Gonna Need a Bigger Gun
Ok, so it came up again in a comment on a Mittani article:
"Aside from that I've got mixed feelings on the state of w-space, dreads serve as an excellent field-leveller for smaller corps
Instead of a 50 man fleet they can deploy several caps and a few T3's and blap the living hell out of the other team's T3 blob."
I see this argument used for not changing how dreads work against subcaps or in WHs all the time and since it is complete and utter garbage, I thought I would dispel a few myths for the smaller corps out there before they decide to 'level the field' with their dreads.
I have been on both the dealing and receiving end of dread blapping and if you ask me it is the single worst thing ever to happen to WH PVP.
Let's start with how dreads actually function against other ships in w-space:
Other Dreads - This is obviously a massive slug fest which tends to come down to fittings, drugs, who has their skills to 5 and who made the mistake of fitting CCCs rather than trimarks. Pilot experience also plays a large part if it's 1-3 dreads per side, in the 20 vs. 20 dread blobs that have been more common in the past year or so, experience is more or less irrelevant.
Carriers - Do you remember Clarion Call 2? Used to be a single triage Archon could tank 8 dreads and live to tell the tale about it with a BS fleet supporting in none the less. These days a single Moros does more DPS than an Archon can handle for very long and the Dread vs. Carrier fight is so horribly unbalanced now that using a triage carrier against any more than a single dread is a joke.
Battleships - There is nothing in EVE that is going to save your battleships against multiple dreads. There is a reason the initial part of any large WH fight is called the 'Bhaal-Grinder' part of the fight. If you ever want to see isk evaporate, go warp 10 Bhaalgorns into 5 Dreads. Battleships were never really heavily used in WHs due to mass reasons but dreads have made them 100% not viable to fly in large fights for pretty much any reason.
Command Ships - These don't die quite as fast as battleships but a dread will still hit them without any major assistance and they die in 2-3 volleys.
Cruisers - Even T3s are not safe from the blap. Your 200k EHP Proteus is cute and all but throw a couple webs on it, maybe a TP and you can open up your skill queue to retrain that subsystem to 5.
Yes, dreads do need assistance to hit T3s but if you're fielding dreads, you probably have access to 3-4 webs in your fleet and if you know what you're doing, target painters too.
Add the fact that 90% webs exist to the mix and even orbiting at 500m won't help you:
http://dontshootx.com/killboard/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=16491
Logistics - So, got sick of your Archons getting vaporized by dreads? Switched to low sig Guardians? Well, don't get too attached.
Yeah, even the tiny sig of a skirmish link boosted Guardian isn't safe against the blap dread.
It's harder to hit that anything else, sure, but web it down and you can hit it fine. Add to that the relatively low EHP of Guardians and it doesn’t take many volleys to pop them.
All of that is really beside the point any since your Guardians will not be able to keep anything else alive under multiple dread fire anyway so they can just ignore you.
So with dreads being so strong against all subcaps, why are they not a balancing factor for small corps?
Well, there are a couple of reasons.
The first is that you need more than one dread. Sure, a dread can blap on its own fine but in a situation where you're fighting a larger force and want to bring dreads, you need to warp them in at varying ranges, ideally ~30km apart, so that you have overlapping optimal ranges to negate their T3s just orbiting at 500m, which means you need 2 minimum.
Maybe that's fine, maybe you're a small corp that does have access to 2+ dreads. This brings us to the next and biggest reason it's a bad idea:
If you as a small corp have access to 2+ dreads, what are the chances that your enemy, a large corp, doesn't have access to 2+ dreads? Zero.
If you escalate a fight against a large WH corp with capitals, they WILL respond in kind and to a larger degree.
If you have never been in a large WH corp you may not understand just how prevalent dreads are in C5-6 space now but people there often own more dreads than T3s there and large groups always have dreads (plural) sitting at a POS, or at the very least on the login screen, when they are fighting in or near their home system.
As a personal example, when I moved out of AHARM I moved 6 personal dreads out of the system. When AHARM were moving out of Nova they moved over 100 capitals out, most of which were dreads.
WH corps will also not hesitate a second to collapse themselves into your WH to bring dreads to kill you with so they won't bring 1, they'll bring 3.
Ok, maybe that's still fine, maybe you’re a small corp who doesn’t live in a C5-6, maybe you live in a C2 and have built dreads there, the enemy can't bring dreads in there to counter escalate right?
Well, sure, they can't. What they CAN and WILL do (assuming they can't handle you on their own) is jump into any of a dozen public channels and bring a fleet in through your highsec entry that will be able to deal with your capitals.
The day and age where WH corps did things on their own is LONG gone and WH people love nothing more than killing caps in low class WHs. They will come.
Even we in lowly SUSU got in on this action recently:
http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_related&kll_id=19870013
Lastly, w-space knows all about dread blapping now. It's been a good long time since dreads were buffed and w-space has adapted. People are not going to bring battleships to fight a dread and they are going to bring Minmatar ECM to jam your Loki's.
People know what dreads can do now and they know how to engage them, or to stay away from them if they need to.
All of this will lead to your no so glorious death if you escalate with dreads against a larger force.
This was my first experience with dread blapping:
http://dontshootx.com/killboard/?a=kill_related&kll_id=9960
AHARM rolled into our static and wanted to play so we warped a bunch of dreads 50km above their HIC bubble and went to town.
Even after they bounced a planet and came back at zero they continued to die.
AHARM have not brought a BS to a capital fight since that day.
So what would I like see done with dreads in WHs?
Well, Sandslinger would like to see them removed entirely from w-space but I think that is too extreme since they do play a very important role in POS bashing since no one wants to POS bash without dreads, ever.
They are also extensively used for C5-6 PVE which I also think is fine since it speeds up the tedious red cross blapping and makes people bring them out as potential PVP targets.
That said, the level of rape they bestow upon sub battleship target needs to be toned down. A lot.
I've suggested this on the forums before (a while ago now when a discussion about it came up), I think the way to go is to impose the same type of dps reduction on dread guns as was introduced to titan guns based on the sig radius of their target.
