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This guide is intended for new players and includes certain builds that are better suited for new players than elite level players. I personally don't think the best builds are best for everyone, but that's a discussion for another time.
[Guide] Raven 101 – a guide for new players
Like the other light mechs in this game, the Raven is often a challenging choice for new players. The Raven 2X and 4X have always been the most challenging. A few months ago, the Raven 3L was the king of the battlefield. Today, the Raven 3L is dethroned, and while it’s definitely one of the better light mechs, it’s far from superior against heavy or assault class mechs.
As the Raven is one of my favourite mechs to play, and one of my most played mechs, I’ll share a few experiences and tips with new players. Experienced players are welcome to contribute.
General tips for all Raven builds
- Always move. Always, always. Sometimes you’ll find a heavy or mech that doesn’t see you, and it’s tempting to stop and snipe. The difference is, the heavy mech can afford to be caught off guard. You cannot. All it takes is one concentrated blast from an enemy mech when you’re not looking, and your mech is heavily damaged or dead. As you gain experience, you’ll know when to stop and snipe, but generally new players make the mistake of stopping in dangerous positions, which is an instant death sentence in a light mech.
- Don’t wander too far from your team alone. The Raven can handle any other light mech alone, but if you encounter two or three light mechs, you’ll often die if you have to run 1 kilometer to get back to the safety of the team.
- You are not a predator, you’re a vulture. You find weak or wounded prey and you take them out. Don’t be brave, run away if outnumbered.
- Spend a bit of time scouting before you engage, so you get a good sense of where the enemy is weakest. A perfect target is often a clumsy assault mech that has wondered off alone like a baby elephant, preferably carrying LRMs or PPCs, allowing you to sneak in like a hyena, where its weapons are harmless and slowly rip it apart while the rest of the team is busy elsewhere. Like a pack of lions. (I’ve been watching Animal Planet)
- Stay away from mechs with 2 or more Streaks, if possible. Even if you have ECM, they probably have BAP and since I’m assuming you’re a new player, your aim isn’t so good that you can do more damage than their steady stream of Streaks. So if you see any mech, light, medium, heavy or assault, with 2-4 Streaks, look for an easier target first. Kintaros with 4-5 streaks are going to kill most light mechs with little difficulty, at the moment. This is assuming you’re a new player, of course.
The Raven 2X is potentially the most heavily armed of the Ravens. Its engine capacity is only 245, so it’s usually going to be outrun by all other light mechs, especially among experienced light mech pilots who have bought the biggest XL engine available. It does not have jump jets, and it’s not particularly durable. So you’re slower, but you have 4 energy hardpoints and 1 missile hardpoint, which gives you plenty of options for firepower.
Here are three options for you:
1) My Standard Raven 2X 8,9 million c-bills
This build has a fairly low alpha strike, meaning it does relatively low damage if you just fire all weapons at once. It has a good cooling efficiency, which means you can keep firing a long time before overheating. That makes it a great beginner mech. A Jenner light mech will typically have a better alpha strike, but do less damage over time.
Note that this build has AMS (anti missile system), and you should stay close to other mechs with AMS for extra protection against missiles.
Since the Raven 2X is quite slow for a light mech (only 125 kph, while most light mechs do close to 150), a lot of people like to play it more as a support mech rather than a scout and light mech hunter. Personally, I do the same, because I feel the Raven 2X is too vulnerable on its own. It’s outgunned against a Jenner with 6 medium lasers (since you won’t be hitting your SRMs most of the time) and it’s too slow to comfortably outrun a medium mech with lots of SSRM guided missiles.
Since you can’t easily run away from trouble, it’s smart to stay relatively close from your team.
2) Poor man’s Raven – 6,3 million C-bills
Since your engine capacity is 245, a cheaper and tougher variant of the Raven 2X is the Survivor, which replaces the XL245 with a STD240. The speed difference is negligible, but now you can afford to lose a side torso without dying. This build is not as good, but it’s cheaper, so it makes a good beginner build for new Raven pilots.
