all you paper dps warriors forget to compare dmg application properly.. you watch gun graphs and stuff without knowing target information.

look up rat specific hardeners, sig, velocity, orbit range, etc. and you'll see yourself that the one wearing pants on head is you.
afterwards count in drone management, cycling painters etc etc. MJD cycling or even mwd.. which might be better option for non marauders.

golem was and is L4 king at the moment, there is just no way to be more lazy and complete missions as fast or faster than any other ship.

I have flown all those ships in l4's (basically all skills lvl5 - 2006 char)


rattler or typhoon or what the f ever might seem faster because you fiddle with stuff and time goes by faster..



No! you have to use different drones or sentrys in different missions where NPC-s orbit at different ranges.. managing that is alone pita.

on 1200dps golem you shoot BS BC and Cruisers while light/med drones kill off all elite frigates or whatever small there is.
TP+rigored cruises blap non elite cruisers. 2 Volley others, 3 volley BS-es.. some rare BS-es take 4-5 volleys.

meanwhile not giving any f about tank or range...

All the other arguments aside, you can also see it as a choice of what you'll be looking at all day long. Couldn't stand a CNR in my face, Golem looks like a drunken albatross. I'd do the RS 8)

Truly, if you cannot decide you should maybe try them all. Over time.

Answers should contain blitzing and/or full-clear completion times.

Wow a huge amount of info. Thanks everyone for posting it's been a really good read. I think I'll go for the Rattlesnake (after some skill training).

Big mistake, there is currently no good reason to fly a Rattlesnake unless you want to passive shield tank level 5s. Sure, its on-paper DPS makes EFT warriors have a bukake party all over each other but the reality is that it has a low ability to apply its damage. As other players have noted, refitting and managing this ship DPS is a huge pain in the ass. Golem takes less training time, tanks better, far superior damage application, much easier to play and has better mission completion and looting times.

They really ****** the Rattlesnake with the loss of bonuses on all drones and the 400m3 drone bay, imo. This was a ship that does passive tanking best and doesn't have room to fit the omnis that are now required if one wants fast and small frigates to die in an acceptable time frame. Dealing with fast and small frigates was much more efficiently accomplished with bonuses to light drones and enough drone bay space to fit multiple flights of the proper drone type.

Geckos kill everything in the mission just fine..

they actually don't. Sure, some slower, fatter frigates die fine. I've waited up to 20 seconds for a gecko to kill a single frigate web scrambling me with 2 omnidirectionals equipped.

Spider drones take forever for geckos to hit too. Id much rather have the bonused lights for any pvp encounters as well. Only EFTards seem to think the ship is good.

Yeah, no. I only have one Enhancer fitted and my gecko kills frigates just fine... most of the time in one shot. Sometimes it takes slightly longer, but you can always put out light drones for frigates if it bothers you so much.

I had no trouble at all with Spider Drones either.

Sorry you are flat out wrong or trolling. Bonused lights deal with fast frigates and spider drones infinitely better and without the need cut tank to fit omnidirectionals.

I thought this was common sense. Even the dev blog on drone changes state that heavy drones will have an even harder time hitting small, fast frigates than before Kronos.

1 Fighter drone will 1 shot a frig with the current patch. I find it difficult that people resist to think heavies aren't capable as well.

But which one is best for running level 4s?

Answers should contain blitzing and/or full-clear completion times.

Finding it difficult to believe that heavies sometimes or even often miss doesn't change the fact that they do.

Even with the misses, they still kill the frigs before you kill the BSes. But that isn't even the point. You can still hold plenty of light drones in the Rattler if you are OCD about it.

Similar to other peops here my mission character has all three ships. They all have their applications.
I must admit I usually do /lazymode and fly a MJD RNI with extended lock range, max gank and minimal tank. I find it best to MJD away when landing in a room, blap everything, then MJD straight down to the next gate.