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[tryrar]

Honestly? My preference is to go all-in and not try to stopgap for brawling.

This is the Raven 3L build I run. Once you get your skills you top out at ~147kph going forward and ~100kph in reverse, and reach that in less than four seconds from a standing start. You turn on a dime and can twist your torso about as quickly as you can move your mouse. You can alpha those ERLLas eight or nine times in a row before heat starts being a concern, which is about the maximum amount of times you ever want to fire from the same general location (assuming you're being responsible and shifting after every shot). Obviously there's no point running a 3L if you don't take ECM.

Ofc. you run ERLLas CDR and Range modules, as well as the usual Radar Deprivation. The second 'Mech module could reasonably be either Seismic Sensor (defensive) or Advanced Zoom (offensive).

But yeah. You can reach out and touch someone from up to 1500m (more importantly, you can alpha from ~700m out for 18 damage every ~3 seconds), run away from literally anything else in the game while dodging fire via serpentine movements because you turn and run fast enough for that to be viable, and are basically impossible for the average PuG team to focus down, since that requires another ECM mech catching you in counter-ECM long enough for them to pay attention and shoot you. I tested it once on Crimson Strait, sniping at my maximum range from the island--I still managed around 100 damage even though I had to have been doing just about the lowest possible damage per shot in the game.

There's a reason why Raven 3Ls are probably the single most likely 'Mech to be last man standing in a Quick Battle, and it's certainly not because only good players use it. It's survivable as fuck. The extreme speed build is also important for your score, because you absolutely have to relocate frequently, since anything at all that can hit back at your ideal range will probably core you or almost do so; the less time you spend running between positions, the more time you spend putting lasers downrange.

The other reason why I generally avoid putting missiles on my 3L (apart from the utter lack of tonnage for them and the even greater potential for being one-shotted by something nasty) is because they flat-out don't compare to the ERLLas when it comes to damage potential. A SRM-4 or two SSRM-2s do less than half the alpha of the ERLLas and in return make you slower and less heat-efficient, all for the sake of trying to cover for a situation that you can generally avoid with good positioning or escape with quick reactions. The only light that really scares me when I'm in my 3L is an Arctic Cheater, since they're fast as fuck, studded with low-heat low-CD weapons, and can ECM-cancel. Most others you can play the "Oh, I saw you coming when you were 400 meters out and moved a few hundred meters back to a new position, have fun getting legged while you're too far to fire back," game with. 

The only real problem with that strat is that the 3L only has a laser duration quirk, and not a very good one . Most of it's quirks are missile based . But yeah, I can see what you're going for

[Flying Dice]

The quirks are largely irrelevant--the big deal is the ECM. It's what makes the 3L the best sniper/support of the lot, despite the 4X being an excellent mid-range laser skirmisher and the 2X being a good platform for laser vomit. Almost nobody carries Beagles, especially in PuGs, so you're immune to the usual LRM spam. Likewise, PuGs generally don't focus fire well without red pringles--the only times you're likely to get shot at is when an individual is both observant and carrying a PPC or their own ERLLas. Natch there's also the material advantage of enemies not knowing where you're damaged or being able to pick you out amid cover as easily. Note, also, the "support" part of it. You can give that same coverage to a very good-sized chunk of your team, especially when you're on a map that encourages mid to long range potshotting.

Besides, in that family the Huginn's your boy for missile play. The only reason I can see for fitting missiles to the 3L would be if I was going for a really old-fashioned (like, early-2013 vintage) full support build, with the SSRM 2s, a couple MLas, a TAG, and just hugging friendly Assaults and Heavies while peeling off to kill enemy Lights. The problem with that is that it's only really viable in an organized group--in solo play your teammates generally won't take advantage of your TAG marking or ECM, will repeatedly run into you or shoot you while trying to kill enemy Lights, and you won't be able to do enough damage for a decent score. It's the same old sad story of every F2P vehicle combat arena game: the best way to be a good team player in random matches is to build for damage, play carefully (i.e. as if you were the only human being on your team), bait your teammates, and focus entirely on killing whichever target is least likely to leave you exposed. MWO's better than a lot of similar games in terms of community friendliness and cooperation, but I've still run into the assholes that'll core you from behind trying to shoot past you to steal a kill, the ones who ignore marked enemies circling around to flank, &c. forever.

e: I mean, yeah, you can do the x2 SRM 4 and nothing else ass-pounding thing, but you're still a Raven and thus squishy enough that getting caught at all means you're dead via ammo explosion (or you carry so little ammo that you're useless after a couple minutes if you don't die). That, and the recent change to SRM spread means that you have to be more precise when trying to shotgun other Lights with them. And the Huginn still does this vastly better.

