"Stay calm. This is your fight. You got this."
I took a deep breath to calm myself and collect my thoughts. Moments earlier, Ackil Gedian's Golem had painted and shot at my looting Heron. Baiting a battleship in a frigate is a good way to get the adrenaline flowing. Now, warping back in my shiny new Sacrilege, I loaded the EM HAMs and checked D-scan... yup, there he was... only seconds until I landed....
Some history: I had lost plenty of cheap T1 ships and interceptors to low/nullsec fleet roams, but that was over a year ago, and this was the first time I was bringing something expensive to the fight. It was also my first time PVPing in a Heavy Assault Cruiser, and my first time flying with an active armor tank. When I bought "Sacrilicious" a couple weeks ago, I ran it through some PVE shakedown cruises to get the feel of things. This ship was the culmination of my earlier experiences fighting mission runners. I knew that on paper, at least, I had a ship with a small sig radius, considerable DPS, and a mean tank. But did I have the piloting skills to fly it? Would I be able to remember the lessons I'd learned in previous fights?
I pushed aside any doubts as I landed on grid. Ackil Gedian's Golem was quickly locked and pointed, followed by a torrent of HAMs and a medium neut. I settled into a close orbit at full speed and watched as I slowly chipped away at his shields. He was shooting Exp cruise missiles at me, which an Amarr HAC can shrug off easily, so I set my drones on his Hammerhead IIs. Due to my long Caldari history, the low shield klaxon typically gets my heart racing; this time I simply flipped on the armor repper with a close eye on capacitor level. In less than two minutes, the fight was over. There was no discussion of ransom. There was only Ackil Gedian in his pod beside the wreckage of his Golem, demonstrating proof of concept for the Sacrilege.
There are a couple things to note about this fight. First, this fight demonstrates the advantages of shooting the correct damage type. To recap, I shot him with EM, he shot me with explosive. Because he was tanked against Angel NPCs, his explosive resistance was three times stronger than his EM resistance. On the other hand, my explosive resistance was over three times stronger than thermal, my weakest. In simple terms: I correctly guessed his weakest resist, while he blindly shot against my highest resist. It may not have affected the ultimate outcome of the fight, but he could have tripled(!) his missile DPS just by changing to thermal missiles. (Also check out Wensley's blog for an excellent look at projectile damage types versus resists.)
The second thing to note has to do with the medium neut in the Sac's 6th high slot. Some post-fight EFT number crunching says that his active shield tank could run cap-stable with all level V skills. Applying the medium neut reduces his cap to less than 5 minutes. That means that for this fight, he probably still had half his cap when he died. His cap-stable tank simply couldn't keep up with the damage. So while the neut did nothing for this fight, it definitely has merit in longer fights.
Saturday, April 16, 2011
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Lessons From Early Fights (Part 2)
After a well-tanked Armageddon fought off my Drake, I decided I needed more tank and more firepower. I had a couple shield buffer-rigged Ravens in the hangar, so I fitted one for anti-MR work and moved it to Ruvas, my ninja testing system.
The day after the Armageddon fight, a pilot named Takens in a Raven Navy Issue decided to take shots at my Heron. It was in a Sanshas mission with no gates and he was sitting close to the warp in point. I swapped the Heron for my Raven and warped back to the mission. He was still on scan, but when I landed, he was chasing down a wreck about 40 km away. I overheated and started charging at him, cursing my ill fortune, when he immediately opened fire again. It took me 45 seconds to close to overheated point range, and he made no attempt to escape! Still, it took over a minute before I was within torpedo range. He had been pelting me with cruise missiles the whole time so he had a sizable head start on my buffer tank.
Things changed, however, once my torpedoes started reaching their target. Two minutes after landing on the field, I was in armor, but his shield tank was broken and he was dropping much faster than I was. I had closed to web and neut range, and remembered to launch a 5th drone (the Warrior II on the graph below). I burned out one of my Invulnerability Fields around this time, but the fight was effectively over. He attempted a late convo, but neglected to pull his drones. It took two volleys to turn his structure into Swiss cheese, leaving his pod beside his wreck.
