Low sec frigate brawling

In our corp, SEDNA, Tuesday downtime - Weds downtime is scheduled for optional low sec pvp, staging from Minmatar high sec.

We did pretty well tonight and got a bunch of kills.

Here's a blow-by-blow on our best fight tonight:

There were 3 of us: me in a dual ASB Breacher, Saiyon in a dual rep Incursus and Whitewalker in a Kestrel.

My weapon of choice.

We picked up a Cormorant on D scan near a medium plex. We warped to the gate and engaged on the gate, he was about 40km off. Saiyon got on top of him but me and White couldn't get close. We then picked up a Rifter and Slicer on short scan so we bugged out, everyone managing to escape. White was pointed but successfully burned to range and warped off before they could firm up their tackle.

We regrouped and rechecked the probe scanner - there were now unopened novice and small FW sites that hadn't been there before.

We squad warped to the novice and immediately hit the gate. Effectively we were now inviting the slicer and rifter in but locking the cormorant out. They came in with Griffin, Rifter Kestrel and slicer, the griffin cunningly timing his entrance for about 5 seconds after the others landed. White and me primaried the griffin, Saiyon tackled the slicer.

We pushed the griffin quickly down to half armour then he landed a jam on me. He then managed to survive an agonising 20 seconds or so with just White shooting him plus my 2 Hobgoblin IIs. Meanwhile Saiyon was heroically tanking 3. The griffin pulled us about 30km away from the others.

Saiyon popped then shortly after the griffin popped. We primaried the slicer but he pulled range so we had to switch. White died.

It was now me versus a Rifter a Kestrel and a very mauled Slicer.

The Rifter and Kestrel had come very close while they were not being primaried so I picked on the Rifter next. I was tanking by pulsing my asbs So I'd press it to start it then press it again to stop the cycle, judging each cycle as and when needed. Early on that was almost immediately but after I managed to survive only using ASB1 and that one went into reload I managed to squeeze out longer and longer pulses, eventually making the second asb last until about 10 seconds before the first one reloaded. I was in half structure when the asb reloaded - just in the nick of time!

I burned all the reload charges on ASB1, carefully metering them, and ASB2 was ready when ASB 1 ran out. I used about half the capacity on ASB2 - a total of three and a half loads of cap charges. I'm so glad I chose Navy cap charges, the faction ones are worth the extra cost. Also it's important not to use both ASBs even if it means taking some armour damage if you want to have any hope of the second ASB covering you for the long long minute it takes the first one to reload.

I nuked the rifter down pretty quick, then, as he wasn't being targeted the slicer came in to about 5km to get better dps on me. I switched to him, got a good dps spike in using javelin rockets and the drones. I don't think he'd been expecting the javelins and as he pulled out to 10km, out of rage rocket range the javelins killed him.

I'm gradually becoming a fan of combat reloading. I never used to be - just guess the best ammo type and mash till you crash was my old approach. However the player on the receiving end of your dps won't necessarily realise your dps is low because you're reloading, especially on a ship with (comparitively) strong drone dps like a Breacher. They take 40 dps for a bit think "woo hoo I'm a god, yeah baby, I can go all night" then suddenly 143 dps with hobgobs and overheated rage rockets right into their resist hole. It makes you harder to play against than if you did a constant number that they could expect, especially if you were using the wrong damage type or range type.

With just the kestrel left and my asb reloaded I was pretty confident. I approached him, smashed him with mjolnir fury rockets and drone damage and kept him scrammed.

Great fun fight, blowing up ship after ship in a T1 frig is an awesome feeling. Props to Saiyon for magnificent early tanking that bought us time to get rid of the griffin, to Whitewalker for killing the griffin while I was jammed out and to our opponents from Dustm3n and Fatal Ascension alliances  for a well executed attack that made for a very close very exciting fight.

Here's the Eve Kill battle summary.