Ty Delaney
Gambit Roulette
17
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Posted - 2012.06.26 16:36:00 -
[2] - Quote
The Baby Steps of Victory
TL;DR - Long-time wormholer gets bored playing "Cheap Kills with Expensive Ships", can't find a decent fight in Syndicate, so puts his main in Faction Warfare and finally gets his first solo kill. The end.
Now then...
So I was having a pretty terrible night last night. Lost a bomber to lag/disconnect/gate rats. Lost a Wolf to a crappy little Griffin (I let him get a tackle and come in because seriously, Griffin? What are the odds he's going to perma-jam me with two multispecs? Pretty good, apparently...), then lost a ECCM-boosted Incursus (cheap) and a head full of spurs (not cheap) when I came back after the Griffin and got jumped by a Thrasher instead. Getting your pod hung up on a structure so you can't warp out? Super-fun.
Honestly, though, I don't mind the Thrasher fight -- at least it was a fight -- I don't mind losing, but it bugs me not to be able to fight back at all. (So much ECM hate.)
So anyway. I take a break. Log out. Listen to the last segment of BSB Episode 4, and go to bed.
Come back this morning and hop in a Merlin. Three 125mm rails. DCU, Magstab, and Overdrive in the lows. Mids are an afterburner, scram, web, and Medium Ancillary Shield Booster, because Kovorix. Rigs are all resist mods, plugging holes, so I'm at ~65% resists everywhere. AB pushes me about 960m/s, cold, and gets up around 1170 hot, and with the scram-web I figure I can dictate range pretty well. Sig's pretty small.
This time, I head toward Amarr/Minmatar warzone in The Bleak Lands, because I'm tired of trying to fight guys in Gal/Cal complexes while a bunch of Caldari rats throw missiles at me. Amarr NPCs miss. A lot.
So I poke around a bit and find a system with no complexes open and a war target in local. No stations, one gate. I scan and open the minor complex, which has an accel gate on it that only lets in t1 frigs, destroyers, and faction frigs. I had a vexor/rupture fight a few days ago where a Falcon joined in -- something I could have prevented if I'd jumped into the right sized complex instead of out in the open, so I like complexes a lot right now.
The other guy's showing up on short d-scan (21 million km), but he's not dropping on the gate, and he's not in the complex. I can't get him to come after me, and I figure he wants me to engage the complex and get a bunch of npcs shooting at me first, so it's ... fair? Whatever. I'll take the rats if it gets me a fight.
Anyway, I jump in the complex and start the timer running. (Orbiting the objective at <10km while rats keep spawning and spawning and spawning until the time runs out or you die. Pretty easy to speed tank.)
Sure enough, I get up to about 25 rats and here comes the guy, flying an Incursus. Like the Merlin, it got revamped in the most recent update and it's really really good for a t1 frig. If you favor tank, it can dual rep with an injector and tank like 165dps for a long time and still do about 180 up close with Neutrons, or you can sacrifice the tank and adjust that dps up quite a lot. It's scary, but it's usually short range (rail fits are less common, because Neutrons are sexy), and I like this fight for me.
He likes it too, I guess, probably because my Merlin looks like a disco ball right now with all the lasers flying around me.
I let him get in to about 15 and try to keep him at about 8km, but I'm a bit faster than he is, so I'm getting away and out of my scram range. I simplify, because I'm bad at Eve, and just let him get into about 6km and just hit keep at range, web/scram, and set to work. I'm using rails, so my DPS isn't great, but he really can't do a lot to me at 5 or 6 km, except for his drone, which I ignore -- it's doing a little damage, and my keep at range thing is letting the rats hit me a little, but the ASB is tanking everything easily -- I love these things for kiting ships -- it gives you such longevity.
I've flown the Incursus build I imagine he's flying a LOT, recently, so I know pretty much how it works. I get him into high armor pretty quick, watch him rep, and keep the pressure on so he's got to use his cap booster. He's probably got a small booster loaded with a 200, so I wait til I see his armor repping kind of lag behind (he's reloading and trying to float by on one rep), and THEN I overheat, and push him into structure. His speed is all over the place now, because he's thinking maybe he wants to get out, but with the web and my greater speed all he's doing is flailing -- except following his flailing means I'm taking more rat fire and my ASB is working harder -- I'm definitely getting low on boosters charges.
His cap reload goes off, and suddenly he's back at almost full armor for a second, but the writing is on the wall. I keep the heat on, push his reps as hard as I can, and as soon as his cap booster's reloading, he pops.
First solo kill. Ever.
And then I almost DIE because I was doing Keep at Range and when he popped I stopped moving. I oveheat my ASB; I'm almost out of charges, but I'd shut off the auto-reload and just let it keep running off my cap, which is nearly full, and that gets me through. Barely. I nearly cap myself out while getting into warp, and get away with 40% structure, where that guy hadn't even managed to get me into armor during the fight. Still: alive!
Boring fight for anyone else, I'm sure, but I was really really happy with it -- the ship fit did exactly what I was hoping, I didn't screw anything up too badly, didn't forget too many things in the middle of the fight (could have overheated the guns sooner, and forgot to overheat the ASB at all until the end), and got my first 1v1 kill. Achievement unlocked, and all very much thanks to this podcast and the encouragement to get out there, lose some ships, and have fun.
Thanks, guys.
gf, gf. |