Posted 27 August 2014 - 06:31 PM
I picked up the 8Q and 8T tonight, last two awesomes. I mastered the others over a year ago, and rarely play them except for the 8R i get out for lulz once in a while.
I put a fairly silly loadout on my T for its first match, LPL and ML in each arm, ML in head, BAP, and DHS everywhere, STD 300. No missiles, though I had intended to put some LRM in the torsos initially, I wanted to try the laser stuff so I just went with it.
Had a good run, not some kind of outstanding match or anything, but did solid dmg with good assists, one kill. Mostly just hung with the team, it was a fairly odd match on tourmaline whewre both teams were in the center, basically on opposite sides of a wall, trying to out flank each other while completely blinded by ECM everywhere on both teams.
What I decided: The model is too big to "react" torso twist like you can in other mechs even of similar size. Now, I have some bad lag sometimes, so that doesnt help(I even desynched again once tonight) but in general, The awesome has to stand there and eat it, twist or not, they can pretty easily hit torso boxes instead of arms if they try even a little. Now, in ye olde days, the 9M I played had an easier time of it as it had a solid 15kph on these two, and that translated into a lot better turn rate..... which is my big point:
The Turn rate on the 300STD Awesomes is too damn slow. Now, the V and R I played as mostly missile boats, it wasnt that bg a deal. The Q though, damn son, I can twist torso al the way left, right and back to left twice before the legs can turn 90 degrees. And IMO, that plays a big part in why it gets shredded a lot of times.
Anyway, match 2 or 3 in the T, I swapped to smaller lasers(Ml) and put a pair of LRM10 on it, had a decent outting in Frozen cept for a desynch that ended my match for me(we were down by 3 mechs, but they were beat up and I had solid armor left, like yellow) and after that I went to the Q, 3 PPC and 3ML. had some really fair matches in it, but all 4 were losses(a lot due to team choice, but 2 for sure were just bad match ups) Again, Turn rate is attrocious, and I have to say the 300 limit on them feels out of place with the rest of the game anymore. I think if they raised it to 325, it could really help for those loadouts where you want to up the turn rate a bit and fight more up close with shorter lasers.
The only thing I noticed on the Q I felt held it back, was the stupid ghost heat on the third PPC. If you could alpha all three PC on it, it would turn it to rather fearsome, instead of "overgrown medium" firepower. For reference, I run on my last two dragons to master(1 and 5N) twin PPC and AC10(before it was meta, I only play them once or twice a month) and it is both easier and more effective dmg output with just one heavy ballistic like that, because no ghost heat. PLus the dragon with a 300 runs like, 35kph faster lol.
Anyway, i know it wouldnt be cannon, but upping the engine rating, or at least turn rate(and maybe run speed by like 5kph) would go a long way to brining the Awesome up to the level of say the battlemaster.