For once I'm not flying a Vengeance...

A short roam last night netted me two kills, which I think is the most ships I've killed in one outing (usually because the second thing I attack murders me). I'm pretending it's progress, even though the first "fight" was more of a slaughter.

I had decided to finally get my ass into a different AF from my usual Vengeance, purely because it's starting to wear a little thin on me (and no doubt it's also getting boring for anyone who's a returning reader). I chose to try out the Wolf, since I've already had a pass on the Jaguar. I based my fit from this blog post by Ava Starfire. She sounded like she knew her stuff when it came to Minmatar Assault Frigates, so I took the plunge and bought myself a shiny new Wolf, fitted it up as Ava recommended, and headed out towards Ami. I even splashed a few million ISK on some 3% damage implants for Small Projectile Turrets and Surgical Strike. Both were dirt cheap, and totally worth the money in my opinion.

After jumping into Ami through the Gademam -> Daran pipe (much safer, I've never seen a gatecamp this way in), I spent ten or fifteen minutes dodging a couple of Proteuses, who appeared to be hunting a small cruiser gang. I didn't really want to get caught by either side, or get caught between them, so I docked up for a while and checked my sell orders on my alt. Not long after, the cruiser gang left system, and the Proteus pilots seemed to quickly get bored and log off. A quick check of Local now showed only eight or nine pilots including myself, so I undocked and started warping around, looking for a fight. I soon saw a Rifter on scan. I know, I'm a horrible person, but this is EVE! 

I'm not sure he was aware of how to use D-Scan that well, because he kept warping to belts, looking (I assume) for miners or a similar targets. I started trying to predict where he would warp next, but it was ultimately fruitless. He was pretty much warping randomly, and by the time I was in warp to a belt, a narrow scan showed him warping away. I warped to one of my safe spots and waited, hoping that he would get bored warping around and wait for someone to find him. A minute or so later, he seemed to stay in a belt longer than usual, and I flung myself into warp.

I landed next to him a few seconds later. He wasn't even moving, and there was a rat wreck next to him, so I assumed he must have decided to pew a rat while he was there. Fair enough, but it was going to cost him (Evil laugh). I locked him, turned on my scram, and switched on my overheated 200mm Autocannons. Fusion ammo spewed from my ship and absolutely tore the Rifter in half. Two volleys cut into his armour, and three more finished off his hull. A little shocked at how much damage I had done to him in such a short time, I moved to his wreck and grabbed the loot. From what I could tell, it looked like a decent fit (if only T1), his only problem was that I had turned up in an Assault Frigate. Very unfair. I felt a little bad for him, so I didn't offer a "gf" in Local. Frankly that hadn't even been close to a fair fight, so I wasn't going to dress it up as one. He soon jumped out of system.

I waited out my GCC in a station, then headed into Bridi. Utterly empty. I jumped into Fensi, and was greeted by a pair of Drakes, who thankfully jumped before my session cloak ran out (I doubt they would have caught me warping off gate, but I didn't want to risk getting caught by some idiots with Sensor Boosters). Warping to the centre of the system, I caught sight of a Vengeance on D-Scan.

Uh oh.

Obviously, I'm fully aware of how dangerous a Vengeance can be, since it's been my favourite ship for about two months. However, it also means I was very aware of its weaknesses, which I could hopefully lever to my advantage. I decided to get a little more information before I committed to the fight however. First job, find out who the hell is flying the ship. Easiest way to do this is let him find me. I warped to a random belt at 100km, started flying straight up, and waited.

Totally guessed he would do that :P

Within a few minutes, the Vengeance pilot had warped into the belt at zero, and I had a name to feed into the killboards. He was aggroed by the belt rats and warped off, so I felt fairly safe tabbing out for a few seconds while in warp to a planet to check his losses. A quick few glances at his recent deaths showed he had opted for a ballistic control system on his fit instead of more resists, and had pretty much left his EM/Therm hole wide open. A weakness I could exploit.

Fantastic!

I loaded up my EMP ammo, and warped back to100km on the same belt. The Vengeance pilot landed at around 30km from me a minute later, and started burning for my Wolf. Not long after that, an Anathema landed about 50km from the two of us and cloaked up. Instantly I was suspicious. Was the Anathema acting as a warp in for a gang? Not wanting to risk it, I burned about 50km away from where I had seen the CovOps ship, and waited for the Vengeance to catch up. I changed my D-Scan settings to around 2AU incase the Anathema was acting as a warp in, and then locked and engaged the swiftly approaching Vengeance.

I decided to try and hold my orbit at around 5.5km, where my speed should be as a high as possible. Hopefully this would reduce his rocket DPS by a fair amount. I overheated my guns, and  they began streaming hot lead at the Vengeance. Once again, I was shocked by the pure DPS the Wolf could put out. 

Yes, I'm armour tanking.

His shields were cut through in one volley (not entirely surprising), and within ten seconds he was in half armour and falling fast. My jaw was somewhere on the floor at this point, and I glanced at the damage notifications to check how hard he was hitting me. Uhhh, not very hard, since he was using Mjolnir Rage Rockets. Since Minimatar T2 ships get a massive boost to EM resists, he was having a hard time damaging my shields, let alone my armour.

Even worse, my small signature made his Rage Rockets less effective, and my shields hadn't even broken until he had started dipping into hull. Eyebrows raised, I watched as my favourite hull was torn to pieces in front of my very eyes. I even felt a pang of guilt as he exploded.

I think I've been flying the Vengeance a little too much...

I grabbed his loot, offered a "gf" in Local and warped to the nearby gate with no GCC to impede my progress. (Hurray for not engaging first!). Sitting on the gate, I had a quick glance through the loot (sadly nothing shiny, but ISK is ISK), when I noticed the Rifter pilot I had killed earlier was in Local. D-Scan showed another Rifter. Don't worry dear reader, I wasn't a dick (i.e I didn't attempt to murder him twice in the same night)

No, actually he sent me a convo invite and we had a good chat about PvP and starting out. I encouraged him to stick with it, as I was already impressed that after losing a frigate he got straight back out there and kept going. When I first started PvP, I would have a good sulk every time I lost a ship (hell, who am I kidding, I still do), so I have a feeling this rookie is going to turn out well if he stays on this course :P

I salute you sir!

Anyone else out there starting PvP, that pilot has exactly the attitude you need to do well. He even said that he was planning to lose his ships. Remember, frigates are cheap. Buy twenty of the damn things and go have some fun!

Fly safe ;)