More AF stuff

So its been a couple of days since the AF buff now and I have managed to get a couple of good fights in mine, including my first solo fights.

Catalyst vs. Hawk vs. Taranis with Friends

I have been trying out the Hawk mainly, as I am a big fan of rockets and with the extra mids a I can fly a Hawk how I flew my hookbills....with dual webs.  Out in Egg I found a Catalyst in a belt and thought this would be a good test of the new AFs fighting a destroyer.  The Catalyst only has two mids though which meant I had little problem dictating the range this fight occurred at and with the increased damage this fight ended quickly.
I caught a couple of more ships on scan and started to slow boat away from 0 on the belt and low and behold a ranis landed in belt, with his Myrmidon buddy on scan I knew this would need to be a fast fight.  The ranis caught up quickly and got a scram on me, I put my webs and scram on him, opening fire as soon as this happened.  He started to bleed HP fast and popped just in time as his mate in the Myrmidon landed and I warped off.

Hawk Vs. Jaguar

This was my first real test of the Hawk, a newly 'buffed' Jaguar.  This was a good fight getting into scram range of each other we locked each other up and started firing.  Webbing each other though meant that I was the faster frigate, obviously this Jaguar hadn't decided to use an armour jaguar with the fact I could keep at 8km and still do my full damage this fight wasn't terribly close and eventually my advantage in buffer and dps meant there was only one outcome.

I don't know how close this would have been if the Jaguar was armour tanked, with the weakness in kinetic resists it has, it would probably have been closer but still coming out with a win for the Hawk.  This is the same thing I have noticed with most of the new AFs when compared to the Hawk, with the new slot and damage bonus those that can't get close will lose and those that can, can't win the damage race anymore.  It also has the extra gtfo ability as it can now fit dual webs on a shield fit.  It's still too early too say which AF I will fly most regularly yet as I have yet to test my Vengeance out properly but with the damage bonus both it and the Hawk have received its easy to see me only flying those for the foreseeable future.

Check out the newest video released by Liang Nuren, containing some great fights the US Tz Heretics have been getting recently.  Almost makes me want to get up a 6 to play with these guys.

Amamake Fun III

Korg

It wouldn't let me embed his vid so I thought I would embed mine instead :)

Will be working on a new vid this month once my University works dies down again.  So far the ships used a Buzzard, Hawk, Vengeance, Hookbill and Rifters.  Will try and capture some blaster footage whilst I still have some blaster boats in Amamake.

Last night good night

After the slow night I had Monday night I was struggling to even bother logging in, I was out in Doril and would have to do 11 jumps through highsec to get to the rest of my ships.  I did log in the end and drag myself back to Amamake with a bit of the loot that I have had for a while in Curse (Couple of faction MWD/Reppers).

Once I arrived back in Ama, I went out on the usual route in my Hookbill.  Essentially trying to get Militia peeps to kill me.  After a couple of kills not really worth mentioning I came across the reason I fly dual prop Hookbills in the first place.....Slicers, it also served to demonstrate the difference between a good slicer pilot and a bad slicer pilot.

I have always maintained that player skill trumps SP in pretty much all PvP situations, and that statement is even more relevant in the case of the Slicer.  A great slicer pilot is able to kill basically all frigates, regardless of fit, with its brilliant ranged dps even the ones that can catch it have generally taken so much damage that, by the time they do they still can't win the dps race.  However, the margin of error when flying one is very slim, if you make a mistake and get scrammed and webbed early you wont survive long.
Last night I engaged 3 different slicers all fit roughly the same way but all piloted differently.  I will call these pilots the good, the bad and the lucky.

The Lucky

This was the first Slicer of the evening, landing in the belt where him and his mate in a Harpy were shooting an alliance mates Thrasher.  I quickly webbed and scrammed the Harpy to slow him down and allow the Thrasher to catch up with him, whilst I went after the Slicer.  Getting to 13km of him I landed the web then I smacked into an asteroid, a tiny little one but apparently I hit where it was when full and bumped off of air, this allowed the Slicer pilot to escape :(.

