Missions & Complexes

Right Hand of ZZZZZZ first off requires heat and kin hardeners, if I recall correctly. However, the main thing is:
THE ENEMIES DO A CRAPTON OF DPS AT CLOSE RANGE!
Warp in at however far your missiles can reach, and stay at that range. The named cruiser deals quite heavy damage.

Honestly, no, no I don't.

Is it possible to do them for level 4's? Yes, completely. I wouldn't say viable though.

In fact, just because you can DO them, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

You would most likely make 4-5x more money running L3's and blitzing through them. You'd probably train up a battleship faster than completing a few missions also :p.

Drake is renowned for being a great tank this is true, even with terrible skills. Infact when I first started my L4's I took my maelstrom in (Was Buzz kill) and my tank was breaking super fast, I swapped over to the drake just to get a feel for the mission and it was hardly being damaged, but as for killing stuff, I had very very low missile skills (Was actually expecting to lose the drake, didn't care for it at all) and stuff just took FOREVER to kill. I never touched that mission again until recently, now I wonder what the fuss was about.

I wouldn't bother tbh, it would be more hassle than it's worth. Train up for a battleship and stick with L3s unless you are a patient person and would make more money doing L4's (Which per hour, I doubt)

I see far too many people these days saying "I do L4's in my drake!!11!!1" as though it's a special thing. Yeah? and? How fast do you do them? I actually started out with a Domi originally and I loved it, but after properly skilling up for my Mael, I was shocked how I ever even coped at how slow it was, and the Domi is still a lot faster than a drake! Hell, my drone skills were 5x that of my gunnery skills when I made the change to the maelstrom and it still pissed it so hard out the water it wasn't even funny (Really! was not funny! Realising how much time I wasted). I was never comfortable with my mael tank wise until a while later, the DPS helped a lot clearing it, but there were a few heart pounding moments even when I was careful, yet with my domi I could pull the whole room with every trigger and just AFK it.

So while you'd probably tank them more than fine, you'd die of boredom anyway. I'd strongly suggest training for another ship, personally I never really liked the Raven, still think the DPS is lacking in comparison but many love it, especially the Navy one, and if you're skills are all in missiles go for it I guess. Patience REALLY pays off in this game in terms of skills, and I saw a massive MASSIVE difference from T1 projectiles to T2, it was just the 50 days that put me off for so long, but it's just something completely worth doing.

The fit loki energen linked is quite frankly terrible. Don't use it.

A standard t2 drake should be able to do all missions. Some slow, some faster, but decently.

You should never be within 30km of the enemy rats tbh. Use drones to take down all the frigates, particularly the ones that are webbing or scramming you. Other than that, use the afterburner to go ~50km from the rats and just AB around over there. Drop a cargo container with 1 missile and orbit that at 5km if you don't want to manually pilot.

Read www.eve-survival.org as others have said and pay careful attention to all the triggers etc. Good luck.

edit: Regarding your next ship: Machariel is pretty much the no.1 missioner out there and doesn't take long to train for, but as you said the hull cost can be a turn off. Since you're already training for HMLs etc, a Tengu would definitely be your next natural progression ship. In terms of isk/hr the Tengu isn't too far off the Mach.

Izziee pretty much nailed it - it takes me 2 hours per mission in my Drake, not to mention the amount of missiles. I don't like missiles at all, I loved how my Drake tanks, but missiles aint for me.

I am skilling towards a Mael (4d) and will see how it goes. Recommended fits, tanking tactics would be very welcome.

Thanks again

you think ammo consumption is bad with the Drake, wait until you see how much ammo AC equipped Maels and the Mach chew through...


The Mael, like Caldari ships, is a shield tanker so if your having survivability issues with your Drake then your going to have more problems with the Mael at this point if, as it sounds, your skills are low. Speaking of skills, any chance you could post the character in question on http://eveboard.com/ so we can see what we have to work with, then we can better provide training and fitting advice.

I started running level 4 missions with the following fit. I think I had BC 2 at the time.

The toughest level 4 mission I ever did with low skill and in a Drake was Vengeance (Sansha), but I managed to finished it by buying a little bit of Caldari Navy Thunderbolt EM heavy missiles for just the last boss.

This isn't an ideal fit, but I did use it before I later switched to a Raven.

[Drake, Basic]
Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II
Shield Power Relay II
Shield Power Relay II

Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Large Shield Extender II
Invulnerability Field II
Invulnerability Field II
Photon Scattering Field II

Salvager I
Small Tractor Beam I
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile
XR-3200 Heavy Missile Bay, Trauma Heavy Missile

Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I
Medium Core Defence Field Purger I


Hobgoblin II x5

[Maelstrom, PvE Lowskill]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Caldari Navy X-Large Shield Booster
Ballistic Deflection Field II
Ballistic Deflection Field II
Heat Dissipation Field II
Heavy Capacitor Booster II, Cap Booster 800
'Orion' Tracking CPU I, Optimal Range

800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L
800mm Heavy 'Scout' Repeating Artillery I, EMP L

Large Core Defence Capacitor Safeguard I
Large Core Defence Capacitor Safeguard I
Large Core Defence Capacitor Safeguard I


Federation Navy Ogre x4

Is my lowskill Mael. You can always tweak a few things (Light/Medium/Sentry Drones, Prop Mod, Rigs) at your preference, this fit is obviously for Gurista as they tend to orbit a bit far for ACs (thus the TC) and I have enough tank anyway.

Yes, this is quite overtanked, you can easily reduce the tank once you get more experienced with triggers/spawns/aggro but it works well for a beginner.

Nobody ever said the Mael was the recommended BS for new players. I only said that this fit is a good fit for starting with a Mael. The only other mention of the Mael was exactly the opposite.
No, the OP asked for a Mael fit himself:




Then:




The TC was on that ship to test the range increase (dreadful). My fit currently uses an MWD and I always have an AB at hand.


But, if you like to trade tracking and dps for range, you can always use a similar fit, just with arties:



Yes, that med slot is empty on purpose. Put into it whatever you want.

His skills better than mine, he should get 450-500 gun dps with the arty fit I posted. His shield skills are also better than mine, so he shouldn't have any problems with tanking missions.

Take a look at the OPs skills and you'll see that the Mael is by far the best option for lvl4s for him.

Interesting - I didn't remember that correlation between optimal and falloff from when I played before (which was before the projectile rebalancing). Good to know.

Still, I can't say I'm really convinced that the Maelstrom would be the best choice unless the OP is set on training Minmatar BS anyways. AC's without barrage and backed by low skills are going to tickle on the longer-range enemies, while arties have pretty poor dps/tracking. It's certainly doable though and would beat out the OP's current drake. And, to be fair, I suppose one nice thing about the Maelstrom is that you can overtank it quite easily, which is helpful when someone's learning to do level 4 missions.