[Wiles]

Thank you for explaining the omni pod system to me Dostoevsky. I ended up getting the Arctic Cheetah Prime and fitting it with 6 small pulse lasers. It's a blast to play and I got my first 5 kill match in it. It suffers terribly from heat problems though - on hot maps I have a hard time with only one double heat sink.

[Dostoevsky]

Happy to help, goodness knows many of MWO's mechanics aren't explained very well within the game.

And on that note... a few notes about engines & heat sinks. The stock ACH has 10 heat sinks, not 1. Nine are 'internal' - built into the 240XL engine - and the remaining one is external. All mechs require at least 10 heat sinks total in order to function. The larger the engine rating, the more heatsinks can be contained inside the engine: less than a 250 rating and some need to be externalized, while using a really big engine allows you to pack more inside and save on the critslots used up.

Making things even more complicated, the first 10 (and only the first 10) double (and only double) heatsinks located inside an engine are more effective than other heatsinks. On the MWO forums these are often called 'truedubs', and the effect of this is that using an engine smaller than 250 reduces your heat capacity.

The above info isn't helpful for your ACH or other clan mechs with omnipods (since they can't change their engine so you can't really do anything about it), but will be helpful to know if you ever pick up an Inner Sphere mech or one of the (not yet available for C-bill) IIC clan mechs.

[Werdna]

Thank you for explaining the omni pod system to me Dostoevsky. I ended up getting the Arctic Cheetah Prime and fitting it with 6 small pulse lasers. It's a blast to play and I got my first 5 kill match in it. It suffers terribly from heat problems though - on hot maps I have a hard time with only one double heat sink.

Try 5, with extra hs.  Unless you're going for alphas, which this build isn't, being able to keep up sustained fire is better than extra weaponry that sits mostly idle.

[etgfrog]

I've been starting to run beagles in CW more, it is very nice. Now I don't run it on my ligher mechs but I've seen a cheeta start to run up to try to backstab an ally then run off as soon as their ecm gets countered. Any sniper or lrm boat does benefit of a BAP quite a bit in my opinion, that is if the lrm boat isn't hiding behind a rock.

[BuriBuriZaemon]

I have 20,000 premium credits, from my founder package, which I haven't touched. I'm interested in Hero mechs, Faction Play-capable, ideally. Any recommendations? Considering Misery and Illya Muromets. Also, has the Hero mechs ever been on discount? Is it worth waiting for the discount?

[Kyzrati]

I saved up my original Legendary credits for quite a while, too, and eventually spent them mostly on bays and a couple hero mechs.

Which one could depend on your style, but I've always been extremely pleased with my Firebrand. It's made me so many hundreds of millions of C-bills with those twin AC/20s . I love blowing mechs away with those, though in general the mech isn't quite as versatile as the Ilya. I don't like the profile of Cataphracts, personally. With a Firebrand it's too easy to simply pop over a hill and nail someone with your high-mounted AC/40 then disappear before taking any damage. With an Ilya you have to show a lot more body and are more likely to get creamed if the time isn't right.

Not sure how welcome Firebrands are in community warfare, since I joined the clan side since that started. Might not be as suited to it depending on your team.

Almost all the old hero mechs have been on MC discount at one point or another, so I don't know if you can count on that happening again (over the years I've never seen the same one go on discount more than once, but I've been out for the past half year or so--I played every week since beta before that, though).

[BuriBuriZaemon]

Which one could depend on your style, but I've always been extremely pleased with my Firebrand. It's made me so many hundreds of millions of C-bills with those twin AC/20s . With a Firebrand it's too easy to simply pop over a hill and nail someone with your high-mounted AC/40 then disappear before taking any damage.

To perform as you describe, do you snipe with Firebrand's AC20s? I tried snipping with CTLP-K2 with dual PPCs and ER-PPCs and I didn't do as well as brawling/flanking. Could be my poor aim or high ping (280 to 320). For that reason I prefer short-medium range mech.