Titan guns start doing less DPS on targets below 2000m sig which is way too high for dreads as it would let carriers sig tank them and would make them unable to hit anything sub cap at all.
I would make them do less DPS versus targets 500m sig and below.
This doesn’t affect their DPS vs. structures and caps at all, it reduces their DPS what I feel is a reasonable amount (not much) versus battleships but still lets them kill them and drops their DPS against cruisers significantly which would allow logistics to keep up and keep Guardians and T3s alive under dread fire.
The dreads would still hit the cruisers the same but they would do a lot less damage to them.
I think this would go a long way towards repairing the state of C5-6 PVP as it would mean smaller groups could viably engage capitals and you wouldn't need the 40+ man blobs of today to deal with them.
Anyway, enough rambling for today.
Remember, people everywhere love killing caps. If you bring it out to play, make sure you know what you are getting into.
JM
Thursday, 24 October 2013
Sunday, 13 October 2013
There Is No Skiff
There is No Skiff
So I blew up a Les Jihad Joe piloted Skiff on the weekend. Or did I?
There is no kill mail and no loss mail for the engagement but since I was there and did blow it up, how can this be?
Well, the answer is quite simple really; the pilot of said Skiff waited until his ship was in 10% structure and then promptly ejected. The consequences of said action are twofold:
1.) It means your ship loses the benefits of your skills and drops to negative structure points, at which point it poofs into nothingness without leaving a kill mail behind, even while under fire.
2.) It means you're a chicken shit coward who has pissed me off and now owes me a kill mail of greater value.
Now, I fully appreciate not wanting the shame of a mining barge loss on your kill board but perhaps you should have considered that before deciding to mine in a wormhole. Also, given every other ship in your corp is warp core stabbed to high heaven, why not your mining ship?
(The ice harvester upgrade that dropped was a nice touch btw.)
I have heard of this, in my opinion, exploit being used by super pilots in nullsec to deny kill mails on their derped ships but it's the first time I have seen it in practice. Looking back at how it went down, the ship didn’t actually look to explode as soon as the pilot ejected but rather when I next hit it.
Looking through my log after the gank, the last blow I had listed was for a negative value which I found interesting.
Personally I think this is a blatant exploit that should be fixed by CCP in the same way self-destructing was.
Later on I received a mail from an old corp mate which contained a chat log from the Bite Me INC (an old corp of mine) public channel where Kakiv Wavingstar, industry director of Les Jihad Joe, was attempting to gain information on my alts which led to some amusing comments from old corp mates which I appreciated.
Kakiv clearly doesn't read my blog since if he did, he would know that I have no alts.
Here's an extract of the convo log:
[13:18:29] Warlord Shat > Jack left a while ago hes a good dude though
[13:18:37] Agoniad Ractop > spy
[13:18:48] Kakiv Wavingstar > jack is a spy?
[13:18:51] Warlord Shat > Yeah he is a massive spy though
[13:18:54] Warlord Shat > :P
[13:19:02] Kakiv Wavingstar > damn
[13:19:11] Warlord Shat > ...We are joking
[13:19:42] Agoniad Ractop > yeah....joking
[13:19:57] Kakiv Wavingstar > can you proviens me with it's alt character?
[13:20:53] Zara Arran > why the interest?
[13:21:10] Kakiv Wavingstar > he harrast us in our WH, try he and is corp tried to siege our WH, we now he is still in our WH and scout
[13:21:26] Zara Arran > that... sounds like jack
[13:21:34] Warlord Shat > Lol yeah
[13:21:55] Kakiv Wavingstar > lol
[13:22:15] Warlord Shat > A scout is only for infomation what you have to worry about is the fleet that is behind him
[13:22:26] Warlord Shat > if you keep tight wormhole control you will be fine
[13:22:57] Agoniad Ractop > you will need plenty coffee :)
[13:23:04] Kakiv Wavingstar > yeah, but he play on a difference timezone, it's difficult
[13:23:10] Warlord Shat > I know
[13:23:21] Warlord Shat > its whats great about wormholes
[13:23:32] Warlord Shat > you need good timezone coverage is you wanna be safer
[13:23:32] Kakiv Wavingstar > do you think he is planning a second attack?
[13:23:50] Warlord Shat > Did he get kills his first time around?
[13:23:54] Zara Arran > honestly, with jack, you never know
[13:24:21] Kakiv Wavingstar > he's got somme kill, blow up our nid
[13:24:31] Zara Arran > lol
[13:24:32] Kakiv Wavingstar > with is corp mate
[13:24:32] Warlord Shat > then yeah
[13:24:46] Warlord Shat > he will hunt you endlessly
[13:24:57] Warlord Shat > you can't give someone a niddy kill and expect it to be fine
[13:25:24] Kakiv Wavingstar > they we 40 went the attack our nid
[13:25:52] Kakiv Wavingstar > many we're player not in the same corp
[13:26:16] Kakiv Wavingstar > so we didn't see them comming via the HS
[13:26:54] Kakiv Wavingstar > went the attack was up, 30 non-corp player from the HS come our scout did see them
[13:27:23] Kakiv Wavingstar but that's not the point how's many toon Jack Miton as?
[13:28:12] Warlord Shat > quite a few
[13:28:22] Kakiv Wavingstar > can you name it?
[13:29:02] Warlord Shat > No that is enough free intel for today
I sense these guys will be on my shit list for some time, should be fun :)
PS: I wasn’t on the Nid kill mail, nor did I have anything to do with the attack on it, LOVE the paranoia though :D
So I blew up a Les Jihad Joe piloted Skiff on the weekend. Or did I?
There is no kill mail and no loss mail for the engagement but since I was there and did blow it up, how can this be?
Well, the answer is quite simple really; the pilot of said Skiff waited until his ship was in 10% structure and then promptly ejected. The consequences of said action are twofold:
1.) It means your ship loses the benefits of your skills and drops to negative structure points, at which point it poofs into nothingness without leaving a kill mail behind, even while under fire.
