Fit Kitchen: The Jackdaw

The Jackdaw is a boring ship to fit. There, I said it. I had to get that out early because otherwise I’m going to spend the whole article complaining. Nothing about this ship is particularly exciting in all honesty. The tank is OK, range is good, DPS is kinda meh, it’s not particularly fast. The primary use for a Jackdaw is going to be as a long-range kiting fleet fit. A bit like the destroyer version of a Cerberus.

Still, if there’s any ship to underestimate then it will be a Jackdaw. Everyone knows it’s a super ranged light missile boat so you can surprise people and do some magical stuff with the right fit and a bit of sig tanking. Here are the stats you’re dealing with:

The main thing to look at here is the missile/lock range in addition to the 66.6% inertia modifier. This means that most PvP Jackdaws will end up shooting you from 60-80km while having the ability to instawarp away when they feel like it. That’s pretty handy and it’s good to make use of your natural agility wherever possible.

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Standard Jackdaws

Let’s start by going over the basics. The simple Jackdaws that you’ll see anywhere someone asks for a Jackdaw fit for something. For that we have a PvP version and a PvE version which are both fit with light missiles and an obvious shield tank. They are also both instawarp in Propulsion Mode.

The first fit, the long-range PvP version, is probably the most cookie cutter Jackdaw fit there is. You also can’t really do anything else with it at all since there isn’t even 1 PG left to spare without swapping to the rare ‘Canyon’ Medium Shield Extender or a sig blooming Compact MWD. Both options are undesirable. The upshot, however, is that you could rejig this to have slower warp speed and 2k more EHP thanks to a Damage Control. I don’t recommend that, though. The current setup is well balanced and I would only consider changing it significantly if you had a specific goal in mind.

And the second fit is a long-range PvE ship. I’ve gone ahead and created a slightly blingier version than I normally would since that Gist Shield Booster has such a massive impact on the performance. Using this more expensive mod allows you to drop two cap mods, turning this fit into a true all-round sig tanker for low-end PvE content. You can find videos all over Youtube of people flying something similar to this to great effect in basic DED sites so if that’s your jam then give this a go. I’ve seen that auto targeting missiles, as strange as they are, also work very well against the insanely weak k-space rats.

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Fun Jackdaws

Outside of the standard fleet and PvE fits, there are indeed a few interesting fits you might aim for. My favourite of these would be the 10MN kiter. The idea behind this fit is to utilise your agility as much as possible in prop mode to get into a nice orbit and control range. If you do start taking damage, you have a decent amount of tank (for a kiting destroyer) and can even swap to defensive mode to try your best at sig tanking whatever DPS is hitting you. I went with a Multispectrum Hardener here to help that tank out, but you could just as easily make use of a sensor damp for some elite PvP action. Overall it’s a pretty interesting fit and one that I definitely want to try out, I haven’t had the chance to do so yet on TQ. The only thing I really dislike is the lack of DPS. It’s truly anemic so be wary of nearly anyone tanking your damage.

Another fun fit would be a dual prop Jackdaw! There isn’t much to say other than that you should use your MWD for movement on-grid and the AB once on top of a target. Orbit, shoot, see what happens. It’s not a particularly spectacular option but it should work decently well against larger targets. Your lack of web might be an issue fighting frigates and below, though.

If you want to address that web issue, I’d suggest the last fit below! It’s a Shield Extender plus Medium Ancil Rep fit which is totally a buffer fit, don’t be fooled into thinking that this is a true active rep since you’ve only got the 9 charges worth 5.5k EHP in Defence Mode. Your best bet is to utilise those charges around the 30-40% mark in your shield (if the DPS isn’t too high) to make the best use of your shield’s natural regen. This is another pretty balanced fit, just beware of pretty much any other T3D or anyone who can do a lot of DPS to you. The Jackdaw isn’t particularly strong.

If you want a proper active tanked PvP Jackdaw then I don’t have one linked here but you can take some inspiration from the PvE fit, it’s basically the same but with a cap booster + scram web instead. iBeast has a great video showcasing his Jackdaw on Youtube.

Sorry this a bit of a shorter article this time, there just isn’t a huge amount of stuff you can really do with the Jackdaw. It’s hammered pretty hard into that shield kiting niche. Rockets work fine, but there isn’t a huge amount of variation in real fits.

o/