Zerrrdoerer, on 24 April 2024 - 04:11 PM, said:
finally an accurate review of the mech, carriying my 20$ to my dealer now instead
I have had some good games in the laser and ballistic variants, but the forced side torso vulnerability is a huge issue. Once the player base realizes that and learns to target those areas this mech will die fast. It is similar to the Fafnir in the side torso is a big hitbox from the side and the arms don't block it, making it vulnerable from every angle. Good side-twisting skills will mitigate pinpoint damage, but things like LBX, missiles, and SB gauss shred the hell out of you. If you don't devote points to radar deprivation LRMs will destroy you so fast it is almost comical.
With pushing almost all of your armor to the front it only takes about 100ish points of damage to kill the mech from the front/side (50ish from the back), and only 75ish to remove an arm and half your weapons. Walk out in front of two mechs under ECM you didn't know were there, good luck. If you push all your armor forward most backstabbers will kill you before you can turn around if ambushed.
This coupled with the limited tonnage for weapons for a heavy, really restricts what you can do with it. You can barely put two PPC's in it, some lights have more weapon tonnage. I get it, on paper it is a fast heavy with jump jets, which limits weapon tonnage, but it is very limited on configurability. To help protect it they should have removed a jump jet and give it ECM.
Skilled players will get it to perform, but they would with any mech. Average players will have a lot of high-low games and fall to the slot-machine trap. Keep pulling the handle and hope for high numbers, when in reality they are not doing well overall in averages.
They need to make an IS Omni-mech quirk removing the XL vulnerability, or provide some serious structure quirks to the side torsos. As it is, this is a heavy that plays like a medium, with light mech damage vulnerabilities.