Posted 16 June 2014 - 10:21 AM
The Timber Wolf is easily the most versatile of the three mentioned chassis, with a respectable amount of pod space on top of excellent stock armor and absolutely wonderful mobility for its size. It’s a seventy-five ton ballerina hampered only by what felt like a very bad hill climb profile, but that actually makes canonical lore-wise sense – chicken ‘Mechs were supposed to, on the whole, be faster/more agile on level terrain, but less adept at dealing with hilly, broken ground as man-walkers.
I ran several different Timber Wolf configurations; my favorite was an ERPPC and ERSL in each arm backed by a torso-mounted Gauss Rifle with 2.5t of ammo because half-ton ammo increments are AWESOME. Heavy Marauder Prime, and oh boy did it massacre stuff. I also did the jumpy brawly S-variant stuff, but felt like I sacrificed a bit too much firepower to a full load of jets in the Timber Wolf. It’s certainly still doable, and 4x CASRM-6 is an unpleasant day for anyone, but the Timber Wolf’s torsos are crammed to the gills even without jets. It’s doable, and awesome when it works, but even as a pilot who likes his rocket boosters I felt like the Timber Wolf performed better with its feet firmly on the ground.
The Stormcrow is my favorite ride out of the entire set of ‘Mechs. I do <3 my HMP, but the Stormcrow is pretty much the new god of medium ‘Mechs. The Shadow Hawk can jump, the Nova carries an absolutely recronkulous amount of hardpoints, but the Stormcrow is fast, agile, durable as all get-out with that delicious Clan XL engine, and carries more than enough firepower to make people cry. I got a heavy workout with a configuration sporting a CLB-20/X with 4.5t ammo, three CERSLs in the torso and two CERMLs in the opposite arm, and my best game of the entire test period was 700 damage with three kills in a Stormcrow with a CERPPC in each side torso and four CERSL in the arms. Only two of the multitude of fits one can run on the Stormcrow. The ‘Mech is a joy to pilot and is very much to medium ‘Mechs what the Timber Wolf is to heavies.
Unlike literally everyone else, I also put some decent time into the Summoner. Despite the popular notion that the Timber Wolf’s S-variant and S Omnipods completely invalidate the Summoner, I found it to fill a niche the Timber Wolf-S just does not. The Timber Wolf S feels like a grounded ‘Mech with bodged-on jets – you take some fairly stiff maneuverability penalties for using the S-variant side torsos (which provide the jets), the Timber Wolf doesn’t have a lot of torso space to put jump jets in, and it just felt awkward to me. The Summoner, on the other hand, is the ‘Mech for people who jump as reflexively as they breathe. The jets are much better placed since the ‘Mech is built around them, and it also thusly retains all of its twist and turn agility with a full compliment of jump jets. I only had time during the test to stumble across one configuration I liked for the Summoner, which does suffer from rather more limited pod space than you might like in a heavy ‘Mech, but that just means you need to be more careful with your investment.
My best configuration for it was a fairly simple modification of the Prime – I stripped the Prime’s autocannon arm off it and replaced it with the D-variant’s 2M arm and packed two CASRM-6 into it with three tons of ammo to draw on. Of necessity I bumped the CLRM-15 up to a CALRM-15, and used the two tons I had left over after that to patch up the thing’s armor. The ASRMs provided a nice left cross for close-combat fights, and seemed to fit well with the Summoner’s more mobile, hit-and-fadey combat preferences to me, while the CERPPC is God’s gift to the Clans and the CALRM-15…well, I’m not sold on the stupid long lock times for CLRMs, but when I finally got lock, it was nice to have something to throw downrange while I was maneuvering for position for the particannon and the rockets.
If you don’t jump as instinctively as you breathe, I’d stay away from the Summoner. It’s only real advantage over the Timber Wolf is its aerial agility and what felt like a better hill climb profile. If you’re primarily a grounded pilot looking for a flexible, does-it-all chassis, I’d definitely go with the Timber Wolf. If you’re a dedicated medium pilot looking for the best striker-skirmisher you’ll ever know, I’d go with the Stormcrow. The Summoner…I’d probably wait for the C-bill release of, which is coming pretty soon after the Clans drop, and spend my dough on one of the other two that aren’t going to be here for quite some time. It’s by no means a bad ‘Mech, but it strikes me as somewhat ill-advised to grab it as a single purchase A’la Carte over something like the Timber Wolf.
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Rhaythe, on 16 June 2014 - 10:03 AM, said:
