20 replies to this topic

[SovietArmada]

So i was experimented with the upcoming Phoenix mechs, I plan to order assuming the balance update works out for the better .

So i wanted to get your guys opinions on these builds, i tried quite a few on each one till i found something, to me at least, that seemed good.

LCT-1V
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...23a7875df96e065

Admittedly there aren't a lot of options for this mech. At first i tried the LL with x2 MG, but since the LCT needs SHS it would run hot too fast and take too long to cool down, i remember adding 1 SPL on my commando with SHS and it ran amazing hot pretty fast and took long to cool down.

Plus with the MG buff it makes this build viable. I run my CDA-3C a lot, and the x4 MG are quite amazing now.

SHD-2H
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...b24ab0a109567ef

This mech was fun to play around with. There were quite a few builds that seemed good, initially i was aiming at the support x3 AC2, LRM5+ARTEMIS and tag, but a few last second play around and i think i found a better one.

Given how well i perform on my Dragon-5N with a similar build in the Ballistic section, I thought this would be perfect. Allows for good harass style play and is better suited to deal with lights. Then again my support build might turn out for the better if the actual play style doesn't go as i envisioned it.

TDR-5S
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...25a71945d8a0898

This mech took a lot of thought, given the hard points it was tricky to find a good build. But i think i nailed one given my odd but successful style with the 3F. Utilizing the Tag and LRM 15 to dish as much damage as i can, and allow for Tag bonus damage from allies early game, i can harass heavier mechs . The 3 MM, 2 MG, and SRM 6 allow me to brawl effectively to anyone getting too close.

Again, it's a very different style of play but something i have become quite adapt at.

BLR-1G
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...61fdd0d1d114a14

The assault mech with so many viable play styles, i honestly hate PPC boating and vowed to never do it, it can for kicks equip 7 PPC's with decent heating, but that would be boring and WAY to cheesy .

So i decided to go for a brawler. This was my initial build for the 3F, but because of poor hit registration, especially the SRM's, i switched it out. But since the BLR holds mostly laser hard points and they aren't as badly subject to bad hit detection, i went for the brawler.

Now i went with all pulse lasers, i think they are much better than the standard lasers, at least from my experience. And for a brawler that needs to get in damage quick and torso twist, the smaller duration allows just that. The SRM6+ART is there for those large mechs to give it that extra umph! The MG's are for when i run to hot and still want to dish out a little damage while cooling down. STD 310 Engine and 17 DHS will allow me to cool down fast, and at almost 60KPH brawling would be a great idea from my point of view.

Edited by SovietArmada, 14 July 2013 - 07:18 PM.

[Angel of Annihilation]

Well aside from the Locust which really has not build options other than what you put in, I think the rest run from barely decent to horrible.

The Shadowhawk is the only one semi-serviceable and might be decent.

The T-bolt, I mean what are you trying to do with it. You have different types of weapons spread all over the place making it ineffective at doing anything. Also you are neglecting your arm mounted weapons for torso mounted one which really limits how well you can effective engage an enemy target.

Same goes for the BM. Again you neglect your best hardpoint locations, the arms. Additionally LPLs kind of suck at the moment. You would be better off going for LLs to save weight and heat or go with PPC/ER PPC for longer range damaging abilites.

Overall I am guessing your one of those people that hasn't taken the time to learn how to aim using the arm crosshair independantly of the CT. My suggestion is practice. Those arms give you so much more aiming capabilites than those locked the the torso crosshair isn't even funny. By not using the arms you are always going to be locked into very low ELO matches.

[XX Sulla XX]

Victor there is one thing though about the Battlemaster. The hard points on the torsos are right at cockpit level unlike the arms. So if your main weopons are there you can pop your head up and fire. If they are in the arms you will be like an Atlas and have to expose most of your mech and for a longer time.

[Lynx7725]

The Locust is within expectations. Not much room on that ****** to do jack.

