It's advice for Paul time again! Just had a whole bunch of fights with Cmdr F_E_N_I_K_S who was rated deadly (I think) but flew most excellently. He had an FDL with Prismatic in the 4 and SCB in the 5 and a stack of shield boosters. He was running a long range huge beam, not sure what engineering with long range super penetrator rails.
His tactic was long range sniping basically, supported by him being decent at orbiting to keep out of range. I got blown up half a dozen times or so, gamely switching between my FGS and Krait with different builds. I did best when I deployed my SLF in the form of Cmdr Jellicoe in his Corvette.
My lesson from the rebuy screen x6 was that long range sniping is very effective. I did best when my Krait had long range pulses on them, steadily burning through my own SCB's. Even under heavy fire from Jellicoe his shields didn't break so they are clearly very strong indeed.
Advice being, what to do in such a scenario? And should I not drop the shorter range PA's and simply mimic his build? It's clearly effective!
Still, enjoyed the fights, despite losing badly each time I got better and practice makes perfect after all!
If you're not faster than a long range reverski hitscan build then it's just a simple equation of your DPS and healthpool vs their DPS and healthpool, with something on the side for basic pip management to make sure you're keeping weapons cap up and pips in systems at the right moments. The fight was mostly decided on paper before it started, unless they fly bad. All they have to do is keep you at range and let their shields regen while they keep a trickle of DPS going out to you as you slowly edge up to them, then when you get too close for comfort they just boost past you.
If they don't boost wide then it's during the boost past you that you have the opportunity to get a pre-turn and damage out. Be patient, time your boosts and don't get too eager or they use your tunnel vision to pull range from your own boost. Consider that although your relative speeds are low, they're facing forwards at cruise speed backwards and you're boosting forwards at top speed. So if you time your boost wrong then you're in boost stall floundering while they're sailing past you.
Phasing weapons are especially good. Means damage is permanent beyond the shields and often their builds have very light hull underneath.
Reverski builds don't need big shields at all. They sit on the edge of your range the whole time, use weapons that have engineering to eliminate falloff, whilst you're attacking them with weapons that do have falloff. They tend to store most of their MJ in SCBs and will get a lot back out of biweave regen every time you're stalled, slowly turning back around to face them.
These builds are effective as long as someone plays to the trap but tbh they're exceptionally boring to fly. So if you just want cheap, uninteresting wins out of people who haven't figured out they can low wake on you every time you pull 5km and go back to tickling them to boredom then go for it.
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