I have probably played my Fang almost as much if not more so than my Centurion. There are some important facts to learn about dragons that I would tell new players. I highly highly recommend a Gauss rifle in your right arm for many logical reasons but also because you have no where to store explosive ammo safely. I died many times to good light players who just blow a leg off which sets off the adjacent side torso with an ammo explosion. The gauss rifle is designed perfectly to hang out on a big right arm with ammo you can stuff anywhere. Another fact I learned is that 300XL is too slow at 89kph while 360XL I feel is too heavy of an engine to have a decent arsenal. I fell on 95 kph as a good balance of speed and payload. Energy slots are limited, use them all if you can unless going PPC. Medium lasers are a perfect weapon to fill these slots to complement the Gauss rifle for closer ranged engagements. Missile slot: this may be your last weapon if legged and armed and now you can make use of the head to store 1 ton of explosive ammo. I love stuffing a SRM6 in here to shotgun passing lights and to dig into internals after peeling armor away with Gauss and Lasers. Play smart and play fast, never stop moving until the match ends. DO NOT brawl, you're a big walking belly of tender CT. Keep twisting and run off to hide as soon as you're being focused. Make them hate you.
I've always found CT on a dragon to be such an easy target, I rarely ever get legged. But I'll agree the Gauss is probably the best ballistic option, because of its range and pinpoint damage. 300 XL works, I use it on some of my heavier builds. I would say that 325 XL and 340 XL are probably the best engines for the chassis (320 is a bit small for me, I prefer to stay well above the 300-305 hump), but 350 and 360 have their uses. Medium Lasers and SRM6 are very common on my Dragons, too.
In the 8-man skirmishes I did against organized teams my legs were immediately the targets for harassing Jenners and other fast mechs I was there to help deter. Blow one leg and your explosion will rip apart your side XL, and I don't like the thought of storing ammo in torso anywhere because there's been plenty of times I was completely critical all over but no explosive ammo was there to cook off while I lost my lasers etc. I tried all sorts of Ballistics but I swear the dragon chassis was just designed perfectly for the Gauss. When you can start nailing 151 kph lights with it its really the most versatile weapon to build around. I love UAC5's but the combined weight and explosive ammo always works against me. I ran 300XL for 70-75% of my time on dragon and enjoyed it but after tasting 106 kph I knew I needed more speed desperately. I didn't like giving up so much firepower for 360XL however on Fang since it can't fit 4 medium lasers with the Gauss. There are Awesomes running over 80 kph and alot of catapaults, Dragons need to stay well over 90 kph for survivability to hide that delicious center torso.
To this day that LT energy slot still toys with me. Its a rule of mine (and my cheap Logitech mouse) to only have 3 weapon groups unless its LRM's in which case I can get by using keyboard. With that third laser I usually just fire it grouped with the arm lasers even when I'm tracking a target and the LT one goes wide. I arm lock frequently with left shift when a light gives me an oppurtunity for a steady shot and I want to knock it down asap or I get a good angle on someone for an alpha etc. The heat efficiency is good enough that some wasted shots don't really hamper me, only rile up my OCD. Depending on incoming patch and how things go I would still downgrade the SRM6 to SRM4 to add AMS or BAP before my red headed step child LT laser.
I started playing a similar build to this after I picked up my Fang with the 30% discount. As per the LT energy slot, it's pretty much tailor made for a PPC-like weapon if you can fit it on but speed is paramount with a Dragon. I shaved a ton of armor off and put in a MPL in the torso on mine. I was hoping to use a 1C build I had some good success with (LBX, ERPPC, 2ML, & SRM) but the nerf to the PPC cooldown really hurt it's sustained long range damage.
