5/5, I decided to finally work on Blackjacks after watching some SirHitman CW videos and seeing how effective he was peeking and poking. That's a playstyle I'm pretty good at so I thought I'd try this build and see how it worked for me. It's fantastic. I elited it more quickly than any other mech in my stable with basically no "bad" games. Every few games I typically make a stupid mistake that gives me a sub-200 damage game but I haven't had that problem in this mech. The combination of speed, size, punching power and reasonable armor levels let me recover quickly if I get out of position or at least do respectable damage before I get knocked out. Great build. Highly recommended. I prefer the XL version.
If at all possible, I prefer using STD over XL engines. I play aggressively and often lose parts when leading a charge so STD is almost a must for me,... As an additional benefit, on this and many other builds, people expect XLs,... ah the joy of blasting away 2 enemies that were only aiming at and were so glad to see your side torso go boom,...
I used AMS instead of a BAP in my CW drops, but somehow those .43t bother me... I'll probably try 6x MLas + 2x MPLas next.
Yea that tonnage where really bothering me to in the start, 100 battles that's a extra mech we could have brought I actually went BAP mostly because of CW. I think the 6mlas, 2mpl could work nicely if you use it right and separate the weapons, dont alpha (just because you can) at 400m where the pulses hardly do any damage. On paper its less optimal with different ranges, duration, cooldown, more heat, different modules and less quirked. The range and Cooldown diff might be mitigated with range for the pulses and cooldown for the mlas?
I'd be tempted less to simply alpha away but to peek even more by just using the arm mounted MLas. Those MPLas are there for coring guys out from behind or when it's getting close and personal.
3 battles sofar pulling about 500-600 damage except the last on clearing 1000. Separated the weapons into left arm, right arm and then alpha for the close range.
Its slightly warmer but i got the feelin that the extra crits really did pay off. If you are just starting to play or can adapt id think its just as good as the 8mlas one, however im to used to the 8mlas one so ill stick with that. The 6mlas and 2mpl build gets its "Hitman approved" status
Well, I haven't seen a good explanation yet concerning ticks and critical tests in MWO. Just a lot of speculation and extrapolation from the things we have heard. It may be that there is no difference between pulse and regular lasers and that the tick & crit calculation is identical. But on the surface of things I'd say pulse lasers reap more critical hits (which could be due to the shorter duration and better damage delivery ofc). Do you have better intel on this? I looked around when I began playing a few years back but PGI is, as we all know, poor at publishing this sort of info.
http://mwo.smurfy-net.de/equipment Crit boost listed for Flamers, LBX, and MGs, but not Pulses. I'm not sure how the rumor got started, maybe Pulses used to crit back in early beta or something. But I'll take Smurfy's word, he keeps things current and accurate. When discussing builds in SJR, there is no mention of 'pulse crits' unless someone is telling a joke... The performance of pulse lasers seems most improved because of the shorter duration. The damage gets applied before the enemy has time to react and start twisting. Also, the damage gets applied during the best part of your shot - assuming you decide to pull the trigger when you have the best shot.
Oh never mind that part then just felt like i got more critical hits than i usually do. Kill on a dire that where just opened, AC20 on a hunch etc.
Yup. Pulse are very good at taking down open components because they're precise and deal their damage quickly, but that's just regular damage, without any crit bonus.
You wouldn't leave two hardpoints unused, would you? So cruel. More seriously: standard lasers give better range, better heat management and slightly higher alpha (though with a little ghost heat), and with a -20% duration quirk it's precise enough. In one word, a standard laser build is probably more flexible. That being said, pulses might work too.
This is the one you want: The standard engine version is only sliiightly less combat effective, but I still run the above light fusion version. I go with each arm on its own weapon group, with the two torso ML's as the third group. This gives you pretty great flexibility on heat management, you can fire basically continuously except on the hot maps. 2x artillery, 1x coolshot.
I like this 8ML blackjack, but I made it able to take an LFE and added more armor by cutting a little into the too-ample cooling efficiency. Especially since, because of ghost heat, this needs to be stagger-fired anyway.