Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Zephyr, the Claw that killed me

So the downside, I died, the upside, he did too!

I undocked my Crusader in TXW, seeing one non-blue in local, hopefully in a frig or inty!  I headed towards the 3MOG gate just as he jumped out.  Sure that he had jumped into 3MOG I hopped in only to see him jump back into TXW from somewhere other than 3MOG just as I left local!  Damn it.

I turned and re approached the gate, hanging on the 3MOG side of the TXW gate to see if he was going to jump through and to find out what he was in.  Hopefully something I could kill!

The gate flared, and he jumped into 3MOG, his Claw, Zephyr, quickly turning and engaging me, through my shields before I had even begun to fire on him!  Initially I was at a disadvantage, since I could not get my speed up quickly as I kept bouncing off the damn gate.  One of my bounces threw me clear and I was finally able to orbit at around 4-5k from the Claw.

Mental note, I will never use standard S in an engagement again.  First time it nearly cost me the Tristan kill last time, this time it, once again, was not providing enough damage to break the Claw's tank!  I reloaded Imp navy mutli S and ducked in closer, where I should have been the whole time, overheating both my guns and rep to keep up with the damage.  At this point we were both sitting in high armor.

Twisting towards him proved costly to my armor, his NOS made my cap even more scarce and soon, right as we both hit structure, my guns, rep as well as my ab and scram all shutdown because I was cap dead.  His projectiles had no such problem and remained striking at my hull, plunging me towards death, however his rep cycles stopped as well.  During the fight 4 x Serpentis Cruisers had spawned by the gate and now were taking long range pot shots at the Claw and not at me!  Sadly they were 15km away and not the long range cruisers.

I tried to cycle my guns to keep the damage up, one cycle of my armor rep capped me out again but gave me enough armor to withstand his assault for a few moments more.  I hit 1/4 structure after a few frenzied moments, as he hit about 1/3 structure.  I spammed warpout, my screen jerked a few times like it does when you kill someone or die.  I thought I had won briefly, but I knew it wasn't to be when my ship blossomed around me, spitting out my poor pod.  Unable to slip into warp thanks to the lag I was locked down, thrown a GF in local and then podded right back into TXW!

Seconds later as I tried to board my Vagabond to get back to my wreck and hopefully finish off the claw I got a convo...  those rats, landed a lucky killing blow on the claw just after I died.  Thanks a lot Serpentis, couldn't you have done that JUST a bit sooner?  All told we both lost our ships in a very close fight, but I nabbed the wrecks of both inties.

I wish I could say I learnt something new from this fight, but instead I just get to rehash.

A) No damn Standard Crystals to start out PvP, get in close with Imp navy Multi and try to get a kill!
B) Cap stability would be nice, or it even would have been a good idea to run just the AB or just the rep, so I could have kept my guns going longer.  At the very least better cap management!
C) In addition to A, overheat at the start of the fight!  With more damage on him early from both Multi and overheating and maybe I wouldn't have capped out and eventually died!

Sometimes I wonder if I even remember these thoughts in the middle of a fight.  At least frig fighting isn't as expensive as fighting in a HAC or anything else!  Great fight though, silly loss!

At least the 49ers won last night!  They obviously overheated from the get go!

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