Missions & Complexes

To be fair, Marauders like the Kronos have made L4s even more cake than before (R.I.P. web bonus, though). As far as Marauders are concerned, I'm not even sure there really is a "hardest mission"...maybe just "most dps" missions, a Kronos can easily overtank even these.

Bonus room for Angel Extravaganza
Blood Raider Blockade (if you let the nuet boats get close enough, they can be a bit dangerous)
Worlds Collide (though, you already said it was easy for you)
Enemies Abound 5 of 5 (unless you have anything better than drake dps and can't kill the spawns fast enough)
Gurista Assault (last room, if you happen to kill the trigger first and aggro the whole room)

Back when I started L4s in a poorly fit pre-hml nerf tengu, these were the ones I would get nervous about. Now, they're just simply the lucrative ones.

This is the most dangerous vanilla L4 mission in eve IMO.

http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=IntercepttheSaboteurs4gu

Intercept The Saboteurs for Guristas Pirates

If you **** up the triggers and are unlucky with getting extra ECM spawned in the pocket there is a very good chance you could lose your ship.

One thing I've been doing a lot more now since getting a Kronos, and using that MWD. Is I snipe much more more from around 80k or so. If a mission has me warping right in on top of a mob of rats, I get outta dodge ASAP jump out 100k. Snipe the little devils that will scram, jam and otherwise ruin my day before they get all offensive on my ass. Then take out the rest. NEVER, and I mean EVER shoot at more than one cluster of rats, so to draw complete room aggro. I shoot one of the smallest rats, wait to see who's attention I got, then target them once they exposed themselves, and rinse and repeat. The Marauders bastion mode enables not only a super tank, but also longer range on your weapons. Sometimes if I feel I'm safe to do so, I will use blasters, but rails have been doing just fine for me, for the most part. Sure I may kill a little slower, but I feel much safer keeping those little buggers out of scram, jam range.

Good point, although I find drones in many missions can be troublesome. I do like your point though, I haven't flown a Hyperion in a loooong time. Might be time I add one to my fleet.



In addition: I am sort of embarrassed to admit, I used to be primarily a neut Domi pilot, but I've evolved over the years, and now favor guns. Might be time to revisit my past a bit, and think differently about things. Excellent post up above. Right to the point, and a good suggestion.

Thanks... twice

I like my rattle, 800-900 dps out to 100km depending on which drone type i use, 1000 dps out to 60km with gardes, those numbers are with precision cruise, not rage, 100% selectable damage type unless I'm using gardes for more raw dps. It also has around 133k EHP omnitanked (with just two invulns) and 19k raw shields, and can easily tank up harder or fit more sebos/eccm to counter npc ewar. I did the serpentis blockade last night, my 200km lock range was down to about 20km, but with sentry drone autoaggro and the MJD in my back pocket, I hardly ever needed to pulse the or MJD a second time. The fact its not stacked with faction damage mods also makes it a less appealing gank target.

Depends a bit on the fitting. The Kronos before the changes slightly outperformed the Hype(even after the massive buff in the summer where it got the extra low, extra high, more drones and extra fitting) as 1200 dps rail/sentry platform with better cap stability for mwding around, better tracking and extra high slots for more drone links(what gave it enough punch to outperform a maxed out gank fitted navy domi at 100km from a friend sitting next to me in a angel Blockade). Also it did far better at close than any other rail/sentry platform bar the Vindicator, thx to the ability to deal nearly full rail/sentry dps against 90% webed targets or pick off a frig you missed at 18km with a overheated web, even with rails.

Now it is just a BS with training wheels, for people that want to ignore any kind of mechanic in L4s.

As for challenging missions, I found this one ok, doing it blind and with a omni tank last week: http://eve-survival.org/wikka.php?wakka=Evolution4 ( 3 slot armor tanked navy Apoc with mwd and manual piloting to range/transversal tank the 15 BS in the 2. pocket, that I spawned by shooting scram frigs fist like I always do ). I think the only ones that did really push it where Kidnappers strike 10/10 in a old school laser Prophecy(with quite low SP back then) or The Search Party 2/2 in a mwd rail Kronos with a 300 dps omni tank(but I think they took it out of the game, not only because people did rage about losing her CNRs but also it did give hilarious loot -> up to mach BPC if you where lucky since it had a guaranteed angel faction BS in the 2. pocked).

I've got the skills and ship covered, but its not being familiar with each mission that loses me the most time. I don't ever see the kind of numbers people claim for optimized mission running.

Dread Pirate Scarlet is the only remotely challenging standard L4 mission out there due to the random nature of the damage and ewar you face. Well, until you get a Vargur, then there are no challenging missions any more. What mission you are on is not important, order targets by range, F1, repeat until no more red crosses, triggers be damned. Bastion mode is just silly.

For a change I just did STOP THE THIEF with my Ishtar, and that was actually sort of fun. Maybe it's time to give the Kronos a rest sometimes, lol.

There are few missions which are part of L4 Epic Arcs in which you can easily loose your ships...
Not sure what are the names of exact missions, but some were tough... Don't think they will be very difficult for the new marauder tho.