PvP PvP Challenger Build Help

[Bigmaec]

Some really good players have thrown their toys out of the pram over the years, but there are still loads of us left, just trying to perfect the engineering and dogfighting model, and we're training new pilots for the future as well. PvP is busier than ever right now, with more politics and inter coalition open warfare. It's also worth bearing in mind that this game gets ever more complex, and many players stopped competing because the knowledge requirement and skill in engineering and flying eventually became beyond their abilities or more often, available time commitment.

This is a game where it's important to stay current. Some aspects of it are like riding a bike, but new effective combinations are still being discovered all the time. Reverski has become rather too prevalent though, that's the one thing that could use some work, cos the way some people fly they might as well face the cockpit and guns backwards and be done with it.

Off-topic Question:

I have a FDS hulltank with longrange gimballed pulses (purely to annoy Phisto ).

Is it already reverski if I boost past my enemy FAoff, plaster him with laster fire until he closes the distance, then boost again past him and repeat?
(obviously this doesn't work too good because the FDS is quite slow, so it's more a case of seperated jousts, but still)

 

[Aashenfox]

A shame though, I remember back when hull tanking was proper viable. I miss those days.

Silent running isnt as usable as it once was but it's possible to pull off some good no shield wins against the right ships.

I run silent runners, somewhat successfully. Advanced engineering techniques have made them a little more viable under certain circumstances. Occasoinally run into an emissive user in the ninja dbx, but not that often any more. That's one of the great things about this game, it goes in cycles. Since everyone stopped making silent runners, fewer carry emissive. Now fewer carry emissive, I'm having more success with my silent runners.

As for hull tanking, definitely not dead. I've had several recent victories in my hybrids. I'm known around here as a hybrid specialist...

My tankiness allowed my team to win this encounter, 5v5, we were able to remove two ships from the fight while they mistakenly focused the toughest mdeium shpi in the game - My challenger.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fnbUUlkK4s


And here's a bonus couple of well known griefer wins in hybrids...

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=It0JdIgpwEU

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AlK5N_wsyJw

 

[Voracity_T]

Off-topic Question:

I have a FDS hulltank with longrange gimballed pulses (purely to annoy Phisto ).

Is it already reverski if I boost past my enemy FAoff, plaster him with laster fire until he closes the distance, then boost again past him and repeat?
(obviously this doesn't work too good because the FDS is quite slow, so it's more a case of seperated jousts, but still)

Yeah thats reverski.
Try railguns on the FDS, people hate that and the fact its so stable in FA off allows for RIDICULOUSLY accurate shots.

https://s.orbis.zone/3zur < Seriously this is a lot of fun.

 

[Aashenfox]

Off-topic Question:

I have a FDS hulltank with longrange gimballed pulses (purely to annoy Phisto ).

Is it already reverski if I boost past my enemy FAoff, plaster him with laster fire until he closes the distance, then boost again past him and repeat?
(obviously this doesn't work too good because the FDS is quite slow, so it's more a case of seperated jousts, but still)

No! I am sensitive to this because it's how I fly my mamba, I don't reverski cos I don't use reverse (I just drift backwards) and my primary damage still comes from short range weapons, I simply make them come to me to make my boost timing easier. You've seen our recent 2v3 victory over HERC, great fight, you can see me doing this in that fight as well as to kite the hurtful mamba of the opposition while making passes for the FDL.

If you did that with a phantom or a ferdie thouh, yeh it would be reverski, simply because you are full long range.

REverski masters to take lessons from are Kokefeki (kokareverski), OSOBIST (osoreverski) and dangerous.com (reverski.com). lol.

 

[Voracity_T]

I run silent runners, somewhat successfully. Advanced engineering techniques have made them a little more viable under certain circumstances. Occasoinally run into an emissive user in the ninja dbx, but not that often any more. That's one of the great things about this game, it goes in cycles. Since everyone stopped making silent runners, fewer carry emissive. Now fewer carry emissive, I'm having more success with my silent runners.

