I miss the trial dragon DRG-5N(C). I thought it was an incredibly well balanced build and you can shoot all day from all ranges in it. So, I am replicating the mech on, what I think, is a much better chassis. Unlike the dragon, this one can fly like its namesake suggests When the mech is mastered, it is a near carbon copy of the trial dragon untrained. Here is a comparison chart: Code: Stat SHD-5M Basic SHD-5M Mastered DRN-5N(C) Basic ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Armor 320 320 376 Ferro Y Speed 75.1 82.6 81.0 Jump Jets Y Y Sustained DPS 4.31 4.95 4.95 Max DPS 7.99 7.99 7.99 Cooling Eff. 54% 62% 62% Dissipation 2.00 2.30 2.28 Heatcapacity 50.0 60.0 52.8 Overheat Time 32s 48s 41s Feel free to swap the LLas for their ER versions. That would be a range-for-DPS tradeoff. I am not really planning to play this as a sniper, rather more of a mobile medium-long range fire support. That is what I did in the trial dragon so the build I am posting is to fill that same role. The only drawback is the torso gauss. I know from playing my gaussphract that torso gauss rifles are incredibly deadly. Glossing over that, it will also be harder to aim with the gauss and be pinpoint on damage.
I've gotta say... You, sir, are a bit of a genius! I have played with friends who love the Dragon and have great success with Gauss builds, however, I have never been able to get over the survivability issues. Not only does the SHD give a much more survivable chassis, the Gauss in the torso prevents a lot of that ranged firepower from being lost so easily. I really like it. I've run the AC/20 Hawks, but, I will have to try this.
Thanks Chat! I have to admit I am guilty of posting the build without playing it. But now I have! Spent 22 million cbills on my 3 shadowhawks tonight. The dragon is the first mech I fell in-love with in MWO. I bought the victor chassis to build a better dragon on the 9K. The home-coming has been successful. I am in love again! Game 1: No modules, I forgot to load them. I shot 39 of the 40 shots of gauss but wasn't used to it being on the torso so I missed a fair amount. Game 3: Advanced Zoom and an Arty. I thought I whiffed on the arty completely, but possibly not. I sat on a hill on forest and was allowed to shoot freely downwards. [img width=700 height=423]http://i62.tinypic.com/15e7dpk.jpg[/img] 2 of my first 4 deaths were by gauss explosion though. Thats the risk. The high mount point is fantastic though. Given how tall the shadow hawk is, I'm shooting over mechs and hills easily.
Success! Consumable-free. Shot all 4 tons of ammo and hit at least 39 of them by my count. The fat mechs got left behind as I chased the other team while they ran from me and the light lance. The light lance admittedly took most of the beating as I shot from medium-range. An LRM cat stole most of my kills after I ripped their legs off or opened their core. I brawled two assaults up close. I purposely brawled a BLR up-close as he had 5 MLas and some LRMs. The banshee I took down up-close as well, but he shot most of his lasers into the hill-side while I peaked with my right-arm LLas and shot over the rock on my gauss. [size=8pt]Orgy of round numbers: My 100th post + 1000th post in the SHD subforum = 1100 dmg!
This is my favorite Shadow Hawk build!! Haven't gotten lower than a 500 with this bad boy. The high shoulder mount for the Gauss rifle is a huge advantage. I would like to have a couple more jump jets for mobility but there is nothing really to trade off for it. Awesome build!
Thank you for the glowing review! I fully agree on the lack of punch from the jump jets. Having only one really only serves to help navigate the terrain and get to better shooting positions faster. Dropping the engine size is the only way I could think of to find an extra ton for the pair of jumpjets. This does also have the welcome but inadvertent benefit of crit padding the right and center torsos. You could stand to brawl better with this and you'd be able to spread a lot of damage to the legs, which is the strength of brawling shadow hawks like the 2D2 light hunter.
