The punisher is the first of a series o ships I intend to do a small section on explaining a decent pvp fit and how to use effectively.
The punisher is the top T1 frigate for the amaar faction, similar to the rifter, however it has several features that make it an excellent ship for PVP. Firstly it has a large capacitor, as do most amaar ships as the are designed to run lasors, it also has decent armour resists which improve by 5% each level making this ship excellent at tanking for a frigate, it is far less fragile than a rifter. You also get 10% less capacitor use on small energy turrets per level but that won’t be needed for this fit.
The fit I use for this little tiger is.
High slots –
3 x 150mm autocannons (t2 if you can fit them or scouts)
1 x T2 small NOS (or best named depending on skills)
Medium slots –
1 x catalysed cold arc jet (MWD)
1 x T2 Scram (or best named)
Low slots –
1 x 200 mm rolled tungsten plate
1 x T2 small armour repper (or best named)
1 x T2 adaptive nano plate (or best named)
1 x T2 Damage control (or best named)
3 x small trimark rigs
Now you may be thinking why auto cannons on a punisher, mainly because they have good tracking and it allows you to change your damage type at will instead of being stuck with EM/Therm, it also has 2 other benefits, 1 they do not use cap, meaning you can run the MWD and repper for a good long while before you drain the cap, also a lot of rifters use a AC set up and get a shock as they enter their optimal and find you are still doing massive damage lol.
Now the fit above is slightly altered by role, this is the fit I use for SOLO hunting, I find frigates or fail fit cruisers and use the MWD to get close, then lock in with the scram to hold them in system and disable their MWD while in a tight orbit with the MWD running and hit them with the Auto cannons, and the NOS. the NOS will keep you going with capacitor for a long time even with the damage control and the armour repper running it will also force them to drop point which means you can bug out if it get hairy. This fit will eat rifters alive normally..
The modifications you could make is if you are in a frig group and NOT the tackle ship switch the MWD for a afterburner, which keeps you fast even with a scram on you, or if you will be tackling larger ships for a fleet, swap the MWD for a X5 web, which will enable you to take down fast moving drones on the ships and hold larger pray in place until the fleet lands.
The opponent you need to be very careful of when flying punishers is long range kiting frigates like the arty fit rifter or jag, if they can keep pout of your point range they will pummel you before you can even hit them..however you should be able to warp out as you will be out of scram range.
In short the hevey tank and decent guns make this an ideal rifter killer or tackle ship as its good tank allows it to last a long time, its biggest drawback is the lack of a third mid slot for a scram, web, MWD combo and its speed, the base speed compared to other frigates is sluggish to reflect the armour it carries, this can be compensated for with good skills and flying it knowing its slow, who needs to run if your going to outlast the other guy?
Next article will be the punishers big brother..the vengeance, my favourite solo pvp ship.
I t2 laser fit my punisher with beams, the aurora ammo allows me to start shooting as soon as i can lock on and the gleam allows for huge close range damage. I know this does limit the damage types but unless your opponent is heavily em/therm tanked its not always a problem.
ReplyDeleteCap is my biggest issue (as you'd expect) but with a t2 repper, ab, scram, t2 nos and a dmg control as well as the lasers it is easy to manage. I am stable without the repper so if i can get under a bigger targets guns and avoid as much dmg as possible i am normally fine.
Getting under the guns is the biggest issue.
The NOS is not really an offensive e-war capability. It will not force your target to drop point. The NOS will only suck capacitor while the target ship is above 30% capacitor AND your capacitor is lower than the target's.
ReplyDeleteOther than that I have no complaints.
See this article, which pretty much says what I said using a few more words.
Um ... perhaps I was half right. I did some more research and it turns out that the understanding I had was flawed. The 30% capacitor part is crap that somebody explained to me once; I think they misread this dev blog. Sadly, I'd always believed them.
ReplyDeleteBut, the only way to drain the target's cap all the way is still to have no capacitor yourself. Which, I suppose, could work if you have good cap recharge.
When you get into range to turn your scrambler on, you should turn off your MWD otherwise Battlecruisers and Cruisers will still be able to track you. In addition, the MWD uses a significant amount of capacitor which you should be using on your armor repairer.
ReplyDeleteDon't forget to overheat your nos if you are being neutted, it will alleviate the situation somewhat.
i agree if your fighting larger ships, i did say however that it is a frigate killer set up, so the MWD doesnt make much difference, and your almost always counter scramed which shits it down anyway, however it is an additional drain on their cap which helps you win even faster ;)
ReplyDeleteand cypher, if you would like id be more than happy to test the theory of lasers vs AC set up, a duel to hull? and i will stop at hull, no testosterone overload lol.