All the “low tank fits” are using the MJD to immediately get to ~100km range to the NPCs, where they basically can’t hit you any more. At least not for any significant amount of damage. There you enter bastion, clear the field with Javelin Torpedoes while they approach (Jav Torps have a pretty good application and with those fits also like 100km Range, so that fits perfectly).
After you have cleared the wave your MJD cooldown is done and you can either jump in preferred range for any new spawn or towards an Acceleration Gate for the next room. Whatever distance is still needed to cover can be quickly done with a few cycles of the MWD.
Next room or spawn, just repeat: MJD to longrange, enter Bastion, grind everything down with JavTorps, exit Bastion, reposition.
Tbh, it works quite convenient, but a high-burst tank Brawling fit still prints more money (at a much higher risk tho…). But you need an X-Large or Deadspace Large Shield Booster to survive that in the harder missions.
If you activate Bastion you can’t move and thus can’t do MJD jumps. But you can, for example, accelerate, activate Bastion and drift a short distance. The Bastion itself is pretty important because it gives you resists, rate of fire increasing dps by 100% and range(pretty important on torps). You don’t have to activate it right away and can definitely move around to get into whatever position you want to start in, but with those bonuses it is really a good idea to not waste much time before going into Bastion.
In terms of proper positioning you need to have a bit of experience with the particularities of a given mission and find the best spots to stay in or to move to. Your main concern is doing as much dps as possible while managing incoming damage. This means that NPC ships should be 50km and closer so you don’t need to shoot lower dps Javelin torps, but not so close that suddenly multiple spawns can all shoot you at the same time for longer periods of time - although that depends on how much damage they can do. Usually most of the smaller NPC ships come closer than 50 km, while some battleships might try to orbit between 50-60km(depends on faction), which you can handle by adjusting scripts on the guidance computers.
If spawns are few and far away you could want to use MJD to land near farther spawn, so that everything is always in reach of your high dps missile variant. Since MJD was nerfed back to 3 minute cooldown this is not always worth it. You will do some judging yourself whether it is needed to jump around in an offensive manner like that.
Sometimes it also wise to jump away from enemies - IE during Damsel in Distress just MJD through the structures, ignore all the NPCs and just kill the right structure to blitz the mission.
It was rightfully mentioned that my initial fit suggestion is a bit light on tank, so I looked again - and lo and behold - the b-type variant of that shield booster is actually even cheaper. You fit it and get 420-something tank for uniform resists, which is fine for general L4 missioning, considering your damage starts at 1,4k dps for cruisers and larger. Everything should be dead before you get into trouble as long as you don’t fall asleep on the keyboard.
As for target painter(s). Personally, I would maybe stomach one(1) because you then can land all of the damage on the cruisers with non-rage torps, indeed. Whether that would change a two-shot into a one-hit is a matter of experimentation. Rage torps with more than a single painter seem worth it and interesting only with those really good implants - t2 fit with 2,6k to 2,8k fully applied dps at 60 km right into the specific resist hole is pretty bonkers.
My suggested fit was designed as easy to use to demonstrate that Marauders are really head and shoulders above other options for L4s even with a cheap, very simple fit.
Please share your RNI fit.
Not really. A small group of eight Purifiers could easily take out a Golem with an unplugged EM hole before CONCORD kicks in. At work, so no PYFA, but assuming this other fitting site has roughly the right game values:
A single rage torpedo volley will deal 6379 alpha with max skills.
Let’s go complete overkill on tank, just to make a point. Bastion+DC+two overheated multispectrums.
11,000 shield at 63.6% EM resist gives 30,219 eHP.
8375 armor at 70.3% EM resist gives 28,198 eHP.
9625 hull at 71.9% EM resist gives 34,252 eHP.
Total eHP is 93,669. Divide that by alpha and you get 14.68 volleys to kill the Golem. The first volley is free, and overheated bombers have a refire rate just shy of seven seconds.
Eight bombers will two shot a Golem from max HP to zero in seven seconds. And this is assuming the maximum tank a Golem would reasonable fit for PvE mission running. Which is honestly way more than anyone would actually fit for such an activity given you’d be sacrificing application/range to achieve such.
So?
Thats 8 Purifers @ around 60M each (aka 480M) and 8 Chars that get a security hit that you need to offset with tags. What is your point? It will still cost more than 500M to bring the Golem down and you can expect loot of like 50M at best if it’s purely T2/Meta4 fitted. It’s a huge waste of money and time, which means you most likely won’t be ganked in that ship. That was exactly what I was saying. I am running missions in such a “cheap fit” Marauder and never was targeted in years, they rather blow off the X-Type Deadspace fitted guy next to me, which is totally fine.
Thanks for the insight, the managing on cooldowns with 3 minute MJD and the 1 minute Bastion will sure need some time to get used to.
