[PVP] Merlin

[Tony So Xai]

Prometheus, you seem rather obtuse with your feelings about things which have good tanks and limited tackle. There are more styles than one that are good for combat.

[prometheus]

because stuff like that features two things which i try not to do;
relying on really stupid players AND/OR assistance

rather have few really good fights, than steamroll through bads

[Siva Surya]

Regarding the dual-masb fit, I personally feel you should just go with with the Incursus instead, as it reps more DPS and has the utility of the drone (if they are in a frig and they begin shooting it then the balanasanas already been tipped in your favor as you have just received a head started sorts, and if they don't you get an extra 15dps on your side anyway).

The dual-web AB fit posted earlier is absolute killer. I fly one myself and I have yet to lose it. If you're good at manually keeping range however I would recommend going with the SAR-web-rail Incursus. It reps enough DPS that you can afford to make a mistake or two as long as you recover quickly.

Incursus tops out at ~747 dps tanked, with heat, legion mindlink boosts, and strong exile.

Merlin Tops out at ~1288 with heat, tengu mindlink, strong blue pill, and LG crystals (gets even more with HG).

Merlin also cannot be neuted, and still gets 650 per booster (aka only 100 or so under your peak, while being able to burst up to almost twice your tank as needed or to deaggro.

For pure tank, Merlin > incursus by quite a fair margin.

Drone utility definitely is nice as dual MASB merlin dia(slow)f to kiting ships most of the time if they have web, whereas incursus would have :some: dps with their drone.

First of all, let's forget about the Tengu mindlinks - most PVP'rs I've found in FW space don't carry a booster alt with them. Anyway, a Merlin tanks approx 107 DPS per MASB. If you run both you only have about ~30s or so to kill the other target - however, it takes at least about 10s more to do that. So basically you gotta run 1 MASB at a time, which is 136 DPS heated. The Incursus on the other hand can use both reps at almost all times with good cap injection timings, resulting in approximately ~200 dps tanked for as long as you have charges (you'll have way more than necessary for the average fight).

The cap booster also means the Incursus can run its guns under medium neuts, something the Merlin can't do nearly as well. I will concede though that the Merlin is faster. However that's not enough of an advantage to go for the dual MASB Merlin over the dual rep Incursus IMO.