I have played EVE on and off since I was a kid, but have just recently been addicted and playing consistently. I still would consider myself a newbro, and am looking for advice. TLDR will be at bottom.
I have been interested in abyssal space, and already have all the basics down (and am enjoying it thoroughly). I am currently flying the povertila fit from abysstracker, and am breezing through T3 exotics (usually leaving 5ish minutes left on the timer getting 90% of caches). My question is, do I have the skills, the EHP and the DPS to step into the T4s? I have watched plenty of guides, how to handle each room, when and what to overheat, how to manage cap etc but I am still not at the highest efficiency that I could be. There are times I still bump into objects, miss a target switch, miss a reload/reload to early, lose my drones, etc. that could easily be the decider. Which to be clear; I’m not worried about dying, it happens. I’d just like to make sure it’d come down to a pilot issue that can be learned from vs a character capability issue.
I had attempted T4 a few days ago and was unsuccessful, but was managing everything as best as I felt I could, besides heating as I mistakenly didn’t practice heating properly before. I wasn’t immediately killed, and was managing to chip away, but ended up dying in just the first room (3 harrowing vedmaks were the killer). I have applied some more SPs to boost efficiency (cap, shield, navigation, missles) and am now more capable of heating, and managing heat as I have continuously ran T3s and used heating unnecessarily for the practice. The boost in SPs since dying in initial T4 attempt has definitely made the T3s a lot easier to run, but still worried it’s not enough to move up.
TLDR; I am only around 9m SP, and am worried that I just don’t have the skills to combat the challenges in T4 abyss. Rather than waste time listing all skills, I’ve included a picture of simulated fit stats, and am wondering if it is sufficient enough on dps/cap/ehp etc. for managing in T4s with the proper piloting. I would just try again, but I’d like some input before losing another 600m that I don’t have lol.
I am actually surprised that this fit is so popular. You have almost no excess Cap Recharge, which means in any Pocket where there are unlucky spawns of high energy neutralizing enemies, they will shut down your tank pretty quickly. Maybe it doesn’t matter in T3 because there is so few stuff that all the neutralizers are dead before they have an effect, but I remember spawns of Drainer Marshals and Starving Leshaks in T4 that brought a Sacrilege with +20 excess cap recharge into trouble. My guess: You will be able to do most T4s just fine, but there can be unlucky spawns where you will die in this ship.
Any advice on how/where to find stronger fits? I’m still learning all of the different modules so not sure I’d make a sufficient enough ship myself, hence why I targeted the most popular I found on AT. I have been playing around with builds that are cheaper and just taking them in to lower tiers and moving up on trial and error. Something has to fund those runs though lol.
I do have the NOS equipped to help with cap boost but I definitely don’t feel the usefulness in T3, maybe it will be stronger in T4. I thought about a drone boat as well, but kiting in a limited space against MWD enemies doesn’t feel effective. I’ll play around with it, thanks for the input!
Indeed! I guess I could go mining, or sit in Jita all day watching the market and manufacturing but I think I’d rather watch the grass grow.
Since I created all the fits I use in the abyss by myself, I don’t know where to look for such fits. Abyssal Tracker looks not that bad, but I also found a lot of useless or outright bad fits there where people only claim that they work but you will die for sure in them after some runs.
For a T4 I would aim for:
500 DPS if you can shoot right into the damage penalty. 600 if you can’t.
500 DPS permanent tank, non-overheated. Standard Bluepill + Hardshell5 running.
+10 cap excess with 2 batteries, +15 with one battery.
When I have build such a fit in PyFa, I usually build it on the test server and fly like 30-50 rooms with it to see if it meets the expectations.
So my T4 Gila would look like this:
Its a bit more expensive than the Povertila, but not much.
It deals a bit less damage than the Povertila, but not much.
It will still be able to finish all T4 Pockets in time if the pilot is not messing up, but it has a far greater survival chance against cap neutralization (which is the reason a Povertila will die at some point for sure).
In case you wonder why a Thermal Rig and not an EM Rig: All Triglavians deal a significant amount of Thermal damage and the Harrowing Vedmaks and all Kikimoras spool up pretty hard. Also sometimes you get Marshal/Enforcer Spawns that deal enourmous amounts of Thermal HAM damage that can lead to unexpected deaths. EM damage mainly comes from Sanshas (but they deal 50/50 EM/TH so the Thermal rig also helps against hem) or Drones: Needles/Lances can be killed quickly or get killed via using the Suppressor Turrets to your advantage, the Grip BCs can be kited out. Leaves the EDENCOM ships, but while their Alpha can be high, their total damage is nothing to be afraid of).
You are a LEGEND for this, thank you so much for breaking it down for me. I was unaware of the information at the bottom, and comparing your fit to the povertila has taught me a lot.
Comparing the two actually hurts my soul for spending over 1b isk for two povertila fits, I lose about 80 DPS replacing the rapid light missle launchers, but DPS doesn’t help if I can’t even run the modules. Additionally, the removal of the rapid light missle launchers will save me a TON of isk spent on CPU/PG augments.
Your fit has more EHP, and stays cap stable. I noticed that the only reason the povertila was cap stable for me was because of the NOS, which still wasn’t enough to keep my cap above water against the neuts. With the NOS off in simulation the cap life was only 5 minutes. I clip every death to find my mistakes, and although I think I was piloting well, the ultimate reason for my death was cap management. I was trying to keep the cap above water causing me to lose EHP and DPS. Your fit also gives me 50 more meters per second, and every little bit helps while maintaining traversal speed for DPS falloff.
My DPS still sits right at 500, but pardon my stupid question; what do you mean when you say to shoot right into the damage penalty?
All Abyssal Sites except Darks apply a resistance penalty to all ships in there, that includes you, but also the NPCs. If you can use exactly that type of Damage against them, all your hits benefit from them having lower resistances against this type of damage. The impact can be quite big and you should always adapt your drones or missiles to the damage type the abyssal pocket makes all ships weak against.
This is one reason why Exotics and Gammas are so popular among Gilas, they can use shield-based drones in there (which tank the NPCs a LOT better, but also deal 100% of the damage type which the NPCs are weak against). Vespas for Kin damage in Exotics, Valkyries für Exp-Damage in Gammas). Also one of their missile boni is for Kinetic Missiles. Same System applies for other ships… Cerbs love Exotics, Sacrileges can freely adapt to all Types. Laserboats prefer Electricals (-EM resist)…
That makes sense, with the Vespas and the Scourge my survival at 500 dps should be okay in kinetic. I need to get fitted and double check the cap and tank, but I am pretty excited and confident I will be able to do them now. I will warm up with a couple T3s and get used to the fit, and practice some more, then I’m popping some drugs and giving it another shot!
I really appreciate the help, I’ll shoot you an EVE-Mail and let you know how it goes when I get to it.
Edit: will be a bit, CAP is only stable at 1.2% , gonna get that up and then will try lol.
@Syzygium did my first T4 just now, had no problems with your fit, left first T4 with 6 minutes left. Only had one tough room though, so hoping I can keep it going. Thanks again for all the advice man. <3
