Ive been away from my blog for almost six weeks. I have done almost nothing in this time away productive. My PI has fallen behind, Ive let one account laspe just cuz I didnt feel like keeping up with it, and I lost almost my entire isk supply gambling. I have issues, I know! Anyhow, I log in once in awhile to find a quick fight or screw around working to bring my sec status back up; the latter of which isnt doing much of moving up since I recently hit -9.0. Im pretty much a career pirate at this point and unlikely that I will ever spend the time needed to "fix" this. Anyhow, enough with the boring stuff, on to the fight!
I was out in Heild with my Vengeance, as I usually am, and I was eager to test out a new handy dandy fitting of mine. This fitting is not shiny for the most part, excluding my a-type repper, cuz thats just yummysauce there. So when I undock with my non-pimped out fitting, I do the usual safe scanning around to see if anything is out'n'about. Sadly, all I notice is an Ishkur near my Plex Safe. Usually, I avoid fighting blaster ships as well as the issue of Im entirely too lazy normally to actually hunt my targets. 90% of the time an offer of 1v1 in local is enough to provoke someone into a battle, however, this was not one of those times. I wanted to fight though, so I looked for him. He was in the Angel plex! Woohoo, maybe we'll fight with no friends and the rats will help me in shooting him!
Yeah, not so much, he warped out as I landed and approached him. "Yeah, this fitting is terrible!", I say to myself. Damn ABs are way too slow! Docking up, I refit to an MWD in hopes of closing the distance faster next time. Surprisingly, the pilot is back in the plex, perhaps thinking I gave up, or trying to beat me to the key outpost thingy. Either way, I went back in, landed with him 30km or so off of me and the key outpost spawned! Well, fuck, he's gonna explode it and warp to Room 2 and here I am without a spare key! I hit approach, hoping to speed up fast enough to catch him before he can reach the key and warp off with the accel gate.
With my MWD OH'd and me quickly getting up to speed, I close the distance faster than he can warp out as I apply an OHd scram for one cycle. Before reaching the distance of no return (inside his blaster optimal radius), I set orbit to about 6500, and prepare for the onslaught of drones. But they dont come immediately. I dont think my opponent realized how close we were at this point, because I tore through his shields, at which point the drones popped out. I canceled my web on the Ishkur, and targeted two drones, applying web and non-oh launchers. Ive learned that drones die very, very quickly and I didnt want to waste OH time on the launchers for them. This pilot is extremely skilled with drone control however, and he pulls the drones in when it hits half armor, almost immediately redeploying to force me to relock them. This facet of fighting drones is supremely annoying to me. They are able to break my tank if they stay alive, so I need to kill them. Having to relock them is an annoying micro-management of combat that I despise. The pilot was keeping the drones alive however, so kudos for him.
He would wait until I fired some shots back at him or reapplied the web to his ship before relaunching the drones, which imo, was both smart and his downfall. By waiting to launch the drones, he forced me to micro manage my modules, but he also allowed me to rip into his tank. He was nos'ing me, as I him, but the Vengeance capacitor is much stronger than the Gallentean ships, so I believe that he was capped out the majority of this fight as his armor tank was not standing up to the damage I was giving; only repairing when the drones were out. Which by the way, kept coming in and out of my overview. As my enemy hit the last strands of his armor tank, ECM drones came out! Damnit, cheated of a kill due to ECM again!!!!! I start cussing up a storm in RL, alerting my brother to something bad about to happen. Then he comes out to watch and laugh at my incompetence as my enemy is able to pull out.
Only, he doesnt disengage! The Ishkur pilot stays on the field as I open the orbit to 8km, well into his blasters falloff and almsot to the edge of my rockets range. I endure this 20 seconds of jamming while the drones pound on me. At this point, I pop my standard Exile drug and check real quick to see if I took any penalties. Luckily, and thanks to my drug using skills, I take no downsides and get the full bonus of this yummy booster!
When I get unjammed at the end of this cycle, I immediately target both the Ishkur and the two or three ECM drones. Applying scram to the ship and web to the drones, I relieve my foe of that terrible tool! With my attempts to stay at or around 8km clicking in empty space, my enemy is unable to apply his NOS, and being webbed, my rockets are able to do full damage. I am hesitant to hit him down into structure due to the structure Ive learned that most Gallente ships have. If I ignore the drones, I can focus on him fully and not risk losing lock again. Or I can kill the drones and risk more ECM drones coming out. I make the choice to go for the ship!
With the launchers almost OH'd to hell, I am forced to unheat them with 94% damage and the Ishkur in roughly 30% structure. The lowered dps wont save him though and soon, the kill is mine! I try for the pod, but am just half a second too slow in finishing the lock! Maybe I can trade one of my rigs for a sensor boosting rigging, I dunno how much difference that will make though.
GFs were exchanged. Im really surprised I won this fight, as blaster ships with drones always give me trouble. I was able to focus on the drones first while also keeping in his falloff rather than optimal, which I did sometimes drift in and out of. I was easily able to escape this less than 2km range, which was also surprsing to me throughout the fight. This fight was so exciting for me and exceptionally thrilling that I did everything right, I wish now that I fraps'd my fights. This will be something I look into getting started!
During the after-action convo with my opponent, I was complimented, with him being "imrpessed by my piloting skills and pilot age". My enemy even went so far as to invite me to some of their roams if Im online when they are doing them, which I graciously accepted and was invited to their publice channel. Pretty nifty ego boost right there for me.
Compliments will get you everywhere with me!
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