Tried this build as your success looked very promising to me but somehow I dont get used to it. Either my gun explodes killing me through the XL or I barely do damage because this charge up mechanic + zoom takes so much of my focus for lousy 15 damage that it slows down my overall gameplay. Maybe I need to train more but I already begin to hate the Gauss cannon
Sorry to hear I should preface that I am extremely familiar with gauss rifles (paired with lasers) as my play-time leader is the double-gauss CTF-3D in my signature. The cooldowns of the large lasers and gauss rifles don't exactly align but they are close and I find myself staggering their fire pretty often. It goes a bit like this: 1) Shift focus to your o arm crosshair: Paint the enemy mech with your lasers. Try your best to not expose your left torso when doing this. Either have the left side of the mech behind cover, or twist away slightly. - When you get into a good position with a high percentage shot, go to 2, otherwise repeat 1 - 2) Shift your focus to the + torso crosshairs: Line up a quick shot, hold down then release quickly. This is timing critical. If the mech is moving (especially sideways), extrapolate the path of the mech and aim for a spot they are about to go through. Hold down to charge, and then wait to fire either just before or right when they reach the center of your crosshairs. - Go to 1 - You'll get used to the timing and the transition between shooting your laser and shooting your gauss. After a while, it is second nature and doesn't take any time or attention to do. The ultimate goal is finding a position to shoot from where your enemies are too occupied with shooting or hiding from your friends. Only then does the priority become maximizing the damage output of your weapons. When you get shot at, always twist to expose your right side, protecting your left. I have died from gauss explosions much much less in this mech than my CTF. This is because you have a very formidable 18 damage on your shield-side. In my CTF, all my weaponry is on the right, so I am not doing anything when soaking damage. Above all, the most important thing is learning your role as a medium/long range fire support. This is not an above-average brawling mech. It is a medium after-all and a lot of your battle-awareness should be shying away from being targeted by other mechs. Let the big mechs charge. The high mount point of the gauss, plus JJs let you shoot over your friends. The lasers are on an arm so try to be just off to their right side so your lasers have line-of-sight but your mech doesn't. Good luck!
I'm not sure how, but it works. It really works. I was all by myself on Mordor and I took about an Atlas and a Quickdraw before the rest of the team wrecked me.
Gotta say, after watching a few videos of a similar build to this playing by SvennK, I kinda want to try this mech out. I've mastered my Jenners, and had tried Spider but don't like it quite as much as the JR7's...can't decide if I want to try SHD next, or master SPDs first...
I don't know SvennK and have never seen his videos. I had to go look them up. Its creepily close to how I play this mech. I am too embarrassed that I play on low settings to make a video, so here is a lesson in how to do it, courtesy of SvennK and Durandal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcq_MVL-e34
Thanks a lot for the help. Getting along with the gauss was a tough one for me in the beginning as I was only used light mechs and just began to pilot mediums and especially sniper builds. By now I not only got used to it but simply love your build. It's incredible fun how you, as a lousy medium, can harass heavies and assaults which often have a hard time to fire back if you are well positioned. I currently experiment with ER versions of the LLas to max out the sniper ability. It works well as you can see in the picture but you will have to be very careful with heat management and avoid CQB at all cost, exept if you go in for a kill. Next round I'll give it a try without jumpjets but with one DHS more to see, if it makes a difference. I don't know how well jumpsniping still works but for mobility reasons I always like to have at least one jump jet available so this is a tough exchange.
Cheers! Not sure if you've picked other variants of the shadowhawk to master yet, but for purely sniping, it may be advantageous to run this build on the new SHD-2D. It puts all the weapons on one side of the mech so you can expose less of your mech while sniping. Also, for sniping purposes, you may be able to get away with taking a ton of armor off the shield arm and the legs. That would give you the ton you need for the DHS. I also opted to shift some armor off the right torso and into the legs (sort of mitigated by the crit-padded DHS).
e92, good call on the 2D version of this. It makes it even better. A suggestion though. Move all or 3 tons of the Gauss ammo to the right torso. It will pad the right torso and the XL engine in it, since you have very little shielding there. When playing the 5M version, i typically use the left arm as a shield arm, but i know if that left torso is breached, im dead. XL engine plus Gauss, no way to recover from that. So it's typically a trade off, do i switch to shielding with my right arm, and risk loosing the laser? or keep shielding with the left. Neither is a good option. The 2D really solves this problem. Overall a really solid build with great mech stopping potential. I've had some success one-shot legging lights in this and coring atlases that are too distracted to pay attention to me since i'm kinda far back.
i am loving this build. i just got this mech and my mission (successful) was to get the other two builds basic'ed out to get this one mastered. and so far i amy really enjoying this and my damage isnt that grand, no 700+ damage games yet. but my kills are good and im getting 300-500 on average damage. so i will take it. plus it is fun to play. and being able to shoot anything with the gauss you can see is awesome if you are frustrated at the gauss it really helps it to be elited it will fire and charge faster once that happens. plus a little experience using it you will learn to love it. the slug velocity and damage is amazing. and gratifying once you get the kill with a well placed round. i didnt cut my teeth on the gauss rifle with this mech though so i already loved the gauss before using this build. best match so far http://i1280.photobucket.com/albums/a484/landonwilson88/MWO%20Screens/ScreenShot0014_zps4614a066.jpg[/img]
