Review – Rokh
Rokh, the shiny expensive hybrid toy.
Amazing, yet you don’t see it in service as much as some of the other battleships, like the Raven. Why? Well, there are several reasons:
1. It’s shear expensiveness. The ship itself sells for about 110 million on market, about 20-30 million more than the Raven. Plus insurance and buying good fittings for it, that will in all put a 180-200 million ISK hole in your wallet. And since some people don’t know how to save ships from death, they don’t want to risk loosing their money.
2. It’s a very skill intensive ship. To pilot this beast it effectively, a lot of skills are needed. They include many gunnery skills trained up to at least level 4, along with some shielding skills, engineering skills, and electronic skills up to at the lowest 3.
3. It’s rails turn a lot of people away since most Caldarians like the traditional style of combat, which is hurling missiles. A majority of players trained up for heavy missiles, then cruise launchers because all we fly are Drakes, Ravens, Caracals, and the Kestrel frigate. These would be considered to be some of the more powerful ships to fly and easier to use. Velocity times flight time equals distance. With guns there are tracking speed, radial velocity, transversal velocity, radial velocity, velocity, signature radius, and finally you can figure out the gun’s optimal range.
But through this all, why do some people still purchase this ship? Let me tell you. The ship itself is very strong once the battleship skill reaches 4 or 5. Then the built-in tank works very well at 20-25 plus percent; its like a free invulnerability field built in! The range bonus help the massive guns reach ranges of 150 to 200 kilometers where you can pick ships off.
With this in mind, it takes the enemy a while before they can actually come close enough and hit you. A good word of warning though, when some ships get very close (less than 10km), it is nearly impossible to hit them. That’s when drones are essential, especially tech 2 drones because they do a lot more damage. Maybe fitting a nos on one of the high slots will dry off that pesky interceptor or frigate.
The tactic that I suggest with this ship is to first pick of and thin out the frigate fleet before they come too close and are orbiting too fast for your turrets to track or their transversal are too high to hit them for full damage with your guns. If you don’t take them out fast enough and they scrambled then that’s when things will go to hell. Make sure you focus fire on ships because each ship with 1 hitpoint does the same amount of damage and can still be as dangerous as a ship with 1000 hitpoints. Not only this but then it’s easier to kill them as they are receiving more DPS and can not tank, boost, or repair as if you split the damage two or three ways.
Then after the frigates are taken out and come too close, throw your drones on them and start hitting the battleships with the target painters on them to do full damage. By the time that the battleships are taken down, your tank should be able to hold much better and then the drones are taken out too! Remember that whenever you can warp at 100km, do it, because put some iron charges in and this way you don’t have to worry about getting hit, at least for a little while.
This ship definitely gives awe simply by its presence, especially in the some of the beginner systems, since it’s rarely spotted. It you are the pilot of this ship, join a fleet with some corp members and just go blasting the enemy away. One thing, I wouldn’t take this exotic ship through unfamiliar territories though, it’s far too expensive for most people to throw away. Well, unless you are a multi-billionaire.
Suggested Role: Level 4 missions, sniping fleet, blaster-gank boat.
11 comments
The attraction of targeting and firing from 150 to 200km away is very appealing.
However skilling up rail weapons is not.
Keep up the reviews and posts. I enjoy reading your blog :)
Haha, agreed. By the way, thanks for your support:D
A few people seem to turn these things into blaster boats. One day when i am wealthy i think i would like to give it a go.
probably better as a sniper boat tho.
Keep up the work with the Blog. enjoying reading the reviews.
Thanks a lot.
A blaster boat is ok I guess when you are facing mercenaries, as they come up very close to you. But I fit 2 neutron blasters along with 6 425mm to get those closer ships.
The ship is almost useless at less than 10km sometimes
Has anyone tried to put arty cannons on this ship? Autocannons?
The ship bonus isn’t for hybrid DPS so the benefit from using rails and blasters (range bonus is great for pvp blaster setups however) is not really that tempting.
Having cannons make CAP sustainability even greater as they are cap independent and therefore you can have an even stronger tank…
Discuss…
:)
Great site!
@k0ld
Never tried ACs in my time because I don’t have the skills trained yet.
Seems like an interesting concept, but I think in most cases, cap isn’t so much a problem in PvP as long as you have boosters :P
I really like reviews like this, wish there were more though.
Anyway, I’ll be getting a Rokh soon, just gotta get my battleship skill leveled up. I was wondering if there was a good way to passively tank one of these things for level IV missions? (preferrably with T1 stuff. I don’t have access to a lot of T2 equipment just yet). A lot of setups I see focus more on an active tank. If not, I’ll probably go with a setup similar to the PvE setup suggested here, or something.
@Cliff
I will try to make or find a good passive setup.
I really hope you can start working on T2 modules because they become quite essencial to setups, especially for creating good cap sustainable tanks for mission running!
I will try to update and write new reviews!
@Tony –
Thanks. I like to try and run a passive setup if possible, just for the simplicity of it compared to an active one. I might try a similar one to the PvE setup suggested here for now.
Yeah, I need to start working on T2 stuff. I’ve only been playing for a few months, so thats why Im not there already. To be honest, I would have held off on a Rokh for a little longer, but my corp is small, and we need another battleship to soak up some of the aggro on some of the tougher level IVs. Our Raven just wasnt able to do it alone.
@Cliff
Drop me an email using the form under “The Warrior” page if you want more info.
I always try to make setups that are perma-cap because it then is basically a passive setup. (Email if you wanna know why).
As for tanking L4’s there is no better ship shield tanking than the Drake.
If you want, drop an EVEMail if you wish and I’ll invite you ingame. May be able to log on tonight.
heh you are absolutely right about caldari pilots having a hard time getting away from missiles i happen to be a drake pilot that is working on the t2 frigs but i will say that i have seen others use these and will admit that i was impressed
if your willing to put in the time to train up the gun skills id say its deffinately worth getting one of these excellent snipeing ships
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