Hawk's Talon Seeker Knife (naturally) Antigravity Supporter + Wings of Brilliance Wraithcure Jewel Hawksear Grenades Emergency Response Hawk. Your 3 jumps allows you to cross the entire map to help defend that distant point with 1 extra jump to spare in case you need to escape. The huge distance you can cover makes you excellent at patrolling the skies searching for loners what think they're hot shit until they take a seeker knife to the back. Most people don't like the hawksear grenades and say they're bad. I love 'em, you just gotta use them correctly. They turn the Swooping Hawk from a harasser into an assassin, because they allow you to finish off players while simultaneously escaping. It might sound niche, but don't hate until you try it. I'd even make a tutorial video on hawksear grenades if I could get nvidia shadowplay to work.
Update: I removed my penetration upgrade on my regular knife to get grenades. Just like Silfarion said, Hawksear grenades aren't as powerful as Plasma grenades, but they detonate on impact, preventing the enemy from dodging its damage. It is good to seed mayhem in a group of attackers since half will press on and half will try to dodge and search for you. Having grenades also enables me to have more utility. While playing in guild, or a warparty on Voice Chat, having Haywire grenades enables you to stun tanks and rhinos that are driving around points, out of reach of your Fire Dragon mates. Therefore, you simply sign their doom while casually flying above their heads, for the Fire Dragon will simply do his job against an immobile helpless vehicle. (The fact that I removed any enhancement on my knife dramatically lowers my CQC capabilities. I need to rely more consistently on my teammates when engaged or engaging in close combat. I turn more into a harasser than an assassin with that, my primary assassin's tool being my Hunter's Mark)
New player, so I haven't really built mine but from what I'm seeing on this thread I should treat the hawk as a hit and run melee? I have been using it ato mid range in high places near where enemies funnel in, is this reasonable or is melee hit and run so much better that I should do that instead?
Your playstyle is fine, we just really like our pointy bits, getting good with the knife is always a valued skill since melee is a big part of the game As a hawk you would want to use the knife to shank a heavy gunner when they are on a wall or balcony or any other range classes doing the same, just fly past and land then shank them in the back as its faster than shooting them to death. The hawk is weak against other guys with guns so a knife to the back is a reasonable approach if they are alone, a good strong attack before a shootout wins duels, especially to the back and you have the speed to pull it off and escape as a hawk.
Thanks for the reply, what you said makes a lot of sense, I'll try to work on that, gotta get used to the flying at all first, what kind of damage does the hawk melee do? I've been playing a lot of warlock/scorpion and I feel like they do decent damage, but there are still times where melee just seems to go awkward and I end up failing a fight because my hits just never seem to land. Though with diving in, hitting and then flying out I guess that shouldn't be a problem.
The hawk has the same melee weapons as the dire avenger and fire dragon. A knife. Don't underestimate it; Knife backstabs are some of the most powerful melee attacks in the game. They will bring anyone from 100 to 10 in a single hit. Just don't pretend to be an assault class and attack people head on, that won't end well.
I think the knife is like 4 light attacks or 3 heavy to kill to the front but don't quote me on that, I mostly use the seeker knife which is from 12k boxes I believe, it gives about 30 penetration so its basically more damage since everyone is reducing the knifes damage with toughness. If you go from behind I normally kill with two strong attacks if I can get a backstab in and that's the main way I would kill, you don't even have to land the second hit as the gun can easily finish them off after a wound like that although I would keep up melee if the guy is a heavy gunner as you want to deny him his ability to shoot. As for flying I'm still learning as well, if you see a Xio Valency has suicide in a game then that would be me playing hawk or a fire dragon who had his bomb shot
Just because I'm a whore for Swooping Hawks I gave this "knife in the back" thing a go. Holy hell does it work so well... I was having so much fun just gliding in behind people and power attacking them. It's funny as hell watching whole groups come chasing after you with the Benny Hill theme going on in the back after you merced one of their buddies. That said I've been going with three loads of fuel on my character because if you mis-jump or accidentally tap too many times then you have a few extra moments of jumping away again instead of spending both boosts and getting shredded by bolters.
