Can it make sense to put a full rack of neutralizers on a Pilgrim?
The Curse has an awkward slot arrangement for armor tanking.
The Ashimmu is… well it’s fine but last time I checked in April Pilgrims with a Cloak seemed to more commonly chose for neuting that Ashimmus. So there seems to be a reason Pilgrims are favored. A possible strike against the Ashimmu I’m told is that if one shows up on grid, people will strop firing at logi and combat BCs and shoot that while if they see a Pilgrim or Curse people will keep shooting at logi and BCs unless they’re afraid of a cyno they might shoot the Pilgrim.
A step down the Dragoon is great with small neuts, but it can’t match the range of the Pilgrim’s medium ones. So that sounds bad.
To summarize what we have going for the Pilgrim:
Curse has is hard to armor tank.
Ashimmu gets primaried when it arrives on grid with a bunch of combat BCs
Dragoon too little PG to use medium neuts
Low sec groups seem to use cloaky Pilgrims more than Ashimmu or Armor Curse
So if cloaky Pilgrim is a great neutboat, then 4 neuts must be better than 3 if you don’t need the cloak right? All he needs to do is undock, warp to 0 at tactical and start shutting down capacitor.
On the other hand using a Pilgrim without a covert ops cloak screams “wrong” to me. That can’t ever be the right choice.
Armor Curse is great; quad-TD it for max fun. The point of the Pilgrim is the cloak/cyno moreso than cap warfare.
If you want cruiser neuts Curse will always be the choice. You can buffer fit instead of MAAR if you want logi on it (don’t be scared of ACR rigs). If you want a cheaper more logi-friendly medium neut platform use a bricked Maller.
The pilgrim is fine as a neut boat, it’s just a trade off of whether you lose some neut range for a covops cloak. The top solo pilgrim pilot uses shield kiting in it to good effect Pilgrim | Sinistra Nanaki | Killmail | zKillboard
Using it without a cloak loses it’s greatest strength.
Pilgrim sacrifices neuting power for diversity (i.e. cloaky scout, cyno).
For example, it shines with its TDs when cynoing on hostile Marauder.
If you don’t need these roles to be filled, maybe it’s worth to use different boat.
I played with cheap cruiser hulls which can host FIVE medium neuts and found good-looking variants:
5 med neuts Maller
5med neuts Augoror Navy Issue (Maller on steroids)
1hvy4med neuts Maller (as a meme fit but fun, sacrifices too mych tank IMO)
5med neuts Legio (with DUAL cap batteries) is absolutely amazing!
Last one (Legio) can be considered cheap if using T2 modules (slightly more than 600mils).
The pilgrim makes a fine neuting ship that can decloak, disable, and destroy some ships. My legion died to one that decloaked on me in a low sec site. The tracking disruptor made my lasers shoot in all directions. The neuts destroyed my tank and weapons shortly. I sat there and died to his drones quite quickly.
