Analysing the dumb things I do

*Warning! Text heavy post!*

I apologise for the snail's pace that I've been blogging at this month. After Borderlands 2, I stupidly decided to buy another recently released game that took my fancy, called Dishonoured, since it was pretty cheap where I live. I hadn't heard much about it, but it looked fun, and I was pleasantly surprised when I played through it.

Erhmagerd, so kewl

But since I bought Dishonoured, I've had even less EVE time and my Borderlands 2 time has suffered too. Damn having responsibilities and everything, otherwise I could just sit on my ass all day and play games. But I felt a little guilty leaving my little blog without a post for over a week, so I decided to type one up last night. As a change of pace, I decided this post will be about my recent losses, rather than my kills (not just because I haven't been able to kill anything recently). Hopefully it'll be a learning experience for me and you, which is always a good thing.

Mainly it's for me though. After all, I'm the one who keeps doing stupid things in Assault Frigates :)

So here's the basic plan; I'll link the mail, explain a little about the situation I was facing, and then what I did (which got me killed). Then I'll discuss alternatives to what I could have done that I thought up after the fight. Of course, if you have any different ideas, feel free to share them in the comments :D

Here we go! The first fight is...

1) Jaguar (Me) vs Shield Brutix, Coercer (Later on)

The Situation
-Solo roam, ended up in Pynekastoh with two squids in Local. I assumed that if I attacked one, the other would turn up fairly fast. Even so, I was confident I would be able to disengage fairly quickly in my Jaguar if the shit hit the fan, since it's pretty nippy for an Assault Frigate. I found one squid-boy in a Brutix outside a medium plex, and decide to engage for the lols. I could tell from the speeds he was reaching that he was shield fit, so I loaded up EMP ammo and got in close. His guns couldn't track me and he hadn't launched any drones.

- I ripped down his shields at a decent speed, but his peak recharge slowed me down to the point I was worried that I wouldn't break him. Overheated guns pushed him past the edge, but by the time I was past the peak, the Coercer had landed, 50km or so off us. The Brutix was in armour, but I knew there was no way I would burn him down with EMP ammo before that Coercer got in range and pissed on my parade. It was only now the Coercer was here that the Brutix remembered his drones and stuck them on me. The combined fire from his drones and the pulse lasers of the Coercer soon exploded my face. The Brutix was in half armour when I died :(

Choices
- I could have disengaged the moment the Coercer landed. There was no real chance of me killing the Brutix without dying from the Coercer, and I would have most likely been able to break off from the Brutix under an overheated AB before he could catch me again. So I could have run away like a little girl, but I was too fixated on an "above class" kill.

- I could have switched targets to the Coercer and prayed I could kill him before I took too much damage. The Jaguar has a strong native EM/Therm resist, so that would have bought me some time, and I know that most Coercers in FW are pretty much fit for pure DPS, with a minimal tank. Chances are he would be running a similar fit to the people in the Gallente Militia  (light armour tank in the lows, i.e plate and DCU, with two heatsinks). If he had dropped, I potentially could have then tanked the drones of the Brutix, or atleast killed them off, before finishing him off too (if he didn't run when the Coercer died). It's nice to dream anyway.

- Sadly I did neither of these things and stayed on the Brutix, clinging to the insane belief that he might die before me. Jaguar down!

2) Enyo (Me) vs Punisher, Harbinger, Thrasher, Thorax

The Situation
- I jumped from Nennamaila (home system) into Enaluri and noticed a minor plex pop up as soon as I did so. I warped to it instantly and caught this Punisher before he could hit the gate and escape me. He pretty much melted under my LOLOLOL ENYO DPS. I then caught sight of several more ships coming in on close range scan, with the Thorax and Thrasher landing pretty much on top of me a few seconds later and the Harbinger landing around 15-20km from us. I decided to primary the Thorax, since I knew they tend to be all DPS/No tank, completely forgetting the fact that Thrashers are frigate killers.

- I was chewing nicely through the Thorax, with him in deep armour (yay Void ammo) when his flight of Vespa EC-600s got a jam on me, and screwed me over. I lasted the whole 20second jam period, was lucky enough to not get jammed again and instead pewed after the Thrasher, since the Thorax had sensibly pulled range from my blasters. The Thrasher took some serious hits, but I had come out of the jam cycle in seriously low armour, so by the time I had locked the Thrasher and started murdering him, I was in hull and going down fast. One last volley from the Thorax put me in my pod.

Choices
- Primarying the Thorax over the Thrasher was a seriously bad move on my part, I admit it. The Thorax and the Harbinger were having trouble tracking me anyway with their large guns, and the main problem was indeed the "Frigate killer" sitting right on my ass, pewing hot lead into my face. I'm under no illusions I could have killed the Thrasher before the ECM drones cycled on me (I had a good 10-20 seconds from the Thorax landing before I was jammed), and after he was down, I'm pretty sure I could have lasted long enough to kill the Thorax too, since the Thrasher damage would have been wiped away. Sadly I doubt I could have killed Harbinger aswell, but you can't have it all I guess :)

- There was also a chance to run between the Punisher dying and his buddies landing. I had maybe four or five seconds which I could have used to align out and run like a little girl, but instead I wanted to loot the Punisher and hopefully grab some more kills.

Derp derp, Enyo down!


3) Imperial Navy Slicer (Me) vs Rapier
- Yes a Rapier. No, this wasn't me assuming I could take on a Recon cruiser, he was cloaked :D I was chasing afk plexers, when I found an Incursus in a Major. Warping in left me 50km off the Incursus, followed shortly by a Rapier uncloaking not 10km away from me.

- I panicked and completely forgot about the cloaking delay for targeting the Rapier would have to suffer, and attempted to burn away under my MWD. Big mistake. Overheated webs and point caught me at around  35km and after that I was pretty much screwed. Slicer down!

Choices
- Obvious one would have been to warp away. He wouldn't have caught me in time and I would still have my beautiful Slicer. Not really much more I can say about this one :(


There's a couple more recent losses I also wanted to look at, so when EVE-Kill finally gets round to adding them to my lossboard, I'll update this post here. Mainly though, the next two losses are bad engagement choices rather than any actual mistakes during the fight. But otherwise I hope this post has been useful in some way to show you, the reader, that you have more options in a fight than simply "ERHMAGERD, DIE IN A FIRE".

I've definitely helped myself by doing this anyway!

Fly safe ;)