To Claw or Not to Claw?

I'm still working on whether to change the Claw, weird little 'e' on the card that needs to be corrected aside, and I've hit the sticking point of whether to make it a more powerful Hand, capable of pushing an opponent, and giving it something a little more unique like the ability to push target Titans sideways. That's ignoring the question of how to jig the Charge to Effect ratio so that it's still a big, nasty weapon by comparison to the nimble Hand. I think Charge 3 is too much, and keeping it for the Plasma Howitzer is probably best. 

Current Claw 2

Now the tricky part about pushing a target Titan sideways is how to apply the pushing rules giving that they're currently limited to the case of either pushing a target into a new square, into buildings preventing it from being pushed into that square, or slewed around 45°. Turning the direction 90° isn't all that difficult, and probably pretty easy to diagram. The problem is the skew, as that's rather an important part of play, enabling players to open up targets that might have been artfully concealed behind the bulk of the target Titan. In the current pushing rules hitting the target Titan in the middle of its three available targets presented to the attacker pushes that target Titan back and away from the attacker. Hitting the target Titan in the leftmost, relative to the attacker, of its two or three available targets presented to the attacker pushes that target Titan 45° right (or clockwise). Likewise the rightmost, relative to the attacker, of its two or three available targets skews the Titan 45° left. 

It seems like pushing sideways should reverse this somewhat, so grabbing the leftmost target would turn a Titan 45° left, and the rightmost target would turn a Titan 45° right. I suppose you could say it's a pull rather than a push. 

(A) Claw is meant to grab, gouge, and pull and to a degree the paralyzing effect of a claw latching onto a Titan is covered nicely enough by the Shock trait. The Shield Breaker trait is a kind of conditional +0.5 bonus for the weapon to place its effect between 2 and 3 depending on the breaks that players can engineer. All the range 1 weapons have it, and even the Mega Gun has it. My thought was that the Claw's ability to lock on and pull should be better represented by replacing this 0.5 with a straight +1 Effect for Effect 3, and the ability to push enemies sideways for a Terminator-style clinche.  

Proposed Claw 2 A

Alternately, (B) maybe Shock should be the relative advantage of the Plasma Shotgun and the Plasma Howitzer, as range isn't really a particular advantage in this game, and hitting harder than the Range 3 Plasma Shotgun means that I'm just playing whack-a-mole with the weapons in terms of differentiating them from each other so that players can build asymmetrical strategies. So instead I thought bringing the Charge down to 2 like the Laser Blade, and exchanging the Shock and Shield Breaker for two Hard Rounds traits, the ability to push away, and the ability to push sideways. 

Proposed Claw 2 B

The downside to this approach is that there's no particular reason to combine a Hand and a Claw, as a Claw can do the work of both.  

It might (C) be something to enable the Claw to pull and have the Shield Breaker trait as a third option, and maintaining that Charge 2, Effect 2 so that it's both like a bigger, nastier hand, and its own thing, which is pulling targets instead of pushing or shocking them. 

Proposed Claw 2 C