The Hecate is What All the T3D's Should Have Been, Jackdaw Fights & Loki Kills, Hecate Fits and Bad Comet PvP

The Hecate is What All the T3D's Should Have Been.

The Hecate has been out for a couple weeks now and I have been having a lot of fun running around Black Rise blapping frigs with it and getting blobbed by gal mil. Through trial and error I have come up with a fit I am comfortable with (which is actually the fit of the week) and have I can now have corp roams where we have at least one of every T3D.

Compared to the other T3D's though, I personally find the Hecate underwhelming. There are several reasons for this and ironically one of the biggest is a result of CCP actually doing such a good job with this ship.

Unfortunately the Hecate doesn't have the HORIZONTAL supremacy I was hoping for

CCP intentionally kept the powergrid low on the Hecate, which plays into the fact you are forced to fit an MWD if you want to utilize the prop mode bonus. This means when fitting the Hecate, you are forced to decide between tank or dps. You cannot fit neutron blasters while having two reps and full tank rigs, and in FW space at least, you really need two reps, as I learnt the hard way, mainly because the fights you're going to find in a T3D are rarely going to be 1v1's. This makes the Hecate an extremely balanced ship in the sense that it cannot have it all. The problem, however, is that being balanced makes it worse than the other T3D's! The Hecate is how all the other T3D's should of been. The fact the Hecate is actually a reasonable ship puts it behind every other T3D, even the Jackdaw, which while isn't as powerful as all of its counterparts still surpasses the Hecate.

Another reason the Hecate falls behind is because of its lack of utility. The Jackdaw has lots of meds, the Confessor has room for neuts and the Svipul is just OP in general. The Hecate doesn't really have any of these things those. It has one utility slot and no fitting space to put anything in, it has to have a cap booster to support its tank and it's not a Svipul.

Now, I am not saying the Hecate is bad. Like I said, I have been having a lot of fun flying it and getting fights. It has strong dps, great tank (hull tanking has never felt more awesome) and with the MWD bonus, you dont have to worry as much about kite at 20km frigs holding you in place for 30 mins if you decide to go blasters. It's also great at taking on gangs, as any T3D should be, so to be honest, a T3D is a T3D, you will be able to kill a bunch of T1 frigs/dessies and be open to getting fucked by large gangs regardless of what T3D you fly.

Unless you're so cancerous you fly a 10MN Svipul.

What's going on with me this week:

This week I had some fun with my corp, went on a couple roams and had some really fun fights. One of which, involved a bling fitted worm and an immortal Jackdaw vs our AF gang.

https://zkillboard.com/br/46046/ (thrasher and reaper were not involved)

We took the gate into the plex, found the Jackdaw fighting the worm and got some nice whoring done. Worm was 110m with T1 guns, which was funny. After the Worm quickly died we turned onto the Jackdaw. Little did we know, this Jackdaw was tankier than a Golem, and happily took our damage. Our hawk was hitting for 40 damage a volley apparently due to the resists on the thing. My Ishkur wasn't doing much better. As one of the Ishkurs died, I had the idea to contract my Catalyst to the corp member who had died so he could come in and help. He did, and the Jackdaw got into the structure, but the Catalyst quickly got blapped and it was back to just me and the Hawk. I decided to hold my ground a little longer, preying he would run out of charges, but by the time I had decided it was time to burn out, it was too late and I died.

Basically, a Jackdaw rekt our AF gang, but was a really fun and tense fight. Also, due to that sexy Worm kill, we came out isk positive! Good fight.

I also managed to kill a Loki in a Hecate, which I have the video for:

All credit goes to Domino Vyse for setting up this awesome kill for me, would of not even known it was there if not for him.

Here is the killmail, so you can laugh at that small armour repairer: https://zkillboard.com/kill/48053945/

Fit of the week:

I have seen many different ways of fitting the Hecate, some focusing on the raw dps you can get out of blasters, others trying a kite rail approach. After trying several fits and getting input from other solo PvPers, I have come to a fit which I think is one of best for solo roaming in FW space.

What this fit keeps in mind that when you're flying a T3D, you need the tank to take on gangs, as that's what you're going to be fighting most of the time. With this fit, you can take on most targets around FW space with good tank, dps and speed. Your MWD allows you to catch up to kiters and reach high priority targets quickly and your dps allows you to blap things pretty nicely. The tank, when combined with exile, will keep you going for a very long time.

