Hello -
I have the basic jist of what skills are needed to fly a brobird, but was wondering if anyone could give me a slightly more detailed listing on what is required to fly one and be useful in dreddit. Would hate to miss out on something that I could have already trained due to ignorance, and ECM and the related skills are not one of my stronger points knowledge wise.
Thanks
Posted Jun 26, 2012, 8:55 AM UTC
Here's a good guide: http://wiki.eveuniversity.org/ECM_Guide
Just a few tips (probably covered by others, but what the heck):
Distance is your tank. The higher your skills, the better optimal and falloffs you have, the farther away you can situate yourself from the people who are smashing their hands on the keyboard and cursing you.
Stay aligned, keep moving and be ready to jump out as soon as you are targeted. People will burn towards you and, if they're not terrible, land on top of you due to some cloaked asshole. You'll probably die, but it will have been worth it.
ECM Skills. Train them, love them. Also get Electronic Superiority Rigging skills. Caldari Cruiser skills, train up towards the Falcon. Electronic Warfare Frequency Modulation Long Distance Jaming Signal Dispersion
Turn OFF auto-cycle on your jammers. Do it all manually to maximize effectiveness. Remember, people still have to spend several precious seconds re-locking once a jam wears off. This means that your 20 second jam cycle might actually be 30 to 40 seconds, depending on what they're trying to lock. Spread the love.
Never jam the primary. It's going to kersplode, so focus on jamming other things. Logistics are always fun.
Get Thermodynamics. Seriously, shit be awesome.
Enjoy your tears. Few things in EVE hurt so much as being jammed by some asshole out of your range. For the ephemeral moments you are alive, life will taste sweeter than you can possibly imagine.
A very good starting guide, there are also others on the goonwiki and testwiki that will help starting pilots.
Only one nitpick- this guide mentions situations in which you should fit multispecs jammers which is either outdated or just wrong. You will most likely never fit a multi-spec jammer on your ewar ships except possibly in the rare exception that you have a Falcon/Rook using a niche build (even then it's not going to happen often).
Do not fit multispecs. If you don't know what you're facing rainbow (1 of each racial type) your jammers, if you're going out ask in fleet what your FC wants on the particular op.
As it's possible, try and stay between the logistics and the main chunk of the fleet.
Also, When you see yellow boxes, WARP OUT. That skill will save more brobirds than I can put into words.
blackbirds are so easy to be useful in it's ridiculous. frequency modulation electronic warfare, long distance jamming, signal dispersion will all help with the strength, range, and cap use of your jammers. For jammers you don't want to use the tech 2 ones. They're broken, the meta 4s are actually better and cheaper in this case. try to ask when you join a fleet what color jammers to use. (the colors correspond to teh races they works best against> blue=cal, red=min, yellow=amarr, green=gal, brown=shitty range and terrible jam strength spread across the races. The key to flying a brobird isn't skill though, it's staying alive.
With good skills in caldari cruiser and the right fit you should be able to sit 100km from the engagement and still jam targets. That means sometimes youll have to stay behind your fleet then warp to them at range once the fight starts. If you hang out in the middle of the drake blob, you're gonna have a bad time. Don't anchor, just align out and be ready to hit warp if some cocky sniper starts hitting you.
Remember, you don't want to jam the primary, try for logistics and other support, learn which targets (like guardians) fit eccm. And remember: Overheat.
That's about all there is, try not to die, be credit to team, everybody outside your fleet hates you.
haha try not to die in a blackbird, that's a good one
no seriously. Take some claritan, because if you sneeze hard you're in a pod.
I really like the 'everyone outside your fleet hates you' part. Tears are delicious, especially tears from poor bastards that cant retaliate.
just wait until you can fly a falcon. they flow like rain.
Should I get thermodynamics IV? Or is 3 more than enough?
If you're a newbro, you should be working no getting every skill that affects every (or at least most) ship to lvl 3 asap, at least as long as their prerequisite isn't too long.
Here i'm specifically thinking about advanved weapon upgrades which is an amazing skill that affects every ship, but for a newbro getting Weapon Upgrades V (which is a rank 2 skill) can be pretty tough.
Once you're capable of flying a few ships you should work on getting them all to 4, and eventually 5.
TL;DR Every skill that gives bonuses to every ship you fly should be trained to 5 eventually, but when you do it depends a lot on how your skills look otherwise.