The trick to using this build is to twist your torso to distribute incoming fire to your side torsos (preferably your left side) instead of your center torso. Your medium lasers have a 300 meter range, and try not to waste your SRM ammo on difficult targets.
This mech works very well as an escort. Find an assault mech on your team and follow it around. Soon enough, you’ll be in the thick of fighting, but try to let the assault mech absorb incoming fire, and stay close to it while you wait for an enemy mech to be stripped of armour. When the right target presents itself, swoop in, get the kill, and return to safety.
Since you don’t have AMS, you’re pretty vulnerable against missiles, which is another good reason to stay with the team.
3) Raven laserboat 9,1 million C-bills
This is an alternative without any SRMs. It has the same alpha strike damage as my Standard Raven 2X, but it has more range thanks to large lasers, greater accuracy since it’s all lasers, but far less cooling efficiency. This basically means that you need to rely more on sniping and picking your shots, and should avoid long engagements that will likely lead you to overheat.
I’ve included AMS on this build, although you may want to replace the AMS with one DHS (double heatsink) and get some extra armour, depending on whether or not you want to go off on your own. With the large lasers, you can do a bit of flanking and do decent damage from a distance, at the risk of being intercepted by enemy light mech hunters. Like all Raven 2X builds, this build is sub-optimal for 1 on 1 duels with light mechs and medium mechs. AMS gives you a little bit of extra security against guided missiles as you’re running back to safety. An extra DHS gives you a bit more stamina in a long firefight.
The key to this build is patience, and you’ll want to mostly use your large lasers. Don’t use your medium lasers on targets that are more than 300-350 meters away, because you’ll do relatively low damage compared to the extra heat. It’s better to just keep sniping with your large lasers, keeping your heat low until your target is close and you can fire all 4 lasers.
You may want to move your large lasers into the arm for extra dexterity. I like keeping them in the body, in case someone shoots my arm off. But it does make me less flexible on maps with a lot of hills.
Raven 4X
The Raven 4X is commonly considered the weakest and most challenging of the three variants. It is slower than most light mechs, and is usually outgunned as well. Its distinguishing feature is the jump jet capability, although this is shared by Jenners and Spiders. This is going to be a rough ride and a steep learning curve, so keep ice cream and tissues ready.
One thing to consider with all Raven 4X is that you’ll be at a significant disadvantage against most enemy light mechs, except for certain Spiders. You’re slow and you lack the firepower of other Ravens. My advice is to avoid other light mechs and attack heavy and assault mechs instead. Instead of having several disadvantages and no real advantages, you’ll have some disadvantages and some advantages.
Here are three options:
1) My Standard Raven 4X
After much trial and error with the Raven 4X, I’ve found that I can’t reliably do well with 3 different weapon types (lasers, missiles and ballistics). So this is what I’ve been using the last couple of months. I see some people use ER Large Lasers, but frankly I don’t have elite level aim, so I need a higher cool efficiency to keep firing without overheating. If you’re a new player, the same may apply to you, but if you’ve got a lot of FPS experience, you may want to try ER Large lasers instead.
Even with only 1 ton of MG ammo, it’s usually more than enough to last through the match. Just don’t forget to fire the MGs, keep them firing as long as you have a target within 200 meters. Even for experienced players who aren’t afraid of your MGs, it’s always annoying to hear bullets bouncing off one’s armour. And as soon as there’s an unarmored area on your target, focus fire to disable weapons.
You’ll notice I have 4 jump jets. Actually, I often use 5 jump jets at the cost of the extra DHS, because the Raven 4X is dead slow and you often need to use jump jets to get to safety. The Raven 4X has a huge advantage over the Raven 2X, namely the ability to escape from fast medium mechs without jump jets. If you have a Kintaro with 5 SSRMs on your tail, just find a suitable cliff and disappear into the night.
2) Magpie 2.0
Much like my standard Raven 4X, but with an additional SSRM, while only having 1 jump jet. It runs hotter, it’s not as agile, but it has more firepower. And the SSRM is much easier to use than SRMs and compliments the MG nicely.
