48 replies to this topic

[Prototelis]

The 20 is best played like a pirates bane with masc and a little more firepower.

You can approximate the "wombo-combo" from the 17 on the 20 and still fit stealth armor for shenanigans. I run shs, med pulse, 4 smalls. The heat management is balls, but the speed and stealth armor let you straight up leave bad situations.

[Koniving]

In terms of animation, I'm disgusted with the Flea.

If you're keeping to the first stage of animation (as slow as possible), you have the hip movement that is expected.

As you increase your speed however to the jog and sprint stages of animation, the hip movement is backwards (which if you tried to replicate running while moving your hips like this, you'd trip and any woman can tell you that even walking with this motion is nearly impossible). What's more, for some reason every step has a swing of the leg in a circular motion toward the back. Combined with the hip moving away, the leg actually disconnects from the pelvis...on both sides.

How does this get by PGI's animators?
Or its internal testing? The squirrels group? Etc?

[Chados]

I run full survival tree, full radar deprivation, and spread the rest around to what I’m trying to accomplish with any particular variant. I don’t have the FLE-20 and Fire Ant, I view them as underpowered. I like the XL170 and four heat sinks, and max armor.

On my 15 I run 2xLMG, 1 ton LMG ammo, 3xERSL, 2xML, LAMS
On my 17 I run 2xMPL, 4xERSL, MASC
On my 19 I run 8xMG, ERSL
On my R5K I run 2xSRM2, 2tons SRM ammo, 1xML, 4xERSL

None are the recommended builds for the Flea that the competitive pilots would recommend-most of them want to treat the Flea as another Locust and it can do that but the Locust does Locust better. I view the Flea as a tough and mobile harasser, scout, and lightweight brawler.

I like the 19 least-just can’t carry enough MG ammo. I like the R5K best, it has decent protection for its size and hits hard enough that people prefer a bigger target. Without speed tweak you’re good for 137.7kph. The 17s MASC enables it to run from an ambush at 165kph without speed tweak and the MPLs plus MASC mean it can peek and poke repeatedly. Fleas are small enough that they typically are XL friendly and have good hit boxes. Their cockpits have good visibility, also.

They aren’t as powerful as a Locust or Piranha but have good staying power. Inexperienced pilots should stay away, they’re hard to master. I like them, and historically I have not been a fan of light mechs.

[Tina Benoit]

Personally, the Flea (FLE-20) is currently my favorite to play in, I love light mechs, the faster and smaller are the most fun for me.
Right now I'm playing it with 5 small lasers, with MASC+Stealth you become a little back-shooting-escape-artist-ninja and get away with matches like this! (and I had the most match score on both the teams~)


Otherwise I average at about 300~ damage per match with it on decent matches. I used to pilot the full of machine gun Piranha but i'm enjoying the Flea much more just due to the play-style with Stealth+MASC combo.

[Chados]

Yup, me too in the R5K and 17. I find that I’m spending more time in the Flea Circus than anything else I run right now. I haven’t a clue why, I’ve never been a fan of lights. I only had the Urbanmechs and one Arctic Cheetah before the loyalty KFX dropped, and that started changing my mind about that class.

[Lethe Wyvern]

Tina Benoit, on 20 July 2018 - 05:20 PM, said:

Spoiler

Personally, the Flea (FLE-20) is currently my favorite to play in, I love light mechs, the faster and smaller are the most fun for me.
Right now I'm playing it with 5 small lasers, with MASC+Stealth you become a little back-shooting-escape-artist-ninja and get away with matches like this! (and I had the most match score on both the teams~)


Otherwise I average at about 300~ damage per match with it on decent matches. I used to pilot the full of machine gun Piranha but i'm enjoying the Flea much more just due to the play-style with Stealth+MASC combo.

At least one of the developers playing the game. Good news.

Edited by Lethe Wyvern, 21 July 2018 - 02:21 PM.

[Alex Morgaine]

-15 is mah dune buggy :3

ErLL+ smalls and machine guns for close up, stand next to anything heavier and pretty much be ignores while blasting away. And heat neutral when it needs it

[WrathOfDeadguy]

Hm. I think I've reached that point where I'm going to stop messing with Flea builds, because what works for me is settled, and I pretty much know which ones I'll keep using. The FLE-17(S) is the standout best Flea, so that's a 100% keeper. It's like an itty-bitty laser scalpel. The FLE-19 only really has one build, so it's not likely to ever change, but it's silly fun so it stays.

Which leaves the spare FLE-17 and the FLE-15, because I didn't get the reinforcements or hero. The spare 17 currently has ERMLs on it, but I have better pokey-peeky lights, so it'll more than likely be a shelf queen... or I may take it full trollmech, which is what I did with the FLE-15. I was a little disappointed by the 15- it doesn't have enough ballistics to make a good MG carrier (even that 20% RoF quirk doesn't make much difference there), and it's weaker than the 17 on lasers... but also lacks MASC. There's nothing I could do with it in the way of normal, practical builds that wouldn't be better done on a different variant... and that would in no way change if I got the reinforcements or R5K, because all of those are better too. Therefore, the Littlest Shotgun. Now I'll drive it!

[Alex Morgaine]

Lb2 is fun on flea but the ammo goes so oooooooooooloooooolllllo[oooooooooo fast.

[0111101]

Lethe Wyvern, on 23 June 2018 - 02:55 AM, said:

My bet is Piraha or Mr. Lynx for close combat, but Fleas 17 and 20 are decent harassers.