The Bad

Warping to an outpost in Vard, I had a Slicer on scan.  Once inside I started slowboating towards him, trying to bait him into burning towards me to point me.  The reason for this is if he hasn't done this properly an O/H burst of my MWD generally lands me within scram range where the Slicer dies very quickly.
That didn't happen this time, instead the Slicer started burning towards me with his prop mod off, so I did the same thinking he would warp once I get to a certain distance.  We eventually reach 25km of each other with me at just under half shields, this however was close enough that I could burn towards him with the mwd on before he has a chance to react and move away.  Credit to the pilot I suppose at least he noticed my sudden increase of speed but unfortunately it was far too late and despite my loss of shield so far he went down fast.

The Good

There is always one isn't there.  Again as before I was warping to a faction plex and according to d-scan this Slicer seemed to be in the plex, just like before.  What followed was a catalogue of errors on my behalf and some absolutely nifty piloting by Nortel of Imperial Fedyakin.

I landed on the gate to find the Slicer pilot 11km from me, queue error #1, I didn't have my tackle overheated, had I realised he hadn't entered the plex yet I could have overheated the web prior to landing and this story would be different.  Hastily switching on my MWD to burn for him I made error #2 I bumped the gate, this stopped me getting within scram range and again changing the end of this story.

After this try as I might I just couldn't coax him into making a mistake, and was resolved to trying to burn myself out of point range.  With my ship spewing flames and my hull resting at 66% structure, I managed to break orbit range just long enough to warp out.

This was the closest I have come to losing this ship to a Slicer and also served to show why I fly dual prop.  The increased speed I get over the AB fits, means I can escape from situations like 'The Good'.  It also gives me the tank that means I can bait people into doing stuff like 'The Bad'.

In Other News

Looking around the blogosphere yesterday I came across this post by Keyanu about how he has recently broken the top 2k mark on Battleclinic.  It made me wonder how I have been doing on the BC ranking system.  Before I joined Heretics, my main at the time Korg Leaf was ranked somewhere near 11k and Korg Tronix was ranked roughly 2k below him.  Since I have joined Heretics and Tronix has become my main I am close to breaking the 3k mark, which means I have gone up roughly 10k places in the last 4 months and I am still going up at a pace of 200-400 places a week (According to the ranking tracker).  I have to say despite the problems I have with the points system on BC in general I am quite pleased by this and shows if you want to rise quickly on BC solo in frigates.

Also I am closing in on the 1k kill mark on Tronix and I think I will replace the ship of whoever my last solo kill is, before breaking that barrier.

Korg

It's, oh so, quiet

Last couple of nights I have logged into very little occuring on my usual roaming routes.  It's either they are all docked or, as was the case in Providence last night, they bring 7 Battlecruisers, ECM support, a couple of t2/faction frigs and some destroyers to kill 4 people in frigates.

So I am not really sure what to do to get out of this slump, any suggestions to a decent route for a frigate pilot to take that doesn't involve the Amamake > Kamela route or the Providence/Catch > Stain I would love to hear because they have been dead the last couple of nights, at least for me anyway.


If I can't find any fun in a frigate though I may have to ship up to an active tanked Drake or something of that ilk and derp around till someone shoots me......I don't want this.

Korg

We are recruiting

University Requirements.

10m Sp (This isnt set in stone)

PvP Experience (We would prefer a grounding in small gang or solo work)

Must be able to field a BC with reasonable skills

Must be self sufficient

Some proof of solo kills

None of the above requirements are set in stone and we will forgive you not meeting certain things based on out interview with you and your general attitude.  The SP and experience criteria are interchangeable, we might accept a 5m sp character with a ton of solo kills or a 30m sp character with only 1, however if you dont meet either of those requirements please do not apply.

The most common gangs we fly are:

Wolf Packs (Both t1 and t2 frigs)

t1 Cruisers

Shield BCs

Nano BCs

Therefore we would prefer you to be able to bring a ship to any of the above gangs.

Korg Tronix

University Director

RIP Korg Leaf

I have ISK!!!!!!

I sold my main(?) alt last night, basically he was my old main combat character but since moving to Tronix as my main he has been a little surplus to requirements and other than missions there wasn't much I could use him for.  He was mainly being used as a hauler which seemed a shame for the character I first went pirate in.  So I sold him and got a tidy sum for him (9b) which was more than I thought I would get.

Now I just have to decide what I am going to use the isk for, and my other account as well.  I wouldn't mind some suggestions on the other account front as I already have a hauler and my main earns me isk through manufacturing.

PVP

Vengeance + Comet Vs. Vexor

I haven't really been undocking a lot recently but when I do I seem to be able to find a fight quickly.  This was one of them.

