Originally by: Zaran Darkstar

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The Machariel

Since the Machariel uses Artilleries and is actually a Tempest with an extra low slot and a tracking bonus is more suited to tank Sansha/Blood but its weak in offence against them. If you go to do missions against Angel/guristas it will do much better in offence but may have some trouble with tanking as it will have problem with PG or Cpu to fit right. There is a recipy to make it right but still you may have to use both Arties and missiles a "feature" which personaly i dislike. Perhaps you could fit it with autocannons since its reasonably fast but i ve never tried a mission with Large ACs so far so i don't know if it would be a valid alternative. Well all in all the Maelstorm is better in defence against Angels/gurista and valid in offence but i think the tracking bonus and the speed features and cool looks of the Machariel make it a slightly better option if you are after Angels

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Honestly, the machariel can tank armor or shield quite well. In fact in some instances it can passive shield tank sansha rats better than it can armor tank them, that instance being if you use 4 armor hardeners instead of 3 and a gyro.

As for using large ACs in L4s on the machariel, the machariel's fast enough by base speed to make them usable but it's still crawling slow without an afterburner.

In my opinion, you have 2.5 routes for the machariel in L4 missions.

#1 Passive shield tank: Max out your tank. You'll suffer (quite a bit) on the DPS side but even against EM/thermal damage you'll be quite immune, and if you do a 100% passive tank (no hardeners) you won't get into trouble against blood raiders. I do this, personally, and while it's not as fast as other setups (in terms of doing missions) it gets them done and I've very rarely run the risk of losing the ship.

You can drop your tank a bit and fit an AB and use autocannons to boost your DPS but I'd recommend against this if you're doing blood missions (cap warfare) or your ability to manage your cap sucks.

#2 3xCCC tank:
A) Armor: Standard armor tank, dual rep, hardeners, AB, autocannons.
B) Shield: This setup has some truly not-fun CPU issues if you use an XL booster. Using a T2 CPU enhancer I didn't have enough CPU to put a Gyro II in my last low slot. Good thing dread guristas CPUs are cheap. This setup would probably work better with artillery since you, probably, won't have the mid slot for an afterburner, however...

With the 3x CCC tank you can basically use armor for EM, shield for EX, and whatever you want for everything else. The best of both worlds in a sense, and one I might very well switch to when I get bored with the novelty of a massive passive shield tank (nearly 1600 DPS max tank against serpentis/guristas, 1300ish normal tank).

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Minmatar in Fantasy or Duct Tape Goes Medieval.