Level 4 PVE Paladin Guide (Budget fit)

Ah we're back here again, the sweet embrace of being a carebear.

That being said, my last guide on a Level 4 Marauder (the Vargur) was pretty popular, so I've decided to crack on with a followup on the beautiful, the deadly, the graceful, Amarrian Paladin.

Before we go any further, here's the fit I'll be discussing. However unlike last time, this is majority T2 fit and cheap faction. I'll talk about upgrade possibilities later on if you've got ISK to spare or a taste for bling. The price for this fit is around 1.47 billion at the time of writing this according to EVEPraisal. The vast majority of that is the hull itself at approximately 1.3 billion, and less than 200mil spent on fittings.

                                    

[Paladin, Holy Fire]

Core C-Type Large Armor Repairer
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Heat Sink II
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Tracking Enhancer II
Tracking Enhancer II

Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Tracking Computer II, Optimal Range Script
Large Cap Battery II
500MN Cold-Gas Enduring Microwarpdrive

Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Mega Pulse Laser II, Imperial Navy Multifrequency L
Bastion Module I
Small Tractor Beam II
Small Tractor Beam II
Salvager II

Large Capacitor Control Circuit I
Large Energy Burst Aerator II


Acolyte II x5
Infiltrator II x5


So first off it's pretty basic, four MPLs in the highs, bastion module, and two tractors/one salvager. This is pretty standard for a HighSec Paladin. You can change the number of salvagers/tractors around or swap them out entirely but there's not much else you need or want here in HighSec. If you're planning on using this in quiet LowSec, I'd really recommend a mix of Heavy and Medium Energy Neutralizers to throw off tackle incase the worst happens. If you've got nearby backup (say you're in Null with carriers ratting next door) you can even fit a cyno and scream for help while bastion saves your ass long enough for those blap carriers to come wreck the roaming gang that's caught you. In terms of gunnery options, you can definitely switch out the MPLs for Tachyon Beam Laser IIs if you want some crazy long range optimals with no need to ever swap from Multifreq unless you feel like using Gleam. However most missions do not require the insane range of Tachyons and MPLs have better DPS and apply it better due to higher tracking. Do Tachs work? Sure. Are they a better choice than MPLs? Debatable. If you feel like it, try both and stick with what you prefer. Personally I prefer the Mega Pulse Laser IIs for faster cycling and better tracking. The rest of this post will assume you're using the MPL fit otherwise it's going to get very long and confusing explaining the differences in flying them.

Anyway.

Ammo choice is Imperial Navy Multifrequency for anything close up, and then Scorch outside the falloff of Multi. Faction ammo is pretty much the best choice here, since you've got half the guns of a comparable laser battleship (but you have a 100% damage bonus bringing you back to eight effective turrets) and it adds around another 100DPS. Yeah they break, but the cost of replacing them is minor compared to the benefit you get out of them, and you'll get approximately 4000 shots per crystal according to Osmium, which is pretty damn efficient. Just make sure you carry a set of spares so you're not stuck limping through a mission with 3 broken crystals and only one working gun, while being too stubborn to fly two jumps to pick up new ones.

I'm not speaking from experience okay, stop looking at me like that.

The mids are open to your choice, but I enjoy the maneuverability of a MWD combined with a solid cap boost from the recently buffed cap batteries. You could swap this for a Heavy Cap Booster II or a Cap Recharger II, or even change it to something else entirely, but I prefer the Large Cap Battery to drive the already crazy cap strength of the Paladin to "Lol, who cares about managing cap" without drowning it in useless cap stability. Running your guns and rep with your MWD off lasts you a solid 5mins 23secs with max skills which is easily enough time with bastion and the 1k+ DPS to melt the field down to manageable levels. The two Tracking Computer IIs are a really good idea pretty much no matter what to help you push out your optimal, or increase your tracking on elite cruisers and the like. It's possible to fly a Paladin without these, but your applied DPS goes down the toilet, and it's not fun. Alternative choices for mid slots include MJDs, Afterburners, other cap mods, or even webs/grapplers if you want to go crazy, but I think this setup is the most well balanced and new marauder-pilot friendly to start with. If you're using this in LowSec, I'd recommend dropping the Cap Battery for a MJD alongside your MWD, to maximise your ability to GTFO of sticky situations. This will require more attention to your cap but it's alot safer to use.