After setting up my next set of inventions I undocked in my Vengeance and found a Vexor on scan almost instantly, after a quick check on d-scan I found him near the Dammalin gate.  Warping in at 0 I locked him up but was wary not to get too close, this was going to be a close fight as it is and I didn't want to give him or any possible friends he may have had an advantage.

Rather than fight on the gate though, he warped off to the nearest planet.  I followed and landed within scram range of him I locked and started to orbit as close as possible.  He was a sort off semi anti frigate fit, light neutrons being his gun highs but luckily for me there was no neut so with my nos running and the Vengeances high cap recharge I was tanking him fairly well.

At this point he dropped his high dps set of drones (2 Ogres, 2 Hammers and a hob) in the hope that it would force me off, this usually wouldn't bother me in my Vengeance but with my lowest resist being thermal and me being in a plated AC Vengeance for a change they were hitting me for some largish volleys.  So I began webbing and popping the drones.  This was going well but did highlight to me the vast difference between rocket launchers and ACs for killing drones as it took quite a bit longer to kill his drones than it usually takes me.  Eventually after working my way through his numerous drones, a friend came into system in his Comet and warped in to help finish him fast, after this it wasn't long till he popped.

We snagged his pod and this is usually where the pirate life starts to get interesting, I opened his info and saw he wasn't particularly old so offered him a 5mil ransom (He was old enough to possibly have some decent implants but not really worth asking for too much), he said he didn't have that.  Now usually this would have resulted in me sending him to the clone vat but I thought I would give him a second chance at ransom so offered him his pod for a joke or limerick.  Unfortunately after nearly a minute of waiting (I wasn't doing much else) he gave me a quote from Marcus Aurelius so I podded him too.

T1 Frigates are fun

Despite my new found wealth, I have rediscovered the fun of t1 frigates.  I suppose this means that money is going to last a loooooooooooooong time (barring faction fitting my t1 frigates).  I have already had some fun fights in them, but I don't think they will make a fun written story so luckily I have fraps'd them and I am sure I will get round to rendering them into a almost watchable youtube video at some point.

New alt

Due to no longer having an alt (other than the shitty sub-1m sp hauler alt I have already) I am looking for some suggestions of what to do with my other account, although I cant really be bothered to train for a mission runner (its too dull) or miner (its too dull) I would love some suggestions.

Korg

Music

Fun Fits For Fun Times....also alliterations are awesome

So this is part 3 of my Fun Ships posts, in this one I will list fits for frigate killing.  They will all be ships that dont usually pack any sort of punch which therefore makes them even more fun as you can get some great fights and killmails (An Osprey killing any sort of frigate is great).

I suppose I will have to start somewhere so Minmatar will probably be a good place to start.  The idea behind these fits is that you are in such a shite ship that people will engage you in anything, I mean if you saw an Osprey in a belt in lowsec wouldn't you engage it?

Bellicose

This is an obvious one and one that has recently been seeing a lot of use around the Heimatar lowsec area, pretty much every time I have engaged a Bellicose recently they have turned out to be frigate killing fit.  They are very easy to fit and are probably the standard when it comes to shite ships/great frigate killers, certainly if they aren't the best in that category they are near the top.

[Bellicose, Frigate]
Damage Control II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II

10MN Afterburner II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II
Stasis Webifier II

Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
Dual 180mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet Phased Plasma M
Medium Energy Neutralizer II
Small Energy Neutralizer II

Medium Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I


Warrior II x5

This is probably my favourite version of the fit, it has an ok buffer (18k) and roughly 220dps to put on your target but what wins it for me over the 1600mm fit is the medium neut, that combined with the dual webs and small neut means that you should end up being faster than most frigate (inside scram range) once their cap has gone.  You have plenty of drones which gives you some leeway in both choice of drones and amount.

Scythe next, this ship isn't the greatest but once again you get a kill in it and it will feel like Christmas, especially if its shiny.

[Scythe, Frigate Killing]
Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane II
800mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Damage Control II

10MN Afterburner II
Warp Scrambler II
Stasis Webifier II

Small Energy Neutralizer II
Small Energy Neutralizer II
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S
Light Neutron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge S

Medium Hybrid Collision Accelerator I
Medium Trimark Armor Pump I
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump I


Warrior II x1

Its essentially the same fit as the Bellicose, minus the second web, medium neut and large drone bay.  You need to hope that the frigate you fight is scram range if he/she is then overheat everything and let them get close.  Hopefully by the time they realise you have a fairly decent buffer they will be capped out and nearing death.

