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).