zealot
So, no shit, there I was: Zealot vs Loki 1v1
Yes, you read that right.
I was sitting in TVN station pondering going down to empire to pick up a Harbinger and going for a Saturday night solo roam in Venal when the presence of a Loki was announced in intel. Just a handful of jumps away, the Loki belonged to a Solar Fleet pilot named Crystal2, who seemed to be looking for solo ganks in much the same way that, well, I do in Solar Fleet’s space. He was reported to have a covert ops cloaking device, a high-survivability but low-DPS option.
It was a quiet night. I was, frankly, bored as hell. And the Loki seemed to be sticking around. I was a bit short on PVP ships and I was worried about being able to catch him. The only thing even remotely suitable to do the job in my hangar at the moment was my trusty pulse Zealot, which I fly in small gangs and is the veteran of many battles. I undocked and quickly warped to a jump bridge that would take me to within a couple of jumps of his last reported position.
I caught up with him in T-ZWA, a system at the edge of Majesta Empire space that borders that of our nearest neighbors, Morsus Mihi. Local was pretty empty, just me and him and one or two other folks who were probably docked. I warped to the far gate, QFF, wondering if he was leaving our space. As I travelled the 60 AU between gates, I saw a Loki on scan and my heart rate picked up. I knew what he was doing now: he was camping the gate to QFF and spamming his scanner, to see if anything small and lonely enough to kill came after him. He left local seconds later.
He might be running, or he might be betting that the commandship-like tank of a strategic cruiser would save him and is waiting for me on the other side, I thought. I knew that he wouldn’t out-DPS me, a considerable loss of DPS is the price you pay for the cloaking subsystem. Either way, I wanted to fight him. Intel had confirmed no other reds in the area, and my own allied forces were mostly drunk or asleep. If the fight happened it was going to be a pure solo duel at least for the first few minutes. If I could even just keep him tackled long enough for my alliance mates to wake up and get there, I’d be a hero. If I took him out solo, I’d be a legend. And if I lost, well, I’d have a story to tell.
I was oddly calm when I jumped into QFF. A tight smile crossed my face when I loaded grid and I saw him sitting there, waiting for me, just at the outer edge of optimal on my multifreqs. I decloaked, approaching him to put him in the sweet spot of the optimal on my heavy pulse lasers as I locked him up, and opened fire. I took the time to scream in intel, corp and everywhere else that I had a Loki tackled, but I didn’t really expect anyone to get there in time. It was just me and him.
His shields started to go down, but slowly. Definitely a shield tanker, with a considerable buffer and resist tank, but I expected that. The question now was whether his DPS was any good.
My shields went down in three volleys. Well, not great, but it could be worse. His DPS dwindled a bit when he got to my armor, and I activated my repper to keep things stable as I kept chewing at his shields. He was definitely doing more damage than I expected, but I was getting word that help – unfailingly roused by the promise of a T3 kill with the tackle already made – was on the way.
Then, the Loki pilot whipped out his secret sauce: a medium energy neutralizer, AKA sparkly blue death for Amarr ships. My armor repper went dark not long before my lasers did. I started trying to slowboat my way to the gate on buffer alone, but it wasn’t going to happen as the Loki had me webbed as well. Quite possibly he even had the webification subsystem as well, there’s just no way to know with these T3 ships when you’re in the thick of things.
It was just under a minute from the time when he turned on the neut to the blue-white flash of my Zealot exploding around me. I had gotten him down to a bit over half shields when I popped, which in itself is an achievement I suppose. I got my pod out and returned his “gf” in local with one of my own. The Loki pilot clearly had an excellent solo fit, a much better one than I initially thought he did. That combination of cloaking and neuting made me long for the cloaky Tengu I posted about previously – or perhaps a Legion with the neutralizer subsystem.
Happily, most of my gear dropped, too; as I write this I am on my way with it to Jita to fit out that Harbinger. This may not be the last story of the night!
Curses, Foiled Again
So, it turns out you can fit a Curse out as a prober pretty well. I nano it out, with a passive shield tank, an AB and a tracking disruptor. The highs are full of medium neuts and noses, along with that precious probe launcher.
With Hammerheads, my DPS is not great, as my drone skills are a bit crap, but my hope is that between rat DPS and the neut/nos, enemy ships will quickly cap out, and the AB-nano fit will let me outrun missile DPS well enough while the tracking disruptor screws up turret ships. The only thing I have to watch out for is drone boats, right?
So thus armed I head back down to the Drone Regions. I find myself in F9, site of some of the biggest battles in the Drone Wars. It has been yet another desperately quiet trip, and not even the probe launcher is helping me to catch unwary ratters. The new scanning system is just so goddamn finicky and slow for combat probes.
Anyway, I am in warp to the XB gate when a pair of ED ships appear in local. On scanner I see them pop up at the gate… a Zealot and a Vagabond. Oh crap, I think to myself, I am so screwed. My only chance is to wait for them to aggress and jump through, then get safe on the other side.
Unfortunately, they’re smart. The Vaga aggresses and lays on the damage. After a few seconds it becomes clear that the Zealot won’t aggress. I realize that I might have a chance against the Zealot, as his weapons are cap-dependant and the Vaga’s aren’t. So I jump into XB- and hit the ‘burner, aligning for a celestial. Sure enough the Zealot jumps right after me, and he rips through my shield tank with his lasers while I neut him and sic my drones on him. I know I’m neuting his cap; indeed he should be just about dry… but no, his lasers are still firing, his point is still working… and then I realize that he fitted a cap booster rather than a sensor booster, just like I should have done when I was fighting that damned neuting Ishtar.
I am very frustrated at this point. The Harbinger is a bit big and slow to catch ratters; the Zealot, agile but a bit of a glass cannon and really hard to fit even with AWU 4. The Curse, way too fragile and neuts aren’t nearly the equalizer I feel like they should be (and hear that they once were). And probes aren’t really helping either. So what’s left? What will give me an adequate tank, acceptable DPS, sufficient maneuverability and has a little bit of an edge where both combat and survivability is concerned?
(If you say ‘Vagabond’ or ‘Ishtar’ I am going to hit you. What I meant to say was ‘what’s left *that I can fly*’.)
And then, as I pull out old EFT theorycrafting, I begin to get the glimmerings of an idea.