Ships & Modules

I've lost many an Arazu running with an ewar tank. Now I don't undock with at least SOME ehp, especially with faction points. A flight of medium drones will kill you in 20-30 seconds. If you have friends nearby, lose the cap booster, throw on an LSE, damage control, and two shield rigs so you can survive drones. Alternatively you can armor tank it since being slow isn't as big a deal when you have someone scrammed from 25k.

If your target is dumb enough to see you in local and not bug out, the extra second or so you get of targeting speed isn't gonna make a difference in catching him. I like the ewar drones. Considering losing the rails and using two smartbombs for dispatching drones, just note that they will **** your cap.

Here's one idea I've been testing, mostly built for tackling 100MN Tengus, but works against many other ships as well:

[Arazu, Arazu XLASB]

Damage Control II
Overdrive Injector System II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

Experimental 10MN Microwarpdrive I
X-Large Ancillary Shield Booster, Navy Cap Booster 400
Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II
Small Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 200
Republic Fleet Warp Disruptor

Covert Ops Cloaking Device II
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
Heavy Electron Blaster II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Ancillary Current Router I
Medium Targeting System Subcontroller II


Warrior II x4
Hornet EC-300 x4

1913 m/s
666 hp/s omnitank (1333 against kin)

ASBs will be nerfed, but from what I've seen the changes are not dramatic to this ship as it can reload outside most target's effective range, and it really only needs to survive until your gang arrives.

All in all a ship that can and should be tailored to suit the intended targets, I plan to have many versions available, and probably focus more on the damping side after Retribution.

Good concept but that DPS is too low. Consider for a moment that a Harpy with two MSE2s has passive recharge equal to that DPS. Now think of a ratting ship, any ratting ship, that won't be able to tank that.

Thanks for the feedback but I'm fairly sure I mentioned this is not for solo hunting.

OP: Your fit has barely 5k ehp. This is nowhere near enough to survive until your support rides through. I understand how you might plan to rely on your nano and damps to mitigate damage but it only takes one mistake or sebo'd ship to kill your very expensive recon fit.

There are two ways to go when it comes to a hunting Arazu.

1) buffer. Either 1600 brick tank or with a couple of LSEs. The armor version will give your more ehp potentially but the shield will be much more agile for hunting/roaming. Either way aim for at least 30k ehp.

2) XLASB. This is a trade off between lasting longer vs a single target and dying very quickly if you get counter-dropped. As with the shield buffer this method will afford you better agility.

ECM drones are a good choice.If you have logi with you then drop a little ehp for resists on the buffer version.

I wouldn't bother with damps. Final word is that unless you plan to use it for black ops then there are better tackle options than this expensive ship.

IMO:

The strongest thing about a good recon is range. So a scram is not the *best* tackle option for that ship. Especially with no tank to back it up. Many ships will still be able to lock you if you tackle them at -20km. They will also be able to tackle you right back. I would only use it as a secondary tackle, to turn off their mwd when/if they run you down.

You will have a much better chance of survival at 50+km with a Disrupter.
I also agree, that tank is needed.
I like ecm drones too. For gtfo ability.

I have flown a few Arazu's. Your #1 priority is to stay alive, because lets face it, in most cases YOU are primary.
Mine are generally Armor tanked, but I really like that XL ASB fit posted.

To be honest if you're thinking of not using a scram then there is not much point using the arazu. It's just too expensive and slow. The scramrazu has one, clear role: as a tackle-bridge ship for black ops or Titan.

At 50km and doing only 1700ms there is just no real benefit to you. You'll be way too close to the fight in a very expensive ship that has hardly any tank and if you're WMDing, and let's face it you probably will, takes 8s to align out. There are just so few cases where taking that risk pays off.

As secondary/sniper tackle the Lach is much better, especially if boosted and you should be looking at 90km and up instead of just 50km. The Claymore makes a good partner. The extra mid on the lach means you can either get more tank or fit a sebo so it stands a chance of catching anything smaller than a BC.

My advice is to fly an interceptor. Tackles very well at a fraction of the cost and if piloted correctly will have a much higher survival rate.

Arazu's scram range makes it indespensible when shutting down people when on a gate camp. Makes the chances of reaching the gate nil when you factor in a rapier.

Certainly Rapiers and Arazus would make a great pair, and generally I'd take any recon to tag along any day, but check out the base speeds- in my tests 100MN Tengus simply couldn't get away even just from this one alone.

Tengus are at best three times clumsier, the standard variation is notably slower, and even faster variations lack the speed. Assume both parties have links, Snakes might change the situation. So it's just a matter of giving a good warpin so the rest of the fleet can web and pop it. Tengu can obviously heat the prop much longer, but if your fleet is not there yet when you burn out the meta-MWD, you got bigger issues.

That said, I haven't seen a 100MN Tengu out in the wild in months, no mails to prove anything, so take all I write about this with a grain of salt. Actually, I wouldn't be surprised if the Tengu target pointed me in the hopes of easy recon kill :D

As what comes to scram/disruptor- ideally you would have both, for shutting off mwds of small ships, and also getting 4 points strength. However that normally means you don't have slots for multiple damps, or limited cap life. Anyway I think scram+long point is more common than damps.