Been flying a Dominix for awhile using sentires. I have t2 everything except for guns which I haven’t concentrated on skill up much since my sentries kill everything. I’m almost done with Battleship 5. With my limited understanding of ships, it looked like moving to a Rattlesnake would be a good upgrade since I use sentries so much, but i have next to no missile skills.
So my quesiton, would a Rattlesnake be a sensible upgrade? If not, which direction should I go with this playstyle?
Rattlesnake
Im not a professional concerning advanced large hulls, but if you’re almost done with Gallente Battleship V, you’ll have access to strong subcapital hulls. Marauders are the last word in PVE because of all the utility highslots (and their base higher damage plus T2 resistance), but sadly the Kronos is a Megathron hull, so you won’t use as much Drones as you will with blasters/railguns. You might be interested in getting the Sin, as it’s the T2 variant of Dominix, but Black Ops, in my opinion, are better for PVP than PVE. Black Ops also have very poor base resists, and the Sin only have 4 turrets hardpoints.
Ah, I forgot to add it, but the last step of drone boats are of course super carriers (and their capital variants). Fighters being really advanced drones, you can try the “joys” of carrier ratting in nullsec space. Nyx and Hel (with Thanatos and Nodhoggur) get a damage bonus to Heavy Fighters (for supercarrier, carriers get a bonus to Light Fighters) : +10 % bonus to Fighter Damage (5% for carriers).
I suppose you are using that ship for PvE, not for PvP. I doubt you can find any other drone boat, that would offer you same gameplay.
There are 4 battle ships with bonuses for drones out there (apart from Dominix itself). But since they all lack the unique drone range bonus Dominix have, you will have to relay on guns / missiles as your sniper damage dealer. With Dominix there is no problem to get drone damage optimal beyond 100 km for all sentry drones (except garde). You can get optimal for wardens on any other battlehips somewhere between 80-90 km but that will cost you lot of slots… So it make sense, IMHO, to keep you drones shooting targets, that are closer, than 70 km from you. So you have two choices: you go semi-brawle, with working range between 50-70 km from NPC or you still LMJD 100 + km from them and have missiles (guns will not have optimal to shoot that far with any reasonable ammunition type) working on larger / slower trargets while you sentries aniihilate all small and quick targets, burning toward you with 0 transversal. Only Rattlesnake and Armageddon can fit launchers. But Armageddon does not have any related bonuses.
So - yes, it is still Rattlesnake. RHML or cruise missile launcher is a subject of discussion, because you can get over 100 km even with RHML. But you will find very soon, that using sentries to finish targets almost killed by your missiles is much more effective, than use launchers to do all the job… Which will force you to use Rattlesnake in 60-70 km range from NPC any whay.
And in that range you can use Dominix Navy Issue or Nestor to apply about 1000 DPS of instant damage at 50-80 km range. Tachyon fited Nestor offer a little but more range, 425 mm Rail Dominix - slightly more damage… But both will lack tank, required to sit still next to you drones.
After all those troubles you will most probably come to what most mission runners use now:
Rattlesnake for whole room clear
Machariel for brawler mission blitz
Cheap sniper fit Dominix for missions in low sec
Some players use maraduers, but that solution is ISK/skill intense, so it is a different story.
Ok thanks all. I might start concentrating more on gunnery now and change my playstyle up a bit just to freshen everything up. More options too of course training into gunnery and/or missiles.
You Could also Considder Going DOWN in hull size to the “ISHTAR”
Both Domi and ishtar are drone boats, however unlike the Dominix where you are just sitting at range,
with the ishtar, you want to be in a constant Orbit around something in the mission as you will speed/Sig tank and also be using Heavy drones or 2 Geko’s, 2 mediums and 1 light drone for a High DPS flight of drones.
This tyope of playstyle can also make running L4 missions a lot more Fun that the boring sit at range type of thing.
I moved from Dominix to Gila and trained medium drones, light Missiles, gallente cruisers and caldari cruisers to 5. Didn’t regret any of that ever.
Yeah, what he said. =)
L4s in a Marauder are mind-numbingly easy. You warp in, Siege up, and kill indiscriminately b/c no matter how many triggers you hit, they have no hope of taking you down.
L4s in a HAC or T3 are far more exciting b/c you have to actually interact with the mission.
So yeah, I’d go with an Ishtar if you like drones. Or consider a Proteus as well.
A Vindicator can make short work of many missions and faster than a Dominix.
It’s also a good way to go from L4 mission running into Incursions.
EVE is not only about spaceships, but also about what you want to do with them.
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