As for hull tanking, definitely not dead. I've had several recent victories in my hybrids. I'm known around here as a hybrid specialist...

My tankiness allowed my team to win this encounter, 5v5, we were able to remove two ships from the fight while they mistakenly focused the toughest mdeium shpi in the game - My challenger.

True, emmisive is less common these days, but more and more people can use rails now, and though many of them can't hit modules consistently (Definatly in that camp myself) it does'nt mean they cant be good hull smashers, against a silent running build you have less luck against an opponent with them.

Hybrids are still pretty viable, but straight hull tanking is not really because the HP avalible via booster/SCB stacking is so high you're likely going to be out of your finitie health pool long before thier regenerating barrier healthpool is going to fully deplete.

 

[Aashenfox]

Well and the fact that in most engagements its more about who can stack the most hitpoints then actually manage their pips and positioning.. I can see why they got bored of that as there is an all time low in real diversity through builds at this point.
PvP has ony picked up because less of the playerbase is pushed out through the skill to entry barrier IMO. Don't get me wrong, in some sense its a good thing having more pilots in the feild, but it would be better for everyone if there was more reason to get the gud as opposed to prismo bank tanking your vessel and being done with it.

While there's an element of truth in what you say (defense has increased 1000% compared to DPS 100%), this was done to give 'victims' a better chance of escape and cannot now be taken back. They had to give traders and explorers a way to survive a gank, and this is the result. However, managing those huge shields and health pools IS more dependent on good pip work than ever. Honestly. The skill has not decreased, it has increased.

 

[Aashenfox]

True, emmisive is less common these days, but more and more people can use rails now, and though many of them can't hit modules consistently (Definatly in that camp myself) it does'nt mean they cant be good hull smashers, against a silent running build you have less luck against an opponent with them.

Hybrids are still pretty viable, but straight hull tanking is not really because the HP avalible via booster/SCB stacking is so high you're likely going to be out of your finitie health pool long before thier regenerating barrier healthpool is going to fully deplete.

I agree, to go pure hull tank is to either try to run SR build, or to artificially make the game harder for yourself. The FAS is still the best pure hull tank.

 

[Bigmaec]

No! I am sensitive to this because it's how I fly my mamba, I don't reverski cos I don't use reverse (I just drift backwards) and my primary damage still comes from short range weapons, I simply make them come to me to make my boost timing easier. You've seen our recent 2v3 victory over HERC, great fight, you can see me doing this in that fight as well as to kite the hurtful mamba of the opposition while making passes for the FDL.

REverski masters to take lessons from are Kokefeki (kokareverski), OSOBIST (osoreverski) and dangerous.com (reverski.com). lol.

Uh, the last two of those already shot me up, lucky me

edit: shame on you Ashen, Dropship is best ship!

 

[Voracity_T]

While there's an element of truth in what you say (defense has increased 1000% compared to DPS 100%), this was done to give 'victims' a better chance of escape and cannot now be taken back. They had to give traders and explorers a way to survive a gank, and this is the result. However, managing those huge shields and health pools IS more dependent on good pip work than ever. Honestly. The skill has not decreased, it has increased.

Thats all well and good but there lies the issue of imbalance in PvP. The engineering has now been balanced to a PvE environment in which survivability has become the main goal of the rebalance. If weapons and modules are not balanced around a PvP environment there will always be glairing balance issues. It could have been tackled in a different way, IE sure you could super tank a ship, but it would have a cost of very little power for avalible weaponry/internals. But ina n ideal world and what not.

Thats a matter of opinion, reverski became so prevelant because it's easier to run 4-0-2 and ram your opponent on his pass, low skill, but unfortunatly efficient. When you're running pushing 3K+ MJ and SCBs your only real threat becomes a very well flown large vessel or another ship with similar hitpoint satcks/feedback then it does generall push the sill bar down.

