Six out of my seven Cougars are in the 90th percentile average damage for all the mechs I own. That's including heavies and assaults, btw. My average damage for the chassis as a whole is 590.
My point is, Cougars will perform exceptionally well if you play them to their strengths and build them appropriately.
● You absolutely must abuse the high mounts. Any build which uses the low-mounted left arm at all is usually a bad build. That includes gaussvomit.
● You absolutely must use low-exposure loadouts. Builds like 1HLL+6ERML means you only need to expose every little once in a while, and you get to dump a lot of damage for each peek. The same logic applies to all Cougar building - it's all about the alpha, so you don't have to expose to the enemy frequently.
● Expose when your teammates expose. Ensure that *you* aren't the first thing the enemy sees and wants to shoot at.
● You can solo peek, but only when abusing the high mounts AND preferably when you have initiative. That means you expose when there are no enemies to shoot you, and you wait for the enemy to peek you so that you can shoot them first.
● Do not bother with jumpjets, except for the PPC poptart build. You can't afford to lose a high mounted torso hardpoint in order to have hops, and also the large side torsos give you away on your jumps anyways, so you'll often lose trades even when you do execute perfectly.
● Do *NOT* spend skill tree points in Mobility. It costs too much, and the benefits are negligible. Focus on Firepower and Survivability.
● ECM is optional. Of all the stats below, the only variant I really run ECM on is my COU-E with 6MPL. The skill tree cost for enabling ECM is just too high, and it also costs you one of your precious high-mounted hardpoints, so I just don't find it to be worth it.
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