your chevrons are mostly gone (or you can reserve until they’re gone). Bulwark conserves your morale for precision shots or jump+Vigilance a second mech. Not jumping again also helps your heat load out. You can stay on point and absorb fire with Bulwark until you decide you want to move again.

If your tank is starting to look vulnerable, Ace Pilot lets you get off one last salvo and jump to your back line/out of LOS (extra bonus from EM). You can also revert to a kiting strategy if necessary.

If you’re running a bunch of comm modules or have high spirits, you can just Vigilance-jump everywhere and Bulwark isn’t as important. Otherwise, Bulwark lets you maintain your forward position without sacrificing firepower or burning additional morale. Just because you can’t benefit from both at the same time doesn’t mean you can’t use both and still benefit.

I had hopes that since you specifically mentioned Ace Pilot/Multishot you had some insight there I had missed.

I don’t want Bulwark to be the best choice on all my pilots- right now the only 1.3 pilot type I expect to run without Bulwark is Multishot/Improved Initiative.

 

[Camicon Dachass]

I don't see that as I problem. Heavy and Assault 'Mechs carry more armour and firepower than Mediums and Lights. This is a game about giant BattleMechs beating the crap out of each other, Heavies and Assaults should be incentivized.

The problem is that late-game provides players with few opportunities (or reasons) to field lighter lances of Lights, Mediums, and the odd Heavy, because the contracts we get throw waves of Heavies, Assaults, and 80 ton crawlers at us. That's a contract/OpFor composition problem.

Adding to this, I want to be surprised (and a little scared) when the OpFor fields an Assault 'Mech. I don't want to be expecting a partial, or full, lance of Assaults when I take a 4 or 5 skull mission. These things are supposed to be rare and dangerous. I want them to feel akin to mini-bosses, like the Alien Rulers or Chosen in XCOM2. The occasional Steiner Scout Lance is OK, but when every end-game mission has one (or two) the novelty fades.

I'd actually love to see a specific mission type nod towards this, not just the "heavy lance has been inserted, take it out". I'm talking about being hired to "take out a group of pirate scum that somehow managed to get their hands on a bunch of Assault 'Mechs, Commander, and are seriously threatening to take over the system" (thanks for the actually useful intel Darius, now I know to bring my A-game). I want the Magistracy and FWL to come to me begging my help to eliminate an Assault Lance that they simply don't have the assets in place to take care of. Squaring off against a lance of Assaults, with their supporting Lights/Mediums/Heavies, should be the pinnacle of 5 skull missions.

 

[Rabid]

The only "nerf" to Bulwark is that it's now tied to Vigilance/cover. On the numbers, making it stack with evasion means it's actually better than 1.2 Bulwark when you can get it to proc.

Sorry I should have been clearer; I was talking about 1.3 Bulwark. I don't consider it to be nerfed at all, I actually see it as a buff under most circumstances.

 

[JackFrost]

I think a lot of this discussion is going into major tangents. Let's focus here. For the sake of simplicity, let's not compare 1.3 to 1.2 - and let's just look at 1.3 bulwark in isolation and how you use it.

How I expect 1.3 Bulwark to be used:
With a slower 120 meter movement mech, it should be possible to generate 1-2 pips of evasion reliably within a forest if you run back and forth within each forest. Running back and forth here will give you a 20% hit reduction and 40% damage reduction on hit. That's a lot. As you play through single player, to max out a turn, you should generally try to generate at least 1 pips of evasion while staying within cover for anyone who can be shot.

• On a High Cover Map: you will simply never leave cover. Bulwark is essentially a 20% guaranteed DR reduction that auto procs all the time.

• On a Low Cover Map: you are highly incentivized to run back and forth in whatever cover you can find. That's not strategy, it's just tedium.

Damage Reduction is equivalent to a percentage armor bonus
Moving onto the direct impact of damage reduction, if we understand it as a percentage armor bonus, then bulwark is essentially 20% additional armor for each point of armor.

In most cases, if you want to really all out min/max, it's probably worthwhile to drop medium lasers or heatsinks for additional armor until your forward armor is maxed for any location outside of legs (which have a very low hit chance relative to their armor/structure values). With a 20% damage reduction, it's even more so worthwhile unless you have very specific damage/stability thresholds you want to hit.

Basically, unless you are literally calculating out the exact stability damage you can reliably put out in one turn or something equivalent then you probably want to max out forward armor on everything but legs. Unless you are using DFA a lot in SP, then you generally want to leave your legs with less armor than most other parts (specifically due to how hit chances work, and the cost of losing a leg).