 

[Bigmaec]

Yeah thats reverski.
Try railguns on the FDS, people hate that and the fact its so stable in FA off allows for RIDICULOUSLY accurate shots.

https://s.orbis.zone/3zur < Seriously this is a lot of fun.

I have four rails on the FDS in one config, but I can't reliably hit FAoff at the moment.

Your FDS is nearly carbon copy of mine, just other weapons

Coriolis EDCD Edition

A ship builder, outfitting and comparison tool for Elite Dangerous

s.orbis.zone

 

[Aashenfox]

Yeah thats reverski.
Try railguns on the FDS, people hate that and the fact its so stable in FA off allows for RIDICULOUSLY accurate shots.

https://s.orbis.zone/3zur < Seriously this is a lot of fun.

4 rails on the phantom is the way to go for pro reverski, faster in every direction, bigger cap, cell cancellation and module sniping. It is literally undefeatable except by a mirror build flown better.

 

[Voracity_T]

Dropship is best ship!

I concurr. The only hull based ship that can still just tank. Then tank some more, then tank again. And then still ram your opponent to death.

 

[Bigmaec]

4 rails on the phantom is the way to go for pro reverski, faster in every direction, bigger cap, cell cancellation and module sniping. It is literally undefeatable except by a mirror build flown better.

It's not winning that counts it's style.
And there is nothing more stylish then a FDS.
Federal Dropbrick is best brick. Sue me.

 

[Aashenfox]

Thats all well and good but there lies the issue of imbalance in PvP. The engineering has now been balanced to a PvE environment in which survivability has become the main goal of the rebalance. If weapons and modules are not balanced around a PvP environment there will always be glairing balance issues. It could have been tackled in a different way, IE sure you could super tank a ship, but it would have a cost of very little power for avalible weaponry/internals. But ina n ideal world and what not.

Thats a matter of opinion, reverski became so prevelant because it's easier to run 4-0-2 and ram your opponent on his pass, low skill, but unfortunatly efficient. When you're running pushing 3K+ MJ and SCBs your only real threat becomes a very well flown large vessel or another ship with similar hitpoint satcks/feedback then it does generall push the sill bar down.

There aren't any balance issues between ships purposefully built for combat. An all booster mamba is no stronger than my hybrid challenger. The balance issues arise when someone wants to do something other than combat, they are limited to the challenge of 'escaping' rather than winning. And that's not a terrible thing either. At the top level of pvp the fights are hard, long and interesting, there is no inherent problem with pvp in this game except that not enough are investing in it.

 

[Voracity_T]

There aren't any balance issues between ships purposefully built for combat. An all booster mamba is no stronger than my hybrid challenger. The balance issues arise when someone wants to do something other than combat, they are limited to the challenge of 'escaping' rather than winning. And that's not a terrible thing either. At the top level of pvp the fights are hard, long and interesting, there is no inherent problem with pvp in this game except that not enough are investing in it.

Initially not no, but after engineering there definatly is. The problem is that it exacerbates the differences to the Nth degree. What was initially a tradeoff, becomes a huge performance gap. An all booster Mamba gets much higher shields than your Challenger would do, instead of it being by a margin, compensated for by the Challengers higher hull, it becomes a large gap where module damage is a potential TTK on the Challenger not much longer than it was before mods (+50% longer given hull resists').

For sure its much harder, but fighting for 25 solid minutes in some occassions is a little over the top, again another issue that compounds the balance differences between a PvE build, which will likely have half, if that, the TTK than the equivilent PvP vessel. I dunno man, feels like all the balancing was done before then engineering and that just widens the gap between performance parameters too much.

 

[Aashenfox]

Initially not no, but after engineering there definatly is.

If there is a huge gap in shipbuilding ability, yes, but that is also a skill that can be learned. I think engineering is the leveller. It is the method by which a Viper can be built to defeat a challenger, which would, without engineering, be totally impossible.