Huh. The Shadowhawk, that much ammo in the arms -- and ammo that's guaranteed to not be expended early -- is asking for a ammo explosion coring your RA. Since you are running XL engine, that's a death sentence. The loadout itself isn't bad, but you don't really need the MGs, and I'm personally biased against AMS. Try dropping the MGs for a BAP, you'll need it with those Streaks.

I'd also put either all the Jump Jets, or no Jump Jets. 1 JJ isn't going to do much, the acceleration and total thrust that'll give is rarely sufficient to do anything. Personally, I'll give up the AMS (along with the MG) for full jump and a DHS... or just straight out more speed.

The T-bowl needs focus. while you have decent firepower in close, it's all sandpaper firepower -- no penetration/ punch. You're carrying either too much ammo for the LRM, or too few LRMs, or too little ammo, depending on your approach. The TAG is not very useful since you have only one launcher (and in PUG it's very debatable on its usefulness), and you really, really need that arm sweep capability with a laser to fend off lights. MGs too, are debatable. Fundamentally, MGs are never going to be as good as other weapons at anti-mech work, so you might want to replace them.

Overall, it can work, but you need to work quite hard to get it to work. And at the same time, common builds can and will take you apart if you're not careful. Don't skim on head armour -- it's a 35 point location, you're at 33 points now. A few of LRMs/ SRMs/ lasers and suddenly you become vulnerable to 30-point bursts, which is fairly easy to see in the heavy category.

The Battlemaster.. good luck. You have no ranged weapons at all, so you need to be either fast, or sneaky. It's all sandpaper weaponry, so you'll be exposed much longer than "average" to kill another mech. You're not fast enough to avoid a slippery medium (like an AC20 YLW or Hunchback) from getting behind you and staying there, and your side torso rears have insufficient armour to prevent that medium from dropping the side torso. While you are a zombie build, once I take out both side torsos, I can safely ignore you -- you can only cap, spot or act as mobile armour at that point.

At 27% heat efficiently, a brawler will not cool enough to matter in a brawl. His alpha is the key, and in this case the Alpha will spread and sandpaper. I guesstimate you'll be only able to alpha twice -- then you're out of the brawl one way or another. There's also little point in upgrading to an Artemis for a single rack, since it does little and you don't depend on it for extensive damage. Extra cooling is IMO better than the tighter spread, since you're going to be in so close that it rarely is going to matter.

My 2 cents.

Edited by Lynx7725, 14 July 2013 - 07:36 PM.

[FupDup]

Here is the optimum Locust:

The Best Locust

Accept no substitutes. You can maybe swap out the ERLL for a normal LL if you don't feel like trolling at extreme range and want better heat efficiency in a brawl. SHS are never viable on anything and you also made the mistake of storing ammo in your legs as a light.

Edited by FupDup, 14 July 2013 - 07:41 PM.

[627]

man as much as i like the locust, everytime i see these armor values i have to shake my head... i will be so dead if anything hit me in that thing... CT: 16 front, 8 back, 12 internal HP... thats 28 Hitpoints from the front... that's one jenner alpha.

oh boy, this will be a hell of a ride, doesn't matter what weapons you bring or where your ammo is. No one will take the time to aim for the legs, they will just shoot you and kill you.

[Angel of Annihilation]

XX Sulla XX, on 14 July 2013 - 07:01 PM, said:

Victor there is one thing though about the Battlemaster. The hard points on the torsos are right at cockpit level unlike the arms. So if your main weopons are there you can pop your head up and fire. If they are in the arms you will be like an Atlas and have to expose most of your mech and for a longer time.

I realize this but I would say the usefullness of this feature will vary greatly from one player to the next.

Additionally I don't usually find it much harder to hit the top half of the mech peeking over a ridge than I do to hit the CT of a mech in full view. I think the cover this gives you is more of a placebo effect than actually useful though I do suppose in the proper circumstances (which are few and far between, especially with the new movement mechanics), it does allow you to get to cover a bit faster after firing.

