Recommendation from this old pirate:
Put Microwarpdrives on the back burner until you’ve got 50 kills. Maneuver skill is 3x as important when you’re in a MWD fit and things happen so fast it’s hard to really see what you did wrong.
Are you caldari? The caldari blaster tank series is good flying if you like close-up:
Try this merlin fit (may require downgrading some components or buying power grid implants, the faction AB isn’t needed, but it’s nice because speed is so important): A merlin I got shot off…
While you are on the page, you can check out the Gnosis I bagged with that merlin before I lost it.
Here is the story of that morning with some idea of what I’m thinking as I pick maneuver:
Saturday morning scuffles
Another story of me fighting some guys from a public Enemy in that fit: Mo reads it wrong
When you fly against fast boats, run back and forth and try to either swing them into yourself to put an overheated scrambler on them (turns off their microwarpdrive) or to get out of their disruptive range.
Garmurs have a ton of range, as I found out that morning… but most ships are pretty easy to catch with something as fast as the merlin.
For brawlers… you’ll find that the 10k EHP gives you lots of time to think about ranges and maneuver styles so you can find one that favors you.
Also, the neut will allow you to live long enough to turn off webs on brawlers who get ahold of you… but don’t forget to move to a range that favors you and not them once they’re capped out.
It’s a well balance boat. It’ll beat fast boats… it’ll beat brawlers, It doesn’t have a ton of dps, but the neut and some long range ammo combined with 10k EHP and solid passive recharge makes it hard to kill and tough to engage.
Read my tutorial, this build is powerful it its balance. Learn to fly this and select the right ranges and maneuver styles (approach, straight line in space, orbit, or orbit jet can) and you’ll be lethal to small boats.
Here is a walk through of how maneuver affects maneuver I wrote some time ago to try to illustrate the eloquence of maneuver fights:
The good fight, maneuver walk through
And don’t forget, a good 4K orbit or keep at range can disable most frigate brawlers… so if you carry ammo that shoots that far and a neut you can really fistribute frustrations.