2.) It means you're a chicken shit coward who has pissed me off and now owes me a kill mail of greater value.
Now, I fully appreciate not wanting the shame of a mining barge loss on your kill board but perhaps you should have considered that before deciding to mine in a wormhole. Also, given every other ship in your corp is warp core stabbed to high heaven, why not your mining ship?
(The ice harvester upgrade that dropped was a nice touch btw.)
I have heard of this, in my opinion, exploit being used by super pilots in nullsec to deny kill mails on their derped ships but it's the first time I have seen it in practice. Looking back at how it went down, the ship didn’t actually look to explode as soon as the pilot ejected but rather when I next hit it.
Looking through my log after the gank, the last blow I had listed was for a negative value which I found interesting.
Personally I think this is a blatant exploit that should be fixed by CCP in the same way self-destructing was.
Later on I received a mail from an old corp mate which contained a chat log from the Bite Me INC (an old corp of mine) public channel where Kakiv Wavingstar, industry director of Les Jihad Joe, was attempting to gain information on my alts which led to some amusing comments from old corp mates which I appreciated.
Kakiv clearly doesn't read my blog since if he did, he would know that I have no alts.
Here's an extract of the convo log:
[13:18:29] Warlord Shat > Jack left a while ago hes a good dude though
[13:18:37] Agoniad Ractop > spy
[13:18:48] Kakiv Wavingstar > jack is a spy?
[13:18:51] Warlord Shat > Yeah he is a massive spy though
[13:18:54] Warlord Shat > :P
[13:19:02] Kakiv Wavingstar > damn
[13:19:11] Warlord Shat > ...We are joking
[13:19:42] Agoniad Ractop > yeah....joking
[13:19:57] Kakiv Wavingstar > can you proviens me with it's alt character?
[13:20:53] Zara Arran > why the interest?
[13:21:10] Kakiv Wavingstar > he harrast us in our WH, try he and is corp tried to siege our WH, we now he is still in our WH and scout
[13:21:26] Zara Arran > that... sounds like jack
[13:21:34] Warlord Shat > Lol yeah
[13:21:55] Kakiv Wavingstar > lol
[13:22:15] Warlord Shat > A scout is only for infomation what you have to worry about is the fleet that is behind him
[13:22:26] Warlord Shat > if you keep tight wormhole control you will be fine
[13:22:57] Agoniad Ractop > you will need plenty coffee :)
[13:23:04] Kakiv Wavingstar > yeah, but he play on a difference timezone, it's difficult
[13:23:10] Warlord Shat > I know
[13:23:21] Warlord Shat > its whats great about wormholes
[13:23:32] Warlord Shat > you need good timezone coverage is you wanna be safer
[13:23:32] Kakiv Wavingstar > do you think he is planning a second attack?
[13:23:50] Warlord Shat > Did he get kills his first time around?
[13:23:54] Zara Arran > honestly, with jack, you never know
[13:24:21] Kakiv Wavingstar > he's got somme kill, blow up our nid
[13:24:31] Zara Arran > lol
[13:24:32] Kakiv Wavingstar > with is corp mate
[13:24:32] Warlord Shat > then yeah
[13:24:46] Warlord Shat > he will hunt you endlessly
[13:24:57] Warlord Shat > you can't give someone a niddy kill and expect it to be fine
[13:25:24] Kakiv Wavingstar > they we 40 went the attack our nid
[13:25:52] Kakiv Wavingstar > many we're player not in the same corp
[13:26:16] Kakiv Wavingstar > so we didn't see them comming via the HS
[13:26:54] Kakiv Wavingstar > went the attack was up, 30 non-corp player from the HS come our scout did see them
[13:27:23] Kakiv Wavingstar but that's not the point how's many toon Jack Miton as?
[13:28:12] Warlord Shat > quite a few
[13:28:22] Kakiv Wavingstar > can you name it?
[13:29:02] Warlord Shat > No that is enough free intel for today
I sense these guys will be on my shit list for some time, should be fun :)
PS: I wasn’t on the Nid kill mail, nor did I have anything to do with the attack on it, LOVE the paranoia though :D
Sunday, 29 September 2013
Stalker Fleet Assemble
Stalker Fleet Assemble
A large part of playing EVE in the AU time zone, especially in wormholes, is that you need to be able to find things to do by yourself when the rest of your corp is asleep. One of my favourite past times is camping out in other people’s holes and just generally pissing them off, er, I mean having good fights with them! Doing this requires relatively little asset investment and can be done quite effectively even while afk.
The only real challenge in this line of entertainment is finding the right kind of targets so to assist in doing so, about 2 years ago I started purchasing scanning alt characters off the market to fill up the spare slots on my accounts.
These scouts are nothing fancy, just a few mil SP, Astro 5, Covops 4, astro supports to 4. They go for (or at least did when I was in the market) for 2-3bil, skill dependent, and are worth every penny.
I like to think of them as wormhole bookmarks that I can park in a system for weeks or even months without caring and they allow me to drop by and visit whenever I like.
They are also out of corp which helps when scouting targets.
I had to break out EVEmon to do the math but I currently have 13 fully covops capable characters across my accounts, including my mains.
So how do I use these scouts?
Well, some I use as backup scouts in our home system, others I have parked in systems of 'interest' but what I mainly use them for is keeping tabs on active low class wormholes with HS statics that I like to visit from time to time to shoot stuff in.
Generally these tend to be C2s with HS and C3/C4 statics though I don't insist on HS static systems but generally those are the most active.
I only really have 2 selection criteria on deciding which systems get the honour of hosting an authentic Jack Miton scout alt:
1.) They are active in the AU time zone.
2.) They piss me off.
The first category of people is self-explanatory since they give me someone to interact with in my TZ. I also try to make them fun groups that will actually come fight me. Often these are larger entities that don't have AU TZ as their peak time but do have some actives on at that time.