What I do find limiting however is the small range of motion the torso has. Unless you are sniping it is hard to keep the torso lined up on the enemy. Then you have to factor in fighting on the sides of hills where torso mounted weapons become useless for firing at anything above or below you. Then in a relatively slow mech like the Battlemaster, you have to consider the Death Spiral circling attack where torso mounted weapons become almost useless. Since it is very hard to out turn a mech that is as fast or faster than you, you just can't keep torso weapons on the enemy, and if he has arm mounts, your toast.

Basically with your main weapons on the torso you get one rather situational advantage of being able peek over a hill and fire, something that is much harder to do now with the movement changes OR you get several situational advantages when you mount the weapons on the arms and those situations are all a much more common occurance.

[Johnny Reb]

FupDup, on 14 July 2013 - 07:40 PM, said:

Here is the optimum Locust:

The Best Locust

Accept no substitutes. You can maybe swap out the ERLL for a normal LL if you don't feel like trolling at extreme range and want better heat efficiency in a brawl. SHS are never viable on anything and you also made the mistake of storing ammo in your legs as a light.

Yep, the best locust build! My other builds are:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...78c86a596a2027b
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...5baf5273a60fa08
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...16ade579537a22f

edit: also with the heat efficiency on the locust that 1 erll will never overheat you on any map.

Edited by Johnny Reb, 15 July 2013 - 07:41 PM.

[CeeKay Boques]

Hopefully they can pull of something awesome for the Locust where the CT is the CIRCLE (movable chin gun) weapon, and the arms are the Crosses this time.

Edited by Technoviking, 15 July 2013 - 07:48 PM.

[Lynx7725]

For the Battlemaster, I'm starting to favour its torso weapons for one reason that I'm starting to realise from games in my Victor.

Assault mechs seems to have a dead zone directly in front of them where their arm weapons -- not torso -- has difficulty converging. They can still hit the target, but you cannot pinpoint fire on a location. In effect, any high burst damage weapons you have in the arms will become sandpaper weapons since you cannot surgically remove a torso once you are within facehugging range. Against in close mediums or lights, arm weapons can clean miss if their are hugging you.

Torso weapons however, should work fine for that. So a Battlemaster by definition would be a facehugger assault, using its arm mounted weapons to soften things up, then snuggling up with the enemy for their laser bath. If you design and build a particular Battlemaster for that, it should work out ok.

[Corvus Antaka]

Shadowhawk at 116 kph with 55 tons looks epic

Ac/20 build is a bit slow and probably weaker than a hunchie though the jumpjets would be nice with DFA.

but as a light hunter you can outfit it exceptionally well with an XL360

[hammerreborn]

Lynx7725, on 14 July 2013 - 07:32 PM, said:

The Locust is within expectations. Not much room on that ****** to do jack.

Huh. The Shadowhawk, that much ammo in the arms -- and ammo that's guaranteed to not be expended early -- is asking for a ammo explosion coring your RA. Since you are running XL engine, that's a death sentence. The loadout itself isn't bad, but you don't really need the MGs, and I'm personally biased against AMS. Try dropping the MGs for a BAP, you'll need it with those Streaks.

I'd also put either all the Jump Jets, or no Jump Jets. 1 JJ isn't going to do much, the acceleration and total thrust that'll give is rarely sufficient to do anything. Personally, I'll give up the AMS (along with the MG) for full jump and a DHS... or just straight out more speed.

The T-bowl needs focus. while you have decent firepower in close, it's all sandpaper firepower -- no penetration/ punch. You're carrying either too much ammo for the LRM, or too few LRMs, or too little ammo, depending on your approach. The TAG is not very useful since you have only one launcher (and in PUG it's very debatable on its usefulness), and you really, really need that arm sweep capability with a laser to fend off lights. MGs too, are debatable. Fundamentally, MGs are never going to be as good as other weapons at anti-mech work, so you might want to replace them.

Overall, it can work, but you need to work quite hard to get it to work. And at the same time, common builds can and will take you apart if you're not careful. Don't skim on head armour -- it's a 35 point location, you're at 33 points now. A few of LRMs/ SRMs/ lasers and suddenly you become vulnerable to 30-point bursts, which is fairly easy to see in the heavy category.