Damage graph for Guyde's Raven vs Takens' Raven Navy Issue
Total fight time was about 2 minutes 40 seconds from the time I landed on the field until he popped. I started to approach him at 21:56:01 (not shown in the graph). Takens was a good sport about it all, and we ended up having a lengthy chat about PVP and aggression mechanics.
This fight demonstrated my feeling the night before: there will be situations where a PVP battlecruiser will simply not be able to defeat a PVE battleship. His damage while I was closing the gap would have forced my Drake off the field. In this case, it was thanks to the extra buffer and extra damage of the Raven that I was able to finish the fight. Continuing the lessons of the night before...
LESSON 5: A PVP battlecruiser may win many fights, but not all.
I finished the fight with two volleys left in the launchers. This was due to me being a little trigger-happy at the start of the fight and wasting 3 volleys before I was in range.
LESSON 6: Know the maximum range of your missiles. Don't waste ammo.
One final note: I used the wrong ammo type. I loaded up the EM damage Mjolnir torps, forgetting that he was in a Sanshas mission. Sanshas deal EM and thermal damage, so I could reasonably expect him to tank against those damage types. Post-fight EFT calculations showed his shield EM resistance was 55%, and his armor EM resistance was 50%. A much better choice would have been kinetic damage Juggernauts against 40% shield and 25% armor resistances. To make it simple: it took me 30% longer to kill him, because I chose the wrong ammo type.
LESSON 7: Know the mission NPC damage types, and adjust accordingly.
The Raven had been successful, but it moved like a slug. What could I fly that is strong enough to consistently kill a battleship, but quick enough for covering large distances? A new idea was forming....
The day after the Armageddon fight, a pilot named Takens in a Raven Navy Issue decided to take shots at my Heron. It was in a Sanshas mission with no gates and he was sitting close to the warp in point. I swapped the Heron for my Raven and warped back to the mission. He was still on scan, but when I landed, he was chasing down a wreck about 40 km away. I overheated and started charging at him, cursing my ill fortune, when he immediately opened fire again. It took me 45 seconds to close to overheated point range, and he made no attempt to escape! Still, it took over a minute before I was within torpedo range. He had been pelting me with cruise missiles the whole time so he had a sizable head start on my buffer tank.
Things changed, however, once my torpedoes started reaching their target. Two minutes after landing on the field, I was in armor, but his shield tank was broken and he was dropping much faster than I was. I had closed to web and neut range, and remembered to launch a 5th drone (the Warrior II on the graph below). I burned out one of my Invulnerability Fields around this time, but the fight was effectively over. He attempted a late convo, but neglected to pull his drones. It took two volleys to turn his structure into Swiss cheese, leaving his pod beside his wreck.
Damage graph for Guyde's Raven vs Takens' Raven Navy Issue
Total fight time was about 2 minutes 40 seconds from the time I landed on the field until he popped. I started to approach him at 21:56:01 (not shown in the graph). Takens was a good sport about it all, and we ended up having a lengthy chat about PVP and aggression mechanics.
This fight demonstrated my feeling the night before: there will be situations where a PVP battlecruiser will simply not be able to defeat a PVE battleship. His damage while I was closing the gap would have forced my Drake off the field. In this case, it was thanks to the extra buffer and extra damage of the Raven that I was able to finish the fight. Continuing the lessons of the night before...
LESSON 5: A PVP battlecruiser may win many fights, but not all.
I finished the fight with two volleys left in the launchers. This was due to me being a little trigger-happy at the start of the fight and wasting 3 volleys before I was in range.
LESSON 6: Know the maximum range of your missiles. Don't waste ammo.
One final note: I used the wrong ammo type. I loaded up the EM damage Mjolnir torps, forgetting that he was in a Sanshas mission. Sanshas deal EM and thermal damage, so I could reasonably expect him to tank against those damage types. Post-fight EFT calculations showed his shield EM resistance was 55%, and his armor EM resistance was 50%. A much better choice would have been kinetic damage Juggernauts against 40% shield and 25% armor resistances. To make it simple: it took me 30% longer to kill him, because I chose the wrong ammo type.
