5 replies to this topic

[Verstaka]

I'm looking for an IS Medium to work on my brawling and direct fire support skills so I can be of better use to my Merc Co in the scheduled drops. I've narrowed it down to these two as they should be inexpensive to master and it seems like they both would offer a fairly different playstyle across each chassis. Thoughts?

[juxstapo]

Wow. Not too long ago this would've been cut and dried and I would've said Shawk in a heartbeat.
Now, not as sure.

Both can hill hump with the best of them. The Hunchie can turn on a dime and the Shawk kinda drives like a truck. However the Shadow Hawk mounts Jets which overcomes a lot of faults (including turning).

mmmkay, for brawling you need to work on torso twisting to spread damage and the HBK's are better at that.
SHD's will do "Direct Fire Support" better due to having more tonnage to work with and a variant that has Energy slots on that shoulder mount.

I'd say both eventually, (I mean I couldn't imagine *not* owning either one). But start with the Hunchbacks.

EDIT: "Inexpensive to master", I missed that caveat. Definitely Hunchbacks. Reason being because a lot of good Shawk builds want large XL's. But evry HBK wants a standard engine. (The days of the Fastback are three years gone).

Edited by juxstapo, 04 January 2016 - 10:59 PM.

[Nullmancer]

hunchbacks have more variety over the various chassis, with strong ballistic, energy and missile of both flavours and have generous quirks to boot. Shadowhawks only lately got meaningful quirks and they ain't all that compared to the hunchbacks.

The hunchback will be slower and has the easily targetted hunch, the shadowhawk has a wee little hunch in comparison and has a much higher possible speed.

Hunchbacks are short and squat, shadowhawks are too tall, and lanky

hunchbacks arms cant shield for ****, shadowhawks arms will catch fire easily when torso twisting.



anyways, I'd look at what the variety of chassis can do for you, if your starting out, I'd suggest do hunchbacks first, try out the various variants so you arent too bored while levelling them, then try shadowhawks.

Shadowhawks dont vary much between the chassis, so you'll probably be doing a lot of the same old, same old across variants. To me the high mounted ballistic in most variants just ain't that great. The SHD-2K however, is another thing altogether, them high mounted energy hardpoints are ******* amazing.





btw, SHD-2K is best shadowhawk.

Edited by Nullmancer, 04 January 2016 - 11:14 PM.

[Metus regem]

Centurions?

Grate Hit Boxes
XL or Standard friendly
Rolled damage well
Has a sheilds side when running standard engines
Has a sheilds arm when running XL Engines
Most can be bought for under 4 million each (A, AL, AH)
Has three different load outs.
AC + lasers + missiles (CN9-A)
Lasers (CN9-AL)
AC(20) + Missles (CN9-AH)
Has a good hero Mech (CN9-LYW)
Decent mastery pack (CN9-A, CN9-D and CN9-LYW)

[Verstaka]

So between the HBK being cheaper to master with no XL engine being recquirted plus the fact that every chassis is currently 33% off I decided to go for the hunchy. Thanks for the advice everyone

[Kjudoon]

Hunchie currently has better quirks and has always been a better std engine brawler because of its size.

If you are going to work skirmishing and flanking go with the shawk but the one major drawback with the shawk no quirk can fix is a bad cockpit view. Probably worst in game.