The problem with hunting light mechs in a light mech is that for every light mech your team has, the other team has got one too. With the random PUG element, you never know what you'll have, but running a light increases the chance the other side will wind up with more lights than your PUG newbies can deal with, even if most or all of the enemy lights are piloted by newbies too. That's not usually the case though. Newbies tend toward heavier mechs because they're going into it with a false sense of security about the heavy armor and heavy firepower they're packing. So if you bring a light, you're begging the matchmaker to stick you with an enemy light pilot who knows what they're doing, which is super dangerous to your PUG newbies.
A Medium used to be a good choice for a light-killer, but with the introduction of the Cicada, you're just asking for a Jenner with a few extra tons on the other team, possibly with Master skills.
Two of the four Catapult variants are a good choice for the duty, provided you've got your elite skills finished out.
The A1 pure Streak Cat - not very useful. While it'll still make fairly short work of a light mech, it has been properly nerfed to not be much of a threat to larger mechs, and if by some twist of fate the enemy team has no light mechs, you're hoping you got matched with a trial Cat C1 on the other side, instead of a Gauss Cat. You probably won't be able to take out the trial C1, but at least you could keep it busy while the rest of your team kills stuff.
The K2 has no jump jets, and this is important and why there are no Dragon variants that I'd recommend for the job. Jump jets are important because you can use them for rapid turns - helps ever so much when preying on lights -especially Jenner pilots who are using them for this purpose too.
The C4 is not too bad. You can do a jump jet, 4 streaks, 4 tons of ammo, 2 MPL or 1 LL in the CT (I'm having fun with an ERLL on mine) maximum armor, a 315 standard engine, endo steel structure, and 14 DHS (2 in the engine and 2 external). With all your elite skills bought, it does 84kph, and because it uses a standard engine and has two energy hardpoints in the CT, it's a Zombie. It's not ideal if you're doing the PUG thing though. The 4 streaks are still not much use against non-light mechs - you need targeted damage to deal with those in a timely manner, and all you've got for that is the 2 slots in your CT. If you're running with a 4 player premade, you've got some idea if at least some of your teammates are going to be able to pick up your slack. You don't with a PUG.
Which brings us to the C1. A jump jet, 4 MPL, nearly maximum armor, a 315 standard engine, and the rest in DHS. This too is a Zombie, but before it reaches that point, it's got enough heat sinks to pretty much fire that 4 MPL alpha non-stop. This is not as easy to kill lights with as the C4. You need good piloting skill, good aim, and you need a good ping. You're a big slower Jenner without the lag-shield but with 3 times as much armor. Too, you've got a 24 point alpha you can put anywhere and often. That, combined with being fairly fast and extremely maneuverable makes you potentially dangerous to every class of mech on the field. Before PGI nerfed DHS, this build also carried 2 SSRM2s and a ton of ammo, but now that tonnage is necessary for additional DHS to keep it running nice and cool. It's my current favorite.
Edited by Kaijin, 12 November 2012 - 03:26 AM.