Previous groups in this category include The Kairs Syndicate, Clann Fian and Valkyrie Coalition, all of which were great fun to mess around with, though sadly I have since removed scouts from all 3 systems as they were needed elsewhere at one time or another, as well as the corps themselves fading in activity.
This brings me to the other group; people who piss me off.
This category mostly includes people who will not fight us when we connect to them, people who smack talk in local or, in the very special case of the most recent addition to this group; people who smack in local right after not fighting us.
These people I treat very differently than the first group. I am not longer interested in fun fights with these guys, their holes I visit for ganks and general griefing.
Generally I will have 2 scouts in these systems, one that I openly show to the locals, most people add this one to their watch list, and the other that I take care to keep hidden. I also often keep a PVP character and ship logged off inside the system itself, rather than just coming to visit.
This offers several fun griefing opportunities. Firstly, it lets me keep the scout they do know about logged in day and night to keep them paranoid about their activities and if they are POSing up/being careful when the scout is on, I can log it off and swap to the scout they don't know about and watch them go about their business in apparent safety. It can also be quite entertaining to get my known scout 'accidentally' collapsed out of their system or even podded, only to blow up their orca next time they're rolling a hole carelessly.
Keeping the PVP toon in system allows for faster response times to gank opportunities and means any scouts they leave on their exit holes are worthless.
Lastly, just had a fight with the locals, ended up jumping to highsec and now need to head out or go to sleep? Don't forget to leave your PVP ship orbiting their WH within jump range on the HS side :)
Anyway, as I briefly mentioned earlier, I have had to pull most of my deployed scouts out of target C2s over the past 6 months or so for various reasons but they are now free again and my month of camping BNI's lowsec with my combat toon is over so it is time for the stalker fleet to assemble once again.
So if you live in a suitable wormhole, you might find yourself hosting one of my alts soon.
And for those of you who will not fight when we come visit, know this; you owe me a kill mail. It can be yours or it can be mine, but either way I will get it.
Oh and if you decide to really piss me off? Remember, I'm not stuck in your hole with you; you're stuck in it with me.
JM
A large part of playing EVE in the AU time zone, especially in wormholes, is that you need to be able to find things to do by yourself when the rest of your corp is asleep. One of my favourite past times is camping out in other people’s holes and just generally pissing them off, er, I mean having good fights with them! Doing this requires relatively little asset investment and can be done quite effectively even while afk.
The only real challenge in this line of entertainment is finding the right kind of targets so to assist in doing so, about 2 years ago I started purchasing scanning alt characters off the market to fill up the spare slots on my accounts.
These scouts are nothing fancy, just a few mil SP, Astro 5, Covops 4, astro supports to 4. They go for (or at least did when I was in the market) for 2-3bil, skill dependent, and are worth every penny.
I like to think of them as wormhole bookmarks that I can park in a system for weeks or even months without caring and they allow me to drop by and visit whenever I like.
They are also out of corp which helps when scouting targets.
I had to break out EVEmon to do the math but I currently have 13 fully covops capable characters across my accounts, including my mains.
So how do I use these scouts?
Well, some I use as backup scouts in our home system, others I have parked in systems of 'interest' but what I mainly use them for is keeping tabs on active low class wormholes with HS statics that I like to visit from time to time to shoot stuff in.
Generally these tend to be C2s with HS and C3/C4 statics though I don't insist on HS static systems but generally those are the most active.
I only really have 2 selection criteria on deciding which systems get the honour of hosting an authentic Jack Miton scout alt:
1.) They are active in the AU time zone.
2.) They piss me off.
The first category of people is self-explanatory since they give me someone to interact with in my TZ. I also try to make them fun groups that will actually come fight me. Often these are larger entities that don't have AU TZ as their peak time but do have some actives on at that time.
Previous groups in this category include The Kairs Syndicate, Clann Fian and Valkyrie Coalition, all of which were great fun to mess around with, though sadly I have since removed scouts from all 3 systems as they were needed elsewhere at one time or another, as well as the corps themselves fading in activity.
This brings me to the other group; people who piss me off.
This category mostly includes people who will not fight us when we connect to them, people who smack talk in local or, in the very special case of the most recent addition to this group; people who smack in local right after not fighting us.
These people I treat very differently than the first group. I am not longer interested in fun fights with these guys, their holes I visit for ganks and general griefing.
Generally I will have 2 scouts in these systems, one that I openly show to the locals, most people add this one to their watch list, and the other that I take care to keep hidden. I also often keep a PVP character and ship logged off inside the system itself, rather than just coming to visit.
This offers several fun griefing opportunities. Firstly, it lets me keep the scout they do know about logged in day and night to keep them paranoid about their activities and if they are POSing up/being careful when the scout is on, I can log it off and swap to the scout they don't know about and watch them go about their business in apparent safety. It can also be quite entertaining to get my known scout 'accidentally' collapsed out of their system or even podded, only to blow up their orca next time they're rolling a hole carelessly.
Keeping the PVP toon in system allows for faster response times to gank opportunities and means any scouts they leave on their exit holes are worthless.
Lastly, just had a fight with the locals, ended up jumping to highsec and now need to head out or go to sleep? Don't forget to leave your PVP ship orbiting their WH within jump range on the HS side :)
Anyway, as I briefly mentioned earlier, I have had to pull most of my deployed scouts out of target C2s over the past 6 months or so for various reasons but they are now free again and my month of camping BNI's lowsec with my combat toon is over so it is time for the stalker fleet to assemble once again.
So if you live in a suitable wormhole, you might find yourself hosting one of my alts soon.
And for those of you who will not fight when we come visit, know this; you owe me a kill mail. It can be yours or it can be mine, but either way I will get it.
Oh and if you decide to really piss me off? Remember, I'm not stuck in your hole with you; you're stuck in it with me.
JM
Thursday, 19 September 2013
My Alts Are A Lie
So as most people would have noticed, CCP made some rather terrible changes to the EULA.
I was going to write up about it but I doubt I could have done it better than this:
http://themittani.com/features/james-315-responds-new-anti-scamming-rules?page=0%2C0
I highly recommend giving this article a read.