Assaults should be dangerous!
True! I definitely agree with that. But what assaults don't need is reliable percentage armor bonuses making them more dangerous than they should be under normal circumstances.

The point that bulwark is a buff to assaults (and that this is a problem) isn't to say that a locust should be able to threaten an atlas, but it is to say that adding massive buffs to assault mechs (by adding 20% dr to everything) doesn't really make sense. An atlas don't need buffs to be threatening to that shadow hawk.

In summary
Bulwark as proposed in 1.3 is a symmetrical percentage armor bonus to all weightclasses. A buff to assaults and heavies. And it promotes running back and forth in cover to max out defenses.

All of this by adding a "must have" skill that literally every pilot should take.

Why are people defending this?

 

[Edmon]

v1.3 bulwark has the following major weaknesses:

> Cover or viligance is required to fire your weapons and still benefit from bulwark.
> Bulwark stacks with cover and movement, but cover isn't always available and hampers movement (or causes heat generation if using JJ).
> If using cover and "moving back and forth", you will not be able to readily control the angle you show the enemy or LOS.
> Master Tactian is *still* the best skill in the game if you know how to exploit it for double turns.
> Since new bulwark encourages movement, it also opens bulwark pilots to being sensorlocked (and that meaning something).
> Can no longer pick an ideal location and rotate in place to show perferable angles to the enemy (where armour is least damaged).
> Incorrect positioning more likely, being forced to move from ideal position to weaker one to keep defence up more likely.
> Very weak pick for maps without cover or little cover.
> Not highly exploitable with marsh, water or minerals, giving little benefit (or even less benefit) over mechs that have evasive skills.

I'm sure there are others.

If people don't see Master Tactian as a must have, then the new bulwark certainly isn't either.

 

[ThatGuyMontag]

You couldn’t benefit from Bulwark and Evasive Move at the same time, but that doesn’t mean they’re not complementary. Bulwark/Ace Pilot is/was superior at delivering firepower while soaking damage.

Once you’ve made contact, reserve everything to last round. Jump Tank forward into cover, Vigilance if you’ve got a good shot at anything, Brace if you don’t. Get your extra chevron from EM. Any Assaults that still have to move waste shots/slock on your chevrons, anything that gets through is DRed. Your other mechs can open fire with relative impunity on anything that tries to shoot your tank.

Next round, your chevrons are mostly gone (or you can reserve until they’re gone). Bulwark conserves your morale for precision shots or jump+Vigilance a second mech. Not jumping again also helps your heat load out. You can stay on point and absorb fire with Bulwark until you decide you want to move again.

If your tank is starting to look vulnerable, Ace Pilot lets you get off one last salvo and jump to your back line/out of LOS (extra bonus from EM). You can also revert to a kiting strategy if necessary.

That's quite explicitly answering the wrong question. The question is whether you have the same synergy there that you do in with the current combination of Sure Footing and Bulwark, not whether you can successfully use a mech with both EM and Bulwark. There literally is no way in 1.2 to get the equivalent defences of Sure Footing + Bulwark without either spending morale or spending your turn bracing.

I happen to think this is a new development and it would not be possible without Bulwark being positioned to replace both old Bulwark *and* Evasive Move.

For the sake of simplicity, let's not compare 1.3 to 1.2 - and let's just look at 1.3 bulwark in isolation and how you use it.

How I expect 1.3 Bulwark to be used:...

Yep, that's roughly what an evasion strategy looks like in 1.2. I never found it to be static or boring though: quite the opposite in fact! Every round is a tug of war between getting enough cover, dealing enough damage in the right place and controlling the engagement. Rather than forcing you to camp in trees though, sometimes controlling the engagement meant charging forward and, for instance, taking out an enemy lance before it can join up with its reinforcements, or spending a nerve-wracking round in sprint-Vigilance right in front of the full enemy lance because you're stuck in the middle of a lake and need to get some cover for your brawlers. One of the amusing things about listening to Kiva talk about the experiences of people playing 1.3 was precisely how similar it sounded to my own experiences evasion tanking all the way from launch to today.

Basically I'm the wrong audience if you're hoping discussions about the strategy you need to follow in 1.3 will scare me into not liking the changes. All 1.3 does is make the way I always played the game *even stronger* and dropping from two defensive skills that only really differed on their movement profiles to 1.5->2-ish defences (@Camicon Dachass is right that biome considerations is a thing, I'm just not sure how much of a thing yet) but adding the option to stack defensive skills is pure gravy.