The fit is extremely tight, leaving no powergrid at all with all skills at V. With a 3% powergrid implant, you can fit A-type reps instead of B-types, which is highly recommended.

If you're looking for a good brawl in low sec, this is the fit you need.

Fight of the week:

A really nice fight here. I am roaming in my comet and see a couple frigs outside the plex, decide I can take them and go. I manage to take out two of them, before fucking up horribly against the Merlin and getting myself killed. Later did I learn he was AC fit.

I was hoping that the Tristan would come in first so I could get him off the field quickly, as I knew he would have neuts, which were the biggest threat on the field. However, he came in a little while after the Merlins, and I couldn't sit there taking damage waiting for him, so I killed one the Merlins before switching to the Tristan. While killing the Merlins though, I positioned myself around the Tristan as to get away from his neuts quicker.

At the end of the fight, I burnt into the Merlin in order to secure my scram on him. All this did though was put me in his optimal while my DCU was turned off, due to capping myself out with my rep.

What I think the most important decision of this fight was activating the gate when I landed. This meant that I forced the other frigs to come inside with me, allow me to pull some distance before they got in and made it so they started exactly where I wanted them. Had I took them on the outside of that gate, I would have died for sure, but because I made them follow me I was in control and was able to apply my dps fully from the very beginning,

I think the description of my video sums up the fight nicely:

"You see I did have it, but then I decided that I didn't actually want my DCU turned on, nor did I want to be out of range of the Merlin's guns.

Then I decided not only did I no longer want the Merlin kill, but I also didn't want my Comet anymore.

So as you can see, that was all intentional."

Do Stronger Placid/Black Rise Alliances Have More Power Than Before, Summer's starting, Hecate Fights and Atron Fits

Do Stronger Placid/Black Rise Alliances Have More Power Than Before?

Over the last couple months we have seen several shifts in the landscape of Gal/Cal mil space in terms of relevant entities. Comparing then to now, it does seem like there are fewer PVP groups that warrant any attention. Snuffed Out and Shadow Cartel seem to be the two dominant alliances in either corner of the area, with small groups in between which for the most part have little to no influence in caps or otherwise, when compared to these two alliances. Because of this, I think it's worth asking the question is this area of space is moving towards stagnation, or at the very least less variety and competition than before.

By this I mean these two alliances almost have complete control over their areas, as they always have, but these areas are growing. For example, Shadow Cartel may have had to take into consideration Overload Everything if they wanted to go super dunking around Placid, but no more. Take into consideration moons as well. Any valuable moon in both regions belongs to one of the two alliances, as there is no alliance that could really hold out against them apart from each other, but as they live quite far away from each other (or at least out of jump range) that isnt really a problem. Now I'm not saying no one can provide fights against them. Recently Snuffed Out went and took some WAFFLES moons and Snuffed Out actually got beat pretty hard on one of the fights. Overall though, WAFFLES lost moons. I think this is mainly because there just isn't any other alliance that could defend against a attack from either entity, let alone think about taking moons for themselves.

True, there is more than one way to judge an alliance than based on its

 super cap power and amount of moons, but's a good indicator.

Though if this is the case as I have described it, gal and cal mil do help to keep things fresh. While maybe not in the moons area, another big part of an alliance being dominant is that no one can stand up to their roams and general fleets, but being in FW space means there will always be the militia to provide a challenge, and while their power fluctuates over time they are going nowhere, so it's important to remember that while in FW space you cant really get true stagnation.

As well as this, there are new groups coming up, some even with their own super fleets and titan bridges such as Lethal Intend living in Placid, even if they would never dream of taking on a SC super fleet. It does show though that there are still other non-scrub alliances that don't just stick to small gang like my corp.

In conclusion, I honestly don't know if anything of what I'm saying is accurate, but I still wanted to talk about and weight up both sides. Maybe we really are moving towards two power blocks dominating the whole of Placid/Black Rise, or it's just a natural cycle and given a couple months new alliances will be ready to stand up and make some waves. We will see.

