After having flown the Crusader in a variety of situations and in a handful of fights, I'm ready to move on. For any other new pirates, however, here are my thoughts on the Crusader.
In many ways, the Crusader is an unremarkable ship, with middle of the road dps and tank for it's class. What is exceptional, though, is it's high base speed and four low slots.
This pretty much tells you all there is to know about the Crusader, because everything else flows from that point. It has standard interceptor bonuses to mwd and the tracking to actually hit things while moving at speed. And because it packs energy turrets, Scorch allows it to engage targets beyond web and scram range (although range enhancing mods or rigs certainly help). The Crusader was, literally, designed to fill a mwd/kiting role, and by all accounts it fills that role admirably.
Of course, I was flying it all wrong. While I enjoyed the speed, trying to fight at close range meant that I was throwing that advantage away; with only two midslots the Crusader cannot counterweb, and so loses it's relative speed advantage. It's just not a brawler - it should avoid damage, not absorb try to endure it.
When I first finished with the Crusader I was certain that I did not want to end up flying that kind of ship. Further exposure to that way of flying (via the Malediction) has softened my views, though. It's simply not what I am used to, and I suspect I have developed a bit of a comfort zone.
That aside, and while I am reserving judgement until I have some other T2 ships to compare it to, I'm not actually a huge fan of the Crusader. If I want to fly a laser vessel in that fashion, why would I not just fly a Slicer? Sure, the Crusader is faster, but for most thing the Slicer is fast enough, and has much higher dps and range.
Still, the Crusader is an excellent ship, provided you are willing to fly it the way it was designed to be flown.
I've been flying MWD-fitted Crusaders and Slicers recently, and after a few kills and losses in both found I preferred the Crusader. The big advantage the Crusader has over the Slicer is its Interceptor MWD sig penalty reduction - with the Slicer I was finding that I did great against anything I could kite, but anything that could get me in range could tear me apart fast due to the MWD sig bloom.
ReplyDeleteAnother factor was that a Tech 2/best named Crusader costs about 15 million after insurance, while the cheapest effective Slicer fit I could manage ran to 25 million. If you're going to be using (and losing) the ship regularly, that makes a difference!
I disagree with your conclusion. The crusader is a good little brawler. The slicer actually works better as the kite ship since it has a range bonus but lacks the saders tracking.
ReplyDeleteTry it in its AB form.
Taurean, this may be the time that you might want to consider branching to other race's frigates. I have all racial T1 frigates and will be working on T2 soon myself, but really, learning autocannons to T2 takes a whole 5ish to 6ish days depending on attributes and, with autos, you can brawl with most ships, granted some won't give a bonus, but the range and tracking are already great for the dps. Another 6 to 7 days on another race's frigate and you can compare different frigs to find out if maybe Amarr isn't for you.
ReplyDeleteSince the faction ship buff, the Slicer has effectively made the kiting Crusader redundant due to the increased range it offers.
ReplyDeleteThe "brawler" Crusader you have been flying is IMO the best brawling Interceptor out there due to its sheer versatility with the range offered by Scorch, something the Claw and the Taranis cannot touch.
Saying that, in order to get the best usage of it you need to have high SP (max Gunnery and Navigation basicially) and have substantial PvP knowledge so you know when to close in with Multifrequency and when to hang back with Scorch etc.
That makes a great deal of sense and also explains why some people swear by a brawling Crusader and others swear it's completely fail.
ReplyDeleteMy gunnery skills are decent (95%), but my navigation skills are weak. My PvP knowledge is also very basic.
Taken together, I'm almost certainly not getting as much as I could be out of the ship. It might well be worth a revisit after I have more experience.