Playing primarily PVE for now. Is it worth it to train for “Sin” (blackops version of Ishtar), or is the next progression EOS, or ?
FYI: I’m using heavy t2 drones in my Ishtar, and medium turrets fitted.
Any advice will be well appreciated.
i am assuming your pve with the ishtar is ratting. unless you plan to cap rat, you have reached the pinnacle of success. make sure all your critical skills (the magic 14 for example) are level 5 then look at what else you and your friends want to do in the game. if black ops will be your thing , then sure, the sin is nice. or… you may look at other game aspects like exploration or heaven forbid, mining and industry. OR even PI as an isk gnerator after about 2 weeks of skill training.
enjoy the game
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Depends what you want to do the rattlesnake is a monster for a drone boat and is great at all types of pve and also a monster in pvp.
Dominix is also an amazing ship.
Sin is probibly end game thou as those fits tend to hit like 4b-7b for something that’s amazing at pvp, apparently can solo a carrier as well.
But if its just pve I would say rattle snake as it can do wormholes as well.
Eos is more for small gang fleet’s in my opinion but it is still an amazing ship it beats the ishtar for sure.
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The Ishtar uses 5 heavy drones.
There is no further ‘step up’ for drone based PvE as 5 heavy drones/sentries is the most you can get from drone ships. (Unless you consider carriers and supercarriers with fighters as a step up, but that gameplay will be much different).
The Ishtar, Eos, Dominix, Sin and since it got recentoy buffed: the Proteus all can field 5 bonused heavy drones, but they have different strengths and weaknesses. The Ishtar is the cheapest of them all and therefore most cost effective and most commonly used.
I don’t do PvE fighting much, but as I see it:
The Dominix would be a bigger slower alternative to the Ishtar. Benefit is that it has lower skill requirements (it’s no T2 ship), can be used by Alphas and can use a MJD. I think this ship can be used for sentry sniping well, haven’t tried though.
The Eos requires high skills and command burst skills to make optimal use, but can et a lot more hitpoints than the Ishtar. Also has a MJD to get out of sticky situations. You need a lot more SP and ISK, but does pretty much the same as the Ishtar.
The Sin is a really nice ship, all blops battleships are. But I wouldn’t use it for PvE as you’re basically using a very very expensive Dominix to do what a Dominix can do better. The only benefit of the Sin for PvE is that it can travel more quickly and safely with cloak and covert jump drive. For PvP it’s a very strong ship that can deal a lot of drone damage while the high slots are free to neut out enrmy capacitor, and worth it’s high price. I’d use this ship for PvP, not PvE.
The Proteus (with drone subsystem) is a T3 Cruiser and therefore very flexible when fitting because of multiple subsystem choices. Do you want a CovOps cloak? Can be done. Extra capacitor? Sure. Strong self repairs? Also an option. A lot of low slot modules? Yes, if you choose so.
I think the Proteus is closest to the Ishtar as another 5-heavy-drone cruiser, but a lot more flexible and a higher price tag.
The choice of ship depends on what you want to do with the ship.
The Ishtar is at the top of the PvE drone ratting progression, but it shares that top spot, so if you see another ship with bonuses that are useful for your situation and are willing to pay extra for that, there are options.
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I would argue that the rattle snake is 1 step up from the ishtar in pve only because it can solo run a c5 wormhole site where as an ishtar would die. But for everything else I agree with you 100%.
But I guess marauders take this spot way better anyways so there is no point.
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Fair enough, the Rattlesnake can get some very high survivability.
I guess I missed the Guristas options (Gila, Rattlesnake) - they’re nice as well. Require less skills, because they’re pirate ships and not T2 and they give a flat drone damage bonus instead of per level I think.
They’re expensive though and more of a drone/missile hybrids than pure drone boats.
Rattlesnake is definitely worth looking at.
Just keep in mind that more PvP minded players will also be looking at your Rattlesnake when you’re flying it, such big expensive targets will draw a lot more attention than another Ishtar.
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Not sure just curious and too lazy to check 
what about Gecko(s) mixed with other drones along or completely instead of only heavies?
Also there is that rare heavy drone which is even heavier than a heavy drone or something only a couple run blueprints were acquirable during some event not sure about their name but maybe they have some letters and numbers as designations or something.
Though these are not as much a step up from a skill perspective so maybe not really part of the discussion dunno.
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I think there are some rare and expensive drones you could try, including mutaplasmid-rolled drones, but I’ve personally never seen the point of using overly expensive drones as I lose them and the ships containing them regularly.
I stick to T2 drones.
But then again, I don’t do much PvE fighting.
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Sharing is caring, some people scan them down and make a nice profit off of them. I am too lazy for that scanning minigame myself but certainly read some people do that and also sometimes see people combat probe stuff as well.
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Hmm… thanks for all the comments. I think I will start re-purposing my character for PVP - because current PVE has really gotten boring. It does not seem that ship-change will change that, so … PVP it is.
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Can I suggest starting off your PVP career with cheaper ships - vexors, VNIs and ishtars are great for solo PVP since most people assume they’re PVE fit when they take fights against them.
The domi, proteus, sin, etc. are all fantastic ships but much more unwieldy than the cruiser hulls and people will bring much more force against them.
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I wouldn’t recommend Rattlesnake as the next step up in your drone-focused ship progression unless you have pretty good missile skills since the dps is split between the two weapon systems…
Domi might be a step down depending on your skills but it’s probably a better site runner with it’s better tank.
After that, for purely drone dps, go straight to a Minmatar or Gallente carrier.
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