Thats pretty much it for the Minmatar ships, the Rupture is obviously a great frigate killer (in armor fit) but everyone expects that and although the Armor Stabber is also great at it, its still a little too obvious a frigate killer.
In the next post I will list some decent fits for Gallente, they are probably the best overall for this as pretty much all there cruisers can be turned into decent frigate killers or are already great at it.

Music

Korg

P.S.  If you don't think the above fits would work, then please message me with any suggestions or changes you would make.  Although I know the Bellicose fit is successful, the Sycthe fit is definitely more theory crafting than in game experience at the moment.

Transition and Moving Stuff

Moving Stuff

As I mentioned in my last blog post, I am returning to piracy and because of this I have spent the last week or so, slowly moving my ships from Hagekan to Rens so that I can join a corp in Minnie Space.  This unfortunately has meant there has been a lack of PvP in my life recently, as you can imagine moving 40 or so rigged ships does take up some time.

However I have found a pirate corp now and as of 20:45? tonight I will be a member of the Heretics Academy.  The Heretics Academy aren't so much an academy as a testing ground for the Heretic Army, where pilots that haven't flown with, or been recommended to the Army, have to join first.  So naturally as I haven't I am joining them.  I don't mind this though as I relish the fact that not only will I be pirating again but I will have to prove myself competent enough to move into the Army. 

Unfortunately this requires moving the ships again for the obvious reason that once I start losing sec status trying to access a 0.9 system will become very difficult....I think this time though I will just use Red Frog to move it closer.

What PVP I have gotten

Having said all that I have still gotten some decent....well ok pvp whilst moving.

Whilst setting up some off gate bookmarks in my Cheetah, I had to log off for a bit.  Logging back in I found a Stabber and Catalyst on directional scan, narrowing it down it looked like they were ratting in a belt warping my Cheetah in I landed 50km off of the Stabber and decided against burning for them.  The age of the pilots meant that if they were remotely well fit I wouldn't be able to cover the 50km before popping.  So bookmarking a wreck near them I warped out and warped back to that.  

This time landing 18km of the Stabber with the Catalyst 30km away.  I got into a tight orbit on the stabber and pointed and webbed him, I put the tracking disruptor on the Catalyst.  Thinking behind this is it would force him to cover most of the 30km before he could help his friend.  Luckily the Stabber was at half armor when I pointed him and he succumbed to my mighty weapons.  I then burnt for the Catalyst and settled into an 8km orbit, with the tracking disruptor as well as the web and scram he had no hope of covering the distance to be able to hit me and popped as well...talk about mixed guns.

Last night, as I was meant to be doing some work for Uni, I decided to can flip instead in my buzzard. Only got one bite of my hook.  Another canflipper in a Rifter, as I had flipped him I had to wait for him to open fire first.  He soon obliged, although I nearly lost my ship because of that stupid 'Are you sure you want to do this' message that popped up.  I didn't, once the webs were on him and the tracking disruptor he went down fighting.

Back in Curse for a roam

I jumped down to Curse on my alt, mainly because I couldn't be arsed to make the 20 jumps on Tronix, and quickly jumped into my dual prop Taranis to go join a small gang we had roaming in Providence/Catch area.

Warping to the Litom gate, some of my corp mates had dropped a bubble and I cross jumped a Myrmidon so I burnt back to the gate and jumped through just in time to whore the mail on the myrm and his pod...lol.

So moving on I caught up with the others, Eddierio and Atwa in a Myrm each and Parfait M in a Cynabal.  I started scouting the route back, making a quick detour into KDF however and I found an Abaddon on scan towards the out gate, he jumped and I followed.  Eventually catching up with him in F4R2, getting tackle on him, he started to reapproach the gate.  He then agro'd and turned out to be a Tachyon fit Abaddon, slowly I worked through his light drones, whilst this was going on the rest of my gang had caught up.  By the time I had popped all his drones I was entering structure and the Abaddon popped, he didnt warp his pod out and lost that too.

We headed back toward Hq and I hopped in my Helios with Atwa in his.  One of our corp mates had just been blown up by a Thrasher camping a gate in Hemin so we jumped in and Atwa got agro'd.  Doing what the Helios does best, this Thrasher found himself quadruple webbed and double tracking disrupted and quickly in his pod.

