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Heat Cannon popularity was on a pretty steady decline for a pretty long time. Nowadays, it is extremely rare to find a Heat Scout, and even rarer to find one who is decent.
However, I like using the difficult stuff. So I took my little prestiged Scout and perfected the art of destroying better players than me with splash damage from both the TOW and the Heat Cannon, most of the time without these enemies even taking half my health. Flak and Mini Flak Scouts are the pesky fly-bys of the battlefield; they just zip around and unload tons of bullets at you from short range...and require little-to-no skill. Aim, fire, boom 120 damage. If you're anything like me, choosing an easy way to destroy my opponents holds no appeal, so I tried out the Heat Cannon...and slowly fell in love with it. It is, IMHO, much more versatile than the Mini/Flak.
Devastating your enemies with the Heat Cannon's humongous splash is one of the most rewarding feelings you can get in this game.
The splash radius of the Heat Cannon is one of the largest of any primaries in the game, and only require you to launch a shot around your opponent, not hit them directly. For players with low frames like me, it is extremely hard to hit players with any kind of low-projectile-speed weapon. But the Heat Cannon's splash makes up for its weaknesses (such as projectile speeds, slow reload time, small round). If your internet connection is also suffering, it is hard to hit fast-moving pros with a Flak Cannon. Again, because of the splash, your aim does not have to be perfect.
Heat Cannon, if put in the right hands, can easily best a equal skill leveled Flak player. Of course, once that Flak player gets in your face, a Heat player stands little chance. Here's how you can beat any mech (even pesky Flak Scouts) with a Heat Cannon.
1. Stay at medium range, where burst weapons aren't as effective, and your Heat Cannon is still extremely dangerous. If you have to, or want to, close in quickly and make sure they aren't armed with an extremely bursty weapon and/or have over half-health.
2. Get the high ground, where you can use the Heat Cannon's splash to your advantage. Jumping sporadically works very well. DON'T FLY, JUMP.
3. Buy the "air compressor" internal, so you pose a harder target to hit whilst jumping.
4. Aim at the ground around the enemy with charged shots. There is no point trying to hit a fast-moving player with your little Heat round.
5. Master uncharged shots. A charged Heat shot only does like 10 damage more than an uncharged, so charging a shot drastically lowers your DPS but does drastically improve splash damage. Learn to use uncharged shots.
6. Run from shields. The Heat cannon's splash will hurt you as much as you hurt the enemy, and therefore it is better off to run away and live to fight another day than kill your enemy and yourself.
7. If you find yourself in a 1v2 situation, retreat. The DPS of Heat Cannon is simply too low for a low-armored Scout or slow Rocketeer to combat multiple enemies. I'm not saying it's impossible to beat 1v2s with a Heat Cannon, it is just very hard (for me, anyway).
8. Don't let your enemy see you. What I mean by this is hit your enemies from around corners using splash damage. There is no reason why you can't do fuzzy bunny-tons of damage to an enemy without them seeing you.
9. Go for the combo! Heat+Secondary is extremely deadly, and if you manage to land one or two good combos, it is almost impossible for you to lose a skirmish.
10. Recognize splash damage as your BFF. Cannot stress it enough, the splash damage of a Heat Cannon is your most important ally, especially when going up against bursty weapons.
I hope I changed that answer to the question I asked you at the beginning of the post.
Edited by Preternatural, December 05 2013 - 07:06 AM.
. High direct damage with heavy feathering is how I prefer it.
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