The problem is that it exacerbates the differences to the Nth degree. What was initially a tradeoff, becomes a huge performance gap. An all booster Mamba gets much higher shields than your Challenger would do, instead of it being by a margin, compensated for by the Challengers higher hull, it becomes a large gap where module damage is a potential TTK on the Challenger not much longer than it was before mods (+50% longer given hull resists').

I don't agree. There was a reason I took that challenger to a wing fight where I knew I would be focused, and the 5 players shooting at me are all dedicated enforcers (pvp is their only playstyle). There are maybe 5 to 10 players in the game that could take out my modules on my challenger, a) before my shields come back up (as they will several times throughout the fight) and b) Before I kill them.

For sure its much harder, but fighting for 25 solid minutes in some occassions is a little over the top, again another issue that compounds the balance differences between a PvE build, which will likely have half, if that, the TTK than the equivilent PvP vessel. I dunno man, feels like all the balancing was done before then engineering and that just widens the gap between performance parameters too much.

If a fight goes on for 25 minutes, it's either big 3 vs big 3, or the pilots and ships are all bad. 8 mins is the average fight length between two skilled medium ships. In fact, it's something we tell our newbies. If your fight goes over 10 minutes you are doing something wrong, aim for 6 to 7 minute kills (this is obviously holding them to a very high level of course, but we have a very high level of entry to pvp in the squadron).

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

There aren't any balance issues between ships purposefully built for combat. An all booster mamba is no stronger than my hybrid challenger. The balance issues arise when someone wants to do something other than combat, they are limited to the challenge of 'escaping' rather than winning. And that's not a terrible thing either. At the top level of pvp the fights are hard, long and interesting, there is no inherent problem with pvp in this game except that not enough are investing in it.

There is huge unbalance in medium combat ships when it comes to wing fights with SIRIUS opponents, it's prismatic FDL only really, everything else plays in different league, if you check videos of any serious pvp oriented squadrons you see 6fdl in 3vs3 or 8fdl's in 4vs4 like 90% of timem and it's not like they give style points for flying fdl, its just how ridiculously OP this ship in those sort of engagements is, in 1vs1 it's closer, but FDL is still top tier ship.

 

[Aashenfox]

There is huge unbalance in medium combat ships when it comes to wing fights with SIRIUS opponents, it's prismatic FDL only really, everything else plays in different league, if you check videos of any serious pvp oriented squadrons you see 6fdl in 3vs3 or 8fdl's in 4vs4 like 90% of timem and it's not like they give style points for flying fdl, its just how ridiculously OP this ship in those sort of engagements is, in 1vs1 it's closer, but FDL is still top tier ship.

If you're talking about hte top 10 players fighting the top 10 players, yes, they'd be silly not to use the FDL, it has the highest potential, but as a general rule I can't agree. Almost all ships are viable until the very very bleeding edge of the skill cap, where the few% advantage of the FDL can really be leveraged by a good enough player, and even that player will struggle with a reverski phantom player of even mediocre skill.

As for those 'serious wing fighting pvp squadrons'...er...hello? Right here. lol. Feel free to check out our videos any time you like. While we accept anybody, our SBS division is as serious an enforcer unit as any in the game. We usually have a Ferdie or 2, but I don't think we've ever gone out in a wing of 4 ferdies and I don't think we've ever faced a wing of all ferdies either. Just saying. We're always recruiting and training if you want to join a serious pvp squadron. So far 5 people out of 65 have qualified o7

 

[cmdr Ramius007]

If you're talking about hte top 10 players fighting the top 10 players, yes, they'd be silly not to use the FDL, it has the highest potential, but as a general rule I can't agree. Almost all ships are viable until the very very bleeding edge of the skill cap, where the few% advantage of the FDL can really be leveraged by a good enough player, and even that player will struggle with a reverski phantom player of even mediocre skill.