What have I been up to this week:

Finally finished school, on summer now. My own corp is going really well, been getting new members and been doing roams frequently. Really feels good to be a CEO again actually. Honestly though there isn't much new. Although that "This is REALLY  EVE" video was the highlight of my whole week. Even my friends who dont understand EVE love it.

Fight of the week:

Normally this is a place where I like to show off my PvP skills and post a cool video where I take on a gang. Today we have something close to that, but I dont take the gang and die horribly. However, I am choosing this fight because there is a good opportunity for me to walk through it and explain what I did wrong and why it was stupid, so hopefully you guys can keep my mistakes in mind when you solo PvP.

I'm normally not this shit I swear

We're going to ignore my despicable module management  in this fight as it's not really something I can talk about, other than it was a rookie mistake to not only forget to use my cap booster but also burn out my web. We all have those moments though.

So the fight starts off with me trying to catch up to a retri which is slightly faster than me. I messed up at the start by failing to get a scram and web on him, but in my defense I was pretty sure I was in the range when I locked him. Let's blame that on server ticks. As I burn to him I overload my MWD and almost get in range for a web, though he realizes and overloads his MWD, putting him ahead of me. The main mistake I made here is that while this was happening, I ignored the Tristan and kept going for the Retri. I should of seen that Tristan and gone for it straight away, as I knew it was something I would be faster than so it's easy dps off the field. I got greedy and wanted to try my luck again, which ultimately cost me my ship. Had I taken out the Tristans and the Slicer, I would of had plenty of time to try and slingshot the Retri on his own and killed them all.

The main point here is when solo PvPing, always go for ships you 100% know you can kill before trying to get lucky and catch something shinier. That way there is less dps on you, giving you a better chance.

Fit of the week:

Going with something simple today, an Atron fit. I call it the Brawltron. It's fun, cheap and effective in T1 frig solo PvP, especially since hull tanking rigs became a thing. Because of the Atron's falloff bonus and natural speed, this fit allows you to take on pretty much every other T1 frig. You can load null and orbit at 7.5km against AC's and blasters, dealing more dps due to your falloff bonus (around 9km falloff with null and gal frig V), load antimatter and orbit at 500m against rails, arty and lasers, your speed allowing you to stick to targets, and lastly you can load void against rockets and simply out dps them. All of this with very nice tank and dps. Here is an example of this fit taking on an armour condor.

See? T1 frig PvP is still fun!

There is plenty of fitting room for you to work with based on your skills. Just fit it up, go find some T1 frigs farming and have fun.

Radical Ishtar Changes with DDA Nerfs, Avoiding Death While Solo Roaming, Starting My Own Corp, Ishkur Jamming Fun and Tormentor Fits!

Released this post a couple hours than I normally do - haven't been in all day today and yesterday.

Also sorry for no post last week, I was bed ridden ill. All better now though.

Incoming Radical Changes to the Ishtar and Nerfs to DDA's - Will it Make a Difference?

Changes have been announced to the Ishtar and the Drone Damage Amplifier. Upon first look they glance very interesting, but I am wondering will they actually solve the problem of drones?

Let's start with the Ishtar changes. One of its mid slots is being moved to its lows, it's getting a mass, agility, velocity and powergrid decrease. I think this is actually a very good direction to go in, as I have said before that simply nerfing the Ishtar's role bonuses or dps output wont solve the problem, which as we saw it didn't, but instead it had to have much more significant changes to counteract the overwhelming utility that comes with being a drone boat. However, it seems CCP have realized this and have gone for some of the core stats on the ship, most notably removing a med slot and adding a low slot, which I think is an extremely good idea to essentially eliminate large ishtar fleets from the meta, as their tank will no longer be able to hold. It also means though, the Ishtar wont be useless, but instead used in different ways. With an extra low slot, maybe the brawl Ishtar I have always dreamed of will finally be viable. I remember pulling around 800 dps and 50k ehp in EFT. With an extra low slot, maybe the tank wont be quite so shit.

Definitely something to look into for small gang, but I think the Ishtar's fleet days are over. For now it's Gila master race.

A new meta starts now.

Next thing to talk about is the DDA changes. They are getting 2.5% nerf to the bonus damage they give, meaning drone boats across the board are receiving a nerf. This is CCP's attempt to shift EVE out of the current drone dominating meta, but honestly I think this is the wrong way to approach the problem.

