SniperCon, on 03 March 2014 - 02:02 PM, said:
I am fully aware of how skillful you and the leaders are and am not diminishing the accomplishment. I am also fully aware of how effective arty and air are at dealing damage, assists, and the occasional kill which are the focus of the award system. Everyone who played without arty or air gave up points compared to those who did plain and simple.
No arty. No air. Evah.
In fact, I'll sum it up by referring to a message I sent to another pilot:
"To be entirely honest, I'm surprised that my Blackjack turned out to be my focus during the tourney. I really, really thought that it was going to be my Ilya - I consider myself to be a better heavy-chassis player than a medium pilot. Thing is, I was getting utterly creamed whenever I tried to go heavy, and for some reason I was just doing better in my Blackjack overall. People were really giving it their all, and my sluggish heavy builds were getting pounded into fine powder by well-coordinated, concentrated firepower long before I could get any shots off of my own.
I figured that if I was going to survive, I needed to pick up the pace with a lighter, faster mech.
I greatly enjoy the 1X chassis. Its energy hardpoints are very generous, and allow a number of different builds. Plus, it can equip an engine beefy enough to allow just enough speed to take advantage of the BJ's nice and slim profile. With an XL 295, it's a 45-ton medium that can play a lot like a well-armed and better-armored light, which was exactly what I wanted. It's nimble and somewhat hard to hit, with short and stubby little arms that are fairly hard to tear off.
I know a lot of people are averse to using an XL engine, but my reasoning is that, in a 45-ton mech with 50% of its firepower on either side and a fairly low amount of armor, if I ever get into a situation where I'm going to lose a torso, I'm dead anyway or not long from it, and not combat capable enough to justify surviving anyway. Of course, there was the odd match where I'd get a side torso wrecked early, but I'd say that was no more than 5% of the time.
With the fastest engine, the Blackjack can torso twist like a champion, which helps spread out the damage. My only complaint is its sluggish turn speed, which messed with me more than once in close brawls. I actually view the locked arms as a positive, because the lack of lateral aim deviation really helps my shots all stay precisely on one target. That's important, because 8 medium lasers need to be very accurate.
Because of ghost heat, I grouped the six in the arms to fire with one mouse button, and grouped *all* of the lasers to fire in chainfire mode with the other. Short, sweet, and easy to manage in a fight. Chainfired medium lasers give you that extra edge in a brawl - a little bit of staying power for when both you and your opponent are running really hot. It makes the difference when the bad guy struggles to hit you with a salvo of lasers and shuts down, leaving you still able to stay heat neutral with careful, controlled laser shots in his damaged sections. I got a large number of kills this way, by avoiding shots with my speed and outlasting my opponent with patient laser fire.
Of course, that 30 point alpha with six medium lasers is nothing to sneeze at, either, and I'm able to alpha that weapon group over and over again without worrying too much about heat. It's easy to click to fire six lasers, wait a half second, and double tap with the other two to avoid ghost heat and add 10 more points of damage.
I find that fast Blackjacks are good knife fighters - small and seemingly underpowered enough for enemies to often pass you over in favor of a bigger, more apparently dangerous target. This works great in your favor, as you are able to nimbly slip in behind the biggest of mechs and unleash all eight lasers to the vulnerable rear armor, with excellent precision thanks to the locked arms. Holding down the arm lock buttons allows a sort of "aim mode" that slows down the reticule when you need to be a little more precise.
You don't have to rely on sneak attacks, though. The speed and high response times of the XL 295 allow you to use cover like a trained gunfighter. The massive amount of chain fired lasers make opponents somewhat intimidated by you, as though they fear you can do more damage than you really can in one go, so it is very possible to nip out of cover and suppress the heck out of a small group with a rapid-fire barrage. I'm surprised this actually works. I've even managed to cause an entire lance to turn and run even though I was scouting on my own!
By poking out of cover, smacking an enemy with an alpha, and then quickly slipping back into cover, you can win the war of attrition so long as you're careful. Dashing between cover point to cover point at more than 110 kph is a bit of an art, and it's loads of fun. The Blackjack can aggressively run over fleeing enemies, and can gain ground quickly. It's also *extremely* proficient at legging distracted lights from a position of cover.
So, all in all, I get the most success from doing one of three things:
1) Use cover and play like a trained gunfighter - poke out just enough to get off your shots, and then take a single step back into safety, and wear the enemy down.
2) Knife em in the back - move with a group so that they pay more attention to the bigger mechs, and slip to heavily wound or kill the enemy team's power players. Don't be afraid to run, because it's better to seriously wound an enemy and get away in mint condition than it is to duel to the death and kill the guy, but end up so damaged that you're easy pickings for the next bad guy.
3) Turn and burn. Use your speed to get into a persuing mech's face, blaze away with your six all-fire lasers, and then plink with chainfire at the weakened bits when you get too hot. If you scare them into playing defensive, you can run and catch your breath for more six-shot alphas. If the enemy presses the attack, you can outlast them with speed, torso-twisting, and careful shooting. They're likely to overheat trying to ground you, but if you're careful (and I'm careful enough maybe 80% of the time), you won't. When they do, it's over for them.
Anyway, sorry to carry on. That's how I play Blackjack. There are lots of people who find success with ballistic builds in other variants, but for me, the 1X is where it's at. I find the Blackjack too lightly tonned and armored to be anything other than a fast skirmisher, and I mean it: *many* of my kills came from me specifically targeting BJs because a lot of them are sluggish and easy to hit. With that little armor, I feel that you *need* to be tough to hit."
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