Also, I have no alts, my alts are a lie.
I was going to write up about it but I doubt I could have done it better than this:
http://themittani.com/features/james-315-responds-new-anti-scamming-rules?page=0%2C0
I highly recommend giving this article a read.
Also, I have no alts, my alts are a lie.
Wednesday, 18 September 2013
Have You Got What It Takes?
Have You Got What it Takes?
"What skills do I need for wormholes?" is a question that gets asked all the time on the forums. It was asked again a couple days ago and I decided to think about it and write up my personal recommendations.
The skills you need do vary based on what class of wormhole you live in and what kind of PVE and PVP activities you partake in so I'll split them up between PVP and PVE and try to cover the class ranges.
These skill recommendations are for general wormhole living and are designed to allow you to participate in as many activities that wormholes have to offer as possible.
Ok, let's get the very basics out of the way first.
You need probing skills. They are the very first thing you need to train if you want to play in w-space and the absolute minimum probing skills you need before venturing into a wormhole are Astrometrics 4 and all the support skills to 3. You should also get the support skills to 4 very early into your wormhole career.
Scanning ship wise, you need a covert ops. No, a tech 1 scanner does not cut it. There is one allowable exception and that is if you're in your very first wormhole, you have been there for less than 2 weeks and you are actively training covert ops pre requ skills.
You should have your covops skill to 4 and need cloaking 4 so that you can use a covops cloak.
Given that there is very little you can do in w-space that does not involve shooting something, you will also need to have some sort of combat ship capability. As a basic start point for low class w-space you should be able to T2 fit a battlecruiser with T1 guns for PVE and be able to fly a T2 fit cruiser with T1 guns for PVP. These are really the bare minimum ships that will let you participate in WH combat.
There is also non-combat PVE in wormholes which consists of mining, gas harvesting and PI.
Of these I would highly recommend you stay away from mining as it isn’t profitable and you will die. A lot.
The PI in wormholes is the best anywhere, regardless of WH class, so it is recommended that you train up some skills for it as it is free income. (That said, I have zero PI skills and don't do it at all, but each to their own).
Gas harvesting can be very profitable and training gas cloud harvesting to 5 is a very good investment if you live in a wormhole, along with venture skills.
You will also need to train salvaging to at least 3, preferably 4, so that you can get those tasty tasty nanoribbons and Noctis skills to go with.
Likewise with hacking and archaeology.
Now that the basics are out of the way, let’s break it down by WH class.
Class 1 and 2.
The above bare basics will do here. A battlecruiser can easily run all the combat sites here and this is as 'entry level' as WH PVP gets.
Note that you will still run into a lot of groups with fancy ships but a cruiser will get you started.
Class 3.
The basics will do here too but you will not be able to run the combat sites by yourself in a battlecruiser so some people in your corp will need to have remote repair skills trained to run sites in small groups.
You may want to train battleship skills here as the sleepers start to get bigger but a BC still works.
If you do want to solo the sites you can do so but you will need to skill up and invest in a T3 cruiser, command ship or T2/Faction battleship.
PVP here is much the same as C1-2s.
Class 4.
Here you start getting into higher class WH interactions more and how you operate will depend a lot on your static. Basically, the skills you need will depend a lot more on what your static is than on the fact that you live in a C4, specifically what ships you will need for PVE.
The sites are no longer soloable and how you run them will depend on your corp. Generally it will involve remote rep Tengus or Domis, or logi supported battleships.
At C4 level, you should really have T2 weapon skills and BS skills. You should also be able to fly T2 cruisers, specifically HACs and at least one of recons or logistics, if not both.
Class 5 and 6.
Here is where the heavy weights of w-space play and if you live here they will expect you to be able to interact with them at least a bit so you should have a decent skill set to play with.
While you do not need to bring it to every fight, you should have access to and skills for a well fit PVP tech 3 cruiser in C5/6 space. You should also seriously consider training logistics (specifically the Guardian) if you have not already as Guardians are a vital part to the vast majority of PVP fleets here.
At this level you should also at least consider training capital skills as PVE is run almost exclusively with dreads and carriers. If you find yourself attacked, you will also need those capitals to defend yourself. If you don't want to train caps, Loki or Rapier skills are highly recommended as they are used for webbing in PVE.
If your corp does not use dreads for PVE, you will need a T2 fit, including guns, battleship.
Notes for specific skills and ships.
Logistics.
If you train this skill at all, and you should, you really should take it straight to level 5. This rule applies everywhere but in wormholes, where you often need to squeeze the absolute most out of your limited resources to come out on top, it is especially important.
Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration.
Train this to 5. Personally I wouldn’t get in a dreadnaught without T2 siege.
Command Ships.
These are very good WH PVP ships and are recommended if you can fly them. It is also highly recommended at least a couple people in your corp can fly them and fit links as they make a huge difference for PVP and you will need them for PVE.
Salvaging.
You need this to 5 to access the advanced sleeper wrecks but you can get around this by rigging your salvaging ship, which you always do anyway.
Orca.
An orca is very useful to have in all WH classes apart from C1s. It's obviously not a skill everyone will train but your corp will need access to a few orca pilots for collapsing and hauling.
Carriers.
Not all ships are created equal and for carriers this is especially true. If you're training a carrier, make it an Archon. It is vastly superior to all other carriers in every way. The obvious exception is if you live in a pulsar, in which case train a Chimera.
Dreadnaughts.
Here you do have some choices, just stay away from the Phoenix as it is just bad. All other dreads are fine to train, though the Moros stands out as top dog in the dread world.
This more or less covers everything you'll need to know about skills for wormholes.
Additionally, most WH corps will have some sort of fleet doctrines, joining pre requisites or recommended skills they will want you to train which will depend of the corp.
As a final note, the nature of WH space is that quality matters. Numbers still play a large part but a highly specialized pilot in the right ship can often turn the tide in a fight. I highly recommend that you find a useful ship that you enjoy flying and skill to fly it at near 100% efficiency and get practice doing so.
