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Fastest L2 mission runner?
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Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#1 - 2014-08-23 20:30:35 UTC  |  Edited by: Carniflex
As the title suggests.

What do you think is the fastest L2 mission runner. Keeping it more or less reasonable so lets say up to approx 150 .. 200 mil for it? The cheaper and the faster the better ofc.

I'm not that frequent in running L2's but it seems to be mostly firgates with occasional cruiser mixed in. A lot of warping around. It would be for low sec / null for the standings grind.

Edit: Clarification about SP. Assuming one can fly everything and fit everything that's available in game.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
chaosgrimm
Synth Tech
#2 - 2014-08-23 20:43:41 UTC
Granted I haven't done 2s in forever.

My first vote would be the machariel. Very fast, very nice dmg and projection, utility high for a tractor.

Within your price range though, I'd vote for an appropriate ranged fit + MWD bc for the mission area / sp.
Paranoid Loyd
#3 - 2014-08-23 21:00:42 UTC  |  Edited by: Paranoid Loyd
GILA but that is out of budget. Ishkur or VNI?

Stoicfaux is probably the only one who actually knows or at least that can back his answer with actual data.

"There is only one authority in this game, and that my friend is violence. The supreme authority upon which all other authority is derived." ISD Max Trix

Fix the Prospect!
Tolkaz Khamsi
Empire Reclamation Services
#4 - 2014-08-23 21:17:55 UTC  |  Edited by: Tolkaz Khamsi
You can run L2's in anything, really. You can run most of them in a destroyer if you want. But if your interest is mainly grinding through them quickly, the following ships do well:

-- If you have high drone skills, it's hard to beat a Vexor for cost/performance.
-- If you're a fan of lazors, an Omen makes a great L2 mission boat (and it has a good-sized drone bay). It's also cheap to fit out.
-- A Thorax or a Moa makes a fine L2 platform as well, if you're a hybrid-turret person (rails instead of blasters and active instead of passive tank)

None of these loadouts will run you more than 20M or so fully fitted, and they'll blow through L2's in nothing flat. Even a destroyer will have no trouble in most L2 missions.
GreenSeed
#5 - 2014-08-23 23:26:15 UTC
a machariel on l2s? gates wont even let you enter. talk about killing rats with a bazooka...

as said on the post above me, a thorax/moa is what you want. at low SP they are fairly good (probably a thrasher will be better for low sp) and at high SP, they are exceptional. i would add a Stabber to the list of cheap T1 hulls for lvl2's

a pirate hull like a cynabal will work even better with some pimp on it, with warp rigs that thing can warp extremely fast and move inside the pocket at amazing speeds.

this is what i use for standing grinds:

[Cynabal, grind swarm]
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II

10MN Afterburner II
Small Shield Booster II
Tracking Computer II, Tracking Speed Script
EM Ward Amplifier II
Adaptive Invulnerability Field II

425mm AutoCannon II, EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, EMP M
[empty high slot]

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Projectile Ambit Extension II

Warrior II x5
Warrior II x5

200m price tag.

1kms with AB, 7 AU/s warp speed plus a 50% warp accell boost that has to be experienced to understand what it means, and a 3 sec align. i have used this ship up to lvl3s and highsec exploration with ease. the small shield booster should be replaced with a medium Clarity one if you are not confident on your TTK. (Gistii A type will work fine too, but its too expensive.) anyway, you are usually too fast to get hit by anything anyway... that's also why you need the Tracking speed TC on the mids. heh.

i tried using a Vagabond, but gates wont let HACs in... -.-' a good replacement for a Cynabal would be a Stabber Fleet issue, but trust me, once you experience the cynabal warp speed, you wont go back. thanks to that +50% warp acceleration, that thing warps faster than a CovertOps! and its definitely WAY better than any Assault frigate out there.

and as a plus, has that lovely highslot for a cloak if you are grinding on a pirate hub. (you'll need a 3% cpu implant)

i know some Lv2 wont let cruiser in, but those missions aren't about shooting anyway.
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#6 - 2014-08-24 06:33:14 UTC
Cynabal is actually quite good idea. Considering how short the missions are when doing them with decent enough dps the warp speed of the platform is quite important. And yeah Mach would be nice as well prolly but it's bound to attract some unwanted attention and I would get sooner or later get hotdropped at gate.

As far as the pricetag goes, the 200 mil is not written in stone. It's just that losses will happen, they always do eventually so I would prefer to keep that reasonable. HAC or T3 are options as well ofc. They are just kinda slowish in warp tunnel as you have to hop around pretty often.

I have done them in AF and couple of tier 2 destroyers and they go fast enough I would just like to add a little more speed to the process. One of the AF's I tried was Ishkur but it was not as fast as I would like to because a lot of that on paper dps was wasted with drone travel time also it's annoying when rats attack your drones. I have considered Isthar as well but have not got around trying it out. I do have pvp Cynabal around so I can give it a try with the pvp rigs for a start, see how I like it etc.

