Review - Drake
The Drake, what could I say? It’s simply a marvel in engineering by the Caldari mega-corps.
The battlecruiser is designed for level 3 missions and it could blow them out of the water no problem. After mastering those, I took it to do level 4 missions and simply, it was amazing. My first thoughts were, oh crap, what have I gotten myself into? Amazingly, I lasted and had won the battle; I was so proud!
This ship is designed for maximum killing and damage absorption. Throw on a few purgers and shield extenders, the effective hit points on this ship skyrockets into the 20k range or more. If for some reason, your capacitor gets sucked dry, it’s not that big of a problem. This baby can be setup to use cap with efficiency or, just don’t use cap at all.
Passive tanking is a skill you must master though. Even though the ship has the potential of being great, you the pilot, must still train for shield skills.
Active setups are different, and usually aren’t preferred as much as a passive build. They include the shield booster and cap boosters along with capacitor relays or flux coils. I won’t go into much details on it, since I don’t run active setups. But you can look around on the net and find some right?
Still, there are still some, just some, disadvantages to the Drake.
The tanking power sometimes will fail you. Since the shield works the strongest at about 33 to 35%, most people don’t worry until it gets to about 25%. Now the problem is, if something appears and shoots your shield down to 30%, then it starts failing. That’s the time to haul ass.
The Drake just doesn’t carry a shield booster because that’s just cap inefficient.
Since that is the only concern anyone has about the passive Drake, you don’t need to worry. I’m sure you’ll be just fine.
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10 comments
I would like to add that the Drake doesn’t work very well at all in Level 2 missions.
I am an Eve newb and thought that if it does well in L3 missions, then I should kick major butt in L2.
The problem I think is the fact that heavy missiles don’t hurt the smaller Level 2 ships very much.
So I’ve gone back to the Caracel for Level 2 missions and once I get high enough for a Level 3 missions I will re-visit the drake.
I so enjoy reading Eve blogs :)
The drake will work well in level 2 missions also. infact u can take any ship down a level. All you need to do is adjust the high slots accordingly. So rather than fitting heavy missile launchers fit heavy assault or assault level launchers. This will enable you to keep the tank of a drake but speed up the missioning.
Be warned tho… this may be overkill!!
@Grevous: I will try out what you suggest tonight and let you know tomorrow how it went :)
Yes, your damage is lowered because the heavy missile does less damage to the smaller ships as to the light missiles.
Keep looking, I will post a new entry on how that works :D
So I after running another mission or two unlocked my first Level 3 agent. A nice Quality 0 too at that.
I equipped my drake with Heavy Assault Missile Launcher, but found that the range on the missiles are about 12km. My drake moves so slow that I couldn’t even get into range of the ships.
So I went back and equipped regular Heavy Missile Launchers and regular Heavy Missiles.
I now have a nice 50km range and about 50% of the ships die with about 3 or 4 missile hits.
The other 50% take five to six times as many missile hits, I’m guessing because they are smaller like you note.
Next time I play I think I’ll try swapping three of the heavies with lights or go all lights. Hrm…
By the way, thanks for the info and the posts and the blog :)
Turns out equipping light missiles just lowered my damage. It turns out that these little suckers just have a crap load of hit points. Good to know :)
One thing i would reccomend is taking some drones with you. With the Drake u can fit 5 small drones. if u fit these based on the damage type of the rat ur going up against for maximum damage, same as what ur putting in ur high slots, then you wont need to worry about ur missiles not hitting them.
You may need to work on your drone skills some though.
incidently you can find the damage types either online or in peoples bio’s Check out General Grevous in game. i hae the list in my Bio. also feel free to convo at anytime
Grevous, thanks for the tips.
I figured out the damage type trick a few weeks ago, My drone skill only allows me to control 3 drones, so I’m running two mediums and one small. I’ve recently changed them to match the ammo I am using.
One thing I tend to do is forget my drones are out there and I warp away and lose them. doh!
Haha, ya, that does suck.
Don’t worry though, they are replaceable.
I’ll be posting a guide on how to equip missiles and such.
Damn, my Drake got blown up!
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