This goes double for key role pilots such as Guardian, Ewar or capital pilots.
"What skills do I need for wormholes?" is a question that gets asked all the time on the forums. It was asked again a couple days ago and I decided to think about it and write up my personal recommendations.
The skills you need do vary based on what class of wormhole you live in and what kind of PVE and PVP activities you partake in so I'll split them up between PVP and PVE and try to cover the class ranges.
These skill recommendations are for general wormhole living and are designed to allow you to participate in as many activities that wormholes have to offer as possible.
Ok, let's get the very basics out of the way first.
You need probing skills. They are the very first thing you need to train if you want to play in w-space and the absolute minimum probing skills you need before venturing into a wormhole are Astrometrics 4 and all the support skills to 3. You should also get the support skills to 4 very early into your wormhole career.
Scanning ship wise, you need a covert ops. No, a tech 1 scanner does not cut it. There is one allowable exception and that is if you're in your very first wormhole, you have been there for less than 2 weeks and you are actively training covert ops pre requ skills.
You should have your covops skill to 4 and need cloaking 4 so that you can use a covops cloak.
Given that there is very little you can do in w-space that does not involve shooting something, you will also need to have some sort of combat ship capability. As a basic start point for low class w-space you should be able to T2 fit a battlecruiser with T1 guns for PVE and be able to fly a T2 fit cruiser with T1 guns for PVP. These are really the bare minimum ships that will let you participate in WH combat.
There is also non-combat PVE in wormholes which consists of mining, gas harvesting and PI.
Of these I would highly recommend you stay away from mining as it isn’t profitable and you will die. A lot.
The PI in wormholes is the best anywhere, regardless of WH class, so it is recommended that you train up some skills for it as it is free income. (That said, I have zero PI skills and don't do it at all, but each to their own).
Gas harvesting can be very profitable and training gas cloud harvesting to 5 is a very good investment if you live in a wormhole, along with venture skills.
You will also need to train salvaging to at least 3, preferably 4, so that you can get those tasty tasty nanoribbons and Noctis skills to go with.
Likewise with hacking and archaeology.
Now that the basics are out of the way, let’s break it down by WH class.
Class 1 and 2.
The above bare basics will do here. A battlecruiser can easily run all the combat sites here and this is as 'entry level' as WH PVP gets.
Note that you will still run into a lot of groups with fancy ships but a cruiser will get you started.
Class 3.
The basics will do here too but you will not be able to run the combat sites by yourself in a battlecruiser so some people in your corp will need to have remote repair skills trained to run sites in small groups.
You may want to train battleship skills here as the sleepers start to get bigger but a BC still works.
If you do want to solo the sites you can do so but you will need to skill up and invest in a T3 cruiser, command ship or T2/Faction battleship.
PVP here is much the same as C1-2s.
Class 4.
Here you start getting into higher class WH interactions more and how you operate will depend a lot on your static. Basically, the skills you need will depend a lot more on what your static is than on the fact that you live in a C4, specifically what ships you will need for PVE.
The sites are no longer soloable and how you run them will depend on your corp. Generally it will involve remote rep Tengus or Domis, or logi supported battleships.
At C4 level, you should really have T2 weapon skills and BS skills. You should also be able to fly T2 cruisers, specifically HACs and at least one of recons or logistics, if not both.
Class 5 and 6.
Here is where the heavy weights of w-space play and if you live here they will expect you to be able to interact with them at least a bit so you should have a decent skill set to play with.
While you do not need to bring it to every fight, you should have access to and skills for a well fit PVP tech 3 cruiser in C5/6 space. You should also seriously consider training logistics (specifically the Guardian) if you have not already as Guardians are a vital part to the vast majority of PVP fleets here.
At this level you should also at least consider training capital skills as PVE is run almost exclusively with dreads and carriers. If you find yourself attacked, you will also need those capitals to defend yourself. If you don't want to train caps, Loki or Rapier skills are highly recommended as they are used for webbing in PVE.
If your corp does not use dreads for PVE, you will need a T2 fit, including guns, battleship.
Notes for specific skills and ships.
Logistics.
If you train this skill at all, and you should, you really should take it straight to level 5. This rule applies everywhere but in wormholes, where you often need to squeeze the absolute most out of your limited resources to come out on top, it is especially important.
Tactical Weapon Reconfiguration.
Train this to 5. Personally I wouldn’t get in a dreadnaught without T2 siege.
Command Ships.
These are very good WH PVP ships and are recommended if you can fly them. It is also highly recommended at least a couple people in your corp can fly them and fit links as they make a huge difference for PVP and you will need them for PVE.
Salvaging.
You need this to 5 to access the advanced sleeper wrecks but you can get around this by rigging your salvaging ship, which you always do anyway.
Orca.
An orca is very useful to have in all WH classes apart from C1s. It's obviously not a skill everyone will train but your corp will need access to a few orca pilots for collapsing and hauling.
Carriers.
Not all ships are created equal and for carriers this is especially true. If you're training a carrier, make it an Archon. It is vastly superior to all other carriers in every way. The obvious exception is if you live in a pulsar, in which case train a Chimera.
Dreadnaughts.
Here you do have some choices, just stay away from the Phoenix as it is just bad. All other dreads are fine to train, though the Moros stands out as top dog in the dread world.
This more or less covers everything you'll need to know about skills for wormholes.
Additionally, most WH corps will have some sort of fleet doctrines, joining pre requisites or recommended skills they will want you to train which will depend of the corp.
As a final note, the nature of WH space is that quality matters. Numbers still play a large part but a highly specialized pilot in the right ship can often turn the tide in a fight. I highly recommend that you find a useful ship that you enjoy flying and skill to fly it at near 100% efficiency and get practice doing so.
This goes double for key role pilots such as Guardian, Ewar or capital pilots.
Sunday, 15 September 2013
Anomalous Mining
Anomalous Mining
It's been a little while since Gravimetric/Ore sites were
downgraded to Anomalies from Signatures and since I have the pleasure of
ganking a few miners in w-space lately, let's have a look at how this change
has affected WHs from the ganker's perspective.