I'm not sure ofc if the AC range is good enough even with the agility and speed of the cynabal. In a good number of L2's the rats are at 70-80 km from you so it might mean a lot of thumb twiddling while buring into range of various rat groups.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#7 - 2014-08-24 06:34:30 UTC  |  Edited by: baltec1
Just about any cruiser. Important to note is that most of your time will be spent in warp so invest in warp speed rigs and implants to get the best blitz times. RLML is highly effective on a navy osprey and a navy vexor is also good. You can omni tank the cruiser too so no faffing around with fits (more time saved) and you can pull it off with a t1 fit. The cynable can hit intercepter like warp speeds but it wont have the range of a navy osprey.

You have lots of options though so it is entirely up to you.
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#8 - 2014-08-24 11:09:52 UTC
Indeed. Tried the nano cynabal I had lying around and it just does not quite have the range to blitz effectively. Tried also a nano Moa I had lying around (warp speed rigged, old idea about beefing up cormorant swarms with some Moa's) and it actually did perform a little better than cynabal in L2's . At least in these couple I tried.

The thing in favor of Moa seemed to be it's ability to swap ammo in reasonable speed and just swat the frigs at range with Spike instead of having to burn 20-30 km to get into the range, then swap back to navy antimatter and delete the frigates in range of that.

I believe thorax should perform even better because tanking is not really an issue and Thorax has the additional tracking bonus instead of the shield resist bonus of the Moa. So from the platforms on the table atm Thorax seems to be the one with best bang-for-buck. I'll try it later and see how it goes.

I probably should just take the time to go over all the cruiser class ships bonuses as I'm not quite on ball anymore with all these tiericides and rebalances.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
Tolkaz Khamsi
Empire Reclamation Services
#9 - 2014-08-24 12:31:51 UTC
I find the Thorax a better mission boat than the Moa because of the tracking and damage bonus to the guns and the much larger drone bay.

The tracking and damage bonus means that the Thorax is probably intended as a close-range PVP brawler, but that bonus helps even with railguns in missions when frigates get in close. And the large drone bay means you can carry a full flight of light drones, a couple of spares, and some salvage drones. It's a good "do it all" ship in that sense. It also tanks well, and I prefer an armor tank to the shield-tanked Moa as it gives me more fitting flexibility in the mids (sebo, cap rechargers, etc).

I'm sure your skills are higher than mine at this point, but even as a relatively low-skill player, I find the Thorax to be a very efficient, cheap, and fast mission-runner. I like it a lot. The only ship I fly more is the Amarr Omen, and that's because it has many of the same advantages as the Thorax, with the added benefit that I don't have to carry ammo (lasers FTW!).
Hasikan Miallok
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#10 - 2014-08-24 12:40:47 UTC
Shield tank vexor with bouncers for the win.
Carniflex
StarHunt
Mordus Angels
#11 - 2014-08-24 14:32:10 UTC
What about navy Exequror. While it lacks the Thorax tracking bonus it seems to get a little more raw damage and seems to be substantially more agile.

[Exequror Navy Issue, L2]
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Magnetic Field Stabilizer II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Large F-S9 Regolith Shield Induction
Experimental 10MN Afterburner I
F-12 Nonlinear Tracking Processor, Tracking Speed Script
Sensor Booster II, Scan Resolution Script

250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M
250mm Railgun II, Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M

Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer I
Medium Ancillary Current Router I

Hobgoblin II x5
Optimal Range Script x1
Tracking Speed Script x1
Targeting Range Script x1
Scan Resolution Script x1
Caldari Navy Antimatter Charge M x5000
Spike M x5000
Caldari Navy Thorium Charge M x5000
Nanite Repair Paste x100

A bit tight fit. with my skills it should have 0.03 CPU left.
According to EFT the total pricetag should be approx 100 mil. Looked also into Deimos but it seems to have a little less damage (but a little longer max range) for approx 250 mil.

Here, sanity... niiiice sanity, come to daddy... okay, that's a good sanity... THWONK! GOT the bastard.
baltec1
Bat Country
Pandemic Horde
#12 - 2014-08-24 15:05:54 UTC
I might add that past a point more firepower isnt needed if you are already alphaing almost everything. Range should be a priority and if you find you have some extra fitting room get a tractorbeam.
Tolkaz Khamsi
Empire Reclamation Services
#13 - 2014-08-24 16:03:55 UTC
Carniflex wrote:
What about navy Exequror. While it lacks the Thorax tracking bonus it seems to get a little more raw damage and seems to be substantially more agile.


Yeah, but you're paying a hell of a lot more for a ship that will give you, at best, a marginal improvement over a Thorax for L2 missions. If you have a ton of ISK to spend or plan to use the Navy Exequeror for other stuff, I guess that works, but if all you plan to do with it is run L2's, why spend all that extra ISK?
Chainsaw Plankton
FaDoyToy
#14 - 2014-08-24 18:52:10 UTC
Paranoid Loyd wrote:
GILA but that is out of budget. Ishkur or VNI?

