Being a Heretic Gets Hectic

EXHALE. Member Report: Agatir Solenth - 2013.02.26

Greetings my fellow alliance men, women, & blog readers!!!

I’m not sure if I have told you yet, but I love flying the Devoter!  I like to be a team player, and I like to fill roles others don’t do.  The heavy and light interdictors are a good example of this.  Both are vital to be successful in PvP.  They keep the enemy from escaping a fight, and can be deployed defensively to keep an enemy fleet from jumping into your own fleet.

When properly fit with a heavy buffer tank, they don’t offer up a lot of range or DPS.  This can often leave you off a lot of kill mails.  I personally like to fit my HICs with weapons that will help clear off enemy drones.  Unfortunately recent changes to the cloaking mechanics now require HICs to wait until the Sensor Recalibration Time expires before it can activate its Warp Disruption Field Generator.  This has limited their ability to lay traps at gates and wormholes, but has greatly increased the use of its little brother the Interdictor.  The Interdictor does not suffer the same delay to launch its Warp Disrupt Probes.  So it can sit cloaked on gates and wormholes waiting to bubble any nice juicy target(s).

The sole weakness of the interdictor…  Its lack of any tank.  Often referred to as flying coffins, interdictor pilots often make the initial tackle, only to get caught in their own bubble and destroyed before they are able to get out and away.  Because of this sad fact, many alliances/corps will fully pay to replace the lost interdictor, to insure the interdictor pilots’ willingness to continue to fly them.  They may not get on a lot of killmails, their roams might end rather quickly, but it won’t cost them much this way.  There are various tactics to be employed to effectively fly them, and good interdictor pilots are an invaluable asset to any fleet.

I am one of those pilots that is more likely to get my Heretic (Amarr Interdictor) blown up before I get on the killmail.  I’m much more comfortable flying the Devoter.  I’m more of a tanky guy than a clicky-clicky-orbit really fast kind of guy.

However, the past few days, things have been a bit slow in the wormhole, and I decided to take my Heretic out for some pew.  The first day as I logged on it seemed that there might be a fight.  One of our scouts had found a Myrmidon floating in space.  I decided to jump into the Heretic and try and be the guy to make the tackle.  Unfortunately the Myrmidon was just outside of a POS’s shields.  The guys in fleet decided that they would try and land and alpha the Myrmidon before it could back into the shields.

Finding my ship a bit useless in that endeavor I decided to jump into the null sec system that our wormhole connected into.  I decided I’d try and cloak up on one of the gates and catch something.

The system was 4O-239.  As I jumped in there wasn’t anyone in local, and I set up on the 39P-1J gate.  Using Dotlan maps & the in game statistics it appeared that 39P-1J had 22 folks in system docked up or doing a bit of ratting.  I set up in position to catch someone 100km before the gate.  Unfortunately the only traffic was a couple of pods going out of the system, and my position left me empty handed.  Eventually I moved onto the gate itself.  I don’t mind getting some cheap pod kills. 

By this time I had an addition interdictor pilot join me in 4O-239.  He setup on another gate.

Eventually the system spiked +1 in local and a Megathron showed up on D-Scan.  I called it out on voice comms, and asked if I’d have some support?  I got a few replies to go for it, so as it landed and jumped into 39P-1J, I jumped in after it.  As I loaded on the other side I got lucky, and was able to drop the bubble in time & it was in position to catch the Mega!  Unfortunately it was on the bubbles edge, and it began to burn toward the edges, and I saw 22 in local.  I quickly locked the Mega, activated my warp disruptor and established an orbit around it firing my rockets.  I figured it was time to lose this Heretic anyway.  Luckily reinforcements showed up rather quickly, as the Megathron’s pilot starting calling out in local for assistance.  We were able to make quick work of the Megathron, Killmail One.

The locals never answered their friends calls for help which emboldened us to stay and harass those still in system.  That resulted in a bunch of station docking games by an Armageddon and handful of random other ships.  I ran next door to PS-94K to snatch a quick noob ship kill at the station’s undock.  He must of gone AFK.  It soon after, that one of our scouts announced that an Iteron Mark IV pilot decided to make a PI run!?!?  I caught him on the gate with a bubble, resulting in Killmail Two.  As we finished off his pod an Oracle arrived at the edge of my bubble, giving me Killmail Three for this Heretic.  If that wasn’t good enough, on our way out a Buzzard jumped into the gate I had just landed on.  I was able to bubble AND de-cloak it to get me Killmail Four for the night! 

I was pretty happy for my little Heretic.  It brought me more happiness, the next day when I was able to help chase down Batman and kill his warp stabbed Maelstrom for Killmail Five!

Until next time...

Fly Safe... Stay Profitable...

Agatir