Missions & Complexes

Hello, I'm relatively new to PvE and now, I'm planning to make a skill plan to pilot a stronger ship. Currently, my ship is a VNI, droneboat and sig tanking (speed tanking) some combat sites. However, I'm eager to get myself to be able to pilot a better ship such as Kronos or Ishtar.

I realise that Sansha's Nation rats deal EM/Thermal damage and are coincidentally, weak against them too. Using a Hybrid Turret ship to damage their ships are not the most ideal, but since I'm already in the path of Gallente ship skills training (and since I have trained some Gunnery skills), I am inclined to training up to be able to use Hybrid Turret ships to do combat sites while minimising the time I need to get to pilot said ship. But, since I'm very new, I'd like some advice from fellow forumers.

First of all, I'd like to know what kind of ship (in the Gallente section) is ideal to deal with all the PvE contents involving Sansha's Nation rats. As said, I'm using a VNI, a droneboat which allows me to pick whichever damage types I need (in this case, Imperial Navy Praetor, as I have no access to drone specialisation skills yet) to effectively deal with them. This ship is not enough for some sites like DED 10/10 (Centus Assembly T.P. Co.), though. The ships I have considered are (again, in the Gallente section): Ishtar, Dominix Navy Issue, Kronos, Proteus and eventually a Thanatos (but this is a long-term goal).

1. Ishtar: I personally think that this ship is not very different compared to a VNI. It has a much larger native resistance compared to a VNI and it also has a much larger drone bay. But realistically, we're probably only using a flight of one type of drones. With Ishtar, I believe Sentry Drones are the best since they get an additional 25% damage bonus at Gallente Cruiser V (correct me if I'm wrong) on top of the 10% damage bonus for drones per level of the skill. So effectively, it might give me more tank and more damage. 25% might be a lot, but is it enough to solo a DED 10/10 site? I do know that this ship is more flexible since I'll be able to fly drones with the damage type I want.


2. Dominix Navy Issue: Compared to an Ishtar, it does not give me extra bonus damage to Sentry Drones. Instead, it gives me bonus damage to Large Hybrid Turret. This might prove to be less effective again Sansha's Nation rats since they are weak against EM and Thermal. With an Ishtar, I can deal pure EM damage with extra bonus to EM solely, while with a Large Hybrid Turret Damage, I have to deal pure EM (from the drones) and a combination of Thermal and Kinetic damage, which might be less effective than the 25% extra damage an Ishtar offer. However, I can train a Dominix Navy Issue much faster compared to training an Ishtar (in my case, Dominix Navy Issue is about 15x faster).


3. Kronos: Primarily using Large Hybrid Turrets and providing a significant damage bonus to them, this ship is probably very good against rats. However, as we're talking about Sansha's Nation rats, again Large Hybrid Turrets do not have access to EM damage. I'm thinking that the damage output might be able to exceed the other ships, but I'm not sure. Another thing is that it has very good active tank capability, so it's probably really good with PvE. Bastion mode allows it to repair even faster, but at the cost of being immobilised (thus making it vulnerable for 60 secs in nullsec). However, to train this ship, I'd need almost 2x the time to train an Ishtar.


4. Proteus: I've got not much info regarding Proteus. But I did try using EFT to simulate it, it had 89% resistance to EM and 92% resistance to Thermal with relatively rational price for the modules (about 500m ISK) and has 30,000 ehp while dealing 800 dps. I'm not sure this is enough for a 10/10 DED site, but please enlighten me? To train this, I'd need about the same time to train an Ishtar. Also, it was Blaster-fitted.... Soo... I'm not sure xD

Ah so from those ships, I'm basically asking kindly, if you guys would, to enlighten me and provide more information about ratting to this newbie T.T Sig tanking, active armour tanking tips are also welcomed. I also considered a Rattlesnake (I think this ship is really good) or a Tengu to do these sites, but they'd take significantly longer time since I don't have even one skill that is related to Missiles (if I'm not mistaken) and no points at all in Caldari ship piloting skills. I'm considering to use my Bonus Remap too since I messed up using my first remap, so I'm trying to compensate by planning a one-year skill plan before using the remap xD

Sorry for the long wall of text T

What about Kronos and Ishtar?

And Rattlesnake? Can it solo a 10/10 DED sites (Sansha's Nation)?

The Ishtar's risk/income ratio isn't really worth it in my opinion over the VNI. Plus the VNI can run rock-style havens pretty well.

Rattlesnakes will do just fine in 10s, but you may want to bling it out a bit. I would recommend an MJD + Sentry fit on the Rattlesnake over the Heavy Drone style of play. Worst case scenario, you may need to warp off and back a couple times until you learn the triggers in each pocket, but the payout will be fantastic in the end.

I tried Googling about this, but couldn't find it.... Could you please link it xD? Sorry.

It was mentioned at Fanfest from what I ahve been told. Soon tm

Here is a good place to start. There are quite a few builds for you to look through.

https://o.smium.org/search?q=sansha%20rattlesnake&op=gt&build=988883&ad=1

Of course not all of them are for pve and you will be using cruise missiles and sentry drones because you don't want to be that close to them and sitting still.