Drones really are a special form of dealing damage for several reasons which turrets just cant do. Putting all your dps into drones opens up a couple things from the start. Firstly, your high slots no longer require guns. You can keep them empty and use all that fitting space somewhere else on the fit or you can fit other modules like neuts, remote reps or drone links. This simply gives drone boats so much more potential than gun boats when it comes to fleet comps. Secondly, drone boats are unique in that their main dps is separate from their hull. This gives them a potential longer range on their opponents than most guns can and it means the only job the actual hull has to do is be fast enough or tank enough to not die, while gun boats would have to into consideration their optimals and tracking speed a lot more. This leads me onto my last point as to why drone boats are fundamentally stronger than gun boats - drones do not have to take into consideration optimal ranges or tracking speed in most cases. Sentries can hit targets from most ranges, and most drone boats can store two flights to pick the best types depending on the fight, while any other type of drone that isn't Gallente can burn out to targets in fleet fights extremely quickly. This means range control is largely irrelevant when dealing with drone boats.

Still though, a DDA nerf isnt a terrible idea and arguably a step in the right direction. It will help to tone down the Tristan for example, as at the moment those cancerous double DDA kite fits are still eating my rail comets apart, and I would say the worm might not be as OP anymore but...that shit is always gonna be OP.

My main point in this is that if CCP want to balance drones then a quick fix dps nerf is not the way to go. More thought through changes will need to be introduced to really make a real difference. Personally I do not have the perfect solution to all of this. Maybe because that's because subconsciously I want drone boats and the glorious Gallente master race to continue standing dominant, who knows.

Solo Roaming - Tips to Avoiding Death

The most disheartening thing that can happen to a solo PvPer is spending time fitting up a shiny new ship, undocking, warping to a plex and then landing on a 20 man fleet with fast tackle. It has happened to me more than once and what's probably the most annoying thing is that it is easily avoided, as well as many classic things that will get you killing while solo PvPing in FW space. Today I'm going to go through some of these things and give ways to avoid falling prey to them. They are all quite straight forward and probably obvious to some, though a lot of them I never thought of until told, so hopefully this will prove useful to some.

Of course if you're solo PvPing in a Rokh then this may not all apply to you.

Warping to Complexes:

Let's start with warping to complexes. This one is quite obvious but still useful for any newer PvPers out there. The main danger with plexes is that you warp to them and there is a gang there waiting for you, which quickly kills you before you can warp off. This happens either because you have not scanned the plex before warping or you have warped at 0km, both can be fatal mistakes. Scanning is again more obvious as you want to see if there are targets at the plex in the first place, but when I was new I would just directly warp to every individual plex, so if I was stupid enough to do it when I was new someone else has to be as well. You may have to warp to a celestial or a gate in order to get in scanning range of a plex sometimes. A nice tip when scanning plexes and trying to chose your fights is, if you see multiple ships at a plex and you cannot decide if you can take them all on solo or not, swap your d-scan to your drone overview and scan again. If you see no drones when you know the ships on scan can launch drones, you know these ships are together. If you see drones on scan, it's possible they are fighting, or they are waiting for targets to warp in, so it's still a risk but you can use this to help you determine going in or not.

Warping at 10km to every plex is an extremely important habit to get into and slightly less obvious than just scanning before warping. This is because when warping to an acceleration gate is 0km, it is possible your ship will get caught on the gate and bounce, which will mess up your aligning and prevent you from warping. This makes you an easy target as not only can you not warp off, but your transversal is going to be very low, allowing for larger alpha from hostile guns.

Docking and Undocking:

Next up is docking and undocking on stations. Highsec trade hubs and certain blob-ridden systems in low sec (Heydieles) will often have station campers waiting for frigs or pods to try and dock or undock from their stations. They can be extremely frustrating and honestly I have lost a few too many implants to them. However there is a simple way to deal with them, the first one being to use insta-undocks and insta-docks (yes, they can still pop you while you are trying to dock up). Though you cant get bookmarks on every station, the rest of the time you just need to make sure your damage control is always on if you're in a frig, as there shouldn't be anything that can alpha you that way. The main problem comes if you're in a pod - then you would need a quiet station or a bookmark, but travelling in a pod can be just as dangerous, which we're going to go onto now.

