Missions & Complexes

I'd love to hear anecdotes and advice from folks who have run this one in the past year or so.

Other than eve-survival, I haven't really seen a lot of recent anecdotes of folks running the Caldari epic arc.

I've been doing a ton of missions in my Golem lately, but it sounds like I should hop back in my Raven and fit it for some serious cruise + ranged action? I have no experience with turret-based battleships.

I've got a Buzzard I'm experienced handling, so hopefully the low / null-sec portions shouldn't be a huge deal, assuming I take the standard precautions. (Dot lan, route planning, etc.)

Any words of advice? Do you recommend some sort of passive tank, as it sounds like one or more missions are heavy neuting?

Thanks!

EDIT: If you'd like to recommend missile-based fits, my eve board skills might help guide suggestions?

I suggest you take Cruise Spec and Auto-Targetting Missiles to 4. If you want to fly that arc in a missile boat you'll need those more than Surgical Strike V.

I have a, uh, "friend" who did that arc not so long ago. Ships used were CNR and Buzz (for the null-sec bit). The Buzz actually got bubbled in the target system this time; not an issue, cloak, double-click, warp away once out of the bubble. Funnily enough, some time later(tm) a bit of "afk cloaking suckzorsss"-type smack started flying in local. [Feel free to insert a troll face right about here].

The last mission in my experience is best done with FoF missiles (hence get that to 4). Warp in and start flying towards the objective. As soon as the mob spawns turn around and start spamming FoFs. iirc the elite cruisers will initially be closest so if you're lucky you might actually take one out straight away. Otherwise they will be overtaken by the frigs. The FoFs will then target those (they always go for the closest target) which works in your favour because this way the pesky scrammers won't be an issue and you'll be able to warp out if the damage mounts up. Once the frigs are gone the FoFs will take out the elite cruisers. Once those are gone you can switch to regular cruises for the BSs.

Ofc if you can, bringing a friend helps immensely, as DMC said.

Whatever you do, don't warp to a structure that's closer to the mob for "better damage application." You'll be perma-jammed and perma-scrammed and with no way to take out the scrammers in a timely manner you'll be toast. Don't ask me how I know this.

Just fly your golem, I do and have no issues. Some of the missions have even frigs that can target you 200kms out and cause damage so they all have iwin buttons but 200kms with target painters and furies is easy. For the low sec mission get someone to scout or use another character on your account, I was in on of the channels, I think help or maybe mining, with a guy that did the first jump and was caught with smartbombs. When I was in the states playing all the time id use a 2nd account spare character to scout the whole way, nothing ruins your day like jumping/landing on a gate, or the in side of station into a smartbomb that didn't even load before your loading station (luckily hasn't happened to me because of precautions), but now I haven't done it because I moved to Africa, limited myself to 1 account doing mining because of operating over a 512 phone connection that can drop at any minute thanks to crappy service. haven't been on eve in 2 weeks now and took me 2 hours to load the forums, 30 mins just to do this 1 post.