The Drekavac is, hands down, the best ship I’ve ever used in EVE Online. No exaggeration, no hyperbole, I fucking love it. I only hope to eat my own words when Drifter ships get released and I can spend all day blasting things with cruiser doomsdays. We’re probably overdue an optimistic fitting article anyway though so here we go!
The fits described in this article were created before the resistance nerf in April 2020. Post-patch revised fits will be marked with a ++ at the start of each fitting name although screenshots will not always be updated.
According to the ever-reliable source that is Wikipedia, Drekavacs are “mythical creatures in South Slavic mythology”. They’re undead and come out of graves at night to spook people. Their name also literally means ‘The Screecher’. That’s quite appropriate given some of the shite I spout on comms while FC’ing them. Check it out below as well as the usual ship stats:
Precursor Battlecruiser bonuses (per skill level):
10% bonus to Heavy Entropic Disintegrator damage
4% bonus to all armor resistances
Role Bonus:
Can use one Command Burst module
50% bonus to Command Burst area of effect range
25% bonus to Heavy Entropic Disintegrator optimal range
50% reduced Energy Neutralizer capacitor need
50% reduced Remote Armor Repairer capacitor need
50% reduced Smart Bomb capacitor need
100% bonus to Remote Armor Repairer range
The ‘Everything’ Drekavac
I don’t know how this hasn’t been nerfed yet but the main fit I’m sharing with you today, dear readers, is one the best fits I’ve ever made. Usually when I show it to people they tend to shrug it off as trash and wonder why we don’t have 150k EHP like everyone else. Some have even taken to calling the “MCAVevac” and shitting on the way we fly them.
It has the unique ability to cost less than 300m ISK and look like pure T2 garbage while outplaying many a nullsec smoothbrain. I love it.
[Drekavac, v8 Skirmish Drek]
Reactive Armor Hardener
Damage Control II
Multispectrum Energized Membrane II
Multispectrum Coating II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Nanofiber Internal Structure II
Entropic Radiation Sink II
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Medium Micro Jump Drive
Medium Capacitor Booster II
Warp Disruptor II
Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II
Armor Command Burst II
Medium Remote Armor Repairer II
Medium Ancillary Remote Armor Repairer
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Hyperspatial Velocity Optimizer II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Acolyte II x5
Hornet EC-300 x5
Hornet II x5
Mystic M x1000
Occult M x1000
Armor Energizing Charge x300
Armor Reinforcement Charge x300
Rapid Repair Charge x300
Navy Cap Booster 800 x15
Baryon Exotic Plasma M x700
Meson Exotic Plasma M x700
Tetryon Exotic Plasma M x700
Electronic Hardening Charge x300
Electronic Superiority Charge x300
Sensor Optimization Charge x300
Nanite Repair Paste x300
Evasive Maneuvers Charge x300
Interdiction Maneuvers Charge x300
Rapid Deployment Charge x300
Coreli A-Type Explosive Coating x1
Information Command Burst II x1
Skirmish Command Burst II x1
Compact Entropic Radiation Sink x1
10MN Afterburner II x1
Stasis Webifier II x1
Warp Scrambler II x1
So what could it possibly be that makes the fit so good? On one hand I’d like to say it’s the combination of 1,200 DPS, 2.8km/s, self links, jump drive, 78%+ resists, fast warp/align and great remote reps. Those stats honestly speak for themselves and in a small gang scenario it doesn’t get much better with nearly any other ship class in New Eden. The Drekavac has enough DPS to take down a carrier in a group of three, the speed to catch anything that isn’t a dedicated kiter, and the repping power to tank supercarriers if you fly it right.
On the other hand, you kind of have to understand the mentality of the average blocs when you’re in their space. They drop caps no matter what and you will die if you aren’t already 50km away or have a 100km blink spell in your pocket when the blob lands. Having the Micro Jump Drive is what completes the fit in each and every one of those situations. Slam the button as soon as a cyno goes up and your five man gang will survive supers time and time again. That, or use them offensively as in the below video and dunk people with a full fleet jump. Did I say that I love these ships? Because I do. Nobody expects them to pull of the crazy shit that they do.
As much as I want to praise my own fittings and the strength of Drekavacs, though , they aren’t perfect. Heavy neuting tends to be an issue when 9/15 of your modules are cap hungry and ECM drones still dumpster Entropic Disintegrators. I’ve had many a time where an unlucky neut tick or a pesky little drone has reset my damage spoolup. With a cold base Occult DPS of only 372, that can earn you a one way ticket back to Jita.
Medium Reps Suck
Large ancillary reps are what the cool kids use these days. Or at least it’s what I put on this janky-ass fit, for better or for worse. It isn’t a serious suggestion and I’m certain that a properly fit Drekavac will outperform this in most ways. There’s something just a little funky about a battlecruiser repping 30-40% of it’s armour in one shot. XLASBs can do it so why not an armour ship for once! 😀
Numbers quoted above are for my slightly more blinged abyssal version with implants plugged in. It actually reps back an absurd 17.6k EHP per cycle and supposedly will tank about 200k of damage before running out of charges. As with every oversized rep fit, though, your tank is only as good as you are at not getting alpha’d. A roughly 10 second repair cycle gives you as much time to avoid 43k of damage. Less if you plan on avoiding overrepping. This is a really funky way of running an ‘active buffer’ fit on the cheap with the other option being plate+medium ancil for about 108+32k EHP before links.