The Battlemaster.. good luck. You have no ranged weapons at all, so you need to be either fast, or sneaky. It's all sandpaper weaponry, so you'll be exposed much longer than "average" to kill another mech. You're not fast enough to avoid a slippery medium (like an AC20 YLW or Hunchback) from getting behind you and staying there, and your side torso rears have insufficient armour to prevent that medium from dropping the side torso. While you are a zombie build, once I take out both side torsos, I can safely ignore you -- you can only cap, spot or act as mobile armour at that point.

At 27% heat efficiently, a brawler will not cool enough to matter in a brawl. His alpha is the key, and in this case the Alpha will spread and sandpaper. I guesstimate you'll be only able to alpha twice -- then you're out of the brawl one way or another. There's also little point in upgrading to an Artemis for a single rack, since it does little and you don't depend on it for extensive damage. Extra cooling is IMO better than the tighter spread, since you're going to be in so close that it rarely is going to matter.

My 2 cents.

I assume the 1 JJ is for jump turns, not any substantial jumping or poptarting gains. Instant 180s are awesome.

[TehSBGX]

Well OP I'll be honest, don't Consider those ideas final. You can make the Phoenix mechs more optimal without being cheezy.

Let me show you a joke shadow hawk build that might actually out preform your serious build. And it's only a joke because the LBX http://goo.gl/G6TLY


As for the Locust, Fupdup gave a sweet build. And The t-Bolt I'm not done tinkering with honestly.

Edited by TehSBGX, 15 July 2013 - 11:21 PM.

[Johnny Reb]

Fup gave the only serous build!

[Dexion]

Looking at the SHD real quick, ammo location strikes me as odd... move one ton of AC10 ammo and one ton of streak ammo to your RT, the rest in the legs... Ammo will feed from RT first, and you should get 15 AC10 shots off before your RT is exposed.

[Mechteric]

Though I don't generally encourage Frankenmechs, this Thunderbolt would likely be fun:

http://mwo.smurfy-ne...f8d906c15468fae

[Dexion]

CapperDeluxe, on 16 July 2013 - 06:52 AM, said:

Though I don't generally encourage Frankenmechs, this Thunderbolt would likely be fun:

Lol, not much choice but to go Franken with some of the Phoenix mechs (TDR and SHD I'm looking at you).

[CDLord HHGD]

Here are my Locust builds:

TAG:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9d7e3951d84e47f

ML:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...38e9e78156287f3

CASE:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...1e05081c58ec26e

IMO, PGI is gonna have to get a lot better at defining the Scout role because this thing is very vulnerable....

[Angel of Annihilation]

cdlord, on 16 July 2013 - 07:00 AM, said:

Here are my Locust builds:

TAG:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...9d7e3951d84e47f

ML:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...38e9e78156287f3

CASE:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...1e05081c58ec26e

IMO, PGI is gonna have to get a lot better at defining the Scout role because this thing is very vulnerable....

Going to be completely unusable to be honest. I bought Overload but I am absolutely not expecting anything out of the Locust other than a waste of time.

There is just not enough reason in game to have these very light mechs. If we were in a real enviornment or lore for sake of arguement, these type of mechs would be ranging miles ahead of the main body looking for the enemy, trying to overrun supply convoys and generally harrassing the enemy flank and rear areas. They would not be going up against front line mechs except in the most dire circumstances. That is not their role.

Until/Unless we get scenerio battles that define mission objectives and drop limitations, lights like the Locust will always be the odd man out.

Edited by Viktor Drake, 16 July 2013 - 07:58 AM.

[Lynx7725]

Viktor Drake, on 16 July 2013 - 07:58 AM, said:

Going to be completely unusable to be honest. I bought Overload but I am absolutely not expecting anything out of the Locust other than a waste of time.

Yeah well.. neither am I honestly. A lot of the Locust's usefulness depends on its size and ability to hill climb. If it's smaller than a Commando, then it's still a useful asset. Load it with sensors, tag it, send it out to skirt the enemy and not fight.. can be useful in a 12-mech company. 8 men drop? Not worth the lack of gun.