Missions & Complexes

I think the Rattlesnake could be a very good "definitive" ship for mission running if you are a "clean the whole room" kind of mission runner (if you instead prefer rushing missions to maximize ISK per hour ratio, then Tengu is the only real way you have to go)

Bear in mind that a rattlesnake could be your lvl 4 mission runner only provided that you:
- did not choose the gunnery path
- have patience (needs good skills in drones, missiles and shield tanking, plus lvl 4 gallente BS)
- plan to save quite some ISK (it's quite costly, even if it is by far the less priced pirate faction ship)
- do not plan to rush every mission you can rush, just dropping the ones you can't

Rattlesnake has three big advantages (provided that you do not commit the common error to overtank it):

FIRST: it's a "natural tank" (great recharge and resist) and this means two things:
1) you are not in need to warp out fast when you mess up with aggro and/or have some nasty frigate scrambling on you;
2) you can fit it for gank without having as a result a "glass cannon" (with its 6 lowslots, a rattlesnake lets you fit it for a decent gank - three BCU - and still you have three slots free for utility devices)

SECOND: it has enough midslots to fit a very solid passive or active tank + TWO target painters (very important to make quick work of cruisers)

THIRD: drones + cruise missiles (thech II or faction) are a very handy wapon mix: easy to use to snipe down a lot of NPC before they event start hitting you seriously + you can change damage type with missiles. For friggies you just let them buzzing around you while you hit the bigger things (a good tank helps once more here) then you just switch to light drones and they will make quick work of those annoying bees.

The only real disadvantage is the Rattler is slow as hell, this means that when you have to travel in missions, you waste a lot of time (well, you can fit an afterburner but personally I'd keep that midslot for something else).

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before you can afford a rattler (or in case you do not like that "kind" of mission style), I'd suggest you to take the good old "caldari missileboat BS progression", that is
- raven (average active tank, enough gank, low price)
- navy scorp (good active or passive tank, bad gank, lower price than navy raven)
- navy raven (enough active tank, really good gank, quite costly price)

the alternative is:
wanna go cheap, quite safe but awfully slooooow in missioning: Drake
wanna rush through mission, spending some ISK, having a lot of fun but risking to cry a lot if you commit some error with aggro: Tengu
wanna spend a lot of ISK, stay enough safe and being able to loot and salvage during the missions: torp Golem with three target painters and active pulse tank

Omg, here we are with te usual "my A is better than your B" forum PVPer.

Tengu and Rattlesnake are different kind of ships suitable for different kind of missions: My main uses both and I know both ships have their pro and conts.

But, you see: the point of giving an advice, in my opinion, is stressing what a ship can do better and what can do worse not to determine which ship "is absolutely the best lvl 4 mission runner".

Rattlesnake is a good choice, But you need T2 Sentrys! :P

I have run many level 4 with a standard raven It gets way easier once you get T2 missiles/torps.

Make sure you have all your missile support skills up though, if you try to mission in a raven to soon before getting the right skills you will lose many ships. A well fit well skilled raven can burn through l4 missions very fast. But a maxed out drake will have a better chance than a minimal skilled raven.

No matter what one you pick make sure you can fit it proper. IE: dont put med guns on a BS.

With caldari offensive sub level5 a tengu can reach over 700dps with fury scourge missiles. Also about the tank, tengu is depending more on speed and sig tanking. Its quite fun to see the tengu passive tank 10+ BS. While using an active tank fit.

Nope, Raven Navy 9/10 in terms of perf, it finish 90% of missions faster than tengu, it's known fact

You're definitely doing something wrong. I'm going to guess you're trying to passive tank the Tengu? If so, don't.

My cheap fit exploration Tengu lists at 494 EM dps (more with the cheap 3%s slotted in my clone). That's right, ignoring the kinetic bonus. A high sec mission queen Tengu should get you mid 600s before implants and hit ~725 when you factor those in. And that's without a Bay Loading Accelerator, which really is a matter of taste.

Is it going to rival a Nightmare or a Machariel? Not on most missions, no. But it's going to clean up against most other ships due to damage projection on top of raw damage.

Edit: all of the above quoting HM damage. Because HAMs are more for EFT than L4s.

Raven class isn't used for much other missions. Drake/Tengu path is more versatile, good for wormholes, plexing and pvp. So I would go drake then tengu for that reason. Only problem with tengu is it is very gankable.

I may do a return to missions soon... Haven't done any since I started hitting incursions and living in WH's.

But when I did, I used 2 toons. My second char in a NI Raven with heavy tank and cruise missiles. This character in a Nighthawk providing a ganglink.

The Raven used Fury and was set for anti BS, the Nighthawk went with a bit less tank for more TP's and focused on anti-frig and anti-cruiser. The tank on the NH just really needs to be tough enough to teal with any "Additional waves" Because the Raven usually soaked up the full room agro first.

I think if I do make a return to missions it would be a combo of marauders or T3's I can fly Kronos and Paladin on this char, the Golem on my other. would most likely just blitz my missions for an hour and BM a wreck in each pocket, then salvage. Rinse repeat.