Firstly, let me just say that mining is a profession that
I take zero part in but understand that it is essential to EVE's economy.
CCP have been giving miners all sorts of handouts on
golden platters over the past 6-12 months or so with the mining barge HP buffs,
cargo buffs and ore yield buffs.
However, these changes were all mostly aimed at highsec mining to make
it harder to suicide gank miners and to make it more profitable in general to
mine.
I have no doubt that the recent move of Ore sites to anomalies,
which do not need to be scanned out with probes, was intended by CCP as a
benefit for miners who, in general, are too lazy to scan out sites to mine in
kspace (certainly in highsec). However,
this 'boost' for miners is a very big double edged sword in wormholes where
needing to probe out the site you are in is not so much a hindrance as it is a
safety buffer.
Before the changes there was no way to find and kill an
active miner in a wormhole without dropping at least core scanner probes, or
more likely combat probes, which the miner has a chance to spot on dscan if
they are watching it like they should be.
In addition to being able to spot the probes, this meant that
the miner had several minutes from you jumping into the system until you were
even able to be on grid with them.
By comparison, you can now be on grid with the miner
within 20 seconds of entering the system, even if you have never been there
before. All you need to do is enter
system, hit dscan, notice mining ships, warp to the Ore site. Add to that a 54km heated point range on a Proteus
(or even more on an Arazu) and you can simply warp to zero and you'll more
often than not be in point range of whatever is there.
Not needing to use probes dramatically reduced the window
a miner has to notice you entering system and if your WH entry is off dscan
from the Ore site, it closes it entirely.
WH space has always been the single most dangerous area
for mining but now it is out right foolish to do so.
That said, there are still plenty of people willing to
take the risk to gather their Ore in w-space but since most miners are not
completely stupid, there are a couple significant changes that have occurred
regarding WH mining.
Firstly, while they used to be reasonably common, I have
not seen a Hulk or a Mackinaw in a wormhole for many months. Miners look to be going far more favourably
for cheap T1 mining ships or even lowly Ventures.
Secondly, virtually every mining ship I have come across
lately has been warp core stabbed (and I have missed a few because of this).
Bottom line is that the days of max yield fit Hulks in
w-space are well and truly over.
So what does this mean for the hunter? Well, it means a few things.
Miners in wormholes are now very easy to catch. Before you needed to have probes and to be
able to use d-scan effectively to locate the ships and then run a combat scan
in as few cycles as possible to catch them and now you just warp to their
site. However, I would highly recommend
bringing 3 points of tackle to guarantee a catch as the ships will be stabbed
way more often than not.
In practice, the overall change is that there are less
people mining in wormholes now than ever before. The miners that do remain present little
sport as the effort to find them is literally zero and since they were not
smart enough to move their mining operations to a safer area, they generally
are not smart enough to pay close attention to d-scan either, seemingly
preferring to rely of their warp core stabs.
Blowing them up is still a fine hobby, but the
satisfaction of getting a 100% lock off a single probe scan is now gone.
Many PVP players hate all miners on principle and while I
would never join a corp that mines as a regular past time, it is a valid play
style.
That said, each play style has a time and a place and
wormholes are becoming less and less the place for mining.
The move or Ore sites from signatures to anomalies was a
pretty big shafting of WH mining by CCP.
PS: I am going to
invest in a Sabre as missing miner kills to warp stabs is not on.
Monday, 9 September 2013
Musings on HACs
Musings on HACs
Ok, so unless you've been living under a rather large rock, you would have noticed that the entire HAC line up has had an overhaul in the latest patch.
The reception of the new HACs has been generally mixed and I tend to fall in the 'not good enough' camp on the changes but I have decided to fly exclusively HACs on my main for a while to try them out and see if they are a viable alternative to my strategic cruisers for WH armour brawling once CCP take them away from me.
I actually started this trend before the changes with the Zealot. Before the changes the Zealot was the only HAC even remotely worth a damn for close range armour fleets with the rest of the HACs ranging from pretty bad to god awful to 'lol Caldari'.
So let's have a look post changes.
CCP look to have learned at least something from what they did to the poor Rifter and Hurricane in the frig and BC balance passes, ie: making them complete junk compared to the other buffed ships in their class, and the Zealot is still a top level HAC.
So what about the other HACs?
Well, I'm not interested in the least in Caldari HACs for 2 reasons; 1) They don't armour tank and 2) as far as I'm concerned, if you're flying a Caldari T2 cruiser that isn’t a Falcon, you're probably in the wrong ship.
Vagabond is also a shield only ship that has very little use in a WH so I'll leave that for now as well.
This leaves me with the Sacrilege, Munin and the 2 Gallente HACs to armour fit and play with.
I also decided to go for resilience in my HAC fits since that is what they are allegedly for and so have been going with 5 slot tanks over the more common 4 slot tanks.
The tanks consist of T2 1600mm plate, faction EANM and 3 active hardeners, along with a T2 resist rig for the hole.
This may seem like overkill but the result is that these HACs tank a serious amount more under reps than a Proteus or Legion and even a bit more than a Loki. They can also overheat the tank for even more tank.
Running active hardeners makes them vulnerable to neuting so I have made cap boosters mandatory on the fits.
The first new HAC I added to my hanger was the Ishtar. I looked at both Gallente HACs but the Deimos still remains a kite/snipe ship that is utterly disappointing up close, where I like to be, and so I quickly dumped it in favour of its drone boat brother.
Note: I'll admit that the new Deimos does have its role but that role is something I have no use for or interest in.
Since I have T2 heavy drone skills and not T2 sentry drone skill on my main (I know right?! Sue me...) the new heavy drone bonuses on the Ishtar suit me perfectly and I dusted off some Ogre IIs and electron blasters.
The main issue I always found with the Ishtar before the changes was that it was one of those ships that seemed specifically designed to be unfittable. It had high, med and low slots but could barely fit 2 of those properly.
