Destroying Destroyers Destructively

So I returned to Eve at the weekend after a "sort of" two week break. Obviously Retribution had been launched during that time. Do you want to know the most shocking issue at patching to Retribution? The internet speeds in the UK! I had my laptop with me and it took me a good three hours to patch the Eve Client at my brothers place on his "broadband". When I got home and patched the desktop back in the Middle East, it took 15 minutes! And that was on a mobile connection!

Anyway, onto the pew-pew. I had already tried the new Caldari destroyer, the Corax, on the test server and loved it simply due to the number of missiles it spat out and the firework-show you were treated to when you fired. The graphics were spectacular especially with rockets. So one of my first jobs in Retribution was to send my alt to Jita to pick me up a couple and bring them back to low-sec in his transport ship. Yeah, yeah, I know ship choice shouldn't be down to what the graphics are like, but I wanted missile madness!

The first set up I tried was rocket based with MSE. I thought about the other mids and opted for web and scram. My reasoning was that I'd be baiting in small faction war plex's so I might encounter frigates. Anything that can point and hit from 12km+ and is faster than me is going to beat my rocket Corax simply because the rockets will be out of range. So my plan was to sit in the plex capturing it (love the new plex layout!) and if anyone came in it would be scwam, web and wockets!

After a few kills with the rocket Corax I did try a light missile kiting Corax...... and it was pants. I've seen slightly angry squirrels with more DPS! If you snag a slow ship with short-range weapons then you'll be OK, but you should note that your target will likely die of old age rather than your light missiles! The Corax does have fairly awesome range with lights, but you need to ask what's the point? The ability to hit from 70km out is pointless if you're hardly doing any damage and your out of point range by a factor of three.

Generally I found that things worked much better with the rocket fit, but the DPS is still rather lacking. Whilst it is much better than the light missile fit, it is pretty low. I thought these new destroyers were supposed to have less tank and more DPS. In the last week I've not been in any fleets so all my kills have been just me and my destroyer. During my solo roams since Retribution hit I've lost two Corax and killed the following:-

• Condor
• Pod
• Coercer
• Jaguar
• Thrasher
• Thrasher
• CN Hookbill
• Catalyst
• Corax*
• Coercer*

*I'd lost my last Corax so was in an AC Thrasher for these kills.

I had a couple of fights that resulted in draws. One was against a Thrasher with an oversized AB. He had a scram to shut down my MWD and my web couldn't hold back the 10mn AB. After it was clear I couldn't hold him, I waited for him to rubber-band and then burn off in the other direction as his scram dropped.

The last Coercer kill was a good one. He was 10mn AB fit, but had a long point not a scram. That meant I could keep up by perma-running my MWD. That led to his guns hitting me better. It was a close fight and as he assploded I was in 49% structure with almost all my mods heavily damaged. I did actually burn out my MWD, it died seconds after the target went down.

Of the two Corax I lost one, was against a Jaguar who was sat on a gate, you know what is coming don't you...... his mates were sat the other side. Schoolboy error on my part there.

The other was against a Hawk. Now I knew that would be a dodgy fight. I love Hawks and they have an awesome tank with twin ASB. But I thought I'd see how it went. It went badly and I got utterly kerb-stomped. Pro-tip, avoid Hawks when flying a rocket Corax!

So the Corax is OK as a solo ship. Not great, not terribad, just OK. I love the graphics of the multiple rocket launchers spitting hell-fire-death at the target. However, the Corax does suffer from a serious lack of DPS.

For me, the Thrasher is still king of the destroyers.