Recently a lot of supers and titans have been dropping. Whether it’s some poor soul logging in for the first time in months and getting a great welcome back to present EVE, or someone going down in a blaze of glory, it’s gotten to the point where unless your involved directly its just another kill.
If someone had told me two years ago news of a titan death was going to be blasé news to me, I would have called them a liar. It’s incredible how times change.
So many titans fall prey to the death of unsubscription. Many more linger and do nothing, vast behemoths that are never used.
It’s with that understanding that I never blame a titan pilot for wanting to use his massive and very expensive toy. Some people do take exception to this however, calling pilots reckless or stupid for doing drive-by’s.
Then there come titan kills that are notable for various reasons, maybe a hilarious fit, or uncommon circumstances, but today I present the titan kill everyone dreams of.
The death of a universally hated pilot: Jean Leaner.
This particular personality is almost individually responsible for the pilot retention hardship that Nulli Secunda [S2N] has in it’s member base. Every single ex [S2N] pilot I’ve talked to has stated him as one of the reasons they no longer fly with them.
For those of you not familiar, I’ve asked for a screen capture of a typical “Jean comment” and a friend of mine in [S2N] provided this:
Click for Image
So now that we’ve established the character of the pilot, here’s what happened to his Avatar.
[S2N] pinged for a swivel fleet and went out to bang with some Russians that were shooting an anchoring POS in the system of 37S-KO in Stain. The [S2N] fleet was victorious, only losing one scimitar to the hostiles, and Jean jumped his avatar in to DD a carrier randomly. By no means was this necessary, this was a titan pilot wanting to use his toy. (which I don’t blame him for remember?)
Click for Killmail
Jean was warping his titan about, trying to evade the probes for that 10 minute timer that CCP imposed on drive-by’s, when he was tackled. If he had been cap fit, he may have survived.
The [S2N] fleet had reshipped to Ishtars and warped to the stricken titan to try and save him. They cleared the Russian tackle and almost got the titan safe when a Pandemic Legion [-10.0] cyno went up, and more tackle appeared. The [S2N] fleet fought for a bit but it was a lost cause as the [-10.0] fleet punched through the [S2N] subcaps.
Elise Randolph, speaking on reddit/r/eve, gives the PL. account of what happened;
It was just really lucky timing for us. We had JUST gotten back home from our fight vs HERO and I get a convo from the Peanut Factory dudes saying that they were about to tackle an Avatar and if we could come.
Changed the fleet MoTD from the fancy, colorful version that I usually have to this:
ISHTARAS AND FUCNG DCOTSRS KOHOASDFJ
The Good Sax guys did basically all the work, we were just there to make it go a bit faster. Titan did get a value DD off as he was going down with the ship – the way all Titans want to go out.
OH SEVENS
Click for Killmail
Another titan down, and to this one all i can say is good riddance. With Jean hilariously being of high command in [S2N], I wonder if this titan will be replaced for him.
Jean Leaner also commented on his own post on Reddit with the story of how and why the titan went down from his point of view;
We had a small fleet going to engage a gang in 37s and I knew there was a carrier skynetting fighters to them.
Our fleet cleared the one dictor the bad guys had so I cyno’d myself onto the skynet carriers pos and killed it. I managed to roll safes for my entire DD timer only to go “well fuck I’m not at jump cap and theres Lenid Kalkin in system now”.
I bounced a few more safes, decided to try a juke since an anathema was regularly landing on me before I could roll to a new safe now(I was going to warp to a gate and gate out and hope they were dumb enough to think I jumped to a cyno).
Decided to try one safe too late, half a dozen dictors landed on me, and then i was just dead :).
‘Skynetting’ is the term that has been very recently known as assigning fighters from the edge of a POS forcefield to a small fast ship on another grid to help boost the DPS of a fleet. Doing this is a widely despised tactic as the Carrier who is assigning fighters is able to assist his fleet from the relative safety of just outside the POS and a group of fighters can do a lot of damage against cruiser sized hulls and above.
However the tactic is on it’s way out as CCP have announced that assigning fighters in this way will be removed from the game at the next patch.
Battle report can be found here.
