I love the partisan prime.
For a while it was by far one of my favorite starting assets. I've joined games already in progress where the enemy had completely dominated the map, and were camping the spawn base in mediums and heavies. With just one partisan prime I was able to push their entire camping force back, watching them all run for cover one by one once they realized bits of their armor were starting to turn cherry red.
It's an extremely versatile machine, being able to swat down ASF overhead, instagib any annoying BA nearby, and still very much hold its own against any light or even medium mech.
That said though, I've often thought that it is slightly overbearing when considering a 1v1 situation between a partisan and a light mech. It's very obvious to me who is experienced with fighting enemy tanks, and who is not. To be completely honest, someone who doesn't know specific strategies for killing a tank wouldn't really stand a chance against me 1 on 1 with them in a light mech. The partisan simply has too much armor, and the damage over time that it can put out is just too much for a light mech to fumble their way through it if the partisan pilot is even somewhat competent.
I think that Mechman was spot on though about how to stand up against an enemy partisan. I remember a while back I used to get completely creamed against a partisan in my favorite light mechs. My little Owens B was a champ against enemy mechs, but cannon fodder to the little quad AC5 terror. Then I started to try a more strategic approach, similar to what mechman was describing. Using the torso twist to my advantage for spreading the damage around a bit, diving for cover when it's available, and most importantly engaging masc to sprint behind him, or even at random intervals, to make myself less predictable.
Using my enhanced mobility as an advantage, I've been able to take down partisans even when they had backup and I was all alone, plus I've also been able to kill even demolisher primes in an Owens B using speed and cover. If you stand there and let a partisan prime wail on you, then you WILL end up cored. Throughout MechWarrior history, light mechs have always relied on speed to survive, rather than just soaking up the damage like a heavy or an assault.
Ideally what I'd like to see happen though is for the partisan to be slightly more expensive than what it is. I believe that it would feel more appropriate in the same price range as most medium mechs are. Then I'd like to see a new asset, one that's slightly less armored, but also much faster, and equipped with quad AC2 as the early game dedicated AA asset. Mechman is completely right when he mentioned that the Partisan is an 80 ton tank, and that it should feel like one. At first I was surprised at how slow the thing was, because I always thought it was supposed to be the light tank, and the demo was supposed to be the heavy tank. Then I looked it up and found out that it was in fact a heavy tank itself as well.
