The thing about the Timber Wolf is that it can kind of do anything. Since champ builds are ones intended to be decent for new players, I went ahead and put 2 UAC 2's on this for long range poking, 3 SRM 6's for short-ranged brawling, and 4 ERSL's for short range poking.
The UAC 2 is a deceptively dangerous weapon, with a base dps of 2.78 per gun and a very good range. I actually front-cored a KGC today with my experimental Ebon Jaguar build sporting something very similar to this.
The SRM 6 is a bread and butter weapon of many clan builds. The lighter launchers are one of the few weapons system advantages the clans possess over their inner sphere counterparts, and a 36 point shotgun is nothing to sneeze at. An additional plus for newer players since their accuracy may not be very good yet, the SRM spread improves the chances that some missiles will hit stripped areas on mechs that have holes in their armor, while reducing chances that all the missiles will hit there. It's a good stepping-stone intermediate weapon imo.
The ERSL is really only just starting to grow on me, so if anything is wrong with this build, this is probably it. I usually stick to pulse lasers exclusively, especially on clan mechs due to their ridiculously long burn times, but the ERSL is not completely useless, very light, and fairly cool. It doesn't do as much damage per tick as a SPL, but at half the weight, you can put them on nearly any build for nearly equivalent damage against slow moving targets.
With 20 heatsinks, it has decent heat efficiency for its weapons load, though in the event of the pilot using all of them it will overheat rather quickly. So long as the pilot uses discretion with their weapon groups, it should be a very cool mech though.
Moving on to that, a lot of you may question why I elected to put three weapon groups onto a newbie mech. The answer is training. If we teach our newer players to take advantage of more weapon groups now without overwhelming them with too many (stock Timber Prime, I'm looking at you) they'll be better able to take advantage of multiple styles of weapon systems and ranges on the mechs that they build when they get through their cadet bonuses.
I've also slightly front-loaded the armor to improve survivability while emphasizing the tactical importance of positioning, though not so much as an experienced pilot might for that weight class of mech. In essence, I've taken a half-measure of many of the things we who have done this for a while do when building a mech, and implemented it to hopefully give the newer player a taste for how it works. It's also very non-meta, and I know that will please many of you in and of itself for some inexplicable reason.
TBR-PRIME
Tallyn, on 17 June 2015 - 08:34 PM, said:
http://mwo.smurfy-ne...8290cc7538fe5ef
Here's a simple, yet effective TBR-C build, based off a similar one I've used on a TBR-PRIME.
It has the power of twin ER PPCs and a long-range LB 5-X, while two SRM-6 launchers handle close range.
This doesn't look terrible, but I don't know why you'd leave arm actuators off when you can afford to fit them.
Krivvan, on 17 June 2015 - 10:01 PM, said:
To all the people posting jack-of-all trades builds, those are exactly the kinds of builds you don't want a new player in. New players need to learn to focus on the role of a build. Builds built for every role are awful at every role and a horrible experience for a new player who won't have any goal for how to play the build.
No more than two weapon types and no more than two weapon groups needed should be the goal.
Respectfully, I have to disagree. I'm not saying you need to hand these guys the hot mess that is the stock Timber Prime, but if you make the game a one-button press thing, they aren't going to learn how to use more complex builds, nor are they going to gain familiarity with very many weapons systems since you're limiting them to one or two similar ones per mech. If they need to, they can put the SRM's and the ERSL's on the same button on my build, but they're going to benefit more from learning each weapon's advantages and limitations.
ACE558, on 17 June 2015 - 10:53 PM, said:
Very close to my build, though you trade ammo and stopping power for artemis and a laser "upgrade." I wouldn't, but that's because I loathe the lengthy burn time on most clan lasers, and the mediums heat you up fairly quickly. The artemis...eh. I'd rather have the extra launcher, personally. I also note that you front-loaded the armor more than I did. That's kind of a "season to taste" thing though.