Tuesday 20 December 2011

Malediction v Jaguar

The hunt:

I was flying my experimental solo Malediction (active armor tank with a cap recharger in the spare mid), and I was roaming around the Aeschee area when spotted Bojangles in a Jaguar. Of course, I decided to say hello.

For whatever reason, I run into Bojangles a lot when I am testing Malediction fits; I practised holding a point under fire from his Hurricane when I was putting my original shield Malediction through it's paces.

At this point, I don't remember whether I warped in on him, or whether I let him warp in on me. Either way, we were both looking for a fight, and we made it happen. He/I landed far enough off that we had to burn towards each other; I remember putting my engines on half speed to try looking like an AB fit brawler - I did not want to scare him off with the threat of kiting.

Once I landed point, I set my orbit for 20km and settled in to see what he had. He was only moving about 1.2 km/s, so there was no chance of him landing a scram. However, once he loaded Barrage, he was actually able to hit me, if only barely.

Since I could not defeat him on range (at least, not if I wanted to shoot back - holding point at 26 km and calling in backup would have defeated the purpose of the exercise), I decided to try defeating him on tracking, and I closed my orbit to 15 km, which is about as close as I cared to get. However, he seemed to be able to continue hitting me, although not well. When I say "not well', he was scoring "barely hits" about once every two or three shots. I was frustratingly close to evading his damage.

Next I tried pulsing the repair system, to see if I could keep up with the damage, but even with the recharger, regular use of the repair function quickly drained my cap. While the booster would not have made a difference in the long term, in the short term I probably would have been able to tank the damage.

Eventually, I disengaged. I could not evade his damage, so I was not going to be able to sit back and try breaking his tank.


Afterthoughts:

I did not even open fire in this fight; because of my low dps I'm just not going to win any damage races. Far better to just get out, which is what fleet interceptors excel at.

I must admit that I was surprised that Bojangles could a) track me and b) hit me. Isn't this where Interceptors are meant to shine? Of course, I only have Interceptors IV, so I'm still getting a fair amount of mwd bloom. I'm definitely going to get Interceptors V within the next month, so it will be interesting to try a fight like this again to see if the reduced signature radius offers any greater protection.

The cap recharger was disappointing. Not only did it add very little in the way of cap (even with the repair system pulsed rather than left running), and it's only noticeable at all near peak regen - towards the extremes it might as well be an empty low slot.

This is particularly frustrating when a repair cycle and an mwd cycle arrive together (my mwd skills are weak  - only level III), which forces me below peak recharge. A capacitor booster would have freed me from this concern without any appreciable downside; I'm not going for cap stability, after all.

3 comments:

  1. Even with all my nav skills and inty skills at V, I've found that medium AC's track just fine unless you wander into Medium Neut range. Even then they tear me up in close without the use of a tracking disrupter.

    Even worse, the warrier II's can catch you and rip you up as well if you use a TD instead of a web.

    Best of luck, but I certainly wouldn't use Canes as the Benchmark.

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  2. I've taken a kiting Slicer against what seems to be the same type of Jaguar as the one you fought. Basically, his low slots were TE II's to give him that falloff range with barrage. I'm guessing that the Jaguar you fought had swapped a TE II for a Nano II, so his hits far away were only barely hitting because of max falloff range, but when you got in close he didn't have the tracking speed to deal with you either.

    Still, I had to do the same as you and warp out: small lasers aren't real effective against a Jaguar haha.

    I think you did the best that you could have in that situation: you held him down, and then warped out. Not to discredit your skill, I think you have quite a bit, but the odds were pretty heavily stacked against you I think.

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  3. o/ Taurean

    I don't know if you are aware, but Kil2, a very well known pvp player of the Eve community, has made a podcast that is gainning fame. You will like it.

    https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=42133

    And he also has a youtube channel where he analyzes his fights (just like you do):

    http://www.youtube.com/user/jampyzero

    Hope you like it. And btw keep up the good work with this blog, i enjoy it a lot ;)

    ReplyDelete