Fit Kitchen: The Gila

So, the Gila is a one-trick pony. Or a lizard, perhaps, since the Gila in the real world is actually a venomous lizardy thing. As a ship in EVE Online it pretty much just spits out well-applying DPS with a decent tank and that’s about it. I’m not about to change anyone’s perception of this ship with some crazy fit, but I can try my best to explain how I would fit a Gila for PvP. I will not be discussing PvE at all since you can already check those fits out in How 2 Krab.

This is the same challenge that I had when I set out trying to write about the Orthrus. You can’t really armour tank it too well (the Gila), fitting is a bit of an issue, and everyone already knows what you’re going to do. Hold onto that last thought, it’s important. Here are those stats anyway. For the newer players here, those last bonuses basically mean (with the smaller drone bandwidth) that this ship launches 2x medium drones that do the same damage as if you had 12 out! Guardian-Vexor eat your heart out.

Caldari Cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
4% bonus to all shield resistances
Gallente Cruiser bonuses (per skill level):
10% bonus to kinetic and thermal missile damage
Role Bonus:
500% bonus to Medium Combat Drone damage
250% bonus to Medium Combat Drone hitpoints

---

Kitey Gilas

Perhaps the most obvious PvP use of any ship is to try and kite with it. After all, if you can kite then you can kill nearly anything. A Gila can just about manage that by trading DPS for Nanofibers or tank rigs for Polycarbons. The result is something like an Osprey Navy Issue, but 300m/s slower with double the DPS and worse agility. It’s not bad, it’s just kind of underwhelming.

Since it isn’t really possible to do an armour Gila, there are two main ways to kite with this ship. You can either use an active buffer XLASB setup, or you can go straight up shield buffer and see how well you do. The XLASB provides about 45k EHP and the buffer setup has 37k, but with less maintenance required and less potential to be alpha’d. I’m a big fan of using the XLASB since you can attempt to bait people into chasing you further off a gate if they think you’re nearly dead.

It’s also quite possible to run a simple drone Gila that has no missiles at all. It’s a fit that I’ve seen used well on Zkill and it seems to be effective. It seems like that sort of fit would work well in a nanogang where you’re pulling range and have someone else to hold tackle. In that situation, I can definitely see that putting 500 DPS on target permanently is going to hurt while you fly off to 60+km.

Of course, there’s also the “standard” 100MN nullsec style fit that I spoke about in Outfitting a New Corp. You can see that all of this really just does what a Gila does, though. It is just damage and tank at drone range. Regardless, both of the kiting fits are linked below and can be customised slightly if you want to fiddle with the low slots.

---

Doing Something Different

Long time readers of my blog will know that I like trying to fit ships in weird ways and you can kind of do that with a Gila. You’re pretty much always going to be shield, though. The armour Gila lives in the same realm as a Huginn but worse, having just 46k EHP. You can boost that to 76k EHP with links and mid-grade implants but who’s gonna do that, really?

So this leaves us with just a few options in terms of tanking our ship (because the alternative is to not tank it). I think my favourite style here is to actually go for a passive tank in a very similar way to a PvE fit would do and leverage those boosted resists and great damage numbers. It’s possible to achieve an easy 516 EHP/s tank and ~600 DPS. That same tank will boost up to 933 EHP/s under mid-grade Nirvanas and a Pithum C-type so there’s plenty of room for improvement if you want to bling it.

This is the sort of fit that you might roam about with to pretend that you’re an easy PvE target to gank. It’s baity, it’s fun, and it should win against anything that can’t tank your DPS while being relatively immune to being held down by tackle. You just need to watch the cap and be aware of your peak regen at 25%.
I also experimented with a strange HAM version that has a web and can hold itself at peak regen for longer but it’s nowhere near as good. The main attractions of that fit are a web and higher DPS, though I’m not sure that’s worth the loss in “proper” tank.

Another style of fitting that I attempted and didn’t like was the anti tackle Gila. It turns out that this isn’t really possible. It’s a piloting style that I’ve enjoyed when using a Drone Navigation Computer Proteus or Ishtar, but that doesn’t translate over to the Gila. The reason is that the Gila doesn’t have any inbuilt tracking, range, or speed bonuses to drones and those are hella important. If you can make your medium (or even heavy drones) go fast enough to catch frigates then you’ll chunk them into low armour quite readily. The Gila can’t do that without dropping most of it’s own tank while still appearing to be a high threat target.

Moving on to the final fit that I’m actually kind of happy with, I like the idea of a dual XLASB full neut Gila. It only gets 380 DPS, but you don’t need much when you neut 45GJ/s. This roughly equivalent to 2x heavy neuts if you’ve ever been shocked by how effective they can be. Granted, the ship neuts itself out in about four minutes, but you should have the job done by then and you can always go 4x neut 1x nos if you really need to.

I don’t have a huge amount of other stuff to say about the Gila really. A polarised, high DPS fit isn’t really optimal. If it was then you’d actually see those abyssal runners stomp the camps that wait for them. Really, people know what a Gila does so they’ll be prepared for it.

Update: People have mentioned several times that a Drone Navigation Computer (or two) is essential to making the most use out of a Gila. And I do agree, but those belong more in a small gang situation where you have the support to make up for the loss in tank. When flying solo you will likely be below point range so the 24km isn’t too bad for your drones. It’s all personal taste and easy enough to swap out though 🙂

---

Sorry that this is a bit of a shorter article than usual. I suppose it makes up for the last piece being >3k words 😀

o/