Note that a single SSRM does less damage than a wet fart against an enemy with AMS. So keep an eye out to see if they’re shooting down your Streaks (have a look at their weapon loadout), so you’re not wasting ammo and extra heat for nothing. If they have AMS, stick to your large lasers and MGs.
3) Raven 4X poptart
I’m not a fan of thisbuid, but I’m going to include it all the same. Some people like it. It has jump jets, 1 ER PPC and 1 PPC, dealing up to 20 damage in its optimal range between 90 – 540 meters. That’s as much damage as an AC20, the most powerful weapon in the game.
With this build, you can get a good speed, jump into the air moving sideways from your target (not directly towards or away from your enemy) and just as you release the jump jet button to stop the cockpit from shaking, you deliver 20 damage to your target. It’s not easy, but it’s potentially devastating.
The bad news is that this is a very hot build and you need to pick your shots. PPCs are also very difficult to use against fast targets at close range, so as a new player, you’ll usually be in trouble if other fast mechs come looking for you, which they will. Nobody likes a poptart.
This build can be effective, but it has some very significant weaknesses.
Raven 3L
As it has ECM, the Raven 3L is one of the best light mechs in the game. It still has a hard time against Jenner JR-F light mechs with 6 medium lasers, but the ECM makes it harder for the enemy to spot and target you, while also making it hard to fire guided missiles at you, so you have more survivability.
It’s currently the fastest of all Ravens, which is extremely significant. It gives you more freedom to scout and probe the enemy for weaknesses, without worrying too much about enemy medium and heavy mechs chasing you.
1) Cookie cutter Raven - 12,8 million C-bills
The so-called Cookie cutter Raven is given this name by most fans because there was one build that was widely considered the most effective build of all possible builds with all possible light mechs. It was therefore widely used, with very few variations. Hence, "cookie cutter". Today, it’s not quite as OP, but it’s still fairly popular.
While the Raven 3L is no longer a major threat to heavy and assault mechs, it is still widely considered the one of the best light mech hunters among light mechs. Its ability to carry two Streaks means that you will often deliver more damage than most other light mechs, even if you don't have better aiming skills. Streaks have the useful ability of always hitting their target, unless it is behind cover. For this reason, the Cookie cutter Raven is often used to flank and scout, taking out enemy light mechs that are either spotting or trying to capture a base.
2) My Standard Raven 3L
I’m not going to say that this is the best Raven 3L build out there, but I’m going to include it anyway, because I’m doing fairly well with it. It’s got 1 large laser, 2 medium lasers and 2 SRM2s. Yes, the most useless missiles in the game, second to NARC. Why? I’ll tell you why. Because SRM2s have a crazy rate of fire, and you can keep peppering your enemies with them like some Ninja Turtle pizza launcher.
Get both coolant consumables (Cool shot 6 and Cool shot 9 by 9) because this is a hot build. But it’s pretty good against big targets. If you’re engaging fast mechs, stick to your lasers only. If you’re engaging slow mechs, try to do a few seconds of burst damage with all weapons, before retreating to cool down a bit. If you can’t retreat, use your cool shot to stay in the fight.
3) Wispsy’s Raven 3L
I don’t know who started using this build, but Wispsy was the first one I’ve seen do well with it, so I’ll him credit unless someone else claims they were the mastermind behind it.
There’s not really a lot to say about this build. It’s great for sniping, if you have a steady aim and a cautious approach. It doesn’t have a lot of firepower, you basically have less than 2 /3 of a Jenner’s firepower and it’s all in your right arm. Lose one arm and you may as well power down and Alt+Tab to watch cat videos on YouTube. But compared to the Raven 4X poptart, a PPC sniper, this Raven isn’t as defenseless against other lights.
PEEFSmash has a good guide for using this build, which you can find here. He mentions it specifically at 22:30.
Edited by Alistair Winter, 15 October 2013 - 04:30 PM.
