Warfare & Tactics

Since I got some nice feedback on my Falcon question, I would like to do the same for the T3 cruisers.

What are weak spots of the T3 Cruisers (some may depend on fitting) and how would you kill it in a 1vs1 :

Legion : Cap if you use lasers. Neut it.
Proteus : .....
Loki : ......
Tengu : ....

In a 1vs1 you'll have to contend with a ship that probably has a 1000+dps local tank and on the order of 600 dps attack, maybe a bit more. As far as I know all of the T3's can be set up along those lines and that's what you often see in wormholes (which is where my experience with lies).

Of those, the tengu is the best test case. The ones you see in wormholes generally make 700-odd dps at almost any range with a >1000dps tank. The disadvantage to that is that they have a little bit of a hard time hitting small targets so a sig-radius tanked HAC or even light-tackle can hold it down for long enough for another ship to get onto it. I prefer to use a HAC to tackle them, a pilgrim to turn off the tank and a falcon to turn off the dps. With this combination, any T3 you find solo (or even in pairs) in a wh will die.

No subcap ship in the game can really make enough raw dps to overwhelm the active tank of a tengu so In a 1vs1 your only hope of winning against it (or most T3's) is to turn off the local rep. Without a good neut and the ability to (a) keep up (b) tank about 600dps yourself and (c) keep the neut running for as long as necessary then you'll probably end up in a stalemate. Configure your ship for neut/web and active rep and even with 200dps you'll be able to kill it once you've drained the cap.

I don't go around killing T3's solo, let alone with T1 ships, but if I had to pick one ship that I thought might have a fighting chance of doing it then I would pick the Myrmidon. You can passively fit it to tank over 500dps and it has the grid to fit the neccessary neut/nos combination plus a big enough drone bay to use large drones or even sentries for dps.

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What about the Vindicator?

90% bonused web, facemelting 1200+ dps, and capable of a very effective tank.

I also see plenty of Tengu kills done by Cynabals, specially 100mn ones.

A buddy of mine just lost one. It does 1100 dps tank and 670dps attack without implants. With implants he told me a number but I haven't put it in the fitting tool to verify so I won't repeat it here. Granted that character has a lot of skills and it was not a cheap fit, so not every tengu you encounter will be that hard of a nut but those are the stats he was getting, none the less.

As for the 100mn ab thing... Yeah.... if someone puts on the "run like a scared rabbit" module and then proceeds to run like a scared rabbit then you're not going to catch them very easily. I would suggest if you're seeing T3's fit like that that it's time to look for another target that won't be such a waste of time. For that reason it's more fun to go after them in WH's because they're usually fit for tank, not speed, so you have a good chance of getting a tackle on one. YYMV.

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Legion - Definitely neut it, if it doesn't have a cap booster it will die

Proteus - I would also recommend neuting a proteus because they rarely have cap boosters and given the cap needed to run those guns, a curse in your gang will give it a hard time. (imo the proteus borders on OP with the 175k EHP and 700 or do DPS)

Tengu - speed tank, it rarely ever has drones so speed is your friend. If its active tank bring many many neuts to overcome the inevitable capacitor regeneration matrix sub it will have, and possible cap booster.

Saw one tengu that has a Tempest running 2 heavy neuts on it for about 5 minutes or so and could still pulse its booster enough to tank the enemy gang.

Loki - I would say ECM because neuts will only work if its armor tanked, given the low cap stability on an armor tank with active hardeners, ive noticed that it also tends to have a low sensor strength.


If you want to win a gunfight bring a bigger gun, you want to solo a T3 bring a bigger T3.

Will it be able to hit hard when you are in a short orbit around it ?

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And yes, bringing in enough dps helps too :). Just want to see how things would go in a smaller gang fight.


http://calm.killmail.org/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12485232

If a T3 is active Tanking, Alpha is probably your best bet, a Cynabal with 720s or a Loki could be good choices, or of course, a sniper Curse

100MN AB tengu is a beast to kill, got one that ran in excess of 3 bil about a month ago (only the rigs were so cheap as to be T2) and we could only keep him on field with an inty until we got people shipped up into some damage with a Curse and Rapier on field and it still nearly killed the Curse.

The Legion may be somewhat vulnerable to neuting but so are the rest of them. That being said the 3 bil Tengu was still a threat to the Curse as it's weapons require no cap. Incidentally we didn't bust out any falcons because 7 of us are all wailing away on a neuted and webbed Tengu, if he kills us all and gets out he just wanted it more and earned it.

I would believe so. Even if a single 90% web might be borderline effective two webs should hold even a Dramiel without problem.

Also a passive tanked tengu has almost the sig of a battleship.

I have theorycrafted a Cynabal fit that should be able to kill 100mn passive tanked Tengus while sig tanking the Tengu's dps by itself using a 100mn ab instead of mwd. Havent tested it but there's an idea for investigation.

I also theorycrafted a Vigilant fit that with tracking disruption, 750 dps and 51k tank should kill a Loki but again no chance yet to test it.

A T3 pilot who gets caught by a Vindicator is a very bad pilot, a very, very bad pilot. Webs don't do much when you can't apply them.

If this thread assumes 1v1 then the only answer is another T3 because a T3 can always disengage from everything it can't beat, as a general rule. There are of course the times when you catch one with a fit that you have a counter for but for the purpose of the thread there's little point in discussing those situations, an example would be if you find a Blaster Proteus when you're flying a Cynabal. Piloting mistakes can naturally change everything, as can shitfits.

You also have the AT prizes, I'd say they're the only ships that compare to T3s for solo situations but I'll gracefully let Garmon elaborate on that because I've never even bothered to EVEFit those things.

If it is about a 1v1 honor duel that starts at 0 with the pilots having locks then there's a lot of stuff that could win. Battleships with neuts and webs can outlast them as long as they can keep them in range and the same goes for say, a Myrmidon.

As for the OP, the "weak spots" depends entirely on the fitting, more so with T3s than with any other ship as you have a wide variety of options when you fit one. Neuting a Legion is cool and all that, if he has boosters he couldn't give a **** and will laugh as he kills you.

If the discussion is not about a pure 1v1 then uh, it doesn't really matter, bring a lot of Rifters, fit webs and troll him with ECM.