The Shadow Cat's a 'Mech I've been at odds with for a long time. The MASC doesn't do as much for it as I'd like and the fact that it offsets your aim makes it less than useless for fleeing battles. The jump-jets can get you to high spots... slowly. Sometimes. Most of the time you brush a wall and stick to it, or slip off the top of whatever you landed on, or clip a ledge and float off up and away from it like a deranged balloon before falling to your leg-crushing death.
I bought one a long time ago, got basics on it and then didn't bother getting another. Recently though I got a second Shadow Cat in the faction loyalty Scouting challenge, so I decided to master one and... bears. Bears everywhere. The Shadow Cat is vapor if you get anywhere near a Kodiak (or most other assaults, let's be fair), the 2 LPL ran too hot for me and the separation of the hard points between arm and shoulder was awkward.
So I glared at the Shadow Cat for a while and noticed something. That shoulder energy hardpoint is actually really well placed. If you're going to be sniping from cover, that's the hardpoint to build around. So I put a CerPPC in it and found you can expose a lot less of yourself using only that one gun, and a single cLPL or erPPC is hot, but manageable.
The arms use the remaining tonnage for the bread and butter mid and close range weapons.
So basically I've made peace with the Shadow Cat by mostly forgetting that it wastes tonnage on float jets and using MASC mostly to re-position between sniping spots.
GREEBO(C)
It's still not my favorite 'Mech, and it's damage output is low enough that it's only going to shine in a drawn-out game, but it's much more manageable.
Edited by no one, 22 May 2016 - 12:55 PM.