Posted 10 January 2015 - 04:47 PM
For lights Spiders are some of the best lights in the game. The -5D will fill your need for an ECM capable light while being everything a fast jumping light ought to be. the -5V fights like an absolute dream right out of the box and as long as your not fighting competitively makes for a fun token stock mech to keep around for fluffs sake. The -5K is the worst of the best. It can fight just as well as the 5V but doesn't really have much going for it other then being made into a not-urbanmech for funzies. I haven't been able to get real familiar with jenners, but people keep saying that their pretty nice.
Hunchbacks are wonderfully unsubtle creatures, They have either a big ol (bundle of) gun(s) or their the all round speed and brawling endurance of the -4SP. The quality of the chassis represents largely on how well it brings out the desired qualities of its weapon(s) of choice. The -4G needs no introduction, just keep the fact that your a heavy mech with about 2/3rds the armor and tonnage and you'll do alright. If you want actual advice, take a look at the later section on "mugging" people with Atlases, with the additional caveat that YOU need to take care not be be caught out on your own either. I'm not super thrilled about the -4H, the hunchies draw is a bigass gun, and making that gun smaller in exchange for a few more energy hardpoints doesn't wow me. the -4P exists to remind us why pinpoint laser weapons need that burn time to keep from being truly OP. Note that if you fill up all the energy hardpoints in the RT with lasers, you can actually get BETTER pinpoint damage then the AC/20 at the cost of higher heat and no cockpit shake. If your worried about ghost heat, just remember that 6 med lasers is juuust a small enough grouping that you won't get that extra heat penalty and group appropriately. You may be tempted to mount PPCs here, and you should be because PPCs are great, but the Shadow Hawk -2K is better suited to that as its better able to control the range of the engagement. The -4J is arguably the worst of the bunch, as it's quirks only apply to LRM-10s and it has no additional missile hardpoints. You may be tempted to give it SRMs in its hunch, but the -4SP comes with those stock and is better able to use them anyway.
Some people have the talent to take the seemingly lackluster Dragon and change it into a roving storm of autocannon shells and laser blasts. I am not one of them. I had fun with it once upon a time, but I eventually fount that the centurion combined everything I loved about the Dragon (fair speed with a good balance of armor and weapons) minus everything I hated about the Dragon (huge hitbox, the need for a horridly expensive XL engine to go fast enough to do what it had to and an armament seemingly focused more on fire support then brawling).
Shadow Hawks have a wonderful hardpoint setup, and can be made to work with a wide variety of playstyles. The high mounting of the shoulder weapons means that you won't end up firing into a hillside unless your aim is SERIOUSLY off and the centurion-like disposable arms means that as long as you can twist fast enough you can survive far longer then mere armor allocation would imply. I have only two complaints to make about them, but there big ones. My first beef with them is that the Shads have some of the most schizo stock loadouts in the game, with most of them having three or four different weapon types for you to juggle for very little damage done. The second is that, partly due to their schizo stock loadouts, nearly any worthwhile build you can think of will require at least one multimillion c-bill upgrade. the -2K is the least painful to start with, give it some DHS as soon as you can and work from there.
Catapults are some of my favorite heavies, sharing the spiders quality of having serviceable (not great, serviceable) stock loadouts. The -K2 is hands down my favorite mech in the game and the -C1 isn't very far behind. There isn't much more to say about them, but try to resist the urge to have ALL MISSILES ALL THE TIME if its not the variant that only has missile hardpoints. plenty of maps have terrain that makes LRM spam unreliable and just as many are too open for a splatcat to get in close before having its ears torn off.
