EVE General Discussion

I do not know why people are posting the Raven sucks in doing level 4's. It's a great ship for level 4's. Just have the skills to back it up. My corp mate goes in and does one level 4 in less than an hour - including salvaging all the wrecks and walks away with close to 60 mil for that hours worth of work.

Didnt read the entire thread got bored.

What needs to be mentioned is if you are going to run level 4's with a GUN based setup especialy a battleship sized ship. you will need some pretty good drone skills to kill the friggates, as large guns have problems tracking them

-Domi
-Apoc
-Maelstrom
-Tengu
-Raven
-Macharial

Can't go wrong with any of those.

For some reason the Drake I used to use for Level 4s could not handle a "Bonanza" mission. You can handle most level 4 missions with a Drake provided you take care for two things:

- you are T2 on your modules
- level 5 on the skills of the modules you use or holding an "elite" certificate on your tactics. For example if you shield tank, you best have a good certificate on it.


Usually the less skills you have, the more ship you need. I have 50M SP, and I can do all level 3s in a Federation Comet but didn't try any level 4s yet because I am on an expedition in nullsec at the moment. It used to be that I had to struggle to do level 3s in a battlecruiser, now I can do them with an "elite frigate" as it's called. One day I realized I had enough LP to buy a blueprint and the rest of the story is obvious.

You might be able to run without T2 large guns but make sure your tank can hold up. This I find is the biggest challenge in level 4s. But don't lost site of the fact that your DPS is also a tank of sorts as it removed DPS from the field amongst the enemy. If your tactic is to sit there like a crippled duck and your tanking skills and mods are not top level, you will not be able to stick around long, but that window where your tanking capability to absorb damage and your DPS that removes damage to tank can close shut on you in an instant and I lost a few battleships even with my SP because of foolish ideas.

Good luck.

First choose what weapons you would like to use. Easy mode missile fire or asskicking guns.

Missiles are always a sure hit, even defenders will shoot 1 missile from a salvo and but you always hit what you aim for. When jammed you can use FoFs and not sit and curse 7th jam in a row. No problems with optimal and falloff. Kinda easy mode to play...and boring.

Guns, (namely 800mms) have high rate of fire, insane dmg on short ranges, tracking issues if a ship is under your optimal, and forget about hitting orbiting frigates. On the upside, 1-2 hit kill from frigates up to (including) most BC. Works wonders even with T1 ammo.

Now for ships.....

Caldari:
Drake trades tank for gank. You can reach 80+ k EHP easily, but with DPS around 200-300 at best. Its still a BC after all, L4s take a while with a drake, but it skills you up towards Tengu.
Tengu, fast - with ab you perma-run around 700m/s, small sig, heavy missiles do 500+ dps (maxed out at around 733). ISK print machine.
Raven, L4s are not hard for it, it just lacks dmg (until you skill a few more M-sp), its slow as hell, and boring to tears.
CNR, upgraded raven, topped at around 850 dps on max lock range (cruise missiles) and a nice upgrade from raven.

Winmatar:
Machariel- PvE king. No matter what others say, 3sec RoF, 1100+ dps, 1350dps with T2 ammo, just burn towards anything and unleash 800mms. Oneshot frigates from 70km, faster lock time that other BS, and almost double the base speed from any caldari BS. If tengu was a ISK print machine, Machariel is a Copy/Paste ISK machine.
Vargur- like a Mach, a bit less DPS and uglier, still the most functioning marauder around.
Typhoon - good ship all around, but split weapon system takes longer to skill to use properly.
Maelstorm-with a shield rep boost, 8 high slots for guns, its a good ship to build your skills towards mach or vargur.

Since i skilled all of them, i would take Tengu first and then CNR. Just mobility wins, and 100km range always work. Its fun to play with Tengu anyway, and with HMLs you can PvP later, cruises aren't that good. They require riggor rigs and TP on smaller ships. Most caldari ships only deal good dps with T2 or faction ammo. But hey, you can choose weapon dmg to apply.

For Winmatar, Mach till you skill for Vargur, by that time you will roll billions of ISK.

In your place, i would skill and save money for tengu or stick with Mael and skill towards a perfect machariel.