43 replies to this topic

[Deathlike]

After seeing this thread, I will reconsider polling to self-troll with Dragons.

[Bishop Steiner]

Tahribator, on 03 November 2013 - 09:42 AM, said:

I think Dragons only become powerful when you're quite experienced in MWO. It has decent firepower and armor, but most of the work piloting a successful Dragon lies in abusing your mobility and knowing when to go in and out. The ridiculous arm yaw, high speed and torso twist has to be abused to their limits. Dragon makes a terrible dedicated brawler or a sniper, it also doesn't go well within big blobs.

Instead it plays almost like a light, go deep into the enemy lines; find isolated mechs away from main groups, hit that sniper/lrm boat in the back and punish them for going "all in". It certainly have the armor to take punishment from heavier mechs for a while. Or dive into a brawl, find that XL mech with open torso, finish him and get out again before getting primaried only to dive again when they switch targets.

You absolutely suck against anything else though. A well piloted light can literally solo you if you don't carefully pick your fight. Actually the hitbox distribution is decent, and the half of the CT sticking out is actually ST. The problem is your CT/ST can be hit even when you're sideways to your target. You have a "fat profile" from all angles.

If you work these out, and accept the losses when enemy doesn't present juicy targets to you: Dragons are pretty fun. Actually, I like all the variants. After eliting all of them, I couldn't get myself to sell any.

If nothing else, instead of a ground up redesign, even re-doing the arms on several mechs would mech them mush more viable. CT is big on the BLR and not tiny on the ShadowHawk. But those chunky massive ape hangers block a lot of shots. Imagine if the Awesome, Atlas and Dragon had that?

[Captain Katawa]

If you want an actually efficient mech for winning games - NO
If you want some extra competition to play swagger on a cool looking mech and try to kick *** on a mech people think is impossible to play - YES
It's center torso can be easily hit from every side and even from behind, It's like it attracts hits especially LRM.
The only dragons that worth attention how are DRG-5N to build it like XL300 3*AC2 2*ML (endo DHS) Whch is expensive. Good but not worth it's money imo. But if you already have XL300 it's cool/
And FLAME with AC20 in side torso (you need a standart engine) and 4 medium lasers.

My personal favorite is 5N. I love how fast and powerful it is. But you need to position yourself quite smart or your CT wont last a second. As for FLAME now you can simply get an Orion for this. Gauss+2LL got nerfed terribly and AC10 is not the same as the old gauss.

[Narcissistic Martyr]

I've played Dragons since closed beta and I'm reasonably good with them. Unfortunately just like in CB, the huge CT makes them a bit of a death trap, especially if the opponent has a high alpha (jagers=instant death if the pilot is remotely intelligent). Unfortunately this means the dragon is out for competitive play but it's a ton of fun in a PUG and if you can successfully pilot a dragon.

The dragon's advantages are the highest available amount of free tonnage available to any mech capable of going 89/106 kph (std/xl), the highest range of motion attached to any ballistics arm in the game for precise shots, small side torsos so you can always run an XL, high mounted energy points on the 1C and 1N for PPC sniping, and looking really freaking awesome.

Additionally, the 5N (which I don't use) has 3 arm mounted ballistics hardpoints for 3xAC2 action and 2 arm mounted energy points. If you end up liking dragons the Flame has 4 arm mounted energy hard points for serious anti-light defense and pin point destruction of damaged components and a high mounted ballistics hardpoint for sniping that is well protected in your small LT. The flame is also one of the fastest AC20s that you can reasonably field (the Treb 7K, hunch, YLW, and Raven 4x are faster but only the Wang is more durable).

I tend to run mine as a finisher (weak area exploitation with my arm mounted autocannons) and an all around light/medium hunter with my arm mounted lasers. I'm a terrible sniper but I know many dragon pilots love to run theirs as a mobile sniper.

For armor distribution I've found it's best to use a 3:1 F:R armor ratio. However a 1:1 ratio also works if you're willing to torso twist to take the a bunch of hits to the rear armor which almost every opponent will happily take. A 1:1 ratio can also work quite well if you want to brawl, are very good at torso twisting, and know how to use free look regularly. You can also remove most of your head armor (never been headshot in the mech with 4 armor) and leg armor (40 points if you're fast but 32 works if you're <90 kph because almost noone will target your legs). All of which allows you to mount more weapons and ammo.

Edited by Narcissistic Martyr, 03 November 2013 - 04:21 PM.