RickySpanish, on 23 July 2021 - 06:52 AM, said:
What's your build? Inquiring minds would love some advice.
Unsolicited, perhaps...but as a T5 nobody who's never really piloted whales a day in their life prior to this, I hadda crash-course
hard in figuring out how these dumb things worked.
If you don't care about jump capacity and just want the most possible firepower with the best possible heat dissipation, you can stuff Vxheous's posited Gausslasers build strictly into the Prime arms and use both Prime torsos for -10% heat generation. You lose any reasonable jump capacity at all, but you gain four extra heat sinks and powerful quirks. Like so:
DWF-C(S). Obviously leaves your weaponry more vulnerable to getting ripped off, but an armless Whale generally isn't a real threat anymore either way and this version might be able to shoot twice in a row with enough skills invested in Ops and minus-heat Firepower.
The version I ended up running and doing well with, completing my Warden challenges and a good chunk of the Beach Baggies event, was a similar build remapped onto full-jets Charlie, like so:
DWF-C(S) This one runs
super heckin' hot if you blammo the lasers; I fished for all the heat nodes I could reasonably get in the tree and I still go from "Cold" to "Oh Dear" whenever I push the ALL TEH LAZARS button...but when you need firepower the build can provide, and the improved jump capacity lets it lean on the geese and bigboi beamers for long-distance poking. This Whale can get to spots people aren't expecting a Whale, cut across terrain that would otherwise remove a Whale from the fight for ten years, and otherwise offset more of the Whale's whalishness than a lot of folks might expect.
The version I started with was something more akin to this:
DWF-C(S). This version has a lot less overall alpha damage, 71 points compared to 91, but it runs drastically cooler than hex-ML Gausslasers and is generally a better infighter. You get ten extra armor on each arm by dropping the Prime energy hardpoints and running just cannons. You're also a lot less vulnerable to getting your arms ripped off in general since your entire laser armament is in the torso. Technically you can use the Sierra right torso and get both the second Goose and the cERLL in there, abandon the left arm completely and just cram spare heat sinks in it, but I found myself disliking the convergence issues with having geese in both arm and torso.
The jump-capable Gooselasers Charlie has honestly started turning me around a little bit on the Dire Whale. I
hated that thing when it was just a boring Prime(I). Didn't care about all that Unmatched Firepower(C); it moved so bloody slow and was so easy to isolate and pick apart that it just didn't matter. All the firepower in the world doesn't help you if you're not playing absolutely perfectly. But a full three-jet Charlie with jump duration skill nodes and ECM? That thing can make plays. It can move around the map better, get into and out of terrain easier, and handles itself well enough in a fight. I've had a surprisingly high percentage of excellent games in it. The thing's appalling slowness forces me to be more considerate in my movement and engagements, which is my usual issue - Rei be nigh pathologically over-aggressive and averse to chickendicking, but you literally
can't be overaggressive in something as slow and ponderous as a Whale. Gotta pick your fights, but the jets and ECM means the Charlie can pick fights no other Whale has the chance to pick.
1