Now at this point, for some reason, I was getting a little cocky and found a Ferox warping around.  He left system and was heading towards Catch.  We caught up with him and got tackle in 1P but he turned out to be bait for a gang that went through earlier, we had no way of knowing.  Needless to say it didnt end well for my poor Helios.  I managed to get my pod out and I warped off to get back to HQ but jumping into the next system I was greeted by one of the gangs sabres and my Pod died heroically.
This was all made worse and served to remind me why alts can sometimes be bad if neglected, by the fact that I didn't realise I had gone over my clone limit and I have now got to train Minmatar Battleship 5 again....fail.

Korg

P.S. Due to the sad nature of the end of this blog, I will be posting a sad video

Ok it wasn't actually sad, just amusing.

General Boredom and then a Roam

Ill be honest when I got in from work last night I wasn't in the mood for going for some big roam around the local low sec, I will need to at some point so I can get a feel for the new digs (Caldari Space).  So out of a combination of apathy and boredom, I half heartedly went can flipping. This made the boredom worse so I logged my other character in.

Like many people in EvE I have a second character. Korg Leaf.  He's mainly being used out in Curse for a bit of null/low sec PvP.  I wouldn't say he was an alt as much as I can never decide on my primary account swapping between them as much as I change my underwear.  I will say this though it is quite nice having a second character as between the two of them I can fly every sub cap in the game, minus logi, with near max skills, Gallente/Minmatar on Leaf and Caldari/Amarr on Tronix.  This makes it very nice when it comes to roaming as you can fit in with pretty much any gang (besides caps).

Turns out I had logged into a slow night in Curse, so youtube was being linked regularly in corp chat.  This 'gem' stuck out for me -

Fucking funny.

Fleet Fights

Now back to last night, so going slow, we decided to ship into shield BCs despite Korg Leaf being a very good shield BC pilot I was jonesing(?) for flying a drake so I logged Tronix back in and cloned jump done to pilot my Dual Web Drake.

So after the fleet finishes forming we set off from Utopia. We have a mixture of canes and drakes with a flycatcher to bubble, a rapier to scout and two scimitars to do scimitar type things.
I believe the whole point of the roam was to head toward HED-GP to see if we could start something but we got as far as the Jamunda gate when our scout reported a Red Overlord Dram, Sabre and two Scimitars on the 1P gate in Jamunda.  They of course bubbled him and started shooting so he let them all agro and jumped through only to get caught by their actual gang on the otherside.

Now you have to wonder how he was caught, as I understand it they had assigned all of their drones to the dramiel pilot and he managed a decloak. Unfortunate.

Not to be deterred however we jumped in and warped to 1P, with the majority of there fleet agro'd on the otherside and the sabre, dramiel and two scimitars bubbled in on the Jamunda side our fleet made short work of them, the basilisk for some reason jumped in halfway through.

By this time the rest of their fleet could jump and did, I believe we had added some more bubbles to the mix just to be sure they couldn't run.  The enemy fleet would have been a larger challenge had they not made the error of agro'ing on both sides as they, originally at least, had more repping power but once the logistic ships had been cleared we made short work of their fleet. Unfortunately their Proteus and other Cynabal made it out :(.

At this point it was getting near most of our fleets bedtimes so we headed back, cutting what had started as a productive roam short.

Dumb Machariel Pilots

I have always maintained that Machariels, although very good ships, are not as overpowered as the EvE online forums would have you believe.  However this reputation does lead to some very bad pilots flying them when they shouldn't.  Last night was a shining example.

After the successful(ish) fleet earlier I went AFK to indulge in a great British past time, making a cuppa.  Once this was all done I came back to my computer only to hear that the fleet had something tackled in Doril that was making people excited.  Quickly undocking and rushing towards Doril to whore some mails, I hear its a Machariel pilot and just as I land on the Doril gate he popped (boooo!).
What makes this story funny though is this is his third Machariel he has lost to my alliance in 2 days!! Some people should not be flying those things.

Korg

p.s. I know this was quite a long post, I apologise for spelling/grammatical/general shitty sentence structure in this post.

p.p.s. After all the wait for my war dec votes to go through and I forgot to vote in any of them, Fail. Oh well another 24hr wait for me.