Welcome Mechwarriors to one of your new prime time Nova builds. (Below is V1, V2 and V3 of MIDAS can be found further down.) With this fantastical machine you can stand up to enemies two weight classes above you one on one, and when supported by a team you'll be dropping enemies left and right faster than you can say "Shayu, why is your mech's name a reference to the mythological Greek King who turned whatever he touched to gold?" The answer is because I painted it gold... that's it. (I used Jade falcon gold paint combined with Clan Wolf camo spec, it gives the mech a swirly gold sheen.) Anyway, onto what makes this mech great. -It can solo heavy mechs and lighter assault mechs: about an hour ago on Crimson Straight i killed a fresh Warhawk that had disco'd and then reconnected after the match had started. I used buildings as cover and put pressure on him until he shut himself down, then I melted his cockpit. A few of days ago on forest colony snow, I got surrounded by 6 or so mechs after deciding to engage a fresh Banshee that had literally been chasing me around the entire match. Needless to say his teammates managed to pry me off of him only after he was dead. MIDAS can damage race like you can't believe, I cored him out in his CT. I have more stories like this, like the time I made a Hellbringer run away in fear as his entire team chased after me. Spoiler alert: the Hellbringer didn't make it : ( -It's better than the 12x cERSL Novas: This is for the simple reason that it puts out more sustained DPS than the 12x cERSL Nova before shutting down. Beyond that the cUAC10 can dish out significant medium to long range damage in its current state, which brings me to my next point... -Clan dakka doesn't suck anymore: this build was created and tested after the patch that reduced the fire-time delay between clan auto-cannons. As I'm writing this, PGI is patching MWO to reduce the shellcount of the clan ACs to make the cUAC 10 EVEN MORE viable. Ontop of these new buffs that the cACs are getting, the NVA-B right arm gives you some pretty sweet UAC quirks, including a jam chance reduction of 30%! Fan that mech-revolver cowboys... interestingly after the next patch the double tap will make it a six shot : p . Now you might say "Shayu, I thought AMS was for n00bs?" My answer: Eh maybe, but that's just personal preference on my part. If you prefer, you can rip the thing off and pile some more armor onto the Midas's flimsier parts. The thing is I'm typically a Jesus Box user, so lurms make me grouchy, hence I want countermeasures for them. (By the way, that NVA-A left torso has an armor quirk, so you should run it even if you don't want AMS.) The Midas does have a few funny quirks about it. A. The armor is frontloaded to help you survive encounters with big baddies, so protect your back. B. Your right arm has almost no protection because it's only purpose is to give you buffs. C. Leg armor is a bit light... some people this will bother, but hey, legged mechs are getting buffed as we speak : p Lastly, here are my suggestions for modules. Mech: I really like my advanced zoom as I'm a typical sniper player, and I feel as though it'll help you make more long range use out of that UAC 10. Weapon: I use range and cooldown buffs for those small lasers, they are what make your mech terrifying at close range so I try to get as much use out of em as I can. furthermore the UAC 10 already has good range and it's double tap ability makes the cool down module a bit redundant. Master Slot: I personally prefer seismic sensors so I can corner check before charging in. It's important to preserve armor since you are still a medium mech. Consumables: I would definitely advise bringing a 9x9 coolant flush. If you are going in for a kill, a coolant flush can be the difference in getting to fire your death ray 3 times and getting to fire it 5 times, and that can make all the difference. I prefer to bring an artillery strike or an air strike as well, but the second thing you bring is really up to you. Toodles and have fun~ -Updated and added a TC1 since the new patch made cUAC10s more ammo efficent.-
Testing this build and so far I find it's lack of armor and ammo to be the biggest issue. That aside, the damage is there. Got 469 on my first run, but still testing it to see if it can be adjusted to fit my play style. Thanks for posting and for the great write-up / analysis.
Honestly, you can rip off the AMS and replace it with some armor and ammo. I assume by lack of armor you mean the legs? As I said, the AMS is just a personal preference because im spoiled by ECM.
In addition to my two matches which you can find in the Nova 1000+ damage club, I managed to pull this off with the Midas as well. I did in fact cut down two separate mechs with the same small laser volley. No joke, I was laughing my ass off. Also props to that Wolverine pilot; you see the one with the same score as me? yeah, he was my partner in crime, we cut swaths through the enemy line, SWATHS I TELL YOU!... okay that's a lie, they funneled towards us like lemmings one at a time, but it was still awesome.
