(Mech Arena) Upgrading - weapons or bots first?

deviant Pick a hangar of 3-4 mechs and focus on getting them to rank 5.
Most people go with Killshot, Panther, a Tank, and Guardian.

Rank ups are fairly expensive after rank 3, and cost premium currency.

Ranking your first hangar up to 5 is more important than upgrading any particular weapon, because the damage gained from equipping higher EN cost weapons adds up more than the damage gained from leveling/ranking up low EN cost weapons.

Once your first hangar is Rank 5, your mechs will have their Maximum equip load. Get the weapon sets that fill up most(if not all) of their equip load, then level those weapons to catch up to the mechs.

Once your hangar is Rank 5 and fully equipped, then you can pick which items you want/need to get a second copy of, be they weapons or mechs, and work on those. 

Sscreenshots as examples: The starter mechs are perfectly fine to main and work on this way.





For a weapon example, the 6 cost version of a weapon will always be 50% stronger than the 4 cost version of the same weapon. The 8 cost version of a weapon will always be 25% stronger than the 6 cost version of the same weapon, and so on and so forth:

Javs, RPGs, Longarms, Pulse 8 and MR8 are going to carry you until you get to where you can start ranking mechs up to 5.

Level the Javs so long as they're going to be your KS mainstay. Stick the Pulse 8 on Juggy once it gets to R4. Panther can main the Long arms. Until you get Carb 12 or Railgun, MR8 is the best weapon Guardian can carry for what it does.

Stasis 16 is a solid buy, and the only 16 en weapon until you unlock Railgun, so if you want to go for something manageable until you get access to the rest of the other heavy hitting weapons, that's what I'd suggest.
Other than that, you're fine with what you have until you get the oppurtunities to get Carb 10, 12 and Railgun.

Refer to the guides for good spending habits. Some of them are a bit dated, but most of what I wrote holds up.

So, Rocket Mortars?
One of the things this game does that actually balances it: slightly changing the functions of heavier weapons.
Changing how the stronger weapons operate changes their ease of use, even though they serve the same purpose as weapons that are easier to use.

Carbine's smaller magazine and lower effective range compared to Pulse cannons.

Arc Torrent's lower range and requiring enemies to be closer together when compared to shotguns.

Stasis beams causing slow instead of just being more damaging variants of Thermal Lance.

Railgun having a tiny magazine and terrible reload speed.

And

Rocket Mortars being unusable at closer ranges and actually needing precision and intentionality as opposed to just letting free damage fly with minimal effort lock-on.

The only weapons that are truly bad, are the ones that kind of suck at filling their intended purpose, like Plasma Cannons and MR6.

AI killshots means weapons don't matter if a single AI mech can wipe your whole hangar.
Weapons do the damage, but MR6x2 is never going to outpace MR8x2. Increasing the EN cap to max increases a mech's total possible DPS MORE than leveling/ranking up the weapons it uses at lower EN levels, especially below R4.
Mech health doubles from 3.1 to 5.1 and their EN cap increases by 4, 6 and 8 respective of their weight class.
For perspective, two rankups will increase each weapon's damage by only 2-5K per rank, with burst weapons on the low end, and sustained weapons on the high end.

reconnecting
The AI changes mean the short term gain of weapons doesn't mean anything without mechs that can take hits.
By 100K exp, R4 MR8 Juggernaughts and Pulse killshot don't care about missile racks. The AI will read inputs and dodge the Missiles, while individual fire salvos will barely take down juggy's shield and 1/4th of it's HP. All the while with MR's of it's own.

No one will ever consistently do more damage against the AI until they're solidly in R6. Spending too much time with inferior weapons on lower ranking mechs means:
Aimbot Long Arms
Mortars.
30+K damage killshots
And
MR Juggernaughts

Will kill everything said player has in their hangar with a sneeze.

As for enemy players, Javelins are trash against sufficiently leveled mechs that aren't in the bottom two tiers of HP (Shadow, Surge, Cheetah, Zephyr, Killshot, Panther, Redox).

A new player focusing on leveling weapons, instantly loses against the enemy Killy who's dash deals more damage and who can tank your Javs while they still one-bang with theirs.

The AI doesn't give any warning or give any time to adjust. It just goes from R3 AI chumps to full Pulse 8 killshot blitzes. Being unprepared for that happening leads to a really bad time.

I've found MR8 to be a liability in any tournament maps except the really tight ones. Mainly because even something like MD or Lancer can tank full salvo hits from dual 4.7 MRs and live, and AI killshots dance like a MF.
Many folks have been complaining the AI takes too much credit after they tweaked it. The AI isn't any harder than it was, they're just more consistent. Not playing for the map, or the most common mechs fielded, is exactly why people's kill rate is getting chumped by the AI.

Bigger weapons on bigger bots, then worry about the individual weapon levels. I'm not saying don't upgrade them at all. I'm saying 5.7 MR8 isn't going to help you against 3 AI Jugs with 65K HP and 15k shield HP, because that 36.6K damage is barely going to scratch them, while they focus fire you. Didn't kill anything? Enjoy everything in the immediate area aimbotting you while you wait the 10 seconds for the reload.
And that getting MR8 to 5.7 is 2500 coins and 710K credits.

4.1 to 5.7 adds 5K damage per MR, so 10K, while.

For comparison, mechs from 4.1 to 5.7:

Killshot: 16K HP, 9K dash damage
Juggernaut: 29K HP, 9K shield health
Panther: 18K HP
Guardian: 16K HP.

So, if one player spends the 2500 coins and 710K credits on getting MR8 to 5.7 from 4.1, and the other spends those same resources on any of those mechs(or even better, the AI just jumps from level 3.5ish to 4.5 ish in the course of a handful of games), who is more likely to kill who, when the base level MR will one bang most of those mechs at 4.1?

Question: gor brawling with a tank, what are your opinions on PC 6 vs Arc 6 ? The dmg is similar. One hits farther away one one hits multiple opponents. Which should I invest in ?

       Its comparing apples and oranges, both fruits but very different.  Close quarters weapons, but PC always fires where you point it when you press the fire button.  In my week and a half experience with Arc it has a longish learning curve.  It will just arc and spark sometimes despite red being 5 feet away and just slightly hidden by an object. Yet when red fires Around cover he fries me every time. Still trying to figure this out.  Arc is a better weapon arguably than pc, but not the same in the firing process..

So will the Arcs have more longevity in how long I use them ?