Don't be this kid

Smartbombers:

Smartbombing is very common in the depths of FW space and is something you need to constantly look out for. It's extremely easy to jump into a shuttle then free burn from A to B but if you have implants in your day could quickly be ruined. For general travel, the best way to not get killed by smatbombers is to fit a T1 frig with a damage control. Smartbombs will not be able to kill you in one cycle. If you cannot get a T1 frig, then you need to warp to gates at different angles rather than directly from gate to gate. If you bounce to a celestial then to the gate, you will be out of range of the smartbombs. When you die and have to warp off, it is important not to warp directly to a station or gate as often people will be waiting for your pod to land there and kill you. This has happened to me before, I lost mid grade slaves, life is hard.

While Fighting:

Last but not least is how to not die while fighting. This isn't the actual fighting, but helping to avoid blobs while in the middle of a fight. Having your d-scan window always open is a really good habit to get into, this means you will always know in advance when there are other ships about to enter the plex. Catching a fleet on d-scan early gives you time to burn away from your target in an attempt to get out of scram range and warp off. Sometimes this can be the difference between life and death. Especially be aware when you are going to fight a typical bait ship on its own such as a Punisher, as they are shit in solo PVP so it's rare to see them on their own.

So that's my advice for avoiding the most common ways of getting killed when roaming FW space. I hope this helps some of the newer pilots trying solo PvP out there, or maybe even some older ones.

What's going on with me:

This week there was a corp meeting. I thought, great, I love meetings. I join the ts and after 10 mins of the CEO asking for isk for supers, or something like that, I was told good luck in my eve life and banned from teamspeak, then kicked from corp. This was mainly because no slaves, didn't join fleets enough, and was streaming solo PvP while fleets were happening. Honestly I cant blame them. As far as I understand I left (or rather was kicked) on good terms though.

But it's ok, as I have gone back to my own corp, Icendus Corux, to rebuild it from the ground up for the third time. I have learnt a lot from my last two times running a corp and already I'm having fun this time, having recruited a couple guys and had a couple T1 frig/dessie roams. Give it a few months, and we shall be bigger than Snuff! Then we shall see who's laughing!

I almost feel bad for such an obvious plug but...yes, we're recruiting.

Nah, we will be scrubs, but at least we will be scrubs having fun!

Apart from that haven't really been up to much in eve, I was out all day today and yesterday, was at a University open day in Southampton, was really really fun. My only main problem amt is deciding between Chemistry and Physics.

Fight of the week:

This week we have more ECM fun but this time with an Ishkur trying to take on a couple T1 frigs. I decided to go into the fight as I intended to put my drones on the griffin and force it to warp off, then proceed to kill the other ships. What I did not think through though, was that the Griffin was going to start off far out of my lock range, giving it plenty of time to perma jam me before I could even think about putting drones on him.

Instead, I put my drones on the torm. The torm is a lot squishier than the Astero and deals the same if not more dps, Eventually the torm was forced to warp out, taking a lot of dps off of me and allowing me to hold out until long enough for RNG to finally smile upon me and get unjammed. I tried to put my drones of the Griffin, the first time I was out of drone control range (though I didn't realize that at the time, hence why I was confused) and the second time was too late, as the torm has warped back in and I was capped out. Had I been a bit luckier, the griffin would of died earlier, followed by the torm, and finishing with a relaxing explosion of the Astero. Either way though, fun fights were had.

Fit of the week:

For the first time ever (I think) we're doing a fit that isnt Gallente! I wont count the Confessor fit, because if the Hecate was out back then I would of done that instead.

So we have a very simple but effective T1 fit today. The tormentor is notorious for being OP when flown properly and I have seen this fit taking on other T1 frigs, comets and even me, as seen below:

It was lag I swear

During that fight, despite my high dps, I hardly dented his armour and he didn't have to rep once. Meanwhile his dps made short work of me, but granted my tank wasn't too strong.

The way this fit works is by using it's huge tank to outlast any opponent while keeping a low transveral to land plenty of dps.

The fitting is actually quite flexible, meaning if you're not part of the AWU V master race you can still throw this together quite easily.

The main counter to this fit is things getting under your guns, and your lack of speed dosn't help that, but if you can just keep in a straight line with multi loaded you should still apply your dps.