Warfare & Tactics

https://zkillboard.com/character/94178346/

Tell me, in all bluntness and honesty, if I look like a serviceable PvP'er to you.

As a little background:

About 90% of my encounters have been solo, and my first 5 or so months were actually spent doing that exclusively. I have had over 100 solo encounters, although in spite of this I've only had one solo kill, ever. For two months after that I was an explorer, and then went back to solo PvP again.

I have been in a few corps, not many.

I have been playing for a total of 9 months now.

Do I look like a decent PvP'er for my age?

Be brutally honest. If I'm great, say so. If I'm honestly the worst player you've ever laid eyes upon then say that. I'm not looking for comments to stroke my e-peen to.

Go.

I still want to know.

Yes, you do look fat in that dress.

Come on man, the only one who can judge you is yourself and maybe your friends, but not a bunch of forum dwellers.

Stop beating around the bush. If I suck, just say so.

I know you're trying to be nice but I'm sick of the "You're okay!!!! You only have yourself to compare to! Everyone's a winner!" stuff. If you really think I'm a poor pilot just say so instead of sugarcoating it.

Thank you for trying to help, though. But I want honesty.

If killboard stats are your measure, then yes - you currently suck at killboards.

Does that make you a bad pvper?

Hopefully I can help you answer that for yourself.

It's clear that you fly the same ship for a while before switching. So when you lose a ship, do you make the same basic moves over and over and over, never changing your approach to a fight?

If your answer is yes - then you suck at pvp.

If your answer has even some aspect of no - then you are just still learning and you have the right attitude. Learning is the most important aspect and combined with experience of different situations, you'll eventually start improving your kill:loss ratio. This means you don't suck (although as a solo boat, the rifter does suck at pvp these days).

You need to pick your engagements much more carefully. Your track record shows you as desperate or foolhardy -- neither of which are trademarks of reliable pilots.

Some of your fits are a bit wonky. Some tips

-Small shield extenders are pretty useless. Try to ram on a medium (fitting skills might help)
-Use ancillary shield boosters. Normal shield boosters suck cap (especially a medium sized one on a dessy )
-Ancillary armor reps are generally more useful than normal reps for solo work as they rep more upfront

I'm getting a few honest answers now. Thank you.

I hate it when people pull the "You have perserverence! Try your best and you're wonderful!" routine on me. If I'm a dumb piece of crap you have every right to say so.

I was fairly certain I was a terrible pilot but I decided to get a second opinion just in case by some miracle I was crazy and was actually passable. But judging by the responses I was right.

Thank you for the input.

Don't worry too much if you suck, we all suck at this game and most of us hide behind our friends to pad our killboards, this admittedly includes me, though I do often show that I can respond correctly in a given situation both in theory and in practice even when alone.

OK, so in all honesty this is what I see.

You say you have done primarily solo pvp, true. But in the first four pages I didn't see any solo fight where you got a kill and a lot where you got killed by a solo pilot. A lot of this comes from your fittings.

One in particular I looked at (I did not check most of them) you lost an AC Thrasher to a blaster Comet. You mixed a weak shield booster with a medium extender and had no point fitted, that isn't really going to work for anything. MWD, point web and an armor tank probably would have made all the difference, alternatively MWD, point and shield extender can work (In FW space consider using an AB as well since it's easier on cap and you are likely to get scrambled inside FW plexes and when scrammed and webbed the AB really helps you apply damage). Also T1 guns and ammo are really bad for your dps, use meta 4 guns if you can't use T2 and use faction ammo, once you can use T2 guns you should always use them and carry T2 ammo and learn when it's appropriate to use T2 instead of faction ammo.

The shield booster has little impact and will drain your cap very quickly especially with low skill points when you don't have good cap or shield compensation skills. My guess is that he orbit you at 500 m and you were unable to track very well while his own web and superior tracking of blasters + drones and the fact that you used meta 0 guns with T1 ammo probably meant his DPS was considerably higher than yours and that's why you lost. You probably tried to orbit him as well which doesn't work at all against a target that is faster than you and had you webbed (he was likely AB/scram/web fit in FW space), it allows him to maximize his transversal while your ship pretty much spins in place unable to get started in an orbit due to the big disparity in speed. If this was the case then what you needed to do was double click in space so there would be legs of his orbit where his transversal drops allowing you to hit him (the faster you can move the bigger your damage window will be which ties into the AB comment above) and a web would have ruined him.

The times where you get kills you are in a group which is fine, most of us do that. What you need to do is get into a corp that has some people who know what they are doing and get them to help you learn what you are doing wrong both with fittings and with tactics. It takes a very long time to identify your mistakes if you don't know what they are and trial and error in this game is very taxing. Better yet if you are really ambitious get recording software and record your fights and see where you are taking the most damage. Things happen quickly and you can often miss what you did wrong in real time, otherwise you might have done it better.

After 5 years I still feel like I suck despite the fact that I've started FRAPS in some fights trying to get a black box on my death and wound up winning in a 3v1. All I see on the playback though is mistakes made, just apparently I'm pretty good at exploiting the mistakes of others as well but apparently I had good teachers because I do SEE what I'm doing wrong and over time these mistakes get fewer and farther between. I once recorded myself fighting 4 frigates in a solo rail Brutix and didn't bother to load Javelin ffs. Somehow I killed 3 of them before the last warped off, so like I said we all suck at this. What I lack is confidence (no idea what my problem is) and often need even a single wingman to get brave (I'll be much more willing to take a 2v4 than a 1v2 as I don't want to leave my buddy hanging), you on the other hand have no problem with the bravery side, you just need knowledge and experience which is sorely lacking for you right now. You need to know what general fitting strategies work in which situations as well as what yours and your enemies ships are capable of and what they will typically fit. Then you will learn what you are likely to beat and what you should avoid (no ship in this game works against every ship it finds except perhaps a Worm vs. anything else in a Novice FW plex) Find someone to teach you that and you will become a prolific killer in this game.

Dude you're bad at PVP. But you're WAY better than I am. You are bad right now, but many above have already listed why (choosing engagements, fitting choices etc) and those are all things you will learn as you go. There are some really awesome suggestions on how to improve in this thread (several of which I'll be trying out myself). What you do have is promise, if you keep it up, you will be good at PVP. Possibly very good. Likely way better than I'll even be.