Your low slots are aimed at increasing and applying maximum DPS while affording the bare minimum of tank. The faction bling here is cheap but helps reduce the number of slots you need to successfully tank Level 4 missions. Frankly you could probably run a T2 rep and a T2 EANM and still be fine. You can also drop a TE for another Heat Sink but the DPS increase is frankly negligable, and I feel better application of DPS is more useful than another 30 or so paper DPS. Alternatively you can drop a TE for another Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane if you're concerned about the tank and want some extra security, but you don't really need any more tank than is already there with the super power that is bastion and crazy DPS out to 100+km (Scorch is OP as fuck). There's the age old 4 Heat Sink + 1 TE vs 3 Heat Sink + 2 TE argument here, I'll leave that up to you to decide what you prefer now I've given my two cents.


The "I have more ISK than sense" part

"But Seraph!" I hear you cry. "I can't sleep properly at night unless my PvE fits are atleast 70% faction or deadspace fit! Where should I spend all this ISK on my brand spanking new Paladin?"

Frankly you fucking shouldn't because you won't get any real increase in performance for the amount of ISK you'll be spending, but if you really feel driven to upgrade this fit, stick with buying Imperial Navy Heat Sinks. That's really all you should pour money into. DO NOT, I REPEAT,

DO NOT

spend ISK upgrading the tank with A-Type or X-Type modules. You don't need it and it'll just make you look shinier for gankers. If you really feel that the tank isn't enough, take off the second TE and put either a Reactive Armor Hardener on there or a second faction EANM. Your wallet will thank me. I strongly disagree with upgrading the Tracking Enhancers or Tracking Computers to faction because it's like a 2% difference to T2 and that's not worth the huge increase in price in my opinion, but if you've got the ISK I can't really stop you.

 A faction or deadspace MWD is an easier pill to swallow because it can help your completion times if it moves you to a gate faster, or lets you save some cap so you're not waiting in an empty room for enough cap to enter the next room safely. That being said, it is 100% workable with a meta or even T2 MWD. I'd only say use a faction/deadspace MWD if you've got one hanging around or you can snag one for cheap.

The most important thing to remember is that you're grinding these missions to make money. A big consideration that most people forget is ISK efficiency with your fit. Sure you might be able to pour 3 billion ISK into a marauder and make it a laser spewing death machine, but you could instead pay 1.5 billion for it, still do shit-tons of damage, and put that other 1.5billion into something else, like a second ship for your alt to dual box, or put it into market trading for some semi-passive income. And the more expensive your ship is, the more missions you have to grind before you start "profiting", because up until you've paid for the price of that ship from missions, you're not technically getting any profit from it.

Anyway guys, I hope you found this post useful. Got an alternative fit? Enjoyed using this one? Post it in the comments!

Until the next time, fly safe o7

A new face in the group

Oh god I'm turning into one of those people.

You know who I'm talking about. The people with more ISK than sense or who have RL cash to burn quite happily on space pixels. In my case, it happens to be more RL cash becoming available to me due to a new job (yay), and a reduction in spending because I'm moving house.

Which lead to me thinking two days ago, "Huh, I want to get really into industry. Shame I don't have any characters I can use, since Seraph and Zendrak are busy training towards Wormhole living. Wait! I can just make a new account!"

And the rest, as they say ladies and gents, is history. I was even clever enough to remember to refer myself so I got a nice extra month of gametime for Seraph's account, and my new character (who shall remain nameless for the time being) has absolutely no ties to Seraph or Zendrak. No ISK deposits, no contracts, no trades, nothing. He's living entirely off what he's earned with the rookie missions and the brand spanking new Venture I got rewarded with for completing them.

