Executioner v Succubus

I recently lost my last Executioner. It would perhaps be more accurate to say that I threw it away.

The fight

I was in the Amarr fleet plexing Labapi into vulnerability when the FC sent me to run a Novice plex that had become available, so I was on my own when a Succubus entered the plex.

Now, I'm not exactly new to low sec, and spamming my Dscan is second nature. Hell, I even have Dscan mapped to one of the thumb buttons on my mouse so I can keep spamming it while I'm manual piloting or selecting targets. So I saw him coming from a mile away, and could easily have warped out.

But it was a Succubus.

I'm working on a Succubus. I wonder what his Succubus is like. Oh damn, I'm really going to do this, aren't I?

So, yeah. He jumps in, and we start to dance.

I know from my fitting work that a 1mn Afterburner II on a Succubus does just under 2 km/s cold, and nearly 3 km/s heated. I do 3.9 km/s cold, and 5.7 km/s with heat. In theory, there is no way he can catch me. Unless, you know, I'm trying to hold point while applying dps. Oh, and deadspace afterburners and speed fittings boost his numbers in a big way.

As I've discussed in an earlier post, the kiting Executioner can't actually apply dps while in orbit at any speed, and I certainly can't out track a Succubus, so winning this one means keeping my transversal to a minimum. That means 'keep at range' and manual piloting.

I notice right away that he has a long point, which is very interesting. Is he fitting beams? If so, I'm in trouble. But he's lunging for me like he needs to get into range. Dual point? Web? Even more interesting.

He never manages to get closer than 14 km from me, but that ends up being enough, because my tank is paper thin, and his is not.

Afterthoughts

I convo'd the pilot afterwards to congratulate him and to ask for his fit. He declined to share it with me, but he died to a gang the following day, so I have it anyway.

No beams, but Small Focused Pulse II hits out to 11+3.1 km with Scorch. The deadspace AB and Nanofiber II let him stay at that range just long enough to chew through my 2.5k ehp at my worst resists. Well flown.

That said, I don't actually like the fit.

A Succubus with a web has the ability to control the range against almost any other afterburner brawler. If you equip a scram, you also have the ability to control the range against mwd brawlers. After that, you want to try to have enough speed to slingshot mwd kiting ships; you'll never match their speed, but you can still be fast enough to catch those that try to fight. That's what I expected him to do against me.

If, instead, you equip a long point, you increase your ability to abuse afterburner brawlers by kiting them beyond scram range. Is this really useful? You should already abuse those poor fellas pretty badly. You then lose the ability to control the range against mwd brawlers (they're still faster than you with the mwd on), and while you may slingshot mwd kiters into web range, once they apply heat many are still fast enough to pull range again.

Worse still, some cruisers are fast enough that you will be forced into trailing orbits if you don't shut down their mwd. That means they stand a pretty good chance of being able to hit you.

So this fit trades the ability to engage any serious mwd ship for the ability to stomp afterburner fits even harder than it does naturally. I don't really think that's actually a good trade, although in the current FW meta you can probably make it work. Heck, my Executioner would probably have come out on top if I'd fit for a little less gank and a little more tank.

Still, interesting stuff.