Well, the days of 800mm plate Ishtars with light ion blasters look to be over. I was extremely happy to find that the ship is very fittable now and I was able to get a T2 1600mm plate, MWD, AB, small cap booster and a full rack of medium electron blasters, along with proper tank and tackle, with just a single fitting rig. Very nice.
Stat wise the Ishtar has a bit less EHP than the Zealot (which I'm more or less using as a base line) but a decent amount of DPS more, even with my no damage mod fit. The Ishtar's resistances also lean more heavily into therm/kin than the Zealot's at the expense of its exp resist which I like since explosive is by far the least used damage type in WHs. Yes, it's weak against Lokis which are prevalent but it does considerably better than a Zealot against a Proteus which is very relevant.
I have not had much chance to play with my Zealot or Ishtar yet but they have both performed very well in the few fights I have used them in.
One thing I will definitely note as a weakness of the Zealot is tracking. If you find yourself alone in a Zealot without a web and get tackled by a frigate, you best hope you have friends close by as you won't be able to do anything to it.
I found this out when I went to kill a Harpy and had to shamefully log in my Loki pilot to come web it.
I'm yet to use either ship under heavy fire but am happy with both so far.
No they don't have Proteus DPS or T3 EHP but they do have Legion and Loki DPS and do tank better under reps than any T3.
I will stick to the Zealot and Ishtar for now but am looking to try the Munin next.
I really hope the Munin works well and the Minmatar line up is severely lacking in the armour brawler category with the only viable option being the Loki, which I hope the Munin changes have addressed.
Unfortunately, initial EFT fitting do not look promising and I suspect the Munin will not cut it.
I'll also give the Sacrilege a try but I'm not really a fan of missiles so I'll leave that for last.
Will do a follow up post once I get to play with all the HACs a bit more.
JM
Ok, so unless you've been living under a rather large rock, you would have noticed that the entire HAC line up has had an overhaul in the latest patch.
The reception of the new HACs has been generally mixed and I tend to fall in the 'not good enough' camp on the changes but I have decided to fly exclusively HACs on my main for a while to try them out and see if they are a viable alternative to my strategic cruisers for WH armour brawling once CCP take them away from me.
I actually started this trend before the changes with the Zealot. Before the changes the Zealot was the only HAC even remotely worth a damn for close range armour fleets with the rest of the HACs ranging from pretty bad to god awful to 'lol Caldari'.
So let's have a look post changes.
CCP look to have learned at least something from what they did to the poor Rifter and Hurricane in the frig and BC balance passes, ie: making them complete junk compared to the other buffed ships in their class, and the Zealot is still a top level HAC.
So what about the other HACs?
Well, I'm not interested in the least in Caldari HACs for 2 reasons; 1) They don't armour tank and 2) as far as I'm concerned, if you're flying a Caldari T2 cruiser that isn’t a Falcon, you're probably in the wrong ship.
Vagabond is also a shield only ship that has very little use in a WH so I'll leave that for now as well.
This leaves me with the Sacrilege, Munin and the 2 Gallente HACs to armour fit and play with.
I also decided to go for resilience in my HAC fits since that is what they are allegedly for and so have been going with 5 slot tanks over the more common 4 slot tanks.
The tanks consist of T2 1600mm plate, faction EANM and 3 active hardeners, along with a T2 resist rig for the hole.
This may seem like overkill but the result is that these HACs tank a serious amount more under reps than a Proteus or Legion and even a bit more than a Loki. They can also overheat the tank for even more tank.
Running active hardeners makes them vulnerable to neuting so I have made cap boosters mandatory on the fits.
The first new HAC I added to my hanger was the Ishtar. I looked at both Gallente HACs but the Deimos still remains a kite/snipe ship that is utterly disappointing up close, where I like to be, and so I quickly dumped it in favour of its drone boat brother.
Note: I'll admit that the new Deimos does have its role but that role is something I have no use for or interest in.
Since I have T2 heavy drone skills and not T2 sentry drone skill on my main (I know right?! Sue me...) the new heavy drone bonuses on the Ishtar suit me perfectly and I dusted off some Ogre IIs and electron blasters.
The main issue I always found with the Ishtar before the changes was that it was one of those ships that seemed specifically designed to be unfittable. It had high, med and low slots but could barely fit 2 of those properly.
Well, the days of 800mm plate Ishtars with light ion blasters look to be over. I was extremely happy to find that the ship is very fittable now and I was able to get a T2 1600mm plate, MWD, AB, small cap booster and a full rack of medium electron blasters, along with proper tank and tackle, with just a single fitting rig. Very nice.
Stat wise the Ishtar has a bit less EHP than the Zealot (which I'm more or less using as a base line) but a decent amount of DPS more, even with my no damage mod fit. The Ishtar's resistances also lean more heavily into therm/kin than the Zealot's at the expense of its exp resist which I like since explosive is by far the least used damage type in WHs. Yes, it's weak against Lokis which are prevalent but it does considerably better than a Zealot against a Proteus which is very relevant.
I have not had much chance to play with my Zealot or Ishtar yet but they have both performed very well in the few fights I have used them in.
One thing I will definitely note as a weakness of the Zealot is tracking. If you find yourself alone in a Zealot without a web and get tackled by a frigate, you best hope you have friends close by as you won't be able to do anything to it.
I found this out when I went to kill a Harpy and had to shamefully log in my Loki pilot to come web it.
I'm yet to use either ship under heavy fire but am happy with both so far.
No they don't have Proteus DPS or T3 EHP but they do have Legion and Loki DPS and do tank better under reps than any T3.
I will stick to the Zealot and Ishtar for now but am looking to try the Munin next.
I really hope the Munin works well and the Minmatar line up is severely lacking in the armour brawler category with the only viable option being the Loki, which I hope the Munin changes have addressed.
Unfortunately, initial EFT fitting do not look promising and I suspect the Munin will not cut it.
I'll also give the Sacrilege a try but I'm not really a fan of missiles so I'll leave that for last.
Will do a follow up post once I get to play with all the HACs a bit more.
JM
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