I would also like to know the RNI fit if you are willing
[Raven Navy Issue, L4]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
IFFA Compact Damage Control
Large Micro Jump Drive
Gist X-Type Large Shield Booster
100MN Afterburner II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Multispectrum Shield Hardener II
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Precision Script
Missile Guidance Computer II, Missile Precision Script
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Cruise Missile Launcher II, Scourge Precision Cruise Missile
Large Warhead Flare Catalyst II
Large Warhead Flare Catalyst II
Large EM Shield Reinforcer II
Caldari Navy Hornet x5
Wasp II x3
You basically enter the mission room and if it is one where you have to expect high Damage, MJD out to a 100km and maw down everything with Cruise Missiles. No matter which ones you use, Precision, Faction or Fury, you will always be able to fight up to your full lock-range of 112km with them.
Once there you can activate the Afterburner to get some speed, absolutely nothing will hit you there, except for a few stray missiles. But don’t even think you’d need to activate the tank for them, you have 50.000eHP on shield alone and it passively regenerates. The room will be clear before you’d even need to activate the shield booster in most cases. And 200M for the Gist X-Type is pretty cheap. If you want to stay even cheaper, a Clarity Ward Enduring Shieldbooster in Combination with a Y-S8 Compact Afterburner will also fit.
In any scenario you will deal more damage than the Typhoon (hint: you cannot count Drone damage to full potential because with kiting fits the Drones will fly a lot, which means they will shoot less of the time. And if they get aggro, you need to call them back, then pull them out again, losing damage potential again), you will need to activate your active tank a LOT less because your have twice the passive buffer and it regenerates all the time when you don’t get hit. And last but not least you have an MJD for either repositioning or reaching far out spawns or acceleration gates faster. Or escape if a squad of gankers warp into your site, just push the MJD and you are out.
It is just a very convenient and very safe ship to fly. Not saying the Typhoon is bad, it offers a great performance for it’s price tag. But it definitely isn’t better than a RNI.
I’m in a similar spot, but have been back in game for a bit - hit me up in game, I’d love to have another in the corp to work the new content with.
Sounds like you might have destroyed a trigger or two and got overwhelmed. Not a problem in Marauders. I’d recommend a Rattlesnake and or a Golem. I fly a Golem but have just bought a Rattlesnake again just for a bit of variety.
Rail Kronos is an absolute beast on L4s. Pulse Paladin, too.
The Rattlesnake is no longer a particularly good option for Level 4 missions. There are better alternatives available these days, although there still aren’t many strong choices if you want to stick with pure missile ships. I use several ships for this purpose: a static MJD fit and more mobile AB- or MWD-based fits for missions that require you to travel to beacons, acceleration gates, and other objectives. The MJD cooldown is simply too long for that kind of gameplay.
In your case, I would build two specialized fits: a MJD cruise-missile RNI (a sniper with more damage and damage application modules) and a cheap TII AB/MWD torpedo Golem (even a cap strong brawler with good tanking will hit harder than anything else). Each fit would be optimized for its specific mission type.
Gun Marauders still run circles around missiles Marauders due to instant damage application and the ability to blap frigates.
I am not sure in which mission type a Cruise RNI would be better than a TorpGolem, given the fact that a properly fitted TorpGolem can dish out Javelin Torps up to ~110 km. And not even counted that you can fit a Golem with 500MN MWD to get to gates quickly + MJD to reposition if you want it. Right now I cannot imagine a single scenario where a Cruise Sniper RNI would have any advantage over a TorpGolem.
There are anywhere from a few to a large variety of mission-running approaches, depending on what exactly you want to achieve. My previous response to the OP was based on her available assets, options, and preferred progression path. I think part of the misunderstanding comes from the use of conjunctions like “or” and “and.” In the end, ship choice mostly depends on your goals and your preferred playstyle: LP farming, bounty farming, reputation grinding, loot and salvage farming, gank-averse missioning, system security considerations, mission speedrunning, low-attention gameplay, and so on. I’m not going to dive deeply into every playstyle and corresponding mission type here — that would require several separate threads. I’ll just touch on a few examples.
One major mistake is comparing Marauders directly to standard battleships. They operate in completely different leagues. At the same time, there’s also a huge difference between Marauders during their prime and the current post-nerf versions. If I had to describe modern Marauders in one word, it would be: “clunky.”
I would only use an AB Golem if fitting constraints forced me to. Otherwise, MWD is almost always the better option. Sure, you can fit a Golem with an MWD, MJD, torpedoes, missile range boosters, and a “meh” active tank. You can MJD 100 km away, end up with targets sitting 90–125 km out, then MWD back into torpedo range over and over again — but why?