The Atlas has become more and more marginalized as its gotten more and more competition in the assault bracket, but it still has its strong points. The biggest weakness of the Atlas is that its (one of?) the tallest mech(s) in the game, but the majority of its weapons are only about waist high. That means that if you try resting a hill its going to be clearly visible for AT LEAST 2-3 seconds before any of you weapons will actually be able to hit the dude you want to hit rater then slamming into the dirt. The key to playing an Atlas is to set up "muggings". Catching mechs cut of, however briefly, for their buddies and moving around corners to get right up in peoples faces and not backing down until they are dead or you are. You know that old MW5 trailer where that Warhammer pilot is just walking along and then SUDDENLY, WOAH, FACEFULL OF ATLAS!?!? That's what you want to be doing yourself. You WILL be shot at while doing this, a lot, so you want to be going out with maxed or near maxed armor every time, improved gryos are also worth considering if you get to grinding modules. A typical "good" match for me in my Atlas ends with me having 2-3 kills, 8-ish components destroyed, 300-500 points of damage, at least one side torso blasted away and my CT will most likely be in the orange. I mostly use the AS7-S for my "pure" atlas tactics, but looking at the hardpoints I'm (almost) totally sure that it does the same stuff as an AS7-D with a c-bill bonus. I had fun with the AS7-RS's dual arm energy hardpoints and while it being one of the trial assaults did make the grind a thought lighter, I also had trouble pumping out enough damage to mug properly. I suppose if you had some great talent with the dual energy hardpoints on each arm then it would be worth it, but for me it just wound up taking up space in a mechbay and I sold it to make room. I have never used the AS7-K, but Dual AMS hardpoints and GR quirks make me think in might be a better alternative to the -RS for mid range builds. If anyone has anything to say about it, PLEASE LET ME KNOW. The AS7-D-DC is thus far the ONLY ECM capable Assault mech available to ANYONE, that alone makes it worth at least considering. While a pure mugging D-DC can be frighting for the other team you either need to have a semi reliable group of buddies to go Atlas mugging with you or go for a more diluted build. My own D-DC has two PPCs, an AC/20 and an LRM-15, I dusted this off after several months/a year of neglecting my heaviest mechs for CW and was surprised by how well it did, the only adjustment I had to make was downgrading the LRM for a -20 to the current size and using the saved space/tonnage for AC/20 ammo. While a full on D-DC LRM boat may SEEM like a good idea at first it is not. The Stalker and Awesomes already do better hardpoint, layout and quirk wise and unless the next patch returns ECM to its open beta brokenness it is simply not worth the guarantee of ECM coverage on your LRM boat. Atlases should be using their missile hardpoints for SRMs both so that they can finish off their victims as fast as possible (my AS7-S uses streaks, but that's because I have an irrational love of Command Consoles and the reduced lock on time is the only way can can justify it) and to that you have a good way to pump out damage if/when your AC/20 get knocked out. LRMs CAN have a place on your Atlas with any builds however, if for no other reason then it gives you something to poke people with while you find a suitable victim. I advise either an LRM-15, LRM-20, or two LRM-10s. Any more and your wasting tonnage that should be going to you mugging weapons, any less and there won't be enough to get through the typical complement of AMSs. The last thing I have to say is that your AC/20 (or /10, or GR in the cases or the -RS and -K) are going to form the core of your build. I've seen some people use one or two LBX-10s on AS7-Ds, -Ss, and D-DCs with great success and I've seen some outright amazing stuff from a dual UAC/5 D-DC, but simpler is better, especially if you're only on the basics yourself. Plentiful ammo for your AC/20 is your top priority with SRM ammo a second and LRMs a distant third. The AC/20 does wonderful damage on its own, but the cockpit shake is going to give you another much needed edge in your muggings. Add this tho the fact that ALL the Atlas variants have at least one quirk that benefits the AC/20 and you'll be get more than enough out of it nine times out of ten.
Goodness gracious, I think I got a bit carried away. Did I at least get carried away with giving helpful advice? I only remembered on the once over before posting it that this thread was for CW deck specifically, but the only think that makes my CW builds special is that I'm doubly sure that I have an ample supply of ammo. If anyone's interested my usual drop decks follow the general pattern of:
Atlas (usually the D-DC, but the -S I sometimes replace the streaks with LRMs for decent cashgrinding)
Catapult (-K2, or -C1, with the -C1 usually being placed in the first wave to spend its missiles then meat shielding for the gens)
Centurion (either my -AL with three LLs or my -A(c) with an AC/10, two med lasers and two SRM-6s for mid to late game mech shredding. Occasionally use one of my hunchies if I think it fits the other mechs better)
Spider (-5D for the all important first or last wave light rush and ECM support if the D-DC is at home, sometimes I use my med laser spamming Locucst-3M if I'm strapped for tonnage)
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. Granted, I'm playing on a crappy laptop with like 10FPS, but the lesson I'm learning is that it doesn't withstand fire very well at all.
