Warfare & Tactics

Personally, I've always seen them both as valid tactics, each requiring it's own skill-set and each having strengths and weaknesses you need to play to. However, I've run into a number of players who seem to think that kiting is for cowards and brawling is the only honorable way to pvp. I never hear the reverse though, that brawling is for morons and kiting is the only reasonable way to pvp.

Why the hate for kiting?

"All is fair in love and war."

I tend to prefer "brawling"... getting right into the enemy's face and saying "**** you" while my ship and weapons melt around me. There is something almost... cathartic... about it. All that fear and aggression rolled into one because you KNOW one of you is not going to make it out alive. Sadly... my wallet says that I cannot indulge as much as I'd want to in this activity.

With "kiting"... it has it's place for those that prefer more "surgical" tactics. Get in, do what you can, get out when you need to, get back in when you are ready. Only recently have I seriously begun to engage in "kiting" and I find it does have its uses.

I guess what bothers me about kiting is that a brawler doesn't have many ways to counter a kiter... especially Gallente ships as they have trouble dictating range to "brawl" effectively in their sluggish armor-tanked ships. Amarr ships at least have lasers, with their loner engagement envelope, to counter

On second thought... I don't want to turn this into a flame-war about how some things need to be nerfed/buffed. Let's just keep this as a campy, "I prefer this tactic because..." discussion.

People don't like to lose.

If a brawler loses to a kiter it's not because he committed to a fight he shouldn't have but it's because kiting is lame. At least, that's what he said. He now tries to argue kiting is lame, just to have you fight him again in a brawling ship.

If he now wins, he has just won the fight not by better tactics or ships or fitting, but because he managed to convince you to go away from your successful tactic to a less successful one.

That's what honor is about: trying to convince people to do stupid things without a good reason.

Brawling is typically weak on tactics as it's usually just a matter of whom ever has the best DPS + tank which simply comes into a numbers game. There are of course piloting skills involved but that's usually only up to the point of getting someone into scram range once you have that it's typically just orbit at X distance F1, f2, f3 ect..ect..

Kiting on the other hand often requires a lot of manual flying specially when you are dealing with more than one target. It's not just a simple set orbit and watch target melt unless you are in something really fast and agile. IMO kiting is a much more pilot skill intensive way to fight because if your just one of those retards that always set orbit and forgets then u will either get webbed/scrammed by a competent pilot or you will lose a lot of targets from guys that know how to get away.

Both have their place but kiting will typically allow you to win more fights with a lot less losses.

What a lot of you have said is kind of what I was thinking it might be. Being successfully kited is kind of like being blue-balled, but you still lose your ship.



I lol'd at this. A pretty apt description, in a lot of cases.

Brawling is fairly simple and straight forward and can be a lot of fun...it's just easier to do. Most PvPers start with this method and graduate to kiting as its much more effective.

i am not sure why us kiters get all the hate. Oh yeah I do its because we win...brawlers are jelly and just resort to insults to compensate. Its kind of sad, but I suppose you can't blame them for being upset...losing does that to people.

In all seriousness tho both are valid tactics and while I find kiting much more useful, brawling has its place in certain situations.

Kiting is great if you dont want to loose ships but i has alot of drawbacks/risks. The biggest one is embarassment (aka lol you lost your slicer/artywolf to a rifter)
the thing to remember when your kiting especially in the smaller boats like frigs is that hp is no indication of how close a fight was. If im in a brawl setup and I get killed by a kiter i judge the quality of the fight by how close i was to landing a scram/web. Still it can be rather boring/frustrating for an oponent which is why i personally avoid kiting outside of scram range in a freindly 1v1 or in areas that i fight in often. Its worth losing a few brawl ships if it keeps people coming back for more.

pft, kiting is so boring and lame. Even if you win.


No thanks.

That's exactly my point... there's a perception that kiting "isn't fair", but let's flip that around. You land on top of him, get web/scram right away. Let's face it; that guy is boned if anything lands a web/scram on him. Would you concede that it wasn't a fair fight for him since he didn't have a chance to pull range?

I fly both, I love brawling when drunk but when i know I'll be taking on over top odds I'll kite every time.

My fave ship is a brawler but the one I head to if I want to live and kill is a kiter.



Both are dangerous, you know in a kiting boat that if you get scrammed you are ****** and the stress levels at keeping awareness on multiple ships closing speed and vectors is far far higher than a brawler in the same situation. . However, a brawler engages and is now waiting for the blob knowing if it arrives before target dies that its a dead ship.