My Loot, Your Tears

So after being back in EVE for a couple weeks, mostly bearing it up for standing to access pretty locators all over the place, I finally decided that enough was enough, and I needed to do something other than mission. I wanted to kill something.

I had been missioning for Gallente for the past couple hours in Dodixie, and the agent I was using kept sending me to Botane. So I decided to start my shenanigans there. I had a Cyclone I’d been dying to get a kill with and figured why not. I’ll use it and see what I can do.

I started scanning with an alt, and warping to hits with the ‘clone. Yup, that’s right. Looting in a gank ship. It’s not quite as bad as you might think. All in all I’ve been shot about as many times flying a hurricane with a salvager as flying a vigil. Most of my hits though turned out to be duds. One or two had really long ass burns I didn’t feel like doing over multiple rooms, even with an ab.

Others had people just finishing and warping out, and yet others had my favorite type of bear – the instablue bear that abandons everything the moment you arrive.

About 20 minutes after I started scanning, I got an odd hit. Brutix, Prophecy, and Raven. Huh. Groups always feel more cocky and therefore shooty, so off I went. Jumped into the first room with the Cyclone and started looting and salvaging, with both BC’s and the Raven sitting random ranges.

After maybe the third wreck, the Prophecy yellowboxed me. Ah, good sign. The Brutix followed suit and so did the Raven. I started to feel like I was in the line of fire of a firing squad.

I just kept looting, minding my business, and soon enough the Prophecy opened fire. Woot. In what was probably a bad call, I rushed over to him to give him some hail as the Brutix now opened fire as well. Brutixes usually have crappier tanks, but hey, it was the heat of the moment and I had already started burning, so I went with it.

I stuck my neuts and everything I had on the Proph, and he tanked well. The Brutix then got into range and started pounding my shields with Antimatter, which wasn’t fun. To make matters worse, the Raven, now 40km off, was pelting me with cruise missiles. I went into armor as the Prophecy went into structure. I just wanted a kill, and then to bugger off and maybe return.

Then, my damage suddenly all but stopped. I wondered why… My neuts had turned off too… Awwww… Stupid me.. I had left overheat on and promptly burned out all my highs. With my armor draining away and the Proph regaining his, I took my defeat and warped off at 2% armor.

But, this was FAR from over. I called in Ninja Dojo for assistance and Urian Kandor responded. He had no RR available save for one rep drone on his cane. But, he was a jump out, and perhaps they’d try to shoot him too, which would give me a little breathing room.

I docked in station to repair my poor modules and stock up on some more hail with a 15 minute agro timer running on Xisevals, and 8 minutes on his corp. I undocked, and told Urian Kandor to jump in system with me. We then went to his mission, and went through the first gate. If they came in, they’d end up right on us, which is where I wanted them.

I told Urian  to keep watching dscan, as was I. After about 5 minutes, Urian announced that Xisevals was now in system once again, and shortly thereafter, his friends were too. I looked up at my timer – 14 minutes on Xisevals, and corp aggro had gone. Perfect. Urian had stolen, and therefore had corp aggro, and I hoped we could bait them all into shooting us, because if they weren’t all dogpiled on me at once I could handle the raven, and then them.

However we didn’t know what they were bringing, and I told Urian to get to around 30km away in case they had brought some points. I was prepared for a 1v1 as his corpies could not interfere. But they could all kill Xisevals, so I didn’t want him where they’d land till we knew what was up.

Seconds later they all landed on dscan. Proph, Brut, Raven. Kay…. Generally when this happens, the bear has either assumed you’ve lost aggro, or has come back with what he THINKS is a PVP fit, which usually means a point and little else. I was betting on the first one.

I was right. They all ran in together, apparently oblivious to us being there. I was confused for a moment as the Raven wasn’t red to me, but about 5 seconds later he went red and started blinking, exactly as he should :)

I immediately locked him up and started everything going. The two BC’s locked me but they couldn’t do a thing but watch their Raven die. I love it when that happens. Wensley over at Rifter Drifter has said many times that he enjoys getting a kill while the enemy’s friends are forced to watch, helpless. I think I have that same enjoyment.