If you want a “do a little bit of everything” setup, just use cruise missiles instead of Javelin torpedoes. You’ll get nearly the same damage projection, around 200 km range, and roughly 300 extra DPS — around 1,800 DPS total without drones. A MWD Rage Torpedo Golem is excellent for missions like “The Damsel in Distress”, “Gone Berserk”, “Extravaganza”, “Sansha Blockade”, “Invasion” etc. However, it performs much worse in missions like “Buzz Kill” or against Serpentis and Guristas, where you deal with many elite frigates and cruisers, strong sensor dampening, ECM jamming, distant targets, and close-range tacklers.
Would you really recommend @Tai_Lin to build an MWD torpedo RNI? There are many nuances involved, including the exact issue the OP mentioned: getting tackled in a poorly tanked ship.
A cheap, buffer-tanked MJD RNI (700M ISK) can deliver:
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900–950 missile DPS and high alpha
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Fury missile application roughly comparable to Javelin torpedoes (~300 m)
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Precision missile application close to 100 m
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110k–150k omni EHP tank
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Sub-7-second align time
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5–5.5 AU/s warp speed
Speed and Agility
I use a similar Raven fit — essentially a weaker and cheaper version of the RNI — whenever I want to clear simpler missions quickly, such as “The Duo”, “Zazzmatazz” thing, silo-destruction missions, get document objectives, or prisoner retrievals. I see no reason to bring a fat-ass Golem to kill a single battleship and/or a few cruisers, then sit in Bastion mode doing nothing for 30 seconds afterward. Or do that without Bastion when the NPC are far away with much lower dps. I use frigates for such missions also. Some of those missions are also annoyingly far away depending on the constellation. “The Duo,” for example, constantly sends me four or five jumps out.
Gank Averse and DC Risks
I also use nano battleships like the Raven whenever there’s increased ganker activity nearby. Looking at killboards, I regularly see 1–1.2B ISK Marauders getting destroyed. Likewise, I avoid Marauders and expensive fits whenever the internet or server connection is unstable. I’ve disconnected several times while stuck in Bastion mode, and my ships only survived because of strong tanks and auto-cycling boosters — one of the cases where cap-stable fits are genuinely valuable.
Gameplay
For low-attention gameplay, I use passive sniper fits. I can run missions on one screen while only half-watching them, with my main focus on another monitor — whether that’s in-game events, exploration, hauling or movies, forums, emails. I can even speedrun “The Damsel in Distress” this way. Therefore, no need to use the ships like a T3 Cruiser in a top DED complex.
System Security
For most NPC null-sec Level 4 missions, I would use an MJD nano RNI.
Multipurpose and Scalability
For Level 5 missions, I’d use a MWD/MJD torpedo Golem and one or two MJD cruise ships such as the RNI, Raven, or Praxis. You can complete almost every Level 5 mission with those ships alone. Carriers sux there.
Yo don’t need to do that, you can facetank every L4 with a cheap ‘meh tank’ and still have MWD, MJD, 110km range and Painters for application. Thats my point, if one can fly a Golem, I see no scenario where one would use a RNI instead. Cruise Missile skills are a complete waste these days for missionrunning.
And a TorpGolem clears ‘Buzz Kill’ in half the time a Cruise RNI does 
I wonder whether you can both speedrun and tank all waves of “The Damsel in Distress” at once in a “meh” tank. Some Amarr and Gallente Level 4 Epic Arc missions can even blow up a Marauder with a “nice” tank, so saying “every” is a bit of an overstatement. But that’s not even the main point here. I see no reason to use a Golem and play with Painters in some cheap and easy mission also. I already shared some of my views above, so I won’t repeat them.
What do you mean? I’m not comparing those ships specifically for the “Buzz Kill” mission. I wrote that torp missile ships perform much worse in that mission than in the previously mentioned ones, like “Gone Berserk,” etc. That’s exactly why it makes sense to use something different if you’re aiming for hyper-capitalistic efficiency results.
I run that mission in a Vargur, by the way
Bastion, blow up the Pleasure Hub, end Bastion. Warp out. Where is the problem?
No they can’t. I run all of them in a Marauder with barely any tank and no module is higher rated then Meta4 or T2. You just kill the NPCs way faster than they can break even a loltank.
If the mission is doable in a Frig (Recon, Cargo Delivery), sure, use it. I don’t debate that. But there is no single mission where the use of a Cruise Missile RNI would outperform a Golem.
You gave that mission as example where Torp Ships would perform badly. Well, compared to a Cruise RNI, the TorpGolem still performs exceptionally better. And of course, if you can use a Vargur for it, use a Vargur. But thats not the Point.
I really don’t know what you are debating over, if you can name a single mission where a Cruise RNI can achieve a better runtime than a Torpgolem, just name it. If not, you can simply agree that there is absolutely no reason to use a Cruise RNI if you have a Golem available. 
If you can’t tank any L4 in a Marauder - you don’t have the right fit. You should be able to get away with a medium shield booster or armor repairer.
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