After reading a lot the wikis and guides, I would need your experience and advices on possible hard counters.
Maybe I am wrong but getting blown up quite a lot in rifters I noticed two things :
Using a marginal difference between ships only works if you have the relevant skill points. Scram kiting a blaster Incursus with a Rifter is useless if the difference in skill points overcomes the difference in ships concerning range control and speed ( especially with the drawback of armor tanking).
A big part of pvp is knowing which fight to pick.
So I was thinking : since I don’t have the skills to soft counter, let’s hard counter.
As far I saw two fits :
Slasher like in this https://zkillboard.com/kill/54072920/. Speed is all you have but at least there is a slim chance of it working. Should work against arty firetails no ?
Neut fit : I didn’t find any fit ( or at least didn’t recognize them) but in theory fitting a ship with neut in high slot and dealing damages with drones should work against energy weapons ( aka blasters ) ? I was thinking about a neut breacher since people usually try to close the distance against it.
To sum up which are the fits that work well against a minority of fits, specialized pvp fits ?
Thanks in advance for your advices
PS : additional question : is there any hope with T1 weapons to deal enough dps to dent the enemy ship or do I have just have to wait for my skills and isk to afford T2 weapons ? You know the motto : only fly what you can afford to loose.
Depends very much on fit. To take this specific scenario as an example, I have an Arty Firetail with 2x Webber, so you won’t have any speed if I get hold of you
Neut breacher may not work well. You only have 2 drones for DPS which will take a while to kill anything. Fine if they gave no friends and local is quiet, but trouble if anything else.
Might I suggest a maulus? Double the drones with a little extra in the bay. A Tristan would be great but too many may run from you in the first place.
Ok firstly the Rifter is currently Trash. My beloved Rifter has lost almost all of its usefulness. Choosing to fly it in the current meta is hard more.
Now to the idea of counters. In solo combat if you fly this way you will always lose or you will get no fights. I would look to your actual skills before looking to skill points. Scram kiting is a very difficult thing to do.
If I can make one suggestion to you is find a corp that will tech you how to fly. Forums can have some good help but just finding a good fit will not get you the kills you want.
Don’t worry : i already found a great FW pvp corp where people spend their time either talking about fits either killing people but mostly killing people and talking fits at the same time.
I just thought interesting to launch a discussion about how you overcame odds with a special match ups or fitting against a particular pvp target. Niche / Asymmetrical pvp gameplay is the hardest to identify as a newbie.
Bait Nereus aren’t a new thing. Properly built they can passively recover shields at a rate sufficient to tank a decent PvP cruiser, let alone somebody’s neut Tristan. Throw on a nos to nibble at your opponent’s energy grid to keep web & scram powered and slow roll them with drones while waiting for friends to pile on in.
Though in that case the Tristan pilot screwed up because they should have killed the Nereus pilot’s drones to effectively defang it. Which would have forced a stalemate or escalation.
If you plan on fighting with hard counters, or fitting a ship to bait an enemy in a special way, i would recommend getting used to trying a few th things, as hard counter fits can perform very badly against general fits.
Try your best to determine what kind of prop they are using by their speed. You might miss some kills trying to get this Intel, but it will be worth it.
When you pre-align and wait to see their speed, take a glance at their hard points and see what weapon system they have. Commit them to memory.
A Tristan that has rails on it, for example, will most likely be after burner. If it is mwd, you can be sure it has a poor tank. There are some exceptions to this when expensive implants are involved. Avoid fights from pilots you know are high as a kite and have strange fits you can’t manage without implants with perfect fitting skills. Export their fits from any losses into a fitting manager from their killboard.
You will only be able to determine such details by experience that can only come by practice with fitting ships and flying them. Understanding a ship’s weaknesses is key to counter fitting and better flying. Know your enemy.
Good luck. Fly well.
Not always true, particularly in small gang or solo. I have a fw alt i trained just enough to fit the fit and barley use t2 rockets. Yet i regularly win mirror match ups in my kestrel. In eve while sp opens options experience is what wins fights
