Snazzy Dragon, on 10 January 2017 - 01:06 AM, said:
I'll put money behind light mechs when they have a role as something other than troll builds (ac/20 raven, ac2 lolcust, etc) and little annoyances for assaults and heavies to one shot.
Think of lights like that, and you'll never get them to be more than little annoyances for heavies and assaults to oneshot. It takes a specific mindset to play lights; and I'll be brutally honest here - a defeatist light is something that I'd rather not see on ANY light on my team. You need to believe that you can work your magic on the enemy team, and that you can find a way, no matter how bloody difficult it is to get there, and murder the living daylights out of the enemy fatmechs.
I'll throw this endgame screenshot as a motivator. This is on Escort Offense, a mode that absolutely murders lights with autoturrets and impossible-to-disable ground-level wallhacking UAVs. I am in a Kit Fox with nothing more than ERSLs, without ECM, on a map that heavily favours long-range sniping and LRM tossing. And yet, I came to the map, I saw the enemy team, I laughed in their faces, and I conquered their rear CTs. A very short ranged build, on a very fragile mech, on a map that favours long-range exchanges of fire, and I still destroyed the enemy.
I am now become Cutefox, the purifier of worlds.
They have a very high skill floor at this stage, owing to the vast amounts of agility quirks being thrown onto fatmechs that make them into 100-ton ballerinas with BFGs. Yes, it's more difficult to play than mediums or heavies. Yes, you don't have the big alpha potential of assaults. So what do you have going for you?
Small sizes, and legwork agility. All other things being equal, the ability to flit from cover to cover on a whim is going to make your sucky little light into the most brutal killing machine possible. Kit Foxes are also extremely,
extremely short. Most cover that would barely cover the crotches of other mechs are full cover for you. If they were just a touch shorter, they could probably fit under the ramps in HPG. On uneven terrain you are nearly impossible to get a proper bead on with any laser or burst-fire clan AC, because even the slightest vertical movement on your short mech would completely throw off their aim.
And as for the Kit Fox not having enough firepower, I highly doubt that. The SRM6x4 build has obscene amounts of firepower; quirks in consideration, it can dish out nearly 7.2 DPS sustained, with an absolute maximum of ~13 DPS. The 8 SPL build of the Purifier can dish out about 8.4 DPS sustained, with a maximum of 17.2 DPS. All of it pinpoint, and nearly front-loaded thanks to the short duration of the lasers. Leave the Kit Fox alone behind an assault or a heavy, and I can tell you that fatmech won't know what hit him before he bites the dust.
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