[Drekavac, Large Ancil Rep]
Damage Control II
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Imperial Navy Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Entropic Radiation Sink II
Dark Blood Reactor Control Unit
Dark Blood Reactor Control Unit
Large Ancillary Armor Repairer, Nanite Repair Paste
50MN Quad LiF Restrained Microwarpdrive
Small Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 400
Fleeting Compact Stasis Webifier
Caldari Navy Warp Scrambler
Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II, Occult M
Armor Command Burst II, Armor Energizing Charge
Small Energy Nosferatu II
Small Energy Nosferatu II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II
Medium Ancillary Current Router II
Medium Anti-Explosive Pump II
Vespa II x5
Standard Exile Booster
Agency 'Hardshell' TB5 Dose II
Occult M x500
Armor Energizing Charge x300
Navy Cap Booster 400 x1
Nanite Repair Paste x64
The alternative dual medium rep fit isn’t too shabby either and feels a bit like a Brutix Navy Issue on steroids. In a straight up fight between two said ships I’m not sure who i’d put down to win, actually. A ‘classic’ brawling battlecruiser has more upfront DPS and ECM drones will hurt a Drek, but the Drekavac has much more utility and potential for outplay. That said, Triglavians are still a bit new and spooky for most people and most will either blob or run away.
As for my own preference here and what I think about repping Dreks in general, I’d personally probably fly 100MN if i was without a corp. Or at least that’s what I would say if 100MN Afterburners worked well on most Triglavian ships. Unfortunately, due to the the way align time is calculated and the mass of the Drekavac being particularly small, it just doesn’t really work. Base align time with a large afterburner is 41.5 seconds. This translates into an atrocious acceleration time to only 1,065km/s and two nanos only brings the align to 30 seconds. I know Nika NOisER can make it work, but I’ll stick with my cheapo 100MN Vedmak.
Why Your Shield Fit is Bad
Everyone knows that the Drekavac (and most of the rest of the Triglavian line, too) is exclusively armour tanked. What might not be obvious is just how bad of an idea it is to do anything else at all. See, the base EHP with all V skills is 1.75k // 9.31k // 6.5k in shield, armour, and hull respectively. When actual resists come into play things are more like 2.41k // 17.2k // 9.7k, too. That’s almost 30k EHP before any modules whatsoever.
Using these base stats you can produce some really silly stuff with relatively little effort. I’ve seen many resist-based heavy armour ships built off that principle and it’s no surprise that my Skirmish Drek above does the same thing in order not be weighed down by a plate. An example of those crazy resists is this fit here; that’s with links and sans-slaves/amulets. 117k EHP and every resist above 84% is just insane from only five low slots on a battlecruiser. Taking it even further to the extreme, though, and throwing on a plate for the sake of it we can get command ship levels of tank for relatively cheap (left image). This is a “T1” battlecruiser, everyone.
Baaaack to the base ship anyway. Applying just a T2 Damage Control to the ship increases total EHP by 10k up to 40k which is nice (and horribly OP already), but what really interests me is the shield. It increases by only three hundred and fucking fifty. 350 more HP is barely enough to tank a set of light drones for three seconds. Trying to expand this into a full shield tank with only four mid slots is a bad idea. It’s actually worse than the shield Vengeance I made a while ago, and that’s saying something.
Has “it’s a bad idea” ever stopped me from trying to make a fit, though? I’ve experimented with laser Stabbers and drone damage Cynabals before just to see what happens. The results are about the same as what you get out of a shield Drek. Still, if you don’t ask then you don’t get. I’ve said it before that experimenting with stupid ideas is often how you make the best off-meta stuff. It’s just a shame that CCP locked this ship hard into one tank type.
Even the meme of fitting a passive shield tank doesn’t work out on the Drekavac like it does on a bloody Sigil. The fully passive tank only reps about 400EHP, but that’s no good when you get pounded through 5k of shield harder than Exooki’s Obelisk. By this point it’s just an armour fit anyway and you can thank base stats for that.
There really isn’t a whole lot more to say about the Drekavac since fittings are honestly rather limiting. The amazing armour stats make anything else kinda worthless other than a 144k hull tank. It can be ran as a brawler, a short-range kiter, or some sort of skirmishy hybrid. I think the real kick in the teeth is the fact that only one single weapon system is even usable, though. That removes many of the other options for fitting weird anti-meta stuff and replaces it with “hey which utility high do you want today?”.
I don’t know if there’s a way to fix the ‘problem’, if you can even call it that. For most of the EVE population I feel that weird fitting options probably aren’t so much a consideration; this streamlined design may actually help them out. What if we at least had a long-range version of the disintegrator which stops shooting below 30km? There’s an interesting thought.
[…] find a target, hit hard, then leave or burn away before hard tackle comes to hold them down. My own Drekavac fit is a great example of this. The long range disintegrator ammo is another bonus, giving them the […]
EC Drones will mess you up, but drek is supposed to have a hard counter to that. have you experimented with a smartbomb?
Glad you brought that up, actually. With three high-slots you can usually afford to simply swap one of those out to a smartbomb and they are VERY helpful. I finally trained Energy Pulse Weapons V for this reason 😀
Our ‘everything’ Drekavac fit is exempt from this since it really needs all those highs for reps and links. We usually either deal with ECM using our own light drones or we’ll have a Leshak that has a smartbomb.
This will need to be updated due to the 2020 nerf CCP applied to it.
The nerf was fortunately only to mass and drone capacity. This has little bearing other than changing 5s align -> 6s and dropping nano Drek speed by 100ish.
I’m happy to leave as is for that reason 🙂
Any tips for countering a Drekavac eviction fleet? Best WH effects to setup for a good defense?
Well our home defence Praxis fleet did quite well and would likely smackdown Dreks too.
https://ashy.vargur.dev/how-2-not-get-evicted/
Best WH effects really depends. You have to remember that whatever you plan for, your opponent will also do the same. That said, a really tanky shield missile doctrine with Rattles/Scorp Navies or something can work well. Choosing your home defence isn’t always so simple!