Excitement! Massive ISK per hour! A sense of accomplishment!
You too can avoid these things by joining a mining fleet!

I've also joined a mining/industrial corp on him on his very first day, and I'm playing the excited rookie role, since I can't be arsed with explaining everything about my past to some snooty recruiters. Instead I'm asking the standard rookie questions, and some are genuinely from me regarding industry and mining because it's not an area I've delved into much in EVE. 


Yeah mining is boring as fuck, but it's something I can leave running in the background at my new job, and that's pretty tempting. Plus their long term plan is to join a NullSec alliance so that should be pretty exciting right?

I've got alot of plans for this new character, mainly revolving around a purely industry skill path, which should hopefully make me alot of dank ISK alongside the plan to move Seraph and Zendrak into a C3/C4/C5 wormhole corp. Then I could even transfer the sleeper loot to my new alt and get him on T3 manufacturing. It's all very exciting in my head, even if it's a little sad. The only real issue at the moment is that I'm only just remembering the absolute hell of training core skills all over again, which are just delaying my specialisation into industry. I've been spoilt for nearly 3 years now on my other two characters that I'm long past these skills and it's a little depressing to see them all again. However since I'm not going to be flying in combat I can afford to skimp on a few percent here and there, so I'm not obsessed with all Vs like I was previously. Instead the maxed skills will be related to mining yield and reprocessing efficiency. Technically I could buy a couple of skill extractors and put myself ahead by a month or so of training but I'm loathe to do this currently since it still feels like cheating to me.

Dat industrial god ship (sort of)

I really want to stick to a "pure" character, no PLEX injections for liquid capital, no skill injectors to skip the hard slog of training bullshit, just cracking on and getting things done. I'm fine with my corp handing me a mining barge to get me kickstarted (and some have already given me BPCs when I said I wanted to be a manufacturing tycoon) but I'd like to avoid the easy way out. It'll make achieving it all the more satisfying for me, even if my total skillplan for my alt so far is almost 790 days for everything I want trained at the moment. However that's without remapping or any implants so I can probably cut off just over 100 days from that which is much less shit. So far my plan for my industry alt is this:

1. Train for mining barges; Retriever, Hulk, Mackinaw etc etc
2. Train for industry manufacturing/refining/research/copying/invention etc
3. Train for a freighter
4. Train for a boosting Orca (including leadership skills etc)
5. Train for a jump freighter. Purchase and research capital ship/component BPOs
6. Build or buy my own Rorqual, Orca and Freighter
7. Max out mining skills/industry skills etc. Start mass building capital ships and make DANK ISK
8. Count my money while cackling evilly

While doing all this I'll be buying and researching BPOs, manufacturing from them and mining while afk at work. I'd also quite like to build any major ships I want to own just because it sounds "fun", so Fenrir, Orca, Rorqual and all that. I probably wouldn't build my own JF because I'm not sure if I want to get into T2/T3 manufacturing, but that's a bridge I'll cross once I get my T1 business going. Invention seems much more complex and skill intensive than T1 so I might actually have to do some real "revision" to understand WTF I'm doing.

If my corp moves out to Null I'd love to try and supply the market out there too, and luckily I've got a trade alt I bought ages ago which I could use to seed the home station with both manufactured and transported goods. I've even got a PI alt I don't use that I could pack off down there and start harvesting from planets. 

Looks very fancy, but very click intensive

However this is all very reliant on constant effort from me and scouring the market for opportunities to make dank ISK. It's also going to take me like 3 years of skill training to get to step 7 alone according to EVE Mon. Ouch. And christ knows when I'll reach step 8. But EVE is a game you play for the long haul, so we'll see what happens. I kinda want to talk more about alt accounts and all the things I could do with them, but this post is getting seriously long and I should probably stop.

In the mean time guys, fly safe o7

What the hell are you doing?

Last night, I decided to try and kill some mobile tractor units to annoy some mission bears and see what they did. So I logged in my two characters, stuck Zendrak in a scanning ship and hopped into a Hecate with Seraph. Sidenote, I fucking LOVE the design of this ship. It looks so awesome, and reminds me of a stealth bomber or something with the single flying wing design.