[Kyzrati]

Well, you can't exactly snipe with the range of an AC/20, so it's fairly close range combat, but with all the perks you can still do some serious damage at medium range, so yeah I'll still carry enough ammo and take shots as long as I can do at least 10 damage per round fired (due to the damage drop over range). And certainly the best tactic where possible is to fight from behind a hill and shoot over the top, preferably repositioning somewhat if you've been spotted/attacked from the other side.

I generally played with 240 ping or so and fared quite well. 280+ might be pushing it... With your ping I might prefer to boat streaks (The Stormcrow is awesome for this.)

The AC/40 excels at medium/close-range guerrilla tactics. In my years of using it I never bothered even changing out my Firebrand's loadout. It's just that good at it. You need to have dead aim though, because every volley missed is a huge opportunity loss.

Long-distance ERPPC sniping with a K2 is certainly doable with a ping of 230-260 (I used to play that way occasionally and perform pretty well--was my favorite build for a long while), but outside that ping that I'm not so sure.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, my experience with the Ilya is that you can't hill-hump effectively at all. It's the sort of machine where you mount triple Ultra AC/5s and shred peoples' faces in close quarters; these days you'll get melted by Clan mechs if you try to cross a lot of open ground.

As for what hero to buy, you're not too far off from my own assessment: I picked up Misery and the Ilya Muromets myself, even if it's going to be a pain to grind those other Cataphracts. The Misery's great in and of itself, and if you play IS at all you're going to have Stalkers in your garage anyways.

Sparky and Huginn are supposed to be good, as are the Pirates' Bane and Dragon Slayer. But yeah, Misery and Ilya are both top-notch for fun and profit. Only buy one or two, save the rest of your MC for 'Mech bays TBH.

[Wiles]

I got really lucky and won the Centurion battlemech through the Stocking Stuffer event!

I've been playing a lot trying to save up enough C-bills to kit out a Clan drop deck so I can try CW. My most recent acquisition was a Hellbringer. I had a hard time deciding how to build it so I had a look at the metamechs website. I'm not sure if I agree with their overall armour placement, they tend to have the back armour very very low which leaves you open to being flanked by light mechs. I know I've snuck up on some heavies (usually ebon jaguars for some reason) with the Arctic Cheetah and taken them out very easily because of this. In the end I decided to go with streak srms and ER medium lasers and it has been working quite well. It runs a little hot but with all the heatsinks you can jam in that thing it isn't too bad.

Is it considered necessary to join a unit if one is interested in community warfare or is playing with PUGs an okay experience? People seem to take it pretty seriously.

[Flying Dice]

Yeah, I'm of the same mind about Metamechs. Sure, low rear torso armor works for some things, but if there's any chance at all that you'll get flanked then it's retarded.

You can PuG. You can do well in PuGs. Just don't expect to win anything ever against organized groups. When it's PuG vs. group, just be a selfish dick and do as much damage as you can before they roll your team.

e: that aside, do we have a B12 unit?

[Wiles]

What do you guys think of this Timber Wolf build? I'm not sure how well I like it so far, but I don't really know how to improve upon it. TBR-C

[Dostoevsky]

What do you guys think of this Timber Wolf build? I'm not sure how well I like it so far, but I don't really know how to improve upon it. TBR-C

If you wanted to be proper and true meta (which is not a requirement, of course) you'd drop the LRMS and probably keep the missile slots unused. While I personally enjoy keeping some LRM support available, they're often not 'good' and for the TBR in particular using large LRMs makes the shoulders much larger targets.

Assuming you want to keep the LRMs or otherwise use missiles, I might suggest putting at least some of the ammo in the arms. The large shoulder-LRMs make bigger targets, and if ammo gets critted it explodes rather violently. So unless you're confident you can empty out those missile stores before you start receiving serious return fire, you're running a pretty significant risk. Since all clan mechs have built-in CASE, an ammo explosion in the arm will just take out the arm... but an ammo explosion in the side torso will still wipe out that entire side of the mech.

(For Inner Sphere mechs, CASE must be installed manually with additional tonnage/space costs, and so is seldom worth it. With no CASE, though, an ammo explosion will chain inward to often devastating effect.)

By the way: for those asking about a sale, looks like they're having one from the 26th through 30th. Many heroes on sale for 50% off, including the Misery, Ilya, Sparky, and others.