Bad choices.
Not hardly. Railgun Kronos is GOAT. It can consistently clear missions as fast as my torp Golem, sometimes faster, if the mission has a lot of smaller targets. Unless you’re rats are all close, within 40km, AC Vargur is going to lose to the railguns and arties. Arties, especially 1400mm’s suffer big time with their poor tracking. 1200mm are better but lose range and dps, but the faster cycle time and better tracking kind of make up for it. I’m still kinda torn between the two. The raw damage of the 1400mm arties is pretty damn good, though. If you’re grouping your arties, don’t. You need to stagger them one by one to keep the damage flowing or you’ll be waiting on cycle times too much. In all honesty, all of their completion times are pretty close to each other, except for outlier missions that favor or a kind of bad for something. Like the rogue drone mission with the three bunkers. Torps/missiles are really slow in that one because of all the cruiser/frigate sized rats. Turrets walk all over missiles in that mission.
I use a cruise golem tbvh, rattlesnake with sentries in null.
Arties are kind of pointless unless your one shotting stuff and neither arties or rails track well enough up close; ive seen many use different fits for missions and cruise golem pwns all of them… unless everything s close which is, lets be honest, rare as fk and on the few missions it does happen.. probably not even worth running.
15 years of experience has taught me that but yall do you 
Please stop repeating nonsense. Arties are worse for L4 missions compared to basically any other weapon system. No one should use an Arty-Vargur for running missions. ACs beat Arties by a mile.
Even a goddamn Cruise Missile Golem (which also sucks badly and is probably one of the worst Marauders you can fly in L4 missions) will probalby beat an Arty Vargur by quite a margin.
cruise golem actually pwns especially in missions like blockade, no other marauder can hit as far and do as much damage.
When i have missioned with others every other ship falls behind simply because of range. You cant damage what you cant hit. Of course its fair to say mjd or mwd into range.. takes time… ive completed mission in golem whilst others still burning to targets.
Its a funny old world, people dont like cruise missiles and still somehow think mass dps wins when it doesnt even hit.
I even have cruise missiles on my rattlesnake in null but i do use that as a sniper mission runner, with sentries it also runs missions quite fast and at range away from the warp in.
AC’s i would say come second close as it does have some range but you know… rat resists… specific damage types…
I have no idea why anyone would use blasters or arties in missions, arties dont track well and blasters well… always out of range… that much so ive completed the mission many times around some fool with blasters hasnt even got into range…
Oh please stop man, this pile of nonsense makes my eyes bleed. Only noobs who don’t know better or lazy people who don’t care for making money use CMs on a Golem.
Even a Torp Golem wipes the floor with a CM Golem any time in missions.
The Marauder Ranking for L4 is pretty much this:
- Pulse Paladin beats everything by a fair margin
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. - AC Vargur / Blaster Kronos / Rail Kronos are pretty close to each other, one can pick the style he prefers
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. - Beam Paladin
- Torp Golem, can catch up to the others by using a HG Hydra Set
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. - CM Golem quite a bit behind
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. - Arty Vargur glorious last place
Try a torp Golem with max skills and rigs/implants to extend their range. It just gets really old counting your shots… 20 years experience.
And a pulse Paladin in the number 1 slot? Lmfao. That whole comment honestly makes me believe you don’t have much experience with the other marauders and their weapons. Railgun Kronos is honestly the GOAT right now and if you have tracking issues, use Javelin ammo and kill frigates before they get under your guns. But let me know how fast you 100% complete Angel Extravaganza with that pulse Paladin.
you are a noob but everyone has to start somewhere so dont worry about it.
its gets what, 30k? 40k? most rats spawn outside that.
ive flown with another using a torp golem, i killed most of the rats at range, he almost died up close in the blockade.
Probably didnt help that i pop all the triggers cus blitz..
