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wanderer, on 13 January 2014 - 03:56 PM, said:
The balancer is of course the ECM variant, which means SUDDENLY ATLAS for many players. There's a reason I like my Atlai with LRMs- you don't care about shooting over things so much as you just back up a bit to let the LRMs fly over things instead. This has the advantage of letting you easily line up the arm mounts on the guy who crests your cover to give him an nice bath in laser fire. I'll sit there watching my 2xLRM 15's stream down the way, poking away with a large laser and letting my torso TAG mount lead the real pain right in- for some reason, the big ol' assault tends to attract people to stay out fighting and plow into a double fistful of missiles while doing it. Then they explode and I do it again with the next target. Or mount a pair of ER PPCs and have fun one-two-LIGHTNING FISTS OF DEATH on opponents and tick off the lights with Streak fire. Or strap a big ol' AC/20 for a backup instead and see if I can one shot any lights.
Just FFS, have some good reach if you're gonna Atlai it up. An all-brawler one is fun, but you're really in trouble with smarter opponents and it's nice to be able to reach out and touch instead.
This is very true. As the metagame has shifted, I've stopped building brawling focused Atlas's (though the DDC can still do this thanks to ECM and "Surprise Atlas!") - instead, that big LRM 20 comes in handy (with Artemis) to apply a steady rain of damage as I get close enough to use the AC20 and medium lasers. This avoid a need to "hill hump" with a mech poorly designed for that as well as the need to get silly close to use SRM's.
So, regardless of assault mech, make sure you can apply damage at range since you really can't catch most of the mechs out there and force them to brawl if they don't want to do so. This also avoids the temptation to walk out into the open to use your close range only weapons... and then get killed.
As for assault mechs:
- Victor and Highlander are overall the best thanks to a good mix of weapons, decent hitboxes, and jumpjets.
- The Atlas is solid at all ranges and has excellent armor, but it is big, slow, and a target. It also can't "hill hump" hence the need for missiles for safe long range engagements.
- The Stalker is very durable and excellent at long-range sniping and fire support. It suffers somewhat in a brawl thanks to terrible torso twist and poor handling.
- The Awesome is the weakest, sadly, but still has its merits. It is rather fragile for an assault mech, but offers good missile capabilities - even somewhat better than the Stalker - and can at least maneuver well in a brawl even if it is not that tough. They are best used for fire support, like Stalkers, though what they give up in durability they gain in maneuverability.
- The Battlemaster is reasonably tough and offers a good selection of variants, though it is very energy heavy and thus overheating can be a concern - a problem it shares with the Stalker. The lack of jump jets does limit it to some level, but it is still a good mech overall.