Here is Midas brawling with an Atlas. ...Alright so he wasn't the smartest brawler, but I had him either way after he lost that first ST.
Tested this for 2 rounds now. As I purchased a 3-pack of Novas in the current sale I skipped both the TC1 and the AMS in favor of additional cooling for the moment. Ridiculous punch for a medium mech. Will report back later.
Ha! Glad somebody else is having fun with it. I've been fooling around with the tertiary equipment like you have and I've found I like an extra half ton of armor and an extra half ton of ammo over the AMS; still love that TC though, helps boost my laser range.
5/5, Today I bought the Nova NVA-C, the last one missing in my collection and I slapped that build on. Gets my seal of approval.
Ladies and gentlemen, after spending a long time in research and development, I give you... Version 2. Now, V2 isn't for everyone, but it sure is for me. I noticed I was losing my edge after the PSR patch a few weeks ago; I can only assume I was getting into the higher tiers which consistently set me against better pilots with more meta builds. MIDAS just wasn't killing quite fast enough, and my lasers were spreading a bit too much. I knew I needed to find a way to give MIDAS more oomph without throwing off the synergy it already had. It took a lot of experimentation, because the tricky part was keeping that synergy. I tried downgrading the UAC/10 to a UAC/5 so I could change the cERSLs to cSPLs, but the mech just lost its soul; the weapons didn't sync near as well, the range of the lasers dropped just a little too much, it was rough. After that I went back to the original, tried swapping out the TC for a cAP and found that it was definitely an improvement; the range drop was minimal and the crits didn't seem to matter, but being able to counter ECM in order to see which components were the weakest on my opponent helped immensely. A bit later I went back to toying with the weapon systems. There had always been an idea in the back of my head that I wanted to try, but it seemed stupid: "what if I only replace half of the cERSLs with cSPLs?" My retort to myself was usually "the difference the pulses will make in terms of impulse damage won't outweigh the desynchronization it will cause." Boy was my critical self wrong; drop the AMS and a half ton of UAC/10 ammo, pull off 3 ERSL and slap on 3 SPL and you've got the monster that is version 2. If you equip the range module on the SPL and the cooldown module on the ERSL then the desync is next to non-existent, and you end up with a laser array that has what is quite possibly the perfect ratio of impulse damage to range. You've also got the same heat gen as the original, the same fire rate, and three more points of damage; it's all worth the AMS and 30 UAC rounds if you ask me. Oh and here's some sprinkles on top folks, 33dmg laser array 1-shots heads on shutdown mechs :3 Have fun!
So, I've been putting this off for a while... But no longer! Midas has been updated for the balance patch for a while, and I've been doing you fine people a disservice by not putting it here. Melodrama aside, here it is, V3... though it's really more of a 1.5 as it's more similar to the original design. Alas we will all remember the days of the mixed laser array, but with the balance patch's laser range reduction and clan DHS nerfs, it was time to revert back to the 6x cERSL array. This in conjunction with the removal of the cAP allows us to equip 2 extra double heat sinks to keep Midas cooler, and on the offensive for longer.The placement of the these extra DHS in the left arm and in the left torso, both provides crit padding for the small lasers and helps to mitigate the heat dissipation lost when the right torso is destroyed. Now, with the recent hitbox changes to the Nova, the CT is incredibly difficult for your opponent to hit, so many have turned to legging, this makes fully armored legs almost a necessity. For that reason the last half ton of podspace, along with some armor shavings to the CT, allows us to fully armor up Midas's legs, and add some armor to the head. The improvements to the head armor will allow Midas to stand against artillery and air strikes a little more effectively, something the design has always struggled with. Lastly I do have a change to the weapon modules I recommend. I would actually recommend you run Midas with cERSL Cooldown 5, and UAC/10 Cooldown 5, since apparently UAC Cooldown modules increase the rate at which the weapon unjams. My recommendations for Mech and Consumable modules remain the same. (Now if you'll excuse me, I've got two more pictures for the Nova 1000 damage club : p)
Awesome build! Got this in my second game with it: Not a lot of damage, but that's what happens when you core enemies in a single Alpha from behind.
5/5, Really an excellent build! I really like Novas because of their high damage potential in combine with great jumpjets but most builds are really one sided. But not this one!
5/5, Only made a minor change, adding 2xLMG ... So far, this is the Best NOVA build for me! ">BREAKER "Midas4" 6xERSL 2xLMG 1xUAC10
