Excuse me if I sound ignorant, but I’m not super experienced with this stuff. What are the advantages of flying a Rook over a Falcon or Scorpion? How is the approach to flying it in fleet different from the other two mentioned. Seems most kills on zKillboard are in fleets; does it fail solo or are there interesting solo fits? Any “non traditional” ways of fitting one?
Like all combat recons, it’s meant to hide in FW ‘plexes, either solo or in a gang, as a support ship that can lay down a bit of damage as well.
There are a few non-ECM fits that field a decent shield tank, but on its own it still doesn’t excel in any way over other choices.
If you’re flying a Rook, you’re flying it in scenarios where the D-scan immunity improves your engageability but for which the element of surprise is not absolutely crucial to your victory. Hence the FW ‘plex, where they only see you when its too late (as they’re warping in to what they though was an empty site).
Not every ship in the game is designed to be viable in both fleet and solo scenarios. The Rook is a fleet support ship for when your fleet needs more mobility than a Scorpion can handle, doesn’t need a covert cyno, and could benefit from some extra damage.
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1 - meta does not exist.
2 - rook has no place in not existing system.
3 - as any combat recon its an ewar support meant to provide your fleet with some ewar while being able to deal some damage as well.
As for advantages: Falcon is cloacky ewar, it appears after fight has started and fucks things up for enemy (or die in 5 secs, or cyno, or w/e) . Scorpion is much slower, so it has no place in cruiser sized gang.
Hmm… I have some ideas to remedy that…
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Not a pvper myself but I used the Rook in WH for PVE sites, I’m sure that the more combat capable rook as opposed to a falcon could make more targets viable to engage, with similar to same element of surprise in wormhole space.
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Ewww…
Thats going to be horribly slow, and if you think that the d-scan immunity also means you will not be caught, think again. People will see the wrecks on d-scan, and their scouts may spot your rook passing through WHs or undocking from citadels.
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Yes I was aware of the wreck giving me away, altough I used the rook to actually ECM the sleepers to make it easier, with an omni ecm ready for a eventual lone player uncloaking on top of me.
I stayed in low-classes signatures and haven’t been bothered once, got lucky I guess.
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Rooks are not that common in large scale null fleets. They are expensive compared to cheap T1/T2 EWAR frigs. So even in a battleship fleet, EWAR frigs are faster, cheaper, and can even be pressed into service as a scout.
ECM itself sees use in disrupting Entosis ops, but overall other types of EWAR work better en masse. Painters make for insta-blap missile doctrines, Sensor Damps can completely cripple a kiting fleet or force logi in close (and in range).
The Rook isn’t a bad ship, but it’s over shadowed by several others, especially considering cost vs EWAR frigs. I personally like the Rook, and have lost several over the years. But I don’t see any use for it in null fleets over a Griffin or Kitsune.
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You can do solo fits with the Rook, with 1-2 jammers and a HAM brawling style fit you can jam out your opponent while laying out decent DPS, it’s pretty slow and expensive however so there are generally more efficient ships for the role like the Cerberus. Can be good to solo/bait people in medium plexes with in FW and can catch some people out who are not prepared for it.
The Rook is actually a great anti-support ship even in an ECM role. RLMLs + the drones it has is enough to threaten a lot of enemy tackle ships or ewar ships, it has high sensor strength and lock range too so it’s fantastic at countering enemy damps/ecm thats get too close to you.
IF you just want to bring the ECM the Falcon is probably better given the utility it provides with cloak. However the Rook brings decent damage and can fill the anti-support role that I listed above, so it can be good in some smaller gangs where you feel the extra DPS is nice to have as it can overlap into DPS/AS roles as mentioned if your fleet is lacking either or is less than 5 people.
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Combat recons really do shine when in WH space, at least for defenders. If your roaming the falcon is a better choice due to the cloak, but it doesn’t mean that you couldn’t use a rook.
While you can do it by yourself; Abit slightly harder and taking more time, using a combat recon to grab a site runner is great. If you have a cloaky on field you use them as a warp in and due to d-scan immune you have a higher chance of nabbing them.
The Curse is nice for pve due to drone bonue but thats getting of topic
we used the rook as a HAM smallgang ship in wormholes with dual ancil to hunt for careless miners etc. it not appearing on d-scan helps a lot because half the people out there dont actually use scouts and rather rely on d-scan as their safety net. in general you dont see it often though especially not in fleets, ewarfrigs are just cheaper and just as effective and scorps are actually euipped with a tank if it needs to stay on grid. as many T2 ships it fits a specific niche
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Some have used the rook to run losec combat sites.
Tldr Falcon can not stay in grid as long and the scorpion should never be fit in a way that is comparable to the two.
Rooks work great solo and in fleets where the ecm is secondary. Using only one or two ecm then fitting the rest for tank and dps is incredibly powerful in med sized fleets and arguably superior in small fleets.
The scorpion is built for the ecm burst if you are fitting normal ecm then in every situation you are better off with any other ecm ship
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Well not every situation,we used Scorpions to help defend the 9-4 Keepstar because they have enough jams to perma jam 1.5 supers worth of fighters and have a passable tank for an E-WAR ship while being low SP and relatively cheap.
can say the same for the black bird and tack on cheaper and easier to move around
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Scorpions have more tank than Blackbirds so they can survive a super looking at it aggressively.
It’s a nice smartbomb platform, js
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no the black birds have much more sustainability as they can ping off and back when the fighters start heading its way a scorp just sits there and gets alphed. it can also lock fighters much faster to jam them before they get shots off
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