As for defences being armour, that's how an ablative game like Battletech works, and that's true of both DR and evasive chevrons. In that context it's worth saying defensively, once you hit 55 tons, there really isn't all that much difference as you head up: a full armor Shadowhawk has assault 'mech-ish amounts of armor, especially once you take into account the effect of its movement profile, in large part because of the internal structure limitations on armor. The reason the Shadowhawk starts to fare poorly therefore isn't because it lacks defences, it's because it stops being able to mount enough firepower (or more importantly enough firepower of the right type: see HBK-4P) to be a significant threat later on: at higher tonnages it's the fact that enemies can stay on the field for longer periods of time that forces us to move up the weight scale in order to bring more weaponry to bear.

 

[Icewraith]

Maybe this is just a huge buff to Breaching Shot. Here, you two have medium lasers to knock off evasion pips and YOU get an AC/20.

I still say JJ are near mandatory with the cover changes, especially on slower mechs. Can’t move enough to generate a pip in cover? Can’t present your less damaged side and fire at your intended target? Jump Jets have you covered.

Edit: Master Tactician is a great skill, but I don’t know about best skill in the game. It depends on what your composition is... if you’re taking heavier and lighter units or all assaults it’s great.

 

[Edmon]

Maybe this is just a huge buff to Breaching Shot. Here, you two have medium lasers to knock off evasion pips and YOU get an AC/20.

I still say JJ are near mandatory with the cover changes, especially on slower mechs. Can’t move enough to generate a pip in cover? Can’t present your less damaged side and fire at your intended target? Jump Jets have you covered.

I do agree that in the basegame, JJ are pretty powerful and I would usually always mount them.

Most modpacks have nerfed them by upping the heat generated and/or adding an accuracy penalty when firing after using them. In Roguetech, I feel this went too far and I didn't really use JJ at all, largely as energy weapons are so good and the heat penalty really hurt DPS. But in CCC, I think the balance is pretty solid and I have JJ's on some but not all of my 'mechs.

JJ are not free, even in the base game though, costing heat and tonnage. It's a tradeoff and I think that's fine.

 

[Rabid]

Maybe this is just a huge buff to Breaching Shot. Here, you two have medium lasers to knock off evasion pips and YOU get an AC/20.

I still say JJ are near mandatory with the cover changes, especially on slower mechs. Can’t move enough to generate a pip in cover? Can’t present your less damaged side and fire at your intended target? Jump Jets have you covered.

Edit: Master Tactician is a great skill, but I don’t know about best skill in the game. It depends on what your composition is... if you’re taking heavier and lighter units or all assaults it’s great.

JJs are already extremely good and their synergy with bulwark is being ramped right up so I expect them to be even better now. Before a jump into cover gave you evasion and 25% DR, now it's 40% with bulwark. A jump into brace is 60% if you're also in cover, compared to 50% before. And the movement penalty through rough terrain is so punishing that mechs without JJs feel like sitting ducks unless they're sprinting, but the incentive to go and stand in forests is bigger than it's ever been.

 

[Edmon]

JJs are already extremely good and their synergy with bulwark is being ramped right up so I expect them to be even better now. Before a jump into cover gave you evasion and 25% DR, now it's 40% with bulwark. A jump into brace is 60% if you're also in cover, compared to 50% before. And the movement penalty through rough terrain is so punishing that mechs without JJs feel like sitting ducks unless they're sprinting, but the incentive to go and stand in forests is bigger than it's ever been.

This is a bit misleading.

In the past, a vigilance jump into anything and/or anywhere gave you 50% DR, as well as your evasion for jumping. This included minerals (making you all but impossible to damage), water, marsh and just plain old open space.

This is now reduced to 40% for eveywhere that isn't cover, which is 60%. You've lost a lot of flexibility here, even if cover is better.

Movement compared to jumping depends on the 'mech. In the base game you can't trade engines. So if a 'mech has a massive engine (and thus good movement and low tonnage), the last thing you want to do is further reduce your limited tonnage by adding JJ as well.

You are thinking of a specific kind of 'mech which players tend to favour, high free tonnage due to a tiny engine (stalker is the prime example). JJ on these will always be good.