Stoicfaux is probably the only one who actually knows or at least that can back his answer with actual data.


probably not a Gila as it would probably be slower than most other ships thanks to all that drone travel time. lv2s have a ton of small hp ships that can be widely spread out.

how would an arty cynabal work out? well after looking at it in eft, it gets pretty tight to fit, and I was also surprised at how much damage the navy Exequror could do. Although the cynabal still might win based on agility and warp speed.

and/or a warp speed rigged ishtar, although I'm not sure if there would be any missions with gate restrictions for that.

also will 250mm railguns alpha most ships in lv2s (Ungrouped of course)? I mean I know there are a bunch of the super weak npc frigs, but there should also be a bunch of higher hp npcs too? been a long while since I ran lv2s.

@ChainsawPlankto on twitter
Tolkaz Khamsi
Empire Reclamation Services
#15 - 2014-08-24 19:42:08 UTC
Chainsaw Plankton wrote:
also will 250mm railguns alpha most ships in lv2s (Ungrouped of course)? I mean I know there are a bunch of the super weak npc frigs, but there should also be a bunch of higher hp npcs too? been a long while since I ran lv2s.


I can answer that one as I ran a few L2's this morning in my Thorax. I'm a fairly low-skill player and I could alpha most of the frigs with straight Antimatter ammo (meta 4 guns, not even T2). The cruiser rats took about 3 volleys to take out. I'm guessing that higher-skilled players with faction ammo and T2 guns would have no trouble popping L2 frigs in one volley.
Zoltan Lazar
#16 - 2014-08-24 19:55:37 UTC
Orthrus with rapid lights. You'll kill everything before you have to reload a lot of the time. 4x BCU 1x T2 damage rig gives an insane amount of damage. 1x rigor on top of that gives really good damage application.
Voxinian
#17 - 2014-08-24 22:35:33 UTC  |  Edited by: Voxinian
Zoltan Lazar wrote:
Orthrus with rapid lights. You'll kill everything before you have to reload a lot of the time. 4x BCU 1x T2 damage rig gives an insane amount of damage. 1x rigor on top of that gives really good damage application.



I agree about the Orthrus. Haven't tried it with rapid lights yet (rapids sucks unless you have just a few targets), but the dps is pretty impressive with HML's. Npc frigs and cruisers I can destroy in one volley same for any missle battery etc. Also the speed of this cruiser is pretty good, even with an afterbnurner you get close to 1k m/s.

My PVE roaming fit (cap stable if you don't have to tank). you can infinitely use the MWD and still have plenty of juice left to tank for almost 2 minutes, but with that speed you wont have to tank.

High:
5x HML II
Empty slot (I have cloak active atm)

Medium:
1x Cap recharger II
1x 10MN MWD II (@2250 m/s)
1x Invun Field II (pithium)
1x Target Painter II
1x Pithium C-Type Med Shield Booster

Low:
2x Balistic Control II
2x Capacitor Power Relay II

Rig:
1x Warhead Calefacation Catalyst II
1x EM Reinforcer II
1x Thermal Rainforcer II
(my current rig setup for more omni resistance, purely for pve)

+ 5x Hobgoblin II
Hasikan Miallok
Republic University
Minmatar Republic
#18 - 2014-08-24 23:48:34 UTC
Orthrus is a nice boat but at half a bill is not in the OP 150-200 mill limitation.

Even a rapid light Cerebus will be too expensive with a 200 mill limit.



To be honest if you are looking for a sub 100 mill fitted level 2 boat its hard to beat a passive shield T1 Vexor. You can get 100 hp/sec tank and deploy up to 3 T2 sentries at a time. Assuming you have drone skills of course.
Ginger Barbarella
#19 - 2014-08-25 00:50:09 UTC  |  Edited by: Ginger Barbarella
Carniflex wrote:
As the title suggests.

What do you think is the fastest L2 mission runner. Keeping it more or less reasonable so lets say up to approx 150 .. 200 mil for it? The cheaper and the faster the better ofc.

I'm not that frequent in running L2's but it seems to be mostly firgates with occasional cruiser mixed in. A lot of warping around. It would be for low sec / null for the standings grind.

Edit: Clarification about SP. Assuming one can fly everything and fit everything that's available in game.


Ashimmu is a great little boat.

Just about anything will do if you have the skills to T2 fit the weapon systems

"Blow it all on Quafe and strippers." --- Sorlac
Dato Koppla
Balls Deep Inc.
Minmatar Fleet Alliance
#20 - 2014-08-25 05:25:15 UTC
In my experience a gun destroyer usually outperforms a Cruiser for L2 missions. Droneboats using combat drones should be avoided as while they do alot of dps and they shred frigs, if spawns are far the drones take awhile to reach and you also waste time waiting for the drones to travel to each individual target to kill them. I've used an Eris recently to grind L2s and that has been my favourite so far, great range and dps, can one volley most of the L2 frigs with half of it's guns while having a very short cycle time on the guns and great agility/speed/warpspeed. The tracking is also great so you won't have to burn away from rats to get good hits if they are right on top of you (which you will have to do if you use medium guns). However I've never tried an RLML boat like the Orthrus or N.Caracal after the changes so I'm unsure if those will be better.
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