It would be equally silly to not use fdl is you care about win to not use fdl even if your opponents are not top 10, unless you have skill advantage to overcome ship disparity. The better the opponents the bigger is advantage of FDL, because you simply get hit more vs best opponents. What is indisputable is that FDL unlike it's competitors is much less vulnerable to things that under focused fire can't be avoided, hybrids struggle vs seekers and have no defences vs haunds at all, kraits with most health pool in scb's and much lower base shields are much more vulnerable to cascading, ramscading, plasmascading, generally have much smaller window to use bank's, you cant deny this, to sum up, FDL have best laterals, much better acceleration, best firepower of all c6 distributor ships, above average speed, so tell me how pilot of opposing ship is going to take advantage if both ships have mirror loadouts and similar pilot skills? Not only for me current game balance in pvp, especially because how potent skill boosters are is joke now, i would rather ask how much of a nerf to shields is needed to make standard 4booster prismatic fdl only slightly better than it's competitors in wing fights, my bet is that 1600MJ base shields would be already too much, 30% less than now!

 

[Aashenfox]

It would be equally silly to not use fdl is you care about win to not use fdl even if your opponents are not top 10, unless you have skill advantage to overcome ship disparity.

It's a very small disparity it doesn't need that much skill to overcome it.

The better the opponents the bigger is advantage of FDL, because you simply get hit more vs best opponents.

If you fly against a better opponent being in an FDL is unlikely to save you. The FDL isn't the bigger factor here, it's the other pilot being better. If what you say were true, then I should be able to beat the best pilots in an FDL when they are flying anything else.

What is indisputable is that FDL unlike it's competitors is much less vulnerable to things that under focused fire can't be avoided, hybrids struggle vs seekers and have no defences vs haunds at all, kraits with most health pool in scb's and much lower base shields are much more vulnerable to cascading, ramscading, plasmascading, generally have much smaller window to use bank's, you cant deny this,

'less vulnerable to focus fire'...than what? Can you explain this please? Hybrids have problems with seekers sure, what's that got to do with the FDL being a 'huge imbalance'? I have my complaints about pvp, and hybrids vulnerabilities is one of them, but we're not talking about hybrid vs shield, , we;re talking about your assertion that the FDL represents a 'huge imbalance'. Packhounds are more unbalanced than the FDL for example, and I'll tell you what is much more broken than the FDL, and that's a ship that can fly backwards at 591 with a size 7 capacitor.

to sum up, FDL have best laterals, much better acceleration, best firepower of all c6 distributor ships, above average speed, so tell me how pilot of opposing ship is going to take advantage if both ships have mirror loadouts and similar pilot skills?

Sure, I'll tell you, again. It;s because the gap isn't that big.

Not only for me current game balance in pvp, especially because how potent skill boosters are is joke now, i would rather ask how much of a nerf to shields is needed to make standard 4booster prismatic fdl only slightly better than it's competitors in wing fights, my bet is that 1600MJ base shields would be already too much, 30% less than now!

The ships that can stack shield boosters have no hull.

You have the right conclusion, but you're asking for the wrong cause to be changed. FDL's don't need to be nerfed, hybrids need to be made more viable, and both need more diminishing returns on defense.

The whole bottom line here, is that the only thing I disagree with is your assertion that the FDL is hugely unbalanced. Sure, it's the best combat ship overall, just about, but it's not massively op, and some ship or other has to be the best, if only by a little. It's always been FD's baby, it's always been supposed to be the combat ship for the 'master'. Probably why I don't even like it that much. It;s shield tanking that is OP.

Seriously though I find other ships more interesting and I also like to put myself at a disadvantage. MAkes victories when they come all the sweeter and defeats easier to swallow. There are just way too many variables to say something as blanket as 'FDLs are OP', which is why I tried to qualify that by saying 'only under very specific circumstances', and I stand by that cos I can beat better pilots in their FDLs in my own mamba. Again it's just speed and shield, but nevertheless, I've not lost to a ferdie yet, and I've taken on afew.