This series of posts is mainly for people who make decisions on buying mechs in terms of how good they are, rather than if they adhere to a chosen playstyle, or how cool they look.

Heavy Mech Sale: From September 22 to September 30

Boy, that sale name just captures the imagination.

This sale puts all heavies (including heroes and I guess champions) 35% off. Which is pretty good, though this doesn’t include the recently-released Night Gyr. Still, I’d argue that heavies have the tightest race at the top for the greatest of the bunch.

Must-Haves

These mechs are worthy additions to any MechWarrior’s stable; definitely worth picking them up if don’t have them already.

The Whammy has gotten stronger as time goes on and the meta evolves, with multiple great variants running great builds. It’s not the tankiest and its quirks have gotten nerfed, but it’s still pretty damn good.

The Timber Wolf is still one of the best heavies. The poptart build has gotten much stronger recently, but I still find the more traditional laser vomit and gauss vomit builds to be pretty good too. The Night Gyr coming out certainly reduces its specialness, but the agility remains unrivaled in the (good) heavy category. The TBR-Prime doesn’t offer unique builds over any others, so I wouldn’t say it’s a necessary pickup, but in the low chance that the chassis does get quriks, it’ll be the one.

Second-Stringers

These aren’t much worse than the must-haves, so if you still have C-Bills…

One of your best options for laser vomit after the numerous nerfs, this chassis has a couple of legitimate variants, and it’s one of the few jumpjet-capable heavies that are actually pretty good. It’s not in as great a place as it used to be, but it’s still pretty well-off.

This is one of the mechs that I think might be on the rise right now, for a couple reasons. First off, it is a better fit for the modern meta with its DPS builds than it was for the laser meta. Second off, the MAD-3R is the tankiest heavy mech in the game, and it’s pretty capable offensively too.

The menace of the laser vomit meta has been sheared down to size and scaled up. It lost many of the quirks that let it explode in power, but it’s still a solid mech that’s worth a pick-up if you’re into laser builds.

Still Good

These mechs aren’t high priority, but they’re well worth a pick up if you’ve got the coin and have the mechs I’ve already gone over.

Catapult

After its incredible diet, the Catapult is capable of a lot of good builds. There are still some things about it that I’m not a huge fan of, but some of its variants can stomp with the best of ’em. It also has two legit hero mechs. I recommend getting the Jester over the Butterbee because it has more uniqueness coming from the other variants, but if you love missiles, the Butterbee does have one of my highest avg damages.

The Jagermech is a weird one, and throughout its lifetime it has always been on the cusp of being meta. Right now, the dakka build fits into the offensive meta perfectly, but it’s just too squishy to be quite at the top level. Still, worth picking up, and has quite a bit of variety.

The ECM really gives the Hellbringer a niche in the heavy category, and its builds aren’t that bad (though it got hit hard by the nerfs to clantech several months ago). It’s a decent choice for CW, but other mechs I’ve talked about do similar jobs better. It will also be getting some cool new options with the upcoming loyalty mechs, so if you qualify for that tier, stock up now!

I feel kinda meh about the Ebon Jaguar because it does very little that the Timber Wolf can’t do better. Its weight makes it a decent choice for CW, but even there, stacking Timber Wolves, Hunchback IICs, and Kodiaks seems like a better idea. Still, on its own, it’s a good mech.

The Summoner is a weird one. It’s one of the tankier heavies (the tankiest clan heavy at any rate), but its loadouts are limited severely by pod space. Still, there are a couple of very solid builds, and it has the potential to explode with the upcoming loyalty mechs.

This is one of the stronger IS laser mechs, but it focuses on mid-range DPS over alpha. And right now, that style is overwhelmingly dominated by autocannons.

Not Not Worth it

These are far from priorities, but for anyone that already has everything else, you might as well pick up some fresh robots. Basically, you shouldn’t regret getting any of these.

It’s fallen off hard, but it’s actually still pretty decent. Might be worth moving it up a category…might not. After all, it got hit hard by the nerfs last time it was targetted.

I like this mech, but it’s not great. It’s a more fragile (can’t spell fragile without agile) Jagermech, carrying generally lighter builds but doing a decent job of it. There are a couple options I really enjoy, but it’s not a priority.

Its shit reputation is well-deserved, but the last wave of quirks it got gave it a couple of good builds, to the point where the ON1-V is one of my pet favorite heavies.

An old classic, the phrac ain’t what it once was. But it’s still got a few cool options, on the CTF-3D mainly of course.

Orion IIC

It’s not a great mech, and most of the things it could do are done way better on competing mechs (the Night Gyr in particular is putting this mech to shame). But yeah, there are a couple cool things worth checking out if you’ve got extra cash.

Some people really like it for splat and streak builds. And it does a decent job of those, but…I don’t think it does the job that well and it’s not quite my style in the first place.

And all the rest…

You might like the Dragon or Archer, but I’m telling you, any of these others should give you better results.