Missions & Complexes

Most battleships work for general mission, domi and raven are classic choices that still work, any minmatar bs should work, I haven't really used them much so I don't have any favorite, and pretty similar with amarr, note the geddon is now a drone boat with some missile slots, apoc is the more typical choice for the range and tracking bonuses, and the abaddon has a damage and tank bonus so that can work. Most people are using pirate battleships for the extra firepower especially now that they are rather cheap. the machariel outclasses the minmatar ships, the nightmare is way better than any of the t1 amarr ships, rattlesnake is a crazy drone/missile hybrid. I would expect the bhaalgorn to work reasonably well, but it is far more suited to pvp, kinda similar with the vindicator.

if you really want to get into the min maxing machariel is the goal for standard missions, it has insane mobility for a bs and great dps with good range.

And of course a few years ago ccp added burner missions (start with anomic). the basic ones have a pirate frig that is very strong and you can only fight it in a frigate sized ship these require high skills and/or expensive fits. The next variant is vs a navy frig and two npc logistic ships. and there are a few cruiser sized missions that put you up against multiple ships.

this is a guide for bltizing with a mach and running the burner missions.
there are also some videos of the burner missions. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1knVqZEH8qFY0eT44nMEFwcKd3t4PbgcZeuv58SVUxsI/pub

Since you have trained missiles (with the Drake). I suggest you should now train for a Rattlesnake. "snakes hit hard (over 1200 dps easily) and can have an insane amount of tank (150k+). You would have to increase your drone skills to fully utilize all the dps potential fully, but if you would have to do that if you wanted to go the Domi route anyway. Pirate BS, at the moment, are relatively dirt cheap and the snake can be utilized for far harder chores than level 4 missions. Please remember that level 5s spawn in Low Sec and solo pilots tend to run into problems around level 5 mission hubs. The Mach is also a good choice, but you would be failing to utilize all the missile skills you already have trained. If just running level 4s is your goal, then a Golem Marauder is you ship of choice, since you can fit for any NPC faction,use missiles, and generally create a one size fits all mission running boat that you don't have to swap out any modules. Marauders are the champs in running any level 4 mission and contain plenty of cargo room space as well as tractor beam bonuses that allow for easy looting/salvage while missioning.

Hope this explanation helps and welcome back!

And welcome back to Eve.

May you have a long and rewarding career.



DMC

Are Torpedos still considered a must have for LvL 5s and Complexes?

cruise are the typical preferred missile they got a nice damage buff at some point, still have insane range, and better application than torps. Torps got a huge range nerf but got a big dps buff to compensate, they also changed damage application around then.

for complexes I'm pretty sure most are using t3 cruisers. t3c can be fit to be bubble immune and fit covert ops cloaks to travel to sites and then refit with a mobile depot to a better combat fit to run the sites. note there is a big t3c re balance about to hit that they are working on the details now.

bs are a bit slow getting around so generally not used too much anymore. There was a warp speed rebalance at some point that really slowed them down. The devblog has a nice chart on warp speeds. https://community.eveonline.com/news/dev-blogs/warp-drive-active