1453 R, on 24 June 2015 - 04:00 PM, said:
Dire Whale pilots will absolutely detest the Executioner. It has firepower problems, no joke. They're not crippling firepower problems given its stupid preponderance of [E] hardpoints even without the D variant, but it can't do typical Banshee builds, let alone typical Dire Whale builds.
On the other hand, the Executioner might well be an assault 'Mech for people who detest the Whale. I have the Masakari pack, and yet I have never once piloted my Dire Whales. Every single one of them was stripped the minute I got the package as a start to building up a warehouse of Clan gear for 'Mechs I would actually pilot. The Whale has truly stupendous firepower, yes indeed it does...but I would rather 'pilot' the hardened bunkers which are, in fact, capable of outmaneuvering a Dire Whale than the Whale itself.
The Executioner, and more specifically its M.A.S.C. system, enable a style of play no other 'Mech can match. Not even the Shadow Cat, when it hits - the Cat will be grand, but it will also be a forty-five ton machine with ~17 or so tons of pod space at a maximum after scrimping tonnage from anywhere it can find. It won't be a 95-ton monster able to accelerate like a Cicada. That is reserved for the Executioner alone, and frankly? That is a thing that is a whole lot of fun to play, even if I'm not very good with it yet.
I'm flat out bad in mine. I'm a solid Assault pilot, and while I do extremely well in Direwolves, I do very well in Warhawks, Stalkers, Highlanders, King Crabs, Battlemasters, Banshees and more as well.
But, with that said, I don't run any of my assaults fast (with the exception of the warhawk, which is what it is).
I love MASC, and can appreciate what it does, but my Executioners always feel like they're a wall of armor with no real firepower. Yes, you can bring a lot of lasers, but as I don't have the D pods, it's almost all in really low slung arms that can't hit anything unless you're so lucky as to be fighting on flat terrain.
My Prime is equipped with 6 ERML's and a LPL - a "good" loadout - but the realities of it
for me make those ERML's often useless. Fighting with a single Large Pulse Laser on a 95T assault is pathetic. I do get kills, of course - that's a good alpha, and in ideal circumstances it deals a lot of hurt. However... I think my best match to date, since the release, is like 400 damage and two kills. For me in an assault, that's just not acceptable.
The mech is really, REALLY just not for me.