Urian reported aggro from one of the BC’s, but I never saw shots, so I dunno what happened there, but I was merrily tearing into the Raven, who was tanking me quite well. I kept having to redirect my drones to his as they were slowly killing me. What was more insulting was that they were hobgoblin I’s. He just kept spitting them out. I have no idea where he stuffed them all, but it felt like he brought out 50 of the damn things one at a time.

However, I finally got through them all, and directed my drones and everything I had on him. I overheated at his peak, careful this time to not push my guns too far, and he hit armor as I hit 10% shields, at that point I overheated my invuln and forgot about it, which ended up burning out….. But Xisevals lost his Raven a few seconds before that, dropping a crappy 6.1 million ISK worth of modules, for a 100m loss.

It’s okay though. Xisevals  was apparently confused as to what I’d done, which made up for the drops. He didn’t seem to understand how the timers worked, and considered Urian to be some funky shenanigans played by me, thinking he had played a role in the kill, while in reality, he really only kept the BC’s busy for me, though I wish the Raven had shot him, so he could have gotten in on the kill as well.

Here’s the chatlog from local:

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:04 ] Captain Charismatic > I think

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:12 ] xisevals > why he could agress me?

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:25 ] Captain Charismatic > What?

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:43 ] xisevals > it doesn't make sence

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:56 ] Captain Charismatic > Sure it does

[ 2011.07.24 23:35:59 ] Captain Charismatic > I extended aggro

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:02 ] Captain Charismatic > past your corp aggro

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:08 ] Captain Charismatic > your friends couldn't do fuck all

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:10 ] Captain Charismatic > you died

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:13 ] xisevals > yea but that doesn't give you killright on me

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:28 ] WeeDv2 > Myrmidon

[ 2011.07.24 23:36:41 ] xisevals > anyway petition

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:02 ] Urian Kandor > Ha

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:03 ] xisevals > also nobody in fleet was capable of fifghting

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:10 ] Urian Kandor > Learn2EvE

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:18 ] xisevals > explain me the mechanic then

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:27 ] Urian Kandor > Go read the Eve Online MOTD

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:37 ] xisevals > lol

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:41 ] LT Alter > lol, xisevals.  If you shot him after he took the can and he waited 15min after he took the can but not 15min after you shot him he has aggro on you and your corp lost the aggro from the can.

[ 2011.07.24 23:37:58 ] Urian Kandor > Ronin you gunna shoot me or what?

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:02 ] xisevals > well a corp mate took from him, defended him, we waited 15 min

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:05 ] xisevals > we went back

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:17 ] xisevals > and urian which wasn't inviolved in the first fight starts shooting me

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:23 ] Urian Kandor > I never shot you

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:24 ] Urian Kandor > But ok

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:24 ] xisevals > after the 15 min

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:37 ] Urian Kandor > CHeck the killmaill my friend. i am not on it

[ 2011.07.24 23:38:41 ] xisevals > ow hang on

[ 2011.07.24 23:39:05 ] xisevals > ow the same guy

[ 2011.07.24 23:39:13 ] xisevals > altho timer was gone for me

[ 2011.07.24 23:39:13 ] Urian Kandor > Wha?

 

Yes, he petitioned me cause he doesn’t understand aggro extension.

So what did I learn from this… Well, first, pick the weaker tank of a group. Even if it means waiting a few moments for them to engage, I need to not be so quick on the trigger. The Proph was doing NO damage at the range I was at before I burned at him, and I could easily have gotten under the Brutix, who was most likely rail fit (I never saw him blasting, and he had no AB). Second… L2OVERHEAT. Damn. I failed pretty hardcore burning out my entire rack of highs, and then a mid later. I need to practice and figure out how much things can actually take before I need to stop. I also need to pay attention to them after I overheat, which I’m not doing enough.

All in all though it was a great fight, I honestly prefer fights like this that take some engineering to accomplish rather than the dry bait/switch that nets you billions in faction mods. Yes, richness is nice, but knowing you outsmarted your opponent(s) is always a better feeling, in my opinion.

I’ve vowed to myself to start getting more kills. I want my stats to be a little better than they are. There are a couple small changes coming around that should help me do that, as well.

Anyway, I like blowing up smaller, more fun kills into posts like these. Tell me if you guys like this length too. My fraps should be fixed now, before it was crashing my clients every time I started it. So expect some good footage from me in the future. Fly safe :)

This entry was posted on July 26, 2011 at 3:17 PM by captain and is filed under Uncategorized.