if you ever get higher ranked then you'd sure need at least a few meta mods like a quad or an overload
res also matters infinitely more than health
you can use ash creator if you dont have Unstable Power Cell but you need to remove something or just replace the blizzard dissolver with a broken version (keep in mind ash creator uses 93 energy, way more than UPC)
Isn't heat and cooling a bit low for higher ranks? I have ash creator but I do not yet have the dragon thing. Is it okay to proceed with the dissolver I put on my mech until I get the other dissolves?
I'd say Ash Creator or Unstable Power Cell would work better than Big Daddy
If you ever drop a Broken Blizzard Annihilator (simply better in every aspect) or a Blizzard Dissolver (if you dont want as much backfire), replace the Broken Blizzard Bissolver with those
From that point on, focus on getting a bit more health since it has a decent amount of backfire, and maybe replace the energy storage unit with another energy mass booster
Alternatively you could just go all the way and try to get to the meta mod setup, but i'm sure that's way too hard to achieve (1 of each fortresses, 1 plat, 2 quad 2 overload/3 quad 1 overload)
and no, claw will never work in any builds outside of raid, don't bother switching to it