Well, I'll chime in since this already got semi-necro'd.
I enjoyed the Mad Dog recently, up to a point. I have since sold the thing.
It wasn't because of the profile, and it wasn't because it was too tall - I actually enjoyed the height, because coupled with LRMs all you had to do was very barely expose your head and you could rain LRMs on a target that can't hardly hit you. Height is important to pull that off with most amounts of cover in the game.
No, for me, it was the lack of survivability for the side torsos.
You wouldn't think those side torsos are that big, but because the CT is *so* damned slender, and the arms are uselessly dangling knuckle-dragger versions, *plus* the fact the side torsos always have a 'bar' up on top making it easier to hit them by shooting the upper portions of the Mad Dog...most of the time I was finding my torsos popping off like they were made from Legos.
And I just couldn't stand it. I'd rather just use some of my other 'Mechs to bring LRMs, tag, and some ERML; the arms on the Mad Dog are just atrociously low, but that seems to be an ongoing Clan "feature" (aside from the Ebon Jag), so it's not unique to the Mad Dog.
It seems to me that the side torsos, at the very *least*, do not need to be so high up relative to the CT. It might be a matter of inches that I'm nitpicking here, really, but it got to the point that I found myself asking, "why do I need to have this 'Mech anymore?". And I just had no answer.
Especially when I could just grab a second T-wolf or Ebon Jaguar chassis, or even a Stormcrow really, using the same weapons loadout, and rename it the "Pentium Mad Dog", and call it all good.
In hindsight posting this, I will say, if not for the Shadowcat coming along, I would have probably made the Mad Dog my dedicated SRM brawler. If it had a TAG laser on the CT somewhere decently high up enough (mid-CT at least?), that too might have saved the Mad Dog for my hangar...but, water under the bridge by this point.
Edited by Telmasa, 01 July 2015 - 12:11 PM.