I like to consider myself the adventurous sort. This personality trait of mine has manifested itself in my physical life as a desire for travel and to experience as much of this little dustball of ours as possible. I’ve lived in New York City, Los Angeles, Seoul, and now Washington D.C. in an effort to satiate my wanderlust.

I have found, though that this sense of adventure does not penetrate so well into the realm of my hobbies. When I find a particular playstyle I enjoy, it is difficult for me to venture into other modes of play. Or, maybe it’s just that I’m getting older and feeling a desire to settle down. I won’t even begin to psychoanalyze this, it’s really not that important.

What’s important is being awesome and claiming planets in the name of Glorious TEST.

So, with that said, I did a little something adventurous yesterday evening.

After logging in and playing some solo matches to get my skills up, I got myself into a squad with our fearless leader Dent, and prominent Subdredditors Kristoff and Talos. These guys are awesome to squad up with, and super knowledgeable about the game. I definitely recommend squading up with any of these guys if you’re a newbro (or even if you’re not), as they’ve got some great insights into the mechanics of the game.

Dent wanted to try out our new super secret squad doctrine, The Ocelots.

Learn the name, and learn to fear it’s sound!

Actually, it’s probably not something you’ll see us running around in too much, I think. One of the things we learned about this kind of fit is that it is highly situational, so it’s not a fit for regular fights. Obviously, I’m not going to detail the intricacies of this fit right here for all our enemies to see (spais!), but I think I can safely gloss over the major details to give you an idea of what was going on.

The idea behind the Ocelots is to create a highly mobile squad capable of hitting targets at a good distance. Basically, scout suits and l@Z0Rzz!

I made myself a scout suit, and fitted it for Ocelot Squad. This was the first time I’ve stepped out of a logi suit since I started the game up again at the end of closed beta (right after the merge, right before open beta).

I did very poorly.

What can I say? I’m used to my role, and stepping out of it is pretty much like turning me into a brand newberry.

So, I required a bit of adaptation. I wanted to be useful to the Ocelot squad, and in a scout suit, I’m just not that useful (which is funny, because scout roles were what I used to play predominantly when I was younger).

However! I’ve been working on my Minmatar Logistics skill, trying to get it to level 3 so I can get the Type-A Logi Suit. I know I may end up regretting this, because as a life-long Gallente supporter, I know I will be jumping into the Gallente Logistics suit as soon as it’s available. I had figured we weren’t going to see the new suits until at least six months from now, but word in the podcasting community is that we’re getting new suits next build. If you haven’t listened to that podcast, and you’re a Dust merc, I highly recommend setting some time aside to devour the delicious information presented.

In any case, as of right now, my Minmatar Logistics Suit skill sits at level 2 (I’m pretty sure I’ll be moving it to 3 tonight or tomorrow evening, then I’ll probably leave it there until the next build).

This means I’m able to use the Type-II Logi suit.

I used to think this suit was dumb. I knew it was meant to fill a “faster logi” role, but I figured that was kind of pointless because I had a very highly mobile ‘sever’ suit running shields that was not only fast, but also had 3 equipment slots, as opposed to the Type-II’s two equipment slots. It just didn’t seem logical to give up those nanohives for a little extra speed.

Boy, was I wrong.

I’m loving this suit. The Logistics Type-II suit is the perfect logi suit for those logibros assigned to protect highly mobile squads. I had zero trouble keeping up with the scout suits, and after switching my triage repair tool out for the flux repair tool, I was able to extend my repping abilities out to 22.5m, as opposed to the triage’s 15m. And since everyone in my squad was in a scout suit (most of the time), losing that extra bit of armor repair rate didn’t hurt too much. I also put in the low slots some biotics to extend my stamina (holy crap, I never run out in this suit!, seriously I can run forever), and an armor repair module because I knew I was the only logi around. One of the scouts brought along a nanohive (another with an uplink, and I think someone else had a nanoinjector, which I think is a good spread for what we were trying to do).

Once I switched over to this fit, I definitely moved up in the after battle rankings, and felt I was contributing way more than just being in a scout suit. It was a big change from my normal playstyle, though. Ocelots are meant to be a supreme harassment weapon, not an objective taker (which is normally where I find myself), so much of our fighting happened outside the meatgrinder that was the normal battle. I also found my squadmates were more difficult for the enemy to pin down and deal damage to, so a lot of the time I spent behind the hill they were using for cover, just watching to make sure their armor didn’t take any damage (I still had my assault rifle, which I did not trade for a laser because logis don’t have a side arm, and it’s always good to have someone who can take out people who get under the lasers).

So yes, this is a very specialized fit, meant for a very specialized squad. Working as a single squad in public matches, they are not particularly effective, however in corp battles with multiple squads, especially when we get up to the 100 vs 100 numbers, you can bet you’ll start seeing specialized squads like this start to pop up.

I think we’re really starting to see the type of Eve-level intricacies in suit fittings and combat roles, and I’m super excited to see how players are going to be using and manipulating these details for their own advantage.

It’s all very exciting.

– JRD