_ My latest attempt at building the Reaver landed me with an asymmetric build. Akin to the Crab Florentine, this mech just doesn't have enough convergence and tonnage to make two ballistics fun to use. Instead, I opted for one chonky UAC10 doing 2x 2x5 damage, and LPPCs to do 4x 5 damage. This compliments eachother pretty well I find. The ppcs are very nice for long range, and the uac10 tracks targets very well in a brawl, plus gets great quirks. Ghost heat is pretty significant, even for LPPCs, so this is one of the only builds I'd advocate chainfiring (but click pretty fast). Drop to an LE270 to get a few tons to play with (add armor and/or a TC1 or something).
_ Could drop 2 LPPC and a DHS for an ERPPC and keep the same alpha, plus lose ghost heat, at the loss of 3% overall cooling...the bigger downside would be that the recharge on the PPCs would be different, but that could actually help with heat rather than hinder in some cases. Would potentially get more of your shots converged on the same spot for an alpha without the ghost heat though, which is always nice.
Definitely a good alternative, as the lppc ghost heat is very much limiting your damage output if you alpha. Could even make a case that 2ERPPC instead of any LPPC would be better. I mostly did 4LPPC as replacement for 4LL and found it looked cool, then found out I had the tonnage for a UAC10. I haven't yet continued iterating on that thought, mostly double-clicking my LPPCs in sync with the UAC10 bullets.
Could definitely do double ERPPC, though you'd have to drop a DHS to do it, taking you down to 39% unless you dropped some armor. This would, however, let you make this into a Deadside build easily enough, which does have its own advantages with that LE. _ The main downside here is that the ERPPC/PPC recycle is low enough that you'll lose a bit of continual DPS that the LPPCs offered by being able to refire faster. This is much more of a stick-and-move mech, good for popping out, firing once, and fading behind cover, where an LPPC version could potentially pop off 2-3 shots safely without catching return fire. It's a bit of a give and take, not to mention ERPPCs will suffer more if you get light rushed.
Yeah, I feel like 2 LPPC aren't going to help you much against lights either tbh (or torso mounted weapons in general). I think the difference between these builds is really how much you want to focus on continual fire/suppression vs alpha. The original 4LPPC version can keep firing 5 damage projectiles at the same location with very little downtime. But exposure time is a killer in higher tiers, and brawling is less common, making focus on a bigger alpha and range with the ERPPCs preferred.
The main difference for me between LPPCs and ERPPCs vs lights is that you can afford to miss an LPPC alpha since you get another shot moments later at pretty low heat...but if you miss with ERs at that range, you're gonna take a lot of damage before you get another shot in. I run a 3LPPC raven quite often now, and have surprised quite a few Piranha, Flea, and Locust players who thought I'd be easy to pick off when suddenly their armor is gone on a side torso. In just about every situation, if I'd had ERs instead, I think I would have lost the fight.
True, though I feel that's also mainly because you have the agility of a light mech in those skirmishes. With the torso mobility of a roughneck, I don't think the LPPC will have a large impact on its defensive capabilities against a piranha, despite their superior uptime. The uac10 with arm mount is likely much more consistent due to how much easier it is to track a light with that.
