Ships & Modules

Well that extra dps might mean the difference between being able to break your targets tank or kill him before his friends show up. With a cloaky hunting ship you can choose your engagements so it's far safer. Let me put it this way, if something has chewed through 120k EHP on your cloaky hunter, it's unlikely another 25k is going to save you.

Also I'm not sure about your midslots, but most people run a MWD/Scram/Web on their cloaky Proteus. However personally I'd go for a cap booster, the Proteus is incredibly susceptible to cap warfare and even a single medium neut can turn you into a useless brick. The targets you'll be hunting usually won't need to be webbed to be held down. Both are definitely viable though.

We could give better advice if you actually posted your entire fit rather than just a few stats.

If you're up to ganking and in a covert prot, go for the third magstab. 60 (~15%) additional dps help a lot more than being able to tank even more return fire.

Care to share your drony cloaky Proteus fit?

Original Post updated.

Hey man, I do Cloaky WH ganks in my Legion, and let me share two important things I've learned from experience:

1) Fit Medium Targeting Systems Stabilizer II for your rigs. They are cheap tech 2 rigs that significantly reduce your decloak targeting timer. This is important because most WH gank targets are in small, fast frigs. Without the rigs and at Cloaking 4 you are looking at some 5 second decloak targeting delay, which is enough time for an attentive player to warp out.

2) Increase your scan resolution values, be it from sensor boosters or whatever your means are. Even if the targeting delay is reduced to 3 seconds at Cloaking 5 + rigs, things could still be alerted and warp out and if you can't lock quick enough.

I can't tell you how many prey have slipped away because of these two reasons, which is also why I run a Legion now. The added mid slots for sensor boosters are nice.

I realize you may be looking at reduced EHP values, but really, in a cloaky gank you should be picking targets you know you can kill anyway.

Hey,

The lock time really does help. I used to decloak before I warp in to attack, but most people that are in WH's know how to use the Dscan, which we all use extensively, and smarter players are pre-aligned. To guarantee success I pretty much only decloak when I'm within gun and scram range.

Bumping absolutely works, but it's not very easy to do so in Strategic Cruiser, especially one as plated as OP's fittings. But i do bump them upon decloaking very close so it helps a little if they're pre-aligned.

Yesterday I lost an Astero kill because the pilot was attentive, and cloaks up as soon as my Legion was decloaked, well before my 3 second lock timer was over and land scram on him. Plus him going 2000m/s+ with MWD was hard for me to bump or chase under cloak. It just depends on who your target is and how careful of a player he is.

As far as fittings go, yes neutrons are weird on a Legion but Legion's cloaky subsystem bonuses are for laser cap reduction only. I think I prefer the Neutron gank power.

And it's not that I WANT TO hunt frigates in these. It's just most of the time the visitors that do come into these WH's are mostly data/relic raiders in Cov Ops, and then the very occasional sleeper ratters. For these targets the legion is just the one-size-fits-all ganker with dps and some tank. I don't use it for all ganks. For example, when I see the ninja WH gas miners in ventures with their bonus warp strength I would switch into my Interdictor and bubble the exit. Some times the residents want to fight, so I'll bring my Dramiel or Confessor to catch their fast tackles or bombers and what not.

Unless OP want to gank Battleships in big boy WH's like C4s or above, then I could see why his Prot fit would be better, but in C3s and below you're gonna find more Cov ops scanners, ninja gas miners, and cruisers or battlecruisers running anoms, which you really don't need the 80k+ EHP.

Really what it boils down to is your method of hunting. Find and refine a method that works for you, and the ships and its fittings are just tools that compliment your methods. Someone on the forum once said "ships are just really big ammunition" and I think he was right. The most important thing is to cloak up, be patient, and do proper surveillance of your enemies before you engage.

As for my legion fitting I'll post it later. At work so I don't wanna pull up EFT and give the numbers.

o7

Personally, I fly the Proteus as a counter-gank weapon in lowsec. That is, whenever my corpmates report something shiney like a Gila, Orthrus, Vagabond, etc ripping up one of our frigate fleets, I tend to drop a Proteus-shaped anvil on their heads. This is probably the riskiest way to fly one, but every Prote hull I've flown has earned its own weight in faction/dead space loot and tears.

That being said, I'll pitch in my two cents for free:

I'd advise against trading armor rigs for targeting rigs. If you can't bump them or catch them inside of the 6 second decloak timer then they're likely to turn the hunter into the prey by kiting you or getting under your guns. Also, ganking frigates in a cruiser is ill-advised in the first place; use the Astero for that. I caught and killed a Garmur in one the other night...

Using one of those precious mid slots for a cap booster is valid, but in my experience a single medium neutralizer won't cap you out near soon enough to save most victims. I use a scram/ab/mwd setup, and most of the single-neut cruisers I've caught had me to 50% cap when they died. Double neuts will definitely mess you up, so it's always a gamble.

The glory of the Strategic Cruiser is it's flexibility. I always keep multiple fits saved all using the same rigs with all the appropriate modules in hangar so that I can refit on the fly. Even the subsystems change out instantly with a click of the fitting management page, so I can go from cloaky gank machine to fleet railgun platform in just a few seconds.

The hardest part of Cov-Ops in the Proteus is locking that scram in time. Recently I caught an Orthrus looting the wrecks of my corpmates. His prop was on the instant I decloaked and I missed the bump, but still locked the scram before he got away. Very very high risk engagement, but I scooped my ships entire value from his wreck. More often than not, though, you have to be EXTREMELY patient and willing to let targets go when the conditions aren't quite right.

Good luck, happy hunting!