Fit of the Week: Dampening Tengu

I rarely do T3 fits and I'm feeling like doing something a little ridiculous and fun and expensive this week, so let's go with this:

[Tengu, Dampgu]
1600mm Reinforced Steel Plates II
Coreli A-Type Adaptive Nano Plating
Centus A-Type Armor EM Hardener
Centus A-Type Armor Explosive Hardener
Centus A-Type Armor Kinetic Hardener

Gistum B-Type 10MN Afterburner
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script
Phased Muon Sensor Disruptor I, Targeting Range Dampening Script

Imperial Navy Medium EMP Smartbomb
Imperial Navy Medium EMP Smartbomb
Medium Unstable Power Fluctuator I
Corpum A-Type Medium Nosferatu
Auto Targeting System II

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II

Tengu Defensive - Supplemental Screening
Tengu Electronics - Dissolution Sequencer
Tengu Engineering - Capacitor Regeneration Matrix
Tengu Offensive - Magnetic Infusion Basin
Tengu Propulsion - Fuel Catalyst


Somewhat ironically, the Tengu is the best fleet e-war after-burning armor HAC ship in the game... it's far ahead of any competition. The alternatives either have nowhere near the mid slots necessary to be competitive or nowhere near the tank, or both. Granted, you give up the role bonus that a properly fit dampening Proteus might have, but the Proteus maxes out at four mid slots for e-war and (believe it or not) half the tank. I'm not sure what went wrong here -- maybe nobody really sat down and thought about e-war T3s? But that's where we are. Let's have a look at this beast.

The first place to look is at the mid slots: you have five of them for e-war and they can be any type of e-war you like, though damps are very popular this season. You can pick up one more mid using another Electronics subsystem, but this is not advised. Other choices sacrifice both the targeting range bonus and the sensor strength bonus of the Dissolution Sequencer. That and the Supplemental Screen set your mids. A dead-space AB is advisable for a lot of reasons but a big one is that any e-war ship is going to be the enemy's primary target once identified.

The bulk of the ISK on this fit is spent on an extremely hardy tank, which when overheated will give you 160k EHP before fleet bonuses with a ridiculously good resist profile. The average resist is in the high 80s and in particularly against brawling blasters you have 92% resists before bonuses. Go ahead and use your Slaves when flying this ship to make things even more ridiculous. You're not as strong as a Proteus tackler, but you can take a huge amount of punishment. That said, you're paying a price for those resists; if you don't have the coin for A-type resists, use the best type you can afford.

But I'm a big believer here in spending the money. Every single ISK you put into the low slots of this ship make it more likely you'll bring her home. If you skimp, the opposite is true.

T2 rigs are remarkably cheap right now, so don't feel bad about rigging the ship with the good stuff. That said, you can pick up a couple of percent efficiency on your damps with a T1 Inverted Signal Field Projector rig. I personally don't feel it's worth the loss of tank but you might feel differently.

The Auto Targeting System II is a little-known mod that addresses a T3's major weakness: that it can only lock five targets. This is not ideal for an e-war ship and the ATS adds three to that default. You need not activate the module to get the most important effect but it's sometimes entertaining to let it run. In a small gang scenario, a running ATS will automatically target anyone who attempts to do you harm... which coincidentally will make it easy to damp or jam those very same targets off you.

Your neut is purely defensive: use it against any frigate tackler you need to in an escape scenario; otherwise, forget that it's there. The dead-space long range NOS is surprisingly inexpensive and provides you plenty of emergency cap to keep your hardeners (and probably your AB) running. Two long-range smart bombs for clearing drones --particularly ECM drones -- round out the highs.

Your boosters of choice will be X-Instinct to cut down your signature even further, or Mindflood if you're worried about being neuted excessively. That said, it's rather hard to cap this ship out even under neut pressure.

If you're going to use damps, four of them can be used offensively but keep one in reserve for defense. Depending on pilot skill and other factors, your dampening strength starts at around 37% range dampening. But thanks to CCP's recent changes to Command Ships and the new faction mindlinks, there's almost no excuse not to have a Electronic Superiority Information Warfare Link somewhere in the fleet. A Damnation with this link does really nice things for your dampening strength, adding about 8% to your damp strength with a skilled pilot in the booster position. It also boosts your EHP to 220k. Don't neglect this advantage!

Once in battle, your usual tactic will be to damp enemy logistics and long-range tacklers. A common tactic with damps is to "damp dump": get into a position to use three or even four damps against a single target, dropping all of these damps at once on the target at a critical moment. The best use is to damp dump on a distant logistics ship just as your FC calls a new primary. If the enemy logi isn't really on the ball, he might find himself out of position and unable to lock your FC's primary as it's cut to ribbons. If the targeted logi moves in, shut down the damps and replace the scripts with Scan Resolution scripts. Then wait for your FC to call a new primary and damp dump again. The logi will waste many precious seconds waiting and waiting and waiting to lock your fleet's primary... and may lock it up just in time to see it explode.

Your defensive damp should stay range scripted at all times. It's to be used against anything that has you tackled more firmly than you like. That said, remember: you're not in a recon ship with a thin tank, you're in a T3 with a really tough one! Unlike the standard e-war ship, you don't have to run away at the first sign of abuse.

Finally, as I've joked many times, how good a T3 is in inverse proportion to how good it looks. This one, like all effective T3s, is very ugly...

Have fun making people yell at you!


All Fits of the Week are intended as general guidelines only.  You may not have the skills needed for this exact fit.  If you do not, feel free to adjust the fit to suit to meet your skills, including using meta 3 guns and "best named" defenses and e-war.  Ships can also be adjusted to use faction or dead-space modules depending on the budget of the pilot flying it.  Each FOTW is intended as a general guide to introduce you to concepts that will help you fit and to fly that particular type of ship more aggressively and well.