Think we are getting off topic here lol
I have All Marauders on V and own all of them, each one in a different mission location. All of them with an own clone to maximize performance. And I am doing L4 running for the last 15 years or so, for some time quite excessively.
Pulse Pala is #1 absolutely no doubt. The insane projection of Scorch Ammo, combined with the sheer firepower of Conflag and the ability to insta-switch between both just gives it an edge over all competition.
The only way to beat it with the other marauders is to hand-pick missions where the opponents have the highest resistances against EM/Therm. Which is probably why you talked about an Angel Extravaganza?
On average, the Pulse Pala simply beats everything, especially when flying in Amarr Space.
Because you have more than enough missions where lots of Battleships spawn below 40 or you can MJD right on top of them and obliterate them with Conflag, then MJD to the next clump. Which deals significantly more damage than a Rail Kronos even with Javelin. While still doing comparable damage on range with the huge optimal range of Scorch, where the Rails hit well, no doubt, but still fire in Falloff (which means they deal less damage than the tooltip says).
You need to turn bastion on btw, you get 50k-90k depending on ammo (without range mods), which is comparable to ACs and Pulse.
I think you’re talking about switching between marauders for specific rats. So if you’re using the pulse Paladin for rats specifically weak to em/therm, sure, the Paladin is great. I still prefer my tach’s, though. Have you actually ever put your fits into Pyfa, added actual rat damage profiles (using stats gathered from everef.net) and looked at their actual dps based on target resists, range, speed and size? And just for reference, I have all marauder skills maxed. Marauders, racial BS skills, weapon spec skills, etc… and I also use clones specific to those marauders.
Just my imo, but the dmg projection of railguns/arties/beams outweighs the benefits of better tracking and sometimes better “damage on paper” dps from using blasters/auto’s/pulses. I wish Null and Barrage had the range of Scorch, but scorch is also almost entirely em dmg think, so it’s useless vs anything that isn’t em weak and most of the laser weak missions I get, the rats all start off pretty damn far. So you end up using long range ammo 90% of the time doing less damage than if you had just used high dmg ammo in long range guns.
Railguns are great, especially after the buffs they received, what, like a year ago? 5 second reload and ammo switching, great tracking (especially on tracking bonused ships and with Javelin ammo). They also have really good range, especially on a Kronos. I run 2x tracking speeds scripts and never look back.
Arties biggest problem is the ungodly rate of fire. I stagger all 4 guns just to keep the damage flowing, but when you get graze quality shots or even misses, that rof really makes them suffer. Then add their generally poor tracking speed and ammo with split dmg types doing a lot of their dmg to secondary weaknesses or worse, it makes for a much slower mission time, like having to use thermal against Guristas. It does the job, sure, but not very great. I think beams probably do just as well while firing half em damage. Kinetic high dmg ammo would help, but really, reducing artie’s rof a little bit would probably be an overall bigger help.
With my torp Golem, I can reach like 62km I think with Rage torps and then I think it’s like 114km with Javelin torps. They just might get there by the next day XD I using 2x missile velocity rigs on the golem to help with that.
No I am not.
The Pulse Paladin clears an Angel Extravangaza (including Bonus Room) - despite Angels are the WORST opponents for a Paladin for their high EM/therm resistances and their low signatures/high speed ships compared to other NPCs - in pretty much the exact time that a Railgun Kronos can achieve. I have ran this exact mission. Today! In both ships. Similar fits (3 T2 Damage mods each, 5% clones, no drugs, same skills). And guess what: Both run times are within 10 seconds of each other, which is within statistical difference from good/bad shots and piloting mistakes.
DESPITE the fact that it’s the worst possible scenario for the Paladin and the Kronos does like half of it’s damage in the Kin spectrum, where Angel NPCs have rather low resistance.
And if the Pala can pull that off, you can bet that it’s just pulling away in any other scenario. Which is exactly what my experience and mission runtimes say:
- In Amarr Space where most Opponents are EM/Therm weak, it’s pretty much untouchable for any other Marauder. The Difference in performance isn’t even funny.
