Ships & Modules

I have 2M SP and I've no problem running L4 missions in a Raven. Of course it takes 6-8 volleys to kill a battleship, so I'm not as fast as 20M SP Characters, but it's fun.
PvE is usually very predictable and there is no problem using fraction specific hardeners and ammo to get maximum tank and DPS.

Wow... this thread is full of all kinds of bad advice and trolling...

Tengu *is* a better ship for L4's *IF* you don't mind how slowly it does them. If you're grinding for faction or ISK, don't bother with a creative, fun solution. Go to Battleclinic, steal a cookie cutter Minnie fit, and rock on.

Domi is great *if* you have T2 Sentries trained: that means Drone Interfacing 5, not a quick train. T1 Sentries just aren't that great, and hauling around a bunch of heavies for L4's (or anything really) is just lame.

And yes, if you don't have good support skills for a battleship, it'll be even that much more annoyingly slow.

If you can't fly T2 ships, ignore any posts suggesting them. If you don't have the isk for a faction ship, ignore any posts suggesting them. If you don't have T2 sentries trained, stick with lights and mediums: heavies are a joke, and T1 sentries aren't worth the trouble. Go Minnie, get some high meta large projectiles, and rock it. Learn how to use active tanking, get the shield and armor compensation skills up, and Armor Honeycombing (or whatever it's called) if you do plating. There are plenty of support skills that help with tanking, damage bonus, resists, etc. Train them up to L4. Get your toon's API into EFT, and experiment. Recognize your weaknesses, and train and learn tactics to overcome them.

See? A multi-page threadnaught boiled down into one awesome post.

If you don't have t2 sentries the faction ones are an acceptable, albeit expensive option (though they have double the hp of t2 so unlikely to ever die).

i kinda agree with this as well but would recommend 1200s, range is similar, cycle time is much better loss of DPS not huge deal.

Actually you don't NEED Drone Interfacing V, yes it is a significant boost to your dps, but training Sentry Drone Interfacing V first for T2 drones will give you more of a boost and you can start missioning with that, and then train Drone Interfacing V while you do L4s.

In fact with T1 guns, T2 Sentries, and Drone Interfacing/Gallente Battleship IV you can deal 700 dps to lock range on a Dominix, which isn't shabby at all and the only skills that's long is Sentry Drone Interfacing V. T2 tank takes awhile too because of Hull Upgrades V but you should have T2 tank before jumping into a Battleship anyway.

I am not a rich man by any stretch of the imagination, so my testing and upgrading is a slow and methodical process, but I've been taking all of the feedback I've been getting and tweaking things.

Due to where my skill points have been spent, I decided to first try the Megathron fit. And after some successful runs, I realized it had a singular glaring flaw: Its capacitor was very very shallow, which had me running out of Cap boosters faster than I would have liked. But, it was effective and it got the job done when it needed to get done.

After realizing that flaw, I switched to a Hyperion fit in the OP, save that instead of the Sensor Booster, it has 3 Tracking Comps (1 Range script, one empty, one tracking script). Doing the same damage at the time with 6 turrets instead of 7 meant that the capacitor lasted longer (about 30 seconds longer according to the in-game fitting window, which is a significant amount when you're pulsing the rep). And by the time I hit Gallente Battleship 4, the tank was better, more cap efficient, and the DPS numbers were higher. The Hyperion has been an immense amount of fun, and I anticipate I'll take this one all the way to a Kronos. I'm only about 8 days out of Tech 2 Large Rails, and I can only imagine it will get better from there.

The next thing I'd like to try will be the Maelstrom, due to the high regard everyone held it in over the course of the thread. It'll just be a bit before I'm comfortable affording one. I'd love to be able to actually experiment with a large number of fits in-game, rather than just EFT, but that's a slow process. The skills between my Hyperion and the Maelstrom are almost identical, except that I can use Shield Boost Amp IIs, while everything on my Hyperion's tank is T2. Also, I've a long way to go for Tech 2 projectiles, which was the biggest reason for holding it off.

After that, I think it'll be time to train some missiles and finally try a Raven (and probably a Typhoon, while I'm at it), since it's been heralded as the starter PvE ship for Level 4s for some time, and the changes only made it better.

Keep the suggestions coming; I'm still reading them constantly and making little adjustments here and there. I find this all immensely helpful.

Why is there so many people insisting that T1 sentries aren't worth the trouble? Have you ever even fit a domi with T1 sentries? They are perfectly acceptable and more dps then other entry level options that have that kind of projection. With the Domi sentries now have enormous projection, short range weapon level tracking and good damage through DDAs. I suggested a T1 fit earlier in the thread, it does very respectable damage and tanks pretty well for something you can get into in a month.

Edit: In fact the sentries (garde) on a sentry domi with decent (III IV) relevant skills does more dps than a 1400mm maelstrom with the same level of skills.

You're quite right, I was rushing and meant to type "SENTRY Drone Interfacing 5" for T2 Sentries. My bad. But yeah, the added DPS from Interfacing 5 is good. :)

tech 2 purgers on a drake, really.

My training path when I first started was this one, I went up to an arty hurricane, then I got an arty maelstrom. I tried using M4 autos on a maelstrom, but it was excessively painful, the maelstrom is just not fast enough and doesn't have any falloff bonuses to compensate for the short range of the autocannons, even for "close range" rats like angels. They take too long to get into range, if you are waiting for rats to come in range or have the time to wait for rats to get into range, you are probably doing it wrong.

Even T2 autocannons with barrage is deceptively mediocre. Not only does it rob you of your ability to choose damage type, but the dps is quite low, on my Machariel it's almost always a loss to use barrage until you hit excessive ranges and always a loss on non-explosive weak rats. The reason why the Machariel is so successful with autocannons is because it can go fast, especially a MWD Machariel. Burning at 1400m/s towards rats gets you in optimal very quickly coupled with the massive falloff bonus the hull gives.

The other benefit of artillery over autos is efficiency with faction ammo, you can very easily justify using faction ammo with artillery, and while faction ammo is still a plus on autocannons, many do not use it. Assuming both faction, the 1400mm mael starts outdpsing the 800mm mael at 23.4km, that's not very far.

Unless you are gung-ho on the projectile route and aspire to be in a Machariel, I'd skip this path and go with a Domi like the one I suggested earlier.