The Piranha and Mist Lynx are ridiculously easy to take down in a Flea - with MASC they can't hit you very well since they're relying on hitscan weapons to deal their damage, and they can't get away either because their top speed is slower than the Flea even before the boost from MASC.

[Chados]

I like the MLX-ED, essentially stock, but I *really* like the Flea. I bought a second pack for my alt account and I never do that. There’s just something about it I like a lot and even when I get killed seconds in I just boot up another one and ride again. There’s literally no other mech I do that in. None. It’s weird.

[Squiggy McPew]

I'll stick to my pirates bane. Masc might make for some niche knife fighting funzies but I'll take the all the time 165kph 4 meds and 2 light mg fit with stealth. Get all the hard brake and kinetic burst tweaks and its more than agile enough.

[Darian DelFord]

I would say yes, at this time it is one of the top performing lights. The 17 and 20 specifically. Both have their own individual strengths. The 17 is just a pure fire skirmisher, that can put up big numbers, and is a strong if not the strongest light mech finisher, if you can remain undamaged for the mid to late game. The 20 is an awesome scout and is a great assault assassin especially those LRM boats that lag behind.

All in all the Flea is great mech, like most mechs it has great variants and not so great variants. The MASC really helps the Flea to the forefront of IS Lights. In a class that has been nerfed into the ground and with all the 50+ Alpha's out there, the flea is a breath of fresh air and gives another option outside of the Locust.

[Squiggy McPew]

Ok have to agree the flea is sweet. The 17 is hilarious with 7 small pulse and the stupid good rate of fire. I'm not using masc though as it goes 148 with speed tweak and 100% radar dep is all you need to break locks as even small rocks will provide enough cover. I play squirrel till the fight is well joined then I can go in and start harvesting open sections. It's so tiny that they tend to not even notice you once they get tunnel visioned on the pewing the big stompys in their face.

I still like the pb over the 20 but the 20 is still nice and does get that extra medium laser which makes up for the lack of mg.

[PhoenixFire55]

0111101, on 03 August 2018 - 05:33 PM, said:

The Piranha and Mist Lynx are ridiculously easy to take down in a Flea - with MASC they can't hit you very well since they're relying on hitscan weapons to deal their damage, and they can't get away either because their top speed is slower than the Flea even before the boost from MASC.

So how is the Piranha - 20t mech with 180 max engine "slower than the Flea" - 20t mech with 170 max engine before the MASC boost again?

Srsly these "experts" ffs.

[Brizna]

Squiggy McPew, on 07 March 2019 - 12:09 AM, said:

Ok have to agree the flea is sweet. The 17 is hilarious with 7 small pulse and the stupid good rate of fire. I'm not using masc though as it goes 148 with speed tweak and 100% radar dep is all you need to break locks as even small rocks will provide enough cover. I play squirrel till the fight is well joined then I can go in and start harvesting open sections. It's so tiny that they tend to not even notice you once they get tunnel visioned on the pewing the big stompys in their face.

I still like the pb over the 20 but the 20 is still nice and does get that extra medium laser which makes up for the lack of mg.

Removing MASC is a bad idea, it's no there for speed it is there for accel/decel. You fire a volley and press masc while it recycles -> Enemy mech misses you. If the enemy is not very good and/or lack precision weapons you can literally dance in front of a Direwolf a few seconds until you core it out.

[Squiggy McPew]

Brizna, on 07 March 2019 - 01:54 AM, said:

Removing MASC is a bad idea, it's no there for speed it is there for accel/decel. You fire a volley and press masc while it recycles -> Enemy mech misses you. If the enemy is not very good and/or lack precision weapons you can literally dance in front of a Direwolf a few seconds until you core it out.

Well my playstyle is to try to avoid frontal confrontations. ;^p

As to the masc yeah I tried it a few games and the burst speed is nice but after maxing out the speed tree its seems more than agile enough for me.

[Brizna]

I am not talking about SPEED I am talking about accel/decel. Once you are running at 140 running faster is not going to be that important, if you are moving in a straight line you are dead the moment you cross a skilled player's cross-hair. What really protects a light is its ability to change speed/direction quickly and this is something at which MASC excels like nothing else. For 1 ton you get larger bonuses than you can achieve with MOBILITY tree without any point investment which you can then put elsewhere such as SENSORS, CONSUMABLES, SURVIVAL which are a whole lot more important than MOBILITY. IMO.

[John McClintock]

I was going to say something like "be the bullet" but the FLE-20 ain't got no ballistics :-/ Still not leveled up yet, I got about 45 nodes for free using GXP, so I'm just learning this thing and it's my first MASC. Might try the hill climb nodes just for shizzles and giggles. Without them it still ran right up several of the walls of canyon network, as stated earlier, wow!

I find myself baby sitting assaults in NON-Stealth mode mostly, waiting until the baddies get a little close and a little softened up, then going for head shots while they ignore me.


I've found that stealth is good cause this mech is so fast you can get out of position REAL fast (on ACCIDENT, I've found myself behind the enemy team)


Otherwise it's more useful for babysitting the big slow ones in ECM mode and getting free trades.

Had to hide and cool down several times on this match, didn't even turn on stealth.

This little baby will put out some damage.

[John McClintock]

I've tried several load outs so far, Including trading the MASC for an extra laser, but I wouldn't recommend it. Speed and Agility are literally your only hope of surviving long enough to do damage. That extra laser will only make you run too hot, and slow you down. I'm starting to be sold on the ER mediums, it lets me snipe better, and maybe get more damage in the long run (more opportunities to do damage), despite it's extra heat and slightly lower dps. Just have to stay away from brawls with lights (easy with a top speed of ~177.4kph)