The more I look at it, the more I'm convinced that the Mortis is an overweight medium at a cosplay convention. It's firepower is anemic given the overall mass of the Mortis and successfully use has usually involved either capitalizing on an opponent's mistake or finding something smaller and squishier to beat the living daylights out of.
It's not Violator bad, but it's just doesn't strike me as a very good design.
The Mortis suffers from 3 or 4 distinct problems . . .
First, its a click-based design so they had to make them based on what stats/abilities had been made public . . . sometimes this has been good, more often bad
Second, its a Cappie design . . . and they already have the Tsi T'sang (or however spelled) which I think is the premier melee mech- I mean I like the NDA-2KO but I acknowledge the Capellan design is superior. So . . . new melee mech which is not a clone of the TT- that sets up one variant and one flavor of what it will NOT be like.
Third, its slightly overweight just from a design perspective- 70 tons is where the upper end of the bracket for AES. AES does help the melee attacks, not as much as TSM but its about that flavor of not being a TT, so besides design motif needing a reaping hook which is taken as a hatchet. Its also a hatchet b/c when you sunk that much into the design you want to connect with the melee weapon rather than be more tempted by a kick. Not sure it needs the AES in the non-hatchet arm.
Fourth, its too slow . . . which sounds odd about a 5/8 75t design- but as its melee it needs MASC, TSM or now SuperCharger to GET to that melee range. Problem is when you get to that range your big energy mace, the HPPC, has a min range problem- slightly offset by AES. MML5? Well you can load LRM ammo and be a SuperGriffin without jumping or you can load things to assist your close combat- like inferno SRMs or Smoke LRMs. The RL10 is just to round off the weight. Going back to the TT, it had TSM to help it close the gap- 6/9 becomes 7/11 . . . Berserker has MASC . . . but the Mortis does not. Nor does it have JJ to get away when the enemy units start closing in to bring down the melee mech.
Finally, the two canon variants we get I think are based on MWDA stats . . . we do not have one built to reflect TT rules. I spoke a lot about the first variant's loadout but the 2nd Mortis does not make much sense either . . . the Large VSP with AES is good IMO- want to see those weapons used more on fast designs. But the TSEMP? I think its better on a platform like the Raven II, where it can clear the target area while under the user effects of firing the TSEMP- IMO again the Mortis is not fast enough to get some distance and stands a chance as a MELEE mech of being shut down (I think, been a while since I used it).
I wish we could get a new 'production' run for the Cappie invasion of the FS . . . keep everything but ranged weapons from the -1A. Put a Supercharger on it, some JJ which I rarely advocate for, and give it some CQB weapons . . . . Snub PPCs, Variable Pulse, X-Pulse, maybe some Clan ERs if they captured one of the Davion worlds that produced them for the Black Knights (I cannot remember), a clutch of RLs could be fun.
But yeah, the -1A is a SuperGriffin at range that wants to close.