Seriously. Look how sexy it is

After irritating a Nightmare pilot who bumped me a few times to show his displeasure, and scaring the shit out of a Gila when my scanner decloaked on top of him, I was thinking my targets would be thin on the ground tonight. Long gone are the days where mission runners would rage at you stealing from their wrecks or shooting their MTUs, and respond by shooting...

Or are they?


I'd just scanned down a Dominix Navy Issue, and my scanner was sat on the acceleration gate. I warped in my Hecate  and plopped right down next to the Domi, who was slowboating towards the next gate while his drones chewed on some battleship rats. Deciding to be a dick, I flew straight past him and looted two battleship wrecks. Nothing major in them, probably about 2mil of loot, but I apparently enraged him so much he started shooting as soon as he could lock me.

With railguns.

At point blank range.

I'm in a goddam Hecate.


I was laughing so hard I didn't notice his Hobgoblins swarm me at first, and oh god those definitely hurt even if his railguns didn't. I scrammed the Domi, got into a tight orbit and started webbing and blapping his drones down. There were ALOT of drones. I felt like I killed atleast five full flights of light drones and two flights of heavies.

I have no idea how big the Domi's drone bay is, but as I chewed through endless Hobgoblins and  FedNavy Ogres I was seriously concerned I might run out of ammo before I could kill this guy. I'm deadly serious, I only packed about 800 rounds of each ammo type (Null, Void, FN Antimatter) and I'd already used most of my null on the FedNavy Ogres because they tended to orbit me around 6k.

Eventually he stopped launching drones at me and just kept slowboating towards the acceleration gate. I kept pace with him and kept up my withering blaster fire. His shields were dropping far slower than I expected, and I was worried about my ability to break his armour tank if I was already grinding pretty slow through his shields. Then I hit his armour, and OH JESUS.






He fucking melted. Like, literally I was blowing huge chunks off his armour with each volley. I decided to ask for a ransom of 300mil to save his ship but he didn't reply so I kept on shooting. His hull didn't last much longer than his armour, and soon he was in a pod. He warped off to station.

RIP SPACE POTATO

I looted his wreck, sadly no faction loot, and warped off to station myself so I could repair my burnt modules. I landed right on top of his capsule and he didn't seem to be moving towards the docking radius. Well since you asked so nicely Mr Capsule...

Blap blap!

I felt a little mean all for about two seconds, then I remembered this was EVE, so I docked up and went to watch TV with no remorse at all.


-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Now besides this little story I'm currently in the process of applying to wormhole corps so I can experience wormhole living properly and make some ISK to fund my industrial ventures. I've got this dream of building capital ships, and it's something I'm going to need alot of cash to get going. Wormholes seem like the best place for this with a nice mix of cash and PvP, so we'll see how it goes. In the mean time guys;

Fly safe o7

Gone too long

Skill Queue Online is a boring game.

Unfortunately it's all I've been able to do these last few months (okay, over a year) due to a new job taking up a lot of my personal time. The military are not big fans of people taking PCs into basic training! However I've now passed my basic and my further training is much more relaxed, to the point that I'm looking at buying a laptop PC to play EVE and League of Legends on in the evenings after my lessons. Hopefully I'll have it by next week, and I'll be playing regularly again. I might even start blogging more frequently about my clumsy attempts to relearn all that is new in the last year, and perhaps start making some serious ISK in W-Space that I can burn in stupid expensive PvP ships.

I'm also attempting to teach myself the whole Excel-and-importing-XML-data thing but it's goddam confusing to someone with no coding as a background and a short attention span. That's something else I want to work on in the coming weeks.


I won't say I'm back for good because I know how that ended before. This is just a post to let anyone out there still listening for my voice know;

I'm still here. EVE still has me in her grips. Hit me up with an EVE-mail if you're still around too.

Until next time, however long it is, fly safe o7