Topic: Post your reasons - "Don't mix guns"

[Dirpious]

Greets,

Well SghnDubh covered the why pretty damned well, so all I'm gonna do is give you another example of the same logic in a different package.

When you first started running missions to get cash, or standings, etc how did you do them? Would you lock the max amount of targets you could and then split your damage among all of them, or did you put all your damage on 1 target at a time?

I dunno why, but when alot of people start out missioning they tend to split their damage among all targets. Then they learn that they will survive alot longer if they simply reduce the # of ships firing at them as fast as possible. Splitting your damage among multiple targets only works if you can 1 or 2 shot the targets. Anything more, and you are better off focusing your fire on 1 ship at a time. This is ofcourse from a PvE standpoint, but from the number of times I have heard a PvP'er say "primary target" it makes me think it carries over to PvP to some degree.

Do you see where I am going with this? It does you no good to have 500 dps if you only put 50 of it at a time on a ship. By mixing your ranges, you are doing just that. You allow your targets to survive longer, you take more damage, and you prolong the fight. In PvE the length of the fight has little bearing. But in PvP, the longer the fight, the more time your target has to get support to his location.

[SghnDubh]

Nice post Dirpious  thanks for watchin' my six.

[Xanthan]

This is great! This is exactly what I was looking for.

(Much thanks to SghnDubh for replying without chastising me for not going through the old posts. BTW I started this whole thing because I was told to go read dontmixguns.com, but came up craps.)

Congrats to those who have posted so far for giving equal mention to the other side and "what" or "why" you might mix your weapons.

Let's hear from more people. It's a discussion with lots of merit that seems to bring up lots of other useful tidbits.

Thanks all...

[Turelle]

When I started I might have mixed guns a few times. But soon stopped as I realised I wasn't getting the job done quick enough only doing half of my damage. My corpmate setup his megathron a while back (about a year ago) and he mixed his guns using rails and blasters. I went in a megathron too, however I used only blasters. I won because he could not break my tank with just half of his guns. I killed him because I was doing more damage with the full rack of guns.

He came back in a similar setup, this time using rails, blasters AND a cruise and siege missile launchers. Again I came back but using rails this time, I killed him again because he couldn't do the damage and I could.

So to prove it wasn't skills that was killing him, I went in his setup, and he went in mine. No surprise he won. Now he nearly always beats me after he learnt not to mix guns.

[SghnDubh]

I'd like to hear the "good reasons to mix your load to handle a mix of ships being thrown at you" that you alluded to, Xanthan.