Intro: Pilots that know me well ingame are familiar my habit of running a variety of builds. 80% of the time they are pretty well optimised tried and tested builds. However, about 20% of the time I run stupid, insane, crazy or just plain weird builds "for science". Usually my experiments ended badly, however, this is one of the successes. I called it "Heretic" simply because I put Lerms on an Atlas. However, I posted it here because I ran it once last night for the lulz and got multiple kills and 791 damage on live stream, topping the board by a significant margin. The build: Aside from being a silly mess, the mech has two distinct sides in the usual event of one getting destroyed. The right side is direct fire with a PPC and AC10 which can brawl and handle midrange well. I fire the PPC on every second AC10 shot. The left side is a missile boat that still works great in a brawl if you can keep that 180m. If someone does close, LRM the target behind, while hammering the front target with the direct fire weapons. Note: My usual builds are AC20, 3SRM6, 2ML, STD350 and 2LBX, 3SRM4, 2ML, STD300 so I am a brawler at heart and see LRMs on an Atlas as heresy, even if it is effective.
Personally would lose an LRM 15 and add a PPC and use it as a command unit in a lance drop, allowing you to finish up weakened mechs as you run out of LRMs. Having that TAG in a low arm is kind of pointless if you can have a steady stream of chain fired PPCs on an ECM-equipped target. At least this is better than those builds that have missiles, but only 1 AC/20 and 2 MLs as back up.
