Lessons: A Tremendous, Close Fight

The pinnacle of PvP is that close fight that comes down to the slimmest of margins.  I had one of those just a few moments ago, and I know I lost because I made very clear mistakes, but even those mistakes were the matter of a few seconds.

I was bringing an AAR/Rep Myrm back to Tenal from Jita through M-O.  I figured the chances of running into something dangerous were good, but the point of flying a ship like that is to get a fight.

Jumping into M-0, I ran into a Deimos on the other side of the gate.  I aligned out since local had a few neutrals in addition to him, but he caught up to me.  After a few seconds, I engaged, launched my drones, and applied my two webs and scram.

Here was my first mistake… I hadn’t grouped my drones beforehand, so I wasted a couple seconds (perhaps even an entire volley) scrolling down to find the drones I wanted to launch.  Inexcusable.

We were neck-and-neck for a while.  His AAR depleted first, and his armor started to go down, then mine depleted.  I was watching my cap and hit my booster, but not until my normal repper shut off, again costing me precious seconds.

Surprisingly, the thing I did very well during the fight was manage my armor reppers – I typically fly shield ships.  I started to pull range, getting away from his guns, but still in range of mine (I had autocannons), but for some reason I decided to get closer to get my ACs to my optimal damage.  I temporarily forgot that he was suffering for the range more with his heavy neutron blasters than I was.  I should have kept at about 7500 meters… that alone might have won me the fight.

He started attacking my drones, but I didn’t notice until it was too late… my heavies were dying quickly, and I managed only to save a couple.  With only Hammerheads left, I didn’t have enough DPS to beat his tank, though I didn’t know it at the time.  I hoped I might be able to slip in as his AAR reloaded again.

But I didn’t have the time.  I let up on my reppers when he stopped shooting for a moment.  I thought he was trying to disengage, whereas he made the mistake I had and forgot to activate his cap booster soon enough to auto-repeat his modules.

Letting up on my reppers, closing range, not grouping my drones… three mistakes that caused me to miss out on a Deimos kill, lose my Myrm, and turn this story into a hard lesson.

It was a very close fight, and I give catalysT criez credit… He beat me fair and square, though he made some mistakes too (cap booster usage, range).  At one point, he was down to 25% armor when I was at about 40%, so the fight could have gone either way.  My Myrm took a total of 56,446 damage, a tremendous amount for any fight, and we were engaged for three reload cycles of my AAR, so at least 5 minutes or so.

It was the most fun I had losing in a long time.

 

EDIT: I just found out, from another guy in local who was engaging him, that catalysT criez did have Loki boosts.  I actually feel much better; if I was going up against a guy with boosts and nearly pulled it out, I was doing something right.