Proc and Barry Roam | May 14th, 2014

Firstly, I've almost always been the "brawler" type of pilot in this game. In null, it was the large fleet brawls with about every type of class that our alliances/coalitions could imagine. In wormholes, most of the time it was the Armor T3 w/ Archons and Dreads. Manual piloting and solo play is something that has been relatively rare in my PVP experience, but this morning was different. Barry Dacella invited me to fly with him on a roam through null, as he has done a few times, but this time, I took him up on it.

We had three null exits, two leading to Tenal and one to Great Wildlands. We traveled out through the first null exit to Tenal, just Barry in a Stiletto and me, in a Vagabond. Barry scouted us through a few jumps, and nothing. So we went back into Styx, our static wormhole, and moved down the chain to the next null, in Great Wildlands. I stayed on the entrance to null, and Barry scouted around a bit. Nothing.

So, our only hope was that we could find some fun in the second Tenal exit. Barry scouted ahead and told me that there was a system about twelve jumps out that would make for a fun roam, leading over to Deklein. As we traveled toward our destination, we didn't see much, save a ratting Widow that ran when we entered system and a couple Ishtars and such that followed suit.

One of our alliancemates, Zkillz showed up and decided to join us, bringing a Thorax down the route toward our location. As we reached our Deklein destination, we found a couple Skiffs messing about and Barry tackled one of them. They linked their defense fleet in local and as I landed and began attacking the Skiff, an Ishtar, Legion, and Cerberus landed to engage Barry and me. Knowing this wasn't likely going to work for us with more enroute toward the belt, Barry and I bounced out.

Zkillz tells us on comms that activity down the route was increasing and a couple minutes later that a Hurricane and Stiletto were on top of him at a gate two jumps away from us. We begin burning to him. Barry lands as Zkillz loses his Thorax and points the Stiletto and Hurricane. The Hurricane manages to get away and Barry focuses on the other Stiletto.

I land and begin orbiting the Stiletto. Wrong. Barry corrects me and I begin manually flying perpendicular to the Stiletto and it dies. Revenge for Zkillz! They killed our Thorax, we pod their Stiletto.

After that, we begin heading back home. A couple jumps later, Barry tells me that a Deimos and another Stiletto were on the gate and he scrambles the Deimos. I jump in and approach the Deimos to brawl. Wrong. Barry corrects me again, but it's a little late and I'm completely tackled by the Deimos and the Stiletto.

As the fight kicks off I begin beating as hard as I can on the Deimos. I had lost my drones during the engagement with the Skiff, so it is just my Vulcan AC's doing the work. As the Deimos enters Armor, I tell Barry that I think I'm breaking him, but then he begins to active tank. I'm overheating everything hoping to go down swinging. Barry tells me to switch to the Stiletto to ensure a kill before I die, but I keep punching the Deimos. Then the weirdest thing happened. The Deimos begins to bleed structure and the tides turn. Barry points the Stiletto and throws a shot at the Deimos, stealing my final blow.

A few seconds later, we kill the other Stiletto. As the Stiletto died, a couple cruisers jumped into us. My Vaga was down to about 47% Armor, with most of my modules about burnt out. I told Barry that fighting the new ships would be unlikely. So we left.

End of the day, I need a ton of work to get better at Solo PVP and manual piloting. I got lucky this time, but remember never orbit or approach Stiletto's and Deimos' in a Nano-Vaga. Also, a quick prayer to Bob yields pretty solid results. Until next time, Cheers!