Skill Discussions

I've recently resub'd my caldari spear-chucker and need to forge a long-term plan for her once again. Shes currently 80ish mil sp of pure missile/shield goodness, which has served me well in pve (her dedicated role). Now i'm wondering where to go from here. Shes already an ace tengu, golem, cnr, nighthawk, drake (lol), basi, etc. pilot. Other t2 ships would essentially be pvp waste on her skill-sheet.

Looking for some cross-training opinions. My options are fairly open, but i'd like to avoid sinking into more than once race so no mach (sorry fanbois) or vindicator.

Go with Minmatar. Vargur is better than a Golem, IME.

Mach doesn't require heavy cross "racial" training. Getting Gallente and Minmatar BS to IV each is faster than getting Minmatar BS to V for the Vargur. For the Mach, you will just need to train up 800mm ACs. The Mach can be shield or armor tanked depending on what NPCs you mission against. More importantly, think of the Mach as a BS with Tengu like agility, with Tengu like speed (or frigate like speed if you use an MWD,) and the firepower of a Marauder.

OTOH, the Vargur has a serious tank if you're too lazy to aggressively fly a Mach in missions.

i realy love minmatar but also gallente...

gallente seems a very good option also since the hybrid boost its realy a lot better then it was. blasters do insane damage now if you do it properly. more importantly a lot of caldari ships have hybrid bonuses.

You can train all T1 ships and turrets in very short order. Roughly 1 week for all turrets and support skills to 3, and about a week per race for ships.

Then you can try them out and choose for yourself, plus it opens all the faction and pirate ships to you.

First off, caldari are not the king pve race anymore. Sorry to dissapoint, but unless you live in w-space or mission in 0.0 the tengu is out-classed by the mach and nightmare. Secondly, there are zero missions where you golem is an optimal ship and frankly there is never a reason to fly one, unless you really like carpel tunnel syndrome from managing triple target painters.

Take it from a fellow vet who spent years with a missile-focused pve alt, it is long past time to sell that piece of **** and get yourself a real farmer. The mach is so grossly imbalanced that you will literally groan every time you undock in something else. It is that alarmingly, stupid good.

Now get out there and sell your alt so I can buy him or her for cheap.

Caldari might not be the king of missions or even incursions for that matter, but they're still quite high up for pve when you consider the flexibility of the tengu and the drake. I have an alt myself that runs a mach and I agree it is one seriously amazing ship.

That said, I don't find the golem all that shabby. It might not be bleeding-edge optimal on most missions, but it fills the role of battleship smashing marauder nicely, salvages as it goes, and with it's tanking bonus doesn't require the multi-billion investment some people put into their faction battleships. You also forgot to mention the CNR which is still every bit the all-around superb ship it has been for years.

Personally I wouldn't go shelling out for an overpriced angel character.

I'm down with the "sell your alt," crew tbh. Caldari is boring as fuuukall you know? Everybody has h8h8h8 all over gall these years but man I tell you I can loose gallente ships all night and feel good about it. Flyin' in a drake for winning fights is not as fun because zzzzzzzzzzzz. Flying minmatar is as cool as gallente because wtfspeed/agility, but it is really fotm as everyone said.

PVE farm these days is as easy as BTL pub and a half-decent logistics ship fit. There is no more reason to have marauder alts and tengu spam and that is probably the reason everyone and their cousin are offloading tengu alts on the character bazaar rofl. My advice would be get into some incursions on your main, make some bank on ur alt while u can, and use the account for something useful.

Never cross-train!

Extremely tough call and one that I am in the process of making too.

On one the hand you have an efficient train: Gallente. Most of their ships can shield tank, even if it isn't optimal. Hybrid weapon skills overlap. You get good, but not great pirate ships in the gurista line.

Next up you have amarr, the most harsh but overall complete train: Amarr. Most of their ships need to armor tank. Your caldari ships will get nothing out of laser skills (oddball fits not withstanding). Some amarr ships will utilize missile skills, but none of them are particularly special. You get one good pirate ship, the nightmare, and two others that suck.

Finally, you have the minmatar, somewhere in between. Shield tankers for the most part, but ships to cut your armor tanking skills on if you get them eventually. They will get some secondary damage out of your missile skills and a few ships will even be worth flying because of those launcher skills like the typhoon. You get no pirate ships, but by most people's standards you get more viable ships than either of the previous options.

It doesn't seem too cut and dry to me, but I lean toward amarr at the moment. Not because of the nightmare or the amarr ships themselves, but because I feel like having more armor tanked options is a better balance in the long run. I would like to think gallente is a competitor in that regard, but they still feel too pigeonholed into the solo/small gang niche where caldari missile users find themselves already.

So to summarize the thread, the forum community suggests that the OP crosstrains either Amarr, Gallente, or Minmatar.