After reading Parasoja’s blog post about using the Ishtar for Guristas Plex’ing, I was reminded of the Ishtar that is gathering dust in my high sec mission hub.

When I (rarely) do level 4 missions, I use a passive shield tanked Ishtar and a Torp Raven. Passive Ishtar gathers aggro and tanks everything as it’s drones chew on the rats, leaving me free to concentrate on sending massive torpedo death blobs at the BS and BC sized rats.

If the same fitting is applied to Guristas plexing, I think that it would prove more succesful than the conventional dual armour tank.

Here is the setup:

[img]http://owenworley.co.uk/eve/eft_images/LolIshtarGuristas.jpg[/img]

As you can see, 1628 tanked vs Guristas. With the invuln shut off, it still tanks 1341 (overheated it tanks a whopping 1781!).

Compared to the armour tank, this is over a 500 dps tanked increase.

It does not have an AB, but….

[img]http://owenworley.co.uk/eve/eft_images/Ishtar%20-%20PassiveGuristas.jpg[/img]

If a shield power relay is swapped for a Damage Control, the Invulnerability Field can be swapped for a 10mn Afterburner II. And it still tanks 1057.

All this with a core probe launcher fitted to actually find the plexes.

Plus! It is fully passive, and therefore Neut Towers do not affect you, which I’ve heard is important for plexing.

I’m not sure how much the sig bloom from the LSE’s and shield rigs will affect the tank, however, the signature radius of the passive shield setup is 268m, compared to 145m. (A Raven is 460m).

This is my first attempt at the eve blog banters that regularly circulate, and I must say I approve of the concept, having ideas thrust at you to write about can stimulate the imagination somewhat.

So down to business: My current combat hanger is as follows:

Hurricane x 2, shield extenders, damage mods, nanos and neuts. Nice agile small gang boat, or solo. Named Cane1 and Cane2

Harbinger, similiar to the ‘canes, shield extender, max gank lows, scorch loaded HBL’s. Lovely 24km optimal with nice dps, more of a gang boat, but again, agile enough to solo a bit. Not names yet.

Broadsword, standard shield buffer setup, 130k ego, 500 dps passive tank. Named “On The Blob”, heh…

Rupture x2, shield gank nano, again – gang/solo :p.

Taranis x 2, dual prop neutron blaster, yummy solo dog fighter, or gang tackler (I’d rather fly the safer for gang tackling though). Named “Wheres the Party?”

Crusader, Long range nano fit, 5.5k top speed, agile, 125 dps. Enjoyable solo roam boat, had an awesome dual with a claw that I kited till he was 11% structure but like a fool I didn’t notice I had capped myself out, he got away :(. Named “Crusading”.

I also have a number of covert ops ships ready and waiting for covops gangs, including a pilgrim, rapier and nemesis.

As you can tell from my combat ready ships, I have a penchant for fitting nano/shield buffer and max gank, as I love the playstyle and it seems to work very well an most things bc size and lower.

I have many more ships spread throughout the eve universe in various states of fitting, however the above ships are the ones that I have had shipped out to our current theatre of operation. After gong on a lovely shopping spree in Jita, I payed Raging Taurus of Dark Cross Industries for his awesome Jump Freighter service to ship them to low sec for me, 8ish jumps, 400 mil collateral, and it only cost me 40 mil, which is a price I believe was fair as it saved me moving them one by one from Jita to low sec (we had 3 active wars at the time).

Logging on to EvE for a bit of down.time after work, I noticed an open fleet invitation in alliance chat for a gate camp in p3. i hopped in my Jaguar and started making my way through low sec to the gang.
When I arrived, we had a fair few people in a wide range of ships, roughly 40 pilots in everything from frigs to bs’s, wit a nice amount of dictors, but no logistics.

after camping the gate for a while, a group of neutral dramiels jumped in to us, about 20, supported by a covops loki with probes, 2 sabres and a few taranis’.

A rather annoying game of cat and mouse followed, as our tackle attempted to provide warp in points for us, the dramiels would burn away and attempt to pick off stragglers.  I landed a few scrams on some of the dramiels, but as I neglected to fit a web, I was unable to old them in place. after numerous warp outs, warp ins and bubbles dropped, the dramiels left, we popped a few of them, and lost a few of our pilots. unfortunately the killboards do not seem to be updating,  but I believe we were up on isk killed vs lost, even if we were down on numbers killed vs lost.

a fun night in the end, but it makes me think about the balance of the dramiel, when the enemy fields a fleet almost entirely comprised of them… oh well, now the question : should I buy one myself? my track record for fotm ships is pretty bad, web nerf hit just after I trained recon 5, nos and myrmidon nerf hit just after I bought 5 fully fitted nos myrms :p.

Hmm, decisions…

Edit:

Killmails -

Taranis

Taranis

Dramiel