I’m looking for a better option than the Praxis for Lv4 mission running. Currently I have pretty good Drone and Large Rail skills. Finished off the magic 14 and all. Just looking for something to speed up runs. Any suggestions?
The primary problem with rails is that their “effective” combat range is about the end of their “optimal” with long range ammunitions, unless your ship is bonused for either tracking (Megathron, Talos) or optimal (Rokh, Naga). The Praxis is neither, and among the battleships, I think the Praxis also has the poorest sensors, which means you need Signal Amplifiers or Sensor Boosters in order to be able to even target ships in the effective combat distance.
Railgun damage application is so poor that in fact you will need to rely on ewar even when you have a railgun bonused ship. Here’s a lengthy explanation of your options to improve application, with some charts:
Since you’re into drones, I’d recommend you to look into the Gallente line, unless you want to snipe hard, in which case it’s Caldari as Caldari are range bonused
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Yikes! haha ok, thanks! I’m not very far into rails, so I can easily switch to other weapon systems.
Well, decided since I already have Gallente BS 5, I’ll stick with something there for now. Either Domi or Megathron
If you’ve got Gallente BS V then I would suggest going with a Domi. After that skill into the ISKtar and you’ll be doing 950 drone dps with a speed tank good enough for level 4’s and higher level anomalies which is basically the pinnacle of sub-cap drone boats.
Drone ship progression is a bit weird because there isn’t a drone Marauder:
Tristan - Vexor - Myrmidon - Domi - Ishtar - Rattlesnake? - Carrier - Supercarrier
If you feel like cross training into another weapons system and want to fill the gap between Isktar and Carrier, Rattlesnake is probably your best option. You will exceed 1000 dps with mediocre missile skills and will have much better tank than either a Domi or Ishtar can provide.
Large railgun are basically worse than medium. Don’t use them.
A kronos with large blasters, and tracking computers+range rigs, is much better, even if staying in null most of the time.
You can go a couple of different routes with what you have, but they will generally be very similar since there’s only a few ways to use rails effectively.
The obvious answer is an MJD Sentry Dominix with as many rails as you can sneak into the highs, but while they’re popular, I don’t think they’re actually good. You get most of your DPS out of Wardens with a bit of sniper back up from Rails (or you can forego the rails and just have silly range on the sentries, but that’s always been of questionable use IMHO).
The other option is a Hyperion doing much the same thing, but with the focus on the rails and a full flight of wardens as secondary damage. You get a bit more damage but not as much range, though it’s much of a muchness, and both the Domi and the Hype are both incredibly ugly.
The Megathron can do the same, but the smaller 100m3 bandwidth and only 4 mids does limit it a little and the Hyperion is just better in most circumstances, especially since the tracking bonus on the mega is pretty worthless at the ranges you’re fighting at with a rail boat.
Even discounting that you’ve got Gal BS V and probably don’t want that to go to waste, the Rokh is a terrible option since it doesn’t have a damage bonus, and is outshone by the Naga in basically every possible way bar tank, and again, if you’re sniping from range, tank is generally a distant afterthought at best.
I don’t know that either of these will speed your runs up much tbh, IIRC, they both end up putting out like 500-550 dps which is … underwhelming. Not to mention that something like a Naga will do basically exactly the same job for 1/3rd the cost.
I would suggest going blaster-fit Hyperion (or Navy Domi if you’re made of ISK), since there should be a LOT of overlap between a rail-focused character and what a blaster fit wants, where you can punch your numbers up to 1300+ dps, though while it IS faster, it’s not twice as fast since you’ve still got travel time to get into range on many missions, and you’re going to eat a bunch of damage getting into range until you learn how to fly a blaster boat properly. A supported full flight of heavies is also going to punch pretty hard for support too, not as much as most Ishtars to be fair, but then, most Ishtars don’t have 1000 dps of blaster damage to back their drones up with either.
But then, you asked about rails, so, if that’s what you want, then yeah, while the others here have maybe overstated the tracking issues a little, large rails aren’t in a great spot. As much as it hurts to even think about putting rails on a Kronos, it will fix SOME of the issues that plague large rails, but it’s a combination of wasting a perfectly good Kronos hull and a band-aid on a bleeding artery - you’d be much better served by simply putting blasters on it and switching to null if you want to shoot stuff at >30km.
Well, a NavyDominix with Rails+Drones can also do almost 1000 DPS up to like 50km and hits really good if you keep flying away from the NPCs in a straight line. They will follow you, so tracking is not a real issue. You don’t have much tank, but honestly with keeping range and this firepower you don’t need much tank anyway. I used that before I had the second BS-skill for the Rattle and it performed pretty good.
However, that ship alone costs like 700M and with fitting and some implants you are well over a billion. You can get a T2 fitted Marauder or a blingy Ishtar for this money which do a better job.
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