LESSON 7: Know the mission NPC damage types, and adjust accordingly.
The Raven had been successful, but it moved like a slug. What could I fly that is strong enough to consistently kill a battleship, but quick enough for covering large distances? A new idea was forming....
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Lessons From Early Fights (Part 1)
On a high from my first mission runner kill, I started fishing around Ruvas again the following Saturday. The only nibble I got was from an Armageddon.
LESSON 1: When an Armageddon "nibbles" on your stationary salvaging Heron, you can kiss the Heron goodbye. If salvaging, orbit the wrecks instead of parking on them.
Still, this meant I was free to return in the Drake. He was in a Guristas mission, so I loaded up the explosive Fulmination Rage, followed him through a gate, and locked him up. He returned fire almost immediately, but I didn't realize the danger when he dropped four Ogre IIs on me. In retrospect, I now know that this was a significant increase in his DPS that I could have quickly removed from the field.
LESSON 2: If his drones will hurt you, kill his drones.
At the time, I was confident that I could burn through his tank first. But even with an overheated tank, his lasers and drones worked through my shields and started eating up my Drake's armor. I could see where his damage was coming from, but how was he soaking up my damage so easily? At the 3 minute mark, with my target still in low armor, I was forced to pull my drones and go to warp as I started taking structure damage.
I realized afterwards that I had a salvager in my 8th high slot, instead of my usual medium neut. Would it have made the difference in breaking his active tank? There's no way to know for sure, but note to self...
LESSION 3: Keep your PVP ships fitted for PVP. If you take a module off, put it back on!
I chatted with him afterwards, congratulated him on fending me off, and explained how to post his Heron kill to Battleclinic. He agreed to show me his fitting, and sure enough, it was a PVP-style omni-tank. He said that a friend had gifted him the Armageddon, and he just kept flying it the way it was.
LESSON 4: An armor tanker fighting Guristas might still have explosive resists. :P
Regardless of the outcome, it was a good fight. I figure I could have won if I'd played differently--especially regarding his drones--but I still sensed that the Drake wasn't going to be able to cut it in every situation. Time to dust off one of my old PVP Ravens... (part 2)
LESSON 1: When an Armageddon "nibbles" on your stationary salvaging Heron, you can kiss the Heron goodbye. If salvaging, orbit the wrecks instead of parking on them.
Still, this meant I was free to return in the Drake. He was in a Guristas mission, so I loaded up the explosive Fulmination Rage, followed him through a gate, and locked him up. He returned fire almost immediately, but I didn't realize the danger when he dropped four Ogre IIs on me. In retrospect, I now know that this was a significant increase in his DPS that I could have quickly removed from the field.
LESSON 2: If his drones will hurt you, kill his drones.
At the time, I was confident that I could burn through his tank first. But even with an overheated tank, his lasers and drones worked through my shields and started eating up my Drake's armor. I could see where his damage was coming from, but how was he soaking up my damage so easily? At the 3 minute mark, with my target still in low armor, I was forced to pull my drones and go to warp as I started taking structure damage.
I realized afterwards that I had a salvager in my 8th high slot, instead of my usual medium neut. Would it have made the difference in breaking his active tank? There's no way to know for sure, but note to self...
LESSION 3: Keep your PVP ships fitted for PVP. If you take a module off, put it back on!
I chatted with him afterwards, congratulated him on fending me off, and explained how to post his Heron kill to Battleclinic. He agreed to show me his fitting, and sure enough, it was a PVP-style omni-tank. He said that a friend had gifted him the Armageddon, and he just kept flying it the way it was.
LESSON 4: An armor tanker fighting Guristas might still have explosive resists. :P
Regardless of the outcome, it was a good fight. I figure I could have won if I'd played differently--especially regarding his drones--but I still sensed that the Drake wasn't going to be able to cut it in every situation. Time to dust off one of my old PVP Ravens... (part 2)
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