 

[JackFrost]

Basically I'm the wrong audience if you're hoping discussions about the strategy you need to follow in 1.3 will scare me into not liking the changes

Dude, I'm in no way trying to 'scare' anyone about anything. I'm just hoping that the devs realize that this is potentially a opportunity to help add more strategic depth to the game. That bulwark in 1.2 takes away a great deal of depth, and 1.3 only adds a little back.

I understand that this is perhaps an unpopular opinion with committed forum vets, but bulwark (in 1.2 or 1.3) as a whole, reduces options and railroads the player into a narrower band of strategy options.

It's not the end of the world or some catastrophic disaster, but it's really a missed opportunity to make the game a bit more open ended and give players more depth to their decisions.

 

[Edmon]

Dude, I'm in no way trying to 'scare' anyone about anything. I'm just hoping that the devs realize that this is potentially a opportunity to help add more strategic depth to the game. That bulwark in 1.2 removed a great deal of depth, and 1.3 only adds a little back.

I understand that this is perhaps an unpopular opinion with committed forum vets, but bulwark (in 1.2 or 1.3) as a whole, takes away options and railroads the player into a narrower band of strategy options. It reduces the number of viable chassis at an earlier point in the game.

Some Chassis are simply not good (I don't want to use the word viable here, everything is viable), compared to others because that is the lore. The Banchee, Cicada and Quickdraw were all known to be dumpster tier 'mechs for the sake of lore realism. Not every military creation is good. So 'mechs are made out of misguided ideas or poor decision making on the part of the maker.

The Banchee in particular, is known to have come into use only after everything better was wiped out and the stockpile of the awful things became tempting because... well, it's still an assault 'mech, even if it is dumpster tier.

 

[JackFrost]

Some Chassis are simply not good (I don't want to use the word viable here, everything is viable), compared to others because that is the lore. The Banchee, Cicada and Quickdraw were all known to be dumpster tier 'mechs for the sake of lore realism. Not every military creation is good. So 'mechs are made out of misguided ideas or poor decision making on the part of the maker.

The Banchee in particular, is known to have come into use only after everything better was wiped out and the stockpile of the awful things became tempting because... well, it's still an assault 'mech, even if it is dumpster tier.

Yes, the problem though is that this ability buffs the best choices. There is no benefit to making the best mechs in the game even stronger...

 

[Edmon]

Yes, the problem though is that this ability buffs the best choices. There is no benefit to making the best mechs in the game even stronger...

Does it? The 'mechs with the least tonnage are the ones that can generate 4-6 evasion running through forest without using jumpjets at all.

The slow 'mechs, the ones that need JJ to be mobile, always had them anyway.

In in the past, a fast mech could generate 4-6 evasion + cover or bulwark.
A slow mech could get 2-3 evasion through forest + cover or bulwark.
OR it can generate heat with JJ for 4 evasion + cover or bulwark.

Now a fast mech can get that same 4-6 evasion AND get cover AND bulwark for 40%, without jumping.
A slow mech can get that 2-3 evasion and get cover and bulwark,
OR it can generate heat with JJ for 4 evasion + cover and bulwark.

So honestly, nothings really changed for heavier slower 'mechs, except bulwark is 40% now (a slight nerf) and cover is 40% (a slight buff).

But for faster mechs that don't JJ, their running through forest for 5 or 6 evasion is now going to also confer a 40% defensive bonus.

This is a relative buff for them.

JJ will always be an issue in this game because assaults benefit from them the most when it comes to getting movement. But that's an issue with JJ not being tied to Engine size...

Edit:
Lets put this another way, incase my point isn't clear.

In the past, the best thing to do with a slow assault (that didn't involve spending resolve) was to JJ into cover (This would generate 4 evasion and give the cover bonus). But you didn't need to take bulwark to do this. So you could load up on other more powerful abilities like Master Tactican, for example.

Now you must take bulwark to do this and thus lose other abilties. Light 'mechs often didn't take bulwark at all, relying on evasion skils. Now bulwark is a choice they may want to make. since it provides that cover bonus.

In both cases, something must be given up if you want this "advanced cover" effect. Where as previously, you need not have bothered. So it's more of a choice when you might not have gotten it previously.

However, in cases where it was the clear choice (such as a highground, LRM boating turret, or an energy weapon boat in water), it has been nerfed.

It is a deeper and more complex choice than it's being given credit for now. Which is why there will be lots of discussion on this when it goes live and I don't think there will be much agreement on how "vital" or not it is.

Which can only be a good thing, IMO.

