The Wolf's "5th low" revisited.

Hello hello!

Been some time since i did a good down and dirty examination of various Wolf fits. We know we have no choice but to armor tank it, but we have some serious issues to work with; the capacitor is tiny, the CPU is terrible, and we have 2 armor holes we have to patch, at least partially. A 400 plate is what many people will elect to run, but I simply dislike any fit that dosent have a repairer on it. While there are some 400 plate fits that run a repairer, these almost always have 125s or at best 150s on them, which will require some serious fitting sacrifices and faction/deadspace mods. Wolves have gone up in price, as have my Pilot's License EXtension costs, so I try to keep them below 50-60m now if at all possible. Dont get me wrong, if I felt that a 400 plate fit was "better", id spend the isk. In certain cases, it is! But... its slow, it has poor range, and it either runs an AB, or has no repper. None of these are sacrifices I am equipped to make.

For a baseline, there are a few things I have come to accept as "Standard" on any roaming Wolf I fly. This is written from the perspective of a solo pilot remember, who is very active in both nullsec and low. An AB can work, but... the wolf is ok scrammed, most of the time (NOTE. If you plan to kill cruisers with the thing, an AB is a much, much better choice than an MWD!) due to its gun range and tracking speed bonus. Our baseline fit:

4x 200MM AutoCannon II
1x Small Nosferatu II (Or meta, depends on fit)

1x 1MN Limited MicroWarpDrive I
1x J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I

1x Gyrostabilizer II
1x Small Armor Repairer II
1x Centii C-Type Explosive Plating
1x Pseudoelectron Containment Field I
1x ____________ (That 5th Mid were talking about!)

1x Small Anti-Kinectic Pump I
1x Small Projectile Collision Accelerator II (Can easily be T1 with marginal DPS loss)

The baseline numbers, with no implants and a T2 collision rig.

244 dps at 750 + 9k with Standard RF Ammo, 195 DPS at 1500 + 11.35 with Barrage
7022 raw EHP
45 sec cap life running all (This is a minor drawback generally) or 1m 48s without the MWD
2415 MSEC.
91.3/71.7/54.3/52.8 resists, 1128 armor.

The 3 modules we will look at on this fit (The most common "extra" mods to toss onto a Wolf, after SAR/Gyro/DCU/Patch explosive hole) are; A Tracking Enhancer II, an Adaptive Nano Plating II, and a 200MM Rolled Tungsten Plate. All 3 fit with the following tweaks;

200 MM plate means running a named nos due to PG useage
ANP II permits the fitting of a T2 Damage Control, which gains us some EHP due to better resists in all 3 areas.

First, the TE. It only changes our falloff and tracking speed; it increases our falloff with standard RF ammos to 11.7k, and with barrage to 18k!! That is a lot of gun range, and it does gain us some tracking speed, making our wolf very difficult to outtrack. (I can hit Stilettos in close orbit with barrage with 1 TE while scrammed... though I recommend loading something besides barrage for this! Doh!). Our tank retains the same numbers.

Secondly, adding the ANP II. That gives us 93.1/77.7/62.8/61.6 resists, lowers our gun range, dosent affect our speed. The higher resists also come from the T2 damage control we can fit on this fit. Retains its speed, has good resists and active tank.

And last, we can add a 200mm plate. 1785 Armor now, with our previous resists of 91.3/71.7/54.3/52.8. We lose a good bit of manuverability and speed here, but our overall armor amount has increased by a whopping (1785/1128) 58%! That is a HUGE increase, and we give up only some gun range, our speed drops from 2415 to 2272, and we will now align a bit slower, from 4.2 seconds to 4.7.

Well... the TE's "value" is hard to judge. I often depend on its added range. At 2.5k, our dps numbers are similar; 243 vs 239, for TE vs Plate or ANP. However, it changes fast beyond this; 218 vs 197 at 5k (Still ok!) 181 vs 144 at 7.5k. This is the range that we worry about with hawks and vengeances; it is an applied DPS difference of almost 40 dps. Interestingly, with Barrage at this range,the TE fit does 178 DPS (This is the range to think about switching ammo types at, see?) while the plate or ANP fit still does 144. At 10k, its 157 DPS with the TE, and 90 without. That is pretty significant. Very. Significant.

Some will scream "but dont believe the math! You cant calculate in hit quality with those numbers!" and theyre exactly right. The TE fit will do even better than those numbers suggest due to both tracking speed and hit quality at range... ouch!

So, now that we have looked at the damage numbers, lets look at the raw tank power of all 3 fits. We will calculate raw EHP vs pure kinectic and pure explosive damage, to armor only, as vs EM or therm, any of the 3 is in pretty good shape (though, more buffer will last even longer there) and kin/exp are the 2 we get shot by from sabres, thrashers, other wolves, enyos, harpies...Math here is pretty dependable:

Our formula for calculation is: Armor value / (1 - % resist) = raw EHP vs that type.

Fit 1, our TE II fit, has 2506 EHP vs pure kinectic, and 2400 vs pure explosive.
Fit 2, with an ANP II, has 3048 vs pure kinectic, 2960 vs pure explosive.
Fit 3, with a 200 plate, has 3966 vs pure kinectic, 3797 vs pure explosive.

Well. That 200 plate wins by a large margin here, and we can see that the minimal EHP gain from the ANP will NOT offset the loss in applied DPS at range if we select that over a TE... for now.

But, wont the extra resist make our armor repper work better? Yes, some. Lets check it out. Lets see how many repair cycles (x) will be required before our ANP fit out-EHPs our 200 plate fit: Our formula is:

(EHP fit 1) + X(Armor rep amount per cycle/(1-% resist) > (EHP fit 2) + X(Armor rep amount/(1-%resist)

So. Vs explosive (the 2 are similar enough that this holds true for both, and due to the way damage types and resists work, this is pretty reliable math)

2960 + X(80/.38) > 3797 + X(80/.47) and lets do some algebra. The (80/resist) tells us how much raw EHP vs that damage type we recover per rep cycle, as a SAR II Reps 80 HP per cycle. Yes, a deadspace repper will nudge numbers in favor of... well. Both. So...

2960 + 210X > 3797 + 170X

This means the ANP fit reps 210 "ehp" per cycle, the 200 plate fit 170 "ehp". Solving for X, which is rep cycles, we get:

40x > 837 or, X = 837/40, which works out to 20.9, or TWENTY ONE, repair cycles before the ANP is more beneficial to the fit than the plate. I have had maybe 2 frig fights last long enough to rep that many cycles.

So, the 200 plate fit is the clear winner in the tank department, but the TE is so, so helpful in applying our DPS...

Id say a solution is obvious. Fit both.

Till next time, folks, fly it like you stole it! Gonna see if i can wrangle a TE and a Plate in here somehow, and keep decentish resists!

Ava