I used to use Missiles and Shield tanking for lvl 4 missions way before I took long break from EvE. Recently I came back and decided to focus on training Amarr focused character. I am still currently only doing lvl 3’s but I just feel like Energy weapons lack efficiency compared to missiles.
Is Apocalypse hull, for example, an efficient runner? (Apocalypse -> Apocalypse Navy -> Paladin).
I feel as if this should be obvious to someone that’s played long enough to be able to run L3s, but…
Lasers are damage-locked to EM and Thermal damage. They shift between being EM-heavy at long range and thermal-heavy at short range. So they are not very effective against NPC types that are not weak to these damage types. Turret systems in general require slightly more effort to be effective since you maximize their efficacy with piloting (reducing transversal, etc.).
Projectile Turrets, Missiles and Drones are the most versatile weapon systems. For this reason, if you want to stick with Amarr ships you might benefit more by training down the Amarr’s drone offerings (Dragoon -> Arbitrator -> Prophecy -> Armageddon).
Phantasm to Nightmare.
Have fun 
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I personally have run the Paladin and can say that they are good mission runners. Lasers being locked does hurt efficiency of some missions, however agents tend to have mission pools. Agents such as Guddidya Shalinilena (Emperor Family) tend to give a large portion of their missions against Sansha and Blood Raiders, so it can be efficient depending on the agent’s pool.
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im using drone and doesnt find any difficulties to finish regular missions
Amarr ships are in general best suited for combat against Sansha and Blood Raiders, this is mainly due to their weapon damage (EM/THEM), they will be slightly ineffective agains pirates such as Guristas and Serpentis as they have THEM as their secondary weakness. If you really want the best and most versatility in a ship I would suggest you go with a Drone or Missile-boat, here Gallente excels at Drones while Caldari excels at Missiles, however both Amarr and Minmatar also have some good ships to offer.
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My experience is from multiboxing a Kronos and Paladin, so that’s my main reference for comparison. Amarr does have the damage type restrictions, however the ranges more than compensate for it. Lasers bridge the mid range gap better than any other turret. Comparing to hybrids, blasters on a battleship might hit out to 30km, and rails start at 50km with a pretty big DPS dropoff between them. AC’s have a more gradual dropoff but still there’s still that drop. The dropoff between short and long range missiles is the most extreme of all. Lasers tend to be more consistent throughout it. It also happens that the gap is where a lot of NPCs like to fight. In practice it means pulse lasers are far more viable in PVE than blasters or AC’s, which means higher applied DPS. The tradeoff, of course, being no damage at the extreme ranges you’d get with something like rails (150km+ rails definitely come in handy in the bigger pockets.) I haven’t found the difference in damage types to really matter all that much even against Angels, except that lasers are insanely effective against rogue drones, 1-shotting even cruisers.
Few things automatically suck. Look at what things are good at, and fly to the strengths, compensate for the weaknesses.
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Yes she is and you don’t have to buy a 700m police faction ship, nor a 300 billion boat to do missions.
Look at this:
I’d suggest going from Apoc -> nightmare. I’d skip the navy BS as they don’t add a whole lot and you can get a nightmare for a similar price (heck it’s cheaper right now). Then if you want you can pick up a paladin later. Nightmare is similar to the paladin in many ways, I think I’ve even seen some argue it’s better, but I love the paladin.
Paladin is my Number 2 ship behind the machariel for mission running. The thing has insane range, and great damage. Can do ~30km optimal with conflag and megapulse, or 70km with multifreq and tachs. It also has a ton of fitting room so you can pretty much throw whatever you like on it. Lasers chew through Bloods, sanshas, and pretty much all the mission generic NPCs, like drones, mercs, and EoM. Those NPCs make up a large part of the amarr and caldari mission pools.
That said there are a few limitations, the main one is if you spend a lot of time fighting angel rats it’s not so great. Guristas can also be an issue, butt there aren’t that many gurista missions, and many of the ones they do have can be blitzed. And if you have t2 lasers conflag will melt guristas with it’s large thermal damage, although with it’s range it’s only useful in a few places. Serpentis I’m not really sure, don’t see them that often, but in the caldari version of Worlds collide it seems to chew through the high bounty bs without much trouble.
drones/missile boats, no thanks. I will take instant damage turrets every time.
I checked Nightmare out and the only issue for me with it is that it’s shield tanked, but I really prefer armor tanking and I have much greater skills for that as well. Even some Implants for armor tanking and I do not want those to go to waste. I think I will go for Apocalypse, while I train for Paladin, because for me Paladin just looks awesome!
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of course you are free to use the ships you like, but the nightmare is a huge step up from the apoc, easy to fit tachs to get that great range/damage combo and uses less cap shooting as it only has 4 turrets. Then shield tanking is very SP efficient, need less than 1 mil sp and a good portion of that is core skills that add some shield HP/Recharge for every ship. Some t2 hardeners and a deadspace xl shield booster is a great cost effective tank. I also think tank implants are unnecessary, all my implants are for damage, application, or movement.
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Well if he is so pragmatic and confident about armor tanking it’s became a common thing to see armor tanked NM as well, ofc its not popular and require some proper fits but still doable. And if that’s really the case he might use navy geddon.
No it’s not just your mind playing tricks on you missiles have always been the more solid choice for mission runners because of range selectable dmg type and because those pesky agents don’t always give you mission just against their corresponding enemy pirates.In case it has been forgotten caldari in general have been iconic in the PVE scene:drake,raven,raven navy,tengu,golem were/are hugely popular.
I armor tanked it for missions.
While lasers do in fact suck versus Angel/Guristas, they are the reapers of death incarnate versus blood raiders/Sansha. Plus the Paladin/Nightmare are two of the best mission running battleships in the game. (When against Blood/Sansha/Generic npcs.)
Personally I use the paly the most, with a golem for those annoying angel/gurista missions I can’t bypass. (Yes I don’t do JUST burners, shocking I know.)
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Paladin does very well I found because of its bastion and immunity to e-war most missions heavy on sanshas are frustrating in other laser ships because of the heavy turret disruption:one I can quickly think of is The Blockade.
Serpentis and Rogue Drones. Now the list is complete.
I thought serpentis were weak vs kinetic …
They are and from experience with my tach-mare, I noticed they also seem to be weak in em resistance.
You can always try it, but I can tell you lasers hurt Serpentis a lot.
For serpentis Kinetic is the hole, therm/em are the middle resists, and explosive is the highest.
so conflag is ideal to max thermal damage, but Multi isn’t that bad, especially with Paladin/nightmare level dps. Rarly see serpentis in amarr space and only a little more in caldari space so it’s not a huge deal imo.