Broadening Horizons

Looking back over the past ten days, I'm not sure which has surprised me more - how much my perspective on PVP has opened, or how it took me this long to really realize things that people have been telling me forever. The previous week and a half has been a collection of events that have ended up meshing in my head - not terribly coherently, at first, but hopefully I'll be able to sort them out enough that they make sense to read!

As we often do, my fiancé and I have decided that in addition to the prospects we're already waist-deep in, we wanted to try something different. A friend and former corpmate of mine is a member of Fiskl Guards, a corp which fairly recently left the blue-to-IT Black Star Alliance and decided to join up with Red Overlord in Feythabolis. Huo and I agreed that it seems like an interesting place to be, between their PVP fleets and the opportunity to do some carebearing away from prying eyes. So, I've packed up my alt and am currently waiting to get her and her things moved down to the middle of nowhere. I can't really offer much more on that at the moment, since I've only been a member of the corp for a few hours, but I'm looking forward to seeing what comes.

Moving right along...

Shortish post this time around, since I haven't really had much going on in the world of EVE lately - between working late shifts and being sick with migraines, by the time I was able to get online for most of last week there wasn't a whole lot happening. Still, since people are actually watching this, I should probably post something. :P

My PVP life has been practically nonexistent for the past week - I haven't posted a kill since the 0.0 roam I went on with Wensley and crew. He's described it quite thoroughly in his post on Rifter Drifter, which you can read here if you're interested. (On the other hand, I haven't gotten a loss since then either, so I suppose I can't complain too much.) I finally passed the 100-kill mark on that roam, though, so hooray for that! I also noted with some amusement that none the ten most recent kills on my KB are factional warfare opponents.

Quick Update

Had a long post planned for today, but circumstances (a migraine among other things) have pretty well killed any motivation I have to write. I'll give it another try soon. In the meantime, I present you all with a VERY pro Hurricane fit, also known as "can i has mods?", courtesy of Wensley.

EDIT: That fit is probably funnier with the explanation. I tagged along on a Molden Heath roam last night, which Wensley has described here. After fantastically losing my Hurricane in the first engagement, I bought a second one off Wensley for the second leg of the roam. The first one I'd purchased from him had come fully equipped with fitting, ammo and drones. The second, not so much. As Wensley quite reasonably pointed out, though, it did take me three jumps or so to realize the problem. This exchange on comms followed:

Dian: "Uh, guys, I'll catch up with you in a bit, just need to run back to Teonusude."
Wensley: "Sure, no worries."
Dian: "Apparently Wens was in a hurry when he sold me this Cane, since it doesn't have any modules on it."
Fleet: *pause, followed by hilarity*

1v1 = 1vWin?

Sorry in advance if this entry is kind of incoherent. I'm still a little shocked that the entire thing happened the way it did. I'm sure more details will come once the adrenaline wears off, but I'll record what I can for now, and add to it later if I need to.

This particular encounter was an unintentional Part 2 of what I'm starting to think of as the Loren Gallen saga. Last time I fought Loren, it was very intentional, very uncertain on my part, and ended with the loss of my ship. This time was different, on all three counts. I'd been in my Jaguar, ferrying some ammo from the nearby highsec hub of Ichoriya to my home base in Enaluri. As soon as I jumped into Akidagi, the highsec gateway between the two systems, I spotted a familiar face in local. I waved to Loren in local chat, he waved back, I didn't think anything of it - until I landed on the Enaluri gate and saw his Ishkur. There was second's pause, since I was surprised to see him, and he probably expected that I would jump through the gate and run, like I usually do when I meet him on a gate.

So, what did I do? I pointed him.

1v1? More like 1vFail...

I don't get into many 1v1 fights out in militia lowsec, for a few reasons. First, the times that I want to go out and get kills, I normally end up joining a fleet (or more often FCing, lately). The times I'm more inclined to actually solo, I'm stuck with the "lowsec curse" of either finding nothing or getting blobbed. I think I've had a grand total of four 1v1 fights - a frigate duel I narrowly lost with both of us in structure, a Taranis that tried to tackle my Ishkur on a gate, an inconclusive duel between my Jaguar and a Hawk (he couldn't keep point on me and I couldn't stay in range to break his tank), and one far more lopsided fight - which is the subject of this post.

My opponent in this particular duel was Loren Gallen. Loren's something of a celebrity in the Caldari-Gallente FW community, due to the staggering number of kills he packs into the course of a day, ranging from ganks of highsec mission runners to 1v1 duels in lowsec. (Despite some Caldari militia members turning their noses up at both his highsec ganking and a few fairly obvious cases of killmail whoring, holding a #9 rank on Battleclinic is nothing to sneeze at, in my books.) Aside from that, Loren and I get on quite well with each other, having developed something of a friendship since the first time we met on the field.

Updates!

It's been quite a while since I've updated this blog. I'll try to remember everything that's happened since then, but if I leave anyone out by accident, my apologies!

I think I can safely say I've resolved my dilemma about flying Minmatar. The answer ended up being "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em", and looking back I'm honestly glad I've made the jump. I still have a special place in my heart for Gallente ships, but I've been spending more and more time flying rustbuckets with guns - even I'm shocked to see that the last few kills I've gotten have been in Firetails and Hurricanes, respectively. In turn, that lead me to a couple of other discoveries regarding my style of PVP.

A Tale of Two Fleets

I suppose it was more like a lead-in and one-and-a-half fleets, really. The evening began with my CEO, who's been a sweetheart about encouraging me to FC (much to my chagrin), pulling me in for an after-action review after listening in on the FCing of a corpmate. (Shout-out to Stalking Mantis for doing better than I did tonight!) The review was full of useful information, especially tips on fleet decision-making and intel management. Little did I know, i would end up getting spectacularly pwnt at both.