 

[JackFrost]

The best way to explain this is basically:

• Proposed 1.3 Bulwark should almost always be taken regardless of mech role.
• It grants all mechs the same 20% survivability bonus.
• It buffs cover and vigilance.
• Because it's a symmetrical effect that just multiplies armor by 1.2 it benefits the heaviest mechs the most.

Example of how it buffs different mechs (numbers are rough and include rear armor, but don't include structural points):

• A stock atlas runs 19 tons of armor. With bulwark in cover it has 26.6 effective tons of armor.
• A stock centurian runs 8.5 tons of armor. With bulwark in cover the centurian has 11.9 effective tons of armor.

The atlas gets 3.8 additional tons of armor via bulwark, the centurian only gets 1.7. When you also factor in cover, the atlas is at 7.6 additional tons of armor and the centurian is at 3.4.

The problem with bulwark is that it doesn't make actual gameplay more interesting. If bulwark didn't exist, sitting in forest is still good and still gives 20% DR. The only choices that it changes are when a player considers moving from cover outside of it, in which case sitting in cover is often 20% more likely to be the right answer.

In practice, bulwark just makes good choices better:

• Use the most heavily armed mech you can.
• Sit in the best cover you can.
• You just do the same thing you would do without bulwark, only you do it even harder.

If bulwark does exist, I can only hope that they make it not cover flanking side shots. This change would at least be a relative buff to maneuver, since flanking would be 20% more powerful (relatively speaking).

EDIT: To clarify, I am not saying that bulwark in 1.3 is better or worse than 1.2. I am not comparing 1.3 bulwark to its predecessor. I am arguing that in 1.3 it's existence doesn't add anything positive to gameplay. That if it didn't exist, the game would play out pretty close to exactly the same, only that mechs wouldn't get a 20% additional DR buff in cover (which is an indirect buff to assaults).

 

[Edmon]

• Proposed 1.3 Bulwark should almost always be taken regardless of mech role.

• > Why would you take it for an direct/indirect fire LRM boat or similar long range mech, where being at a distance is more important than being in cover?
  > Why would you take it for a melee mech? (You certainly can't ensure your enemy is in cover).
  > It might also be of limited use for a very short range 'mech, since being in cover and being in range of the enemy might be mutually exclusive.
  
  

  [*]It grants all mechs the same 20% survivability bonus.

  Bonus is more valuable to a light that can easily generate 6 evasion tokens by running though, than a heavier 'mech that can only manage 2 or 3.
  
  

  [*]It buffs cover and vigilance.

  It does, but both of these are limited and/or situational.
  
  

  [*]Because it's a symmetrical effect that just multiplies armor by 1.2 it benefits the heaviest mechs the most.

  
  Heavier 'mechs are better than light ones, because that's how BattleTech works. Giving everyone relatively more armour just highlights the same issue BT has always had, which is that Light 'mechs are designed to kill things other than 'mechs. They are for taking out tanks, infantry, buildings, SPG's, supply lines, etc. The real 'mech to 'mech designs start at the medium level.
  
  This is not an issue with this change, this is an issue with BattleTech as a whole.

 

[Icewraith]

You can still JJ into cover without Bulwark, you’re just 5% worse at it than you were without Bulwark on live. Bulwark you’re now at 40%, which is a buff. If you turtle up without moving you’re still at 40%, which is a nerf from old Bulwark. If you Vigilance jump into cover with Bulwark you’re now at 60%, which is a buff (but a nerf from the ability beta’s 75%) If you Vigilance jump into cover without Bulwark, you’re at 40%, which is a nerf.

I guess Ace Pilot/Slock types still have a niche in Locusts/Spiders since even with Bulwark those won’t be living through any significant hits and pack no significant firepower. Sure Footed/Improved Initiative Pilots probably lose out to Bulwark/II in most circumstances, or Ace Pilot/Bulwark. Maybe as a mobile Assault mech specialist on low-cover maps?

Breaching Shot/Sure Footed pilots (mobile harasser specialists) maybe still have a use on low cover maps, maybe in things built like stock Wolverines (better heat than Griffins) ? On normal maps they probably lose out to Breaching Shot/Bulwark for Griffin-ish builds.

Breaching Shot/Bulwark and Coolant Vent/Multishot are already some of my go-tos for heavy mechs, now they’re taking over other niches in environments with cover! This is the opposite of what I want.

I want the weaker builds like Breaching Shot/Slock and Multishot/Ace Pilot to be more useful. Those are probably my bottom two.