23 replies to this topic

[Greygal]

Had a terrific class today, really good questions and a lot of fun all around (especially since 99.9% of you had Smart Assery V trained!)  - we even killed a flashy Atron (who gave us a nice crash-the-gate-repeatedly chase!)  He wasn't real happy with us though!  

 

I've updated the graduate list on the original announcement thread, if I missed anyone, just let me know (post in this thread or send me a message).

 

I'll update this post with some details from the roam after it happens later today.  In the meantime, feel free to share any feedback you may have about the class - good, bad or indifferent! We love feedback, and use it to continuously improve our classes!

 

 

Really looking forward to flying with all of you on the roam - it's looking to be an epic roam!

 

EDIT:  Roam was epic good fun! More than 230 systems traveled... lots of good fights!  Special thanks to RvB Ganked and Brave Newbies for starting our roam out with two epic, awesome, fights, damn good brawls!  Luv ya!!

Most valuable killmail was a pod worth over 2 billion!! good kills, will write more later, but this should say a lot:

 

 

 

Jalisco wrote another poem for us, which I share below

 

It's summer in Agony, the fleets are in bloom.

And PvP Basic has just met its doom.

 

We listened to Greygal and took her advice.

No lemmings, no “J” word, we still paid the price.

 

We webbed them, we scrammed them, we fought the good fight.

We tackled, we orbited, did everything right.

 

Now we're all in noob ships or woke up in goo.

And GG as usual, has been 'sploded too.

 

Smart bombs and bubbles and hot drops, oh, my!

Like a leaf in the wind – now watch us all fly.

 

We're headed back home now, I know we can make it.

I'll be back in fleet when my liver can take it.

 

We know these are pixels which don't really matter

But real life is BS so scatter, scatter, scatter.

[Mangala Solaris]

Yes.

 

Yes it is.

[Everett' Labeau]

Great Class. Will be joining further classes. And yes Avina Labeau = Everett' Labeau (LSKY)= Slverfox94739

[Othran]

/me waves at