Super Nerd Sunday Presents: Ode to the Medium Laser!

This week is crazy - crazier than I'd like - so this SNS will be a bit of a cop-out.  Because this week, I want to talk about the beauty of medium lasers in Mechwarrior: Online.

Medium lasers are, in a very real sense, the "baseline" weapon.  They weigh a single ton and occupy a single critical slot.  They generate a reasonable amount of heat.  They fire a pretty okay distance.  They are, in every way, the medium weapon.  Medium lasers do a medium amount of damage, they track lights medium well, they pintpoint heavies medium well.

There are certainly builds that take advantage of this remarkable utility.  The Hunchback-4P's best build, arguably, involves a large number of medium lasers and a lot of heat sinks.  The Blackjack-1X can be kitted out entirely with medium lasers and, as a result, wreak absolute havoc on enemy lines.  The six medium laser Jenner-7F is arguably the best light Mech in the game (though there's another superlative build on hand for dissenters).   But for the most part, Mechwarriors seem to look at medium lasers as filler weapons.  Weapons they can cram in there when nothing else will fit.

Double heat sinks are a must.  You've already maxed out armor.  You really don't need any more AC/10 ammo.  So you throw a medium laser in that you barely, if ever, use.  A medium laser you should be using all the time.

And here's why.

It took me a while to understand how medium lasers fit into MW:O past a baseline state.  They're good enough, good ratios all around.  But they're sometimes difficult to utilize.  If you have an Atlas-D you might not want to use the pair of medium lasers you dropped in its chest because, y'know, heat generation to range to damage... Not as great as dropping another AC/20 round, or dumping some large laser strobe from your wrists into some dumbfucks torso.

But then I started to play with Large Pulse Lasers.  I started to sequence LPLs with Medium Lasers.  I'd put them in the same fire group, use them in sync to drop armor or, even better, get kills.  And the end result?  A staggering amount of damage, pinpointed in locations.  Kill after kill after kill, against apparently superior targets.

I finally understood that the medium laser wasn't just a weapon to toss in at the last minute: it was the ultimate support weapon.

Perfectly rounded in every way, a medium laser burst burns through armor, crits, flim flam, like nobody's business.  Paired with heavier weapons, fired in close range, the medium laser becomes a key augment.  I found Large Pulse Laser bursts (pretty fucking intense to start with) knocking out key armor segments when paired with medium lasers.  I noticed that, in CQBs, my medium/LPL combo would strip armor in seconds and open enemies up for devastating LBX/10 and machine gun fire.  I realized, suddenly, that when I was knife fighting, I wanted a stack of medium pulse lasers, but when I was skirmishing around the 250-450 mark that most engagements seem to occur at, I wanted a medium laser array.

So I write this.  An ode to the medium laser.  Not for its own sake - it is, by its nature, infinitely middling.  But because of what it does when paired with other weapons, because I can make an LPL-2xML arm on each side of a boars head and, in theory, burn through a catapult's torso in a single concentrated volley without overheating I salute the stalwart little beam weapon that can.

You're my hero today, medium laser.