Reflection
It’s been rough, these past couple of months. There’s no denying it. Solo PvP ain’t a path to walk with sensitive feet, and I’m feeling the toll. It’s not just a matter of having less SP, that can be worked around by simply choosing not to engage the challenging fights. I know this, but still I fight anything that seems interesting, and it isn’t going well. I’ve been getting my butt handed to me over and over. The fights where a whole bunch of people gang up on me don’t discourage me; I know this is going to be standard for the rest of my EVE career. It’s the 1 v 1 fights that I lose which hurt the most. The constant deaths are really putting me off and I refuse to keep pushing against the brick wall and wasting ISK on my solo ships which die for no real benefit to anyone. Friends tell me that’s how you learn, by losing ships. Well, I haven’t.
This is an important point, and newbies should keep this in mind when thinking about entering the realm of PvP. Many more experienced pilots will tell you that dying makes you better. It is true to an extent, but it is mostly an encouragement, to keep your spirit from breaking against the hard face of EVE’s learning cliff. Simply flying out and dying does not make you better. You need to understand how you died and how you can lessen the chance of dying based on that knowledge. If you cannot figure these two things out, most likely you have spent your ISK in vain, unless you’re rolling in the dough and simply wanted to have some laughs. I wish I were in your position.
It can be as simple as 1. I died because I didn’t put out enough DPS and 2. I need to figure out how to get more DPS. From there, you have multiple ways to improve your next fight: acquire better gunnery/missile skills, get better ammunition, choose to orbit closer, or slower.
But what if it wasn’t your DPS, but how much you could tank? How do you decide which it was? What if it was your speed? Your transversal velocity? Your drone management? Your overheating management?
It gets wearisome when one must try consider all of this after every fight, and pinpoint the problems, only to realise that one has figured out to win a fight in the past, which probably will never happen again.
So it’s time for a change of scenery.