00sage00's Romps Through the Eve Universe

Considering myself a “lesser celebrity”, I hadn’t expected to participate in the Celebrity Death Match, a program by Nashh Kadavr to battle well-known PvP bloggers in 1v1s. So when I logged into Eve one evening and saw an Evemail from Nashh requesting a duel, I was both elated and anxious at the same time. Elated because I was a so-called “celebrity” (Nashh and I discussed what exactly that word meant) and anxious for fear of joining the ranks of the CDM losers. But I put off those thoughts and set up a match for the next day in T1 frigates, no ECM (just to be sure).

When I logged in the next day, I decided that T1 destroyers would be a lot more interesting to use, as it would level the playing field a bit more (Nashh is nearly twice my character’s age). Plus I had cooked up a fit that I felt sure would bring me victory. Despite feeling a bit guilty over switching ship types at the last minute, I was fairly certain that Nashh would accommodate the change, as he is a very gracious man (except when fighting). Unfortunately, I found out later that he had promised to give Kirith Kodachi the honor of having the first CSM destroyer fight. Nashh and I then agreed to two matches (one frigate and another cruiser), with a third match in case we were tied.

Glad that I already had created and saved fittings for every frigate in Eve (take my Piloting Savviness advice seriously – make ship fittings!), I quickly searched for a suitable frigate. I attempted to avoid the Punisher because my best fits and flying advice are on my blog, but eventually I resigned myself to flying the tried and true Punisher.

Undocking, I warped to Nashh’s location and we both stole from each others’ cans (we were in highsec, so we had to). He was in a Kestrel. As we then both warped independently to the agreed upon location for match 1 (so that we could warp in at whatever distance we chose), I quickly scanned my saved Kestrel fits and loaded Republic Fleet EMP into my autocannons because I doubted he had enough mid slots to significantly boost his EM resist. As I exited warp, Nashh landed a mere 2.5 km meters away from me. I locked him and engaged my web, afterburner, neut, and autocannons. For some reason though, I was doing virtually no damage to him, while his DPS was overwhelming. In spite of overloading my armor repairer, by the time he had reached 50% shields, I was already into 50% structure. Then I realized my mistake: I had somehow turned off my afterburner and thus the range between us was now 9 km, outside even my autocannons’ falloff. Berating myself for overlooking that, I overloaded my afterburner and raced toward Nashh’s Kestrel. For some reason, his DPS seemed to have nearly stopped, allowing me to regain 30% armor. As I closed in, my autocannons finally started damaging his ship. But it wasn’t enough; his DPS increased again and I popped just as he reached 10% shield. Nashh had won round 1.

As I warped back to the station, I re-analyzed the fight in my mind. I had made several mistakes: losing locational awareness, forgetting to overload my guns, and having too cluttered of an overview. Nashh informed me that his DPS had dropped because his missile launchers had somehow failed to stop overloading and had become damaged. He also told me that he had rigged his ship.

As I prepared for Match 2, I began to feel that defeat was inevitable – Nashh would win this CDM. I had virtually no cruiser skills at all; frigates had been my only real hope. I chose the Maller due to the following reasons:

• I possess no missile, medium hybrid, and medium projectile skills. In addition, I have no Minmatar and Caldari cruiser skills. That eliminates all but the Arbitrator, Omen, Vexor, and Maller.
• The Arbitrator’s tracking disruptors and neutralizers will do nothing against PVP Caldari ships, which Nashh flies.
• The Omen has a poor tank and nano-ing doesn’t work against missile ships.
• No one flies Mallers for PVP.
• I have some really radical fits for the Maller.

I fit the Maller with a massive buffer tank, afterburner, dual webs, and a full rack of small hybrids (in retrospect, I should have used small T2 lasers as I only have Small Hybrid Turret 2). Happy at my unusual Maller fit, I undocked and warped to Match 2’s location. Nashh was ready for me, 20 km away from me in a Caracal:

*Nashh Kadavr puts war face on
Nashh Kadavr > grrr

He immediately engaged me with scourge fury missiles and light drones. My two webs and small guns easily dispatched the drones, but by the time I was in range for my guns, I was at 80% armor. Things didn’t look very promising.

Fury missiles pounded my ship. Small hybrids plinked at Nashh’s shields. Then, three and a half minutes into the fight, we both noticed something.

Nashh Kadavr > o oh

I was at 50% armor; he was at 30% shields. Suddenly things didn’t look quite so grim. I overloaded my highs and watched Nashh’s remaining shield and armor melt. As he entered hull and I prepared to take screenshots, my guns suddenly stopped. Oops. I had accidentally overloaded my webs instead of turning off overload on my guns. I quickly ungrouped my guns and finished Nashh off with two that were still functional.

I was elated at the win. My Maller, which would probably end up on someone’s failfit list, had won! And not only that, it was unrigged and had meta 2-3 items (except for the T2 Damage Control). As I returned to the station, I considered the time-tested maxim: One man’s failfit is another man’s win fit.

Nashh and I were now tied at 1-1, so we decided to have a third match in frigates. I made a valiant effort to use a different ship than the Punisher (even buying and half-fitting Rifters, Vigils, Tristans, and Incursii), but eventually decided to use…the Punisher. I used a nearly identical fit to earlier, except this time I fit T2 pulse lasers to prevent the range issue from ever happening again. He was in a Kestrel again (I was expecting a Merlin or some other ship), but told me that his fit was different (I later found he was bluffing). In the can I dropped for him, I stuck a piece of Republic Fleet EMP S to throw him off the fact that I had changed my fit to using pulses. Seeing how little he knew about gunnery, I figured that he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in gun type on my ship.

I then pondered what range to warp in at. For both previous fights, I had been at 0 km. Nashh probably would expect me to repeat that. In that case, he would probably want to repeat the “stay at 10 km” situation as he had in Match 1. So I warped to 10 km. Bingo. I landed right on top of him. I activated my lasers, neut, web, and afterburner as before. His shields melted in less than 30 seconds. Then my targeting lock icon suddenly disappeared and I recieved a notification that my modules were deactivating because my target was not locked. Panicking, I wondered if I had just been hit by ECM. Then I saw Nashh’s capsule in space, floating next to his wreck. We were both stunned for a couple seconds.

00sage00 > o.O
Nashh Kadavr > o crap
Nashh Kadavr > what happened there

Nashh had popped so quickly that I hadn’t even seen him hit armor. I don’t think even he knew what had happened for a couple seconds. According to my game logs, the entire fight had lasted a mere 41 seconds; I blew through his armor and hull in 9 seconds.

We exchanged GFs, and I grinned absurdly as I realized that I had won, 2-1. Overall, it was a great series of battles and lots of fun. I was very impressed by Nashh Kadavr’s professionalism and courtesy, and I wish him the best of luck as he continues his journey throughout New Eden. GF Nashh.

Nashh Kadavr’s recounting of the events can be found here.