- In all other spaces it performs on par with the others. Sometimes a Railgun Kronos can grab a few seconds on the Pala, sometimes not. In Angel Space sometimes the Vargur can pull away a bit, sometimes not (Drone Missions).
And this makes it overall the fastest Marauder when it comes to printing money. You can even easily test it by running against NPCs that have omniresists, like Sleepers: We are doing C3, C4, C5 sites with Marauders and while in C3 (due to very close spawns and lots of small ships) Vargur and (Blaster)Kronos can keep up, in C4 and C5 the Pala just outperforms all others again. By quite a margin.
What exactly is your 100% clear time on AE with your pulse paladin?
That question cannot be answered easily. If I’d say “25 minutes!” you still wouldn’t know if that would be a good or a bad time if you don’t know from what moment I begun counting and at which moment I stopped counting the time. Or what kind of fit I used. It’s quite a difference between a T2-fitted budget Marauder without implants or a minimum tank 4-abyssalrolled-factiondamagemod blingmarauder with a max-performance clone.
The point isn’t the time. The point is that I did run both ships under the exact same circumstances. Same character (who has all skills max for all Marauders), same implants, same amount of damagemods, same price for the fits etc… and the Pala is still on Par with the Railgun Kronos, even while being in it’s worst imaginable environment.
I have not run the Paladin at all through AE and timed it yet. So I will. I’ll also run your pulses and start gathering times on those. And I always start my timer when I land in the first pocket of rats, not on the first gate and then stop it when the last rat dies. So basically start timing when I start firing and stop timing when I stop firing (through all pockets, I don’t stop my timer warping through gates).
I used to do that too in the beginning. But then I realized that this wouldn’t be a fair comparison of ships if you cut-off the last bastion cycle in a marauder this way. Because if there would be still 30 seconds left in bastion, you can’t leave the mission even when all NPCs are dead. With a Rattlesnake or Machariel you could. Or when shooting the last few NPCs out of bastion in a Marauder, depending on how much you could decimate the remaining group in the last cycle.
So, just as a suggestion if you want to start tracking your times “professionally”: the better way to count mission timings is from “Warpin to warpout”. Means from the moment you land in the first pocket to the moment you initialize warp out of the mission.
Also in AE, for a correct timing it has to be clear how to run Pocket #3. Most people I know only kill the single Battleship and move on, since the handful of turrets neither give meaningful loot or bounty. And most do that without entering Bastion there in a marauder. However, if “full clear” counts only if you shoot all those turrets as well, another Bastion cycle would be needed in this pocket. You can only compare runs if both ships solve #3 in the same way.
Same goes for Missions like Worlds Collide. Does “full clear” mean "opening one gate (A), do the pocket #2A and the final pocket #3? Or does “full clear” mean "opening BOTH gates (A+B), then doing #2A, #3 and then going back again for #2B? Most people I know just pick a faction to run against and only do this path. Only those who want maximum loot clear 2B as well. But it’s important for the timing which variant is done.
Full clear means everything dead. I’ll cycle bastion once in pocket three and have everything dead by the end of that cycle. And I also don’t stop at “warp out” because it rules out sometimes forgetting to cut off bastion or getting it timed perfectly or nearly perfect. I’m not worried about being fair to any faction ships because they just can’t compare regardless.
Also, I tried a few missions with pulse lasers and I think I’ll stick with the tachs. About to start AE now actually, so we’ll see how it goes.
These are some of my best times for AE btw, they’re time from the start of firing to the death of the last rat. 100% all rats dead, including bonus room.
Golem Torps - 27 minutes
Golem Cruise - 30.5 minutes
Kronos 425mm - 27 minutes
Vargur 1400mm - 28 minutes
Vargur 1200mm - 29 minutes
Paladin Tachs - 31 minutes