Warfare & Tactics

Yes. Stop beliving everything you see on TV. Ok, on YT. Those vids present 3 kills and leave out prolly 10-15 losses suffered in the process of getting those 3 kills. Also, make sure you always scout with an alt to avoid situations where you are outnumbered heavly and last but not least, stop fitting CPRs.

Awesome man...

Losses and kills means little when your having fun. In the end that is all that counts.

FTFY

IMO whenever you go for a 1vs1 you should have a plan on your mind, a success scenario. First you should make that scenario work and then look for extensions and variaties over that scenario. If it doesn't work on a particular instance you should learn from it whether adjusting your plan, adding back-up plans, or just avoiding that scenario next time.

Your ship should be fitted to excel that particular scenario. Of course you can make fittings that can handle several scenarios also, however you should start with one, learn it and move to next. No ships in this game can handle each and every fight. In this game fitting the most expensive ship with most expensive stuff never guarantees win.

When you understand how that scenario works, move to another one. Perhaps an extension of the first scenario/plan or a completely new one. Make a fitting for that and go try your chance.

Loosing is OK if you learn something from it. Loosing (or even winning) is a waste of time/ISK if you don't know why you win or loose at the end of the fight. A really good way to learn from your fights is to record them and watch afterwards. Generally frigate fights are too fast to realize what really went wrong. And in general it's not only one thing that made you loose or win.

As the guy above suggested definitely use cheaper ships. However not just because of ISK efficiency. Expensive ships/equipment sometimes conceal your mistakes by superior attributes. So you might miss an opportunity to learn. If you can create scenarios/tac tics and fit cheap ships and win (or at least loose by close margin) then you're getting better.

I personally suggest you new revamped "Attack Frigates". They are fast and have nice amount of mid-slots so you can practice on different types of EWAR together with tackle and speed. IMO Destroyers have too much firepower and too less mobility so they are not a good learning tool.

And a final note: Even the best PVPer around with a lot of PvP experience/information, with best ships, with best equipment ,with boosters and booster alts, with scouts, even with friends can get out-smarted by someone else from time to time. So in EVE you loose as much as you win. Accept that fact before un-docking.

Best advice in this thread so far.

Note that "fly with them" doesn't preclude being solo. You can go off on your own, but then you have someone to talk to live, or to help out. Some examples of why flying "with" people is useful:

• Live feedback on fits/techniques.
• Advice from more experienced pilots.
• People to test your fits/techniques out against.
• Constructively critical (at least, supposedly) breakdown of any fights you lost
• People to brag to or compete with.
• ♫ You've got a friend in me... ♫ (Friends are pretty cool to have)

Anyway, some advice to your specific fights:

• Try to understand what you can and cannot fight. Picking your fights is a large part of success. For example, a solo Sentinel is not appropriate for fighting anything that can do tracking-independent damage (drones, missiles), or for fighting multiple targets.
• If something didn't work, try to see what went wrong. For example, here it looks like you engaged a bait Punisher. If a ship that should be obviously scared of you is actually charging at you, 90% of the time it is bait. Especially if there are others of his corp/alliance/militia in system.
• A single small armor repairer is never an appropriate PvP tank. For an active tank, you need resistance mods/rigs, preferably with two armor repairers.
• Most of the ships you're using are quite complex to begin with, without using advanced tactics like packing TDs, dualprop setups, etc. Make sure you understand the basics (tackling, keeping range, and other stuff) before jumping up to weird stuff.

Lastly: PvP videos are misleading and will give you false expectations. Behind every "pro" solo fight are either a ton of losses, a ton of ISK (in implants, faction mods, etc), a ton of alts (off-grid boosting, cloaky Falcon, remote repair, etc), or all of the above. "True" solo PvPers who reliably find and win 1v1s without the above... pretty much don't exist.

Good luck!

1. Worrying about statistics reduces one's ability to learn PvP
You get good statistics by reducing risk. Picking fights with little risk means that your choices won't significantly affect the outcome of the fight. You can only learn in-fight skills if it matters what you do in that fight. You have to pick one or the other: aiming for good statistics or aiming for a good solo PvP learning experience.

2. Your fight-pickings skill are more important than your in-fight skills
Studying fits and video's focuses on your in-fight skill. The metagame (finding and choosing your fights) is way more important. You have to fly the ship that is optimal for your learning curve. That is why people often suggest cheap ships, simply because you get more practice time that way. Ask yourself: is your ship an attractive target? What other ship classes would engage your ship in a 1vs1? Does your ship/fit have a chance of beating the popular fits of the ship classes that will engage you? Where do you need to hang out to find the kind of people that want to engage your ship? How do you protect yourself from being blobbed, or being off-grid-out-boosted, falconed etc? On paper, the Curse is a terrific solo ship. In practice, it is a horrible solo ship. Why? Because of the metagame.

You can't win every fight but never engage on your opponents terms, plus there are alot of little things that help, boosters, implants, etc.

Loving solo PvP a lot I'll give my few cents.
I pretty much always fly solo. I don't use off-grid booster or scout, my implants cost around 5m, and I think I'm doing pretty well.
These tips are mostly for frig PvP.

-First of all your fits are pretty expensive, and to be honest pretty bad. This might be the top reason. You want to think and play around in EFT a bit more with your ships. Try to find good balance between gank and tank and start with cheaper stuff first. More ISK doesn't mean AUTO WIN

-Always fit damage control to your brawling ships. The EHP it gives is just too good to miss.

-Get to know the pilots in your area. What they fly. How they usually fit their ships. Who has always backup nearby.

-Knowledge about ships. There's really no quick way for this. Learn the common ships and fits. What are the weaknesses and how you can abuse them.

-Pick your fights. No need to take a fight where odds are heavily against you.

-Damage. This along with speed plays a big part when you're engaging/harassing gangs. You want to wreck separated pilots fast and GTFO.

-Speed. It's nice to be fast.

-Dscan. If you dont love it, you're not using it.

That's all that come in my tired mind. Don't listen to people saying solo PvP is dead. It's sometimes tough to find good fights, but they're out there. You will get frustrated at blobs and off-grid boosters, but remember that you're getting more excitement out of your fights than those worthless blobbers looking for easy kills.

Check out Kil2's awesome Youtube channel and Eve is Easy -channel for tips from the real ninjas

the easiest way to be successful in solo pvp is just to figure out your ship you want to use, optimize the fitting, then figure out what ships you can take on with it, then only engage those ships. its not really fun but its what i was doing when i was newer.


also fon ravedhort is someone i would be very glad to get advice from @ot smithers, hes done alot for the eve solo pvp community and has documented quite a bit of footage to the video community.

I don't disagree with what you're saying (though your tone is a touch abrasive). I have seen firsthand how people multibox or fly expensive ships and fail spectacularly because they have no experience. In the hands of someone who knows how to use them though, they are great tools, and valid play.

What I was warning OP against is believing that he can match the performance of "pro PvP" videos through practice only. In a concrete example: no matter how skilled a Cynabal pilot you are, you will not go 3500 m/s, have 35+ km unheated point range, or have a near-100% guarantee to survive unfavorable engagements without using expensive gear, implants and/or alts. It's not that PvPing in a setup that does that is "wrong", but that many pro videos do invisibly use all these force multipliers -- giving unreasonable false hope to new pilots who aspire to "be pro like the guy in that one video". I get the feeling you agree with the sentiment, but misinterpreted my warning as a whine of "alts/implants/etc are unfair".


Pilots worth their mettle indeed don't (or shouldn't) boast about that stuff, but I've seen the opposite, too -- unironic claims to PvP prowess because of endless slaying of T1-fit frigates using massive overkill.

It really just comes down to: fly the way you want, take everything you see/hear with a pinch of salt, and above all, make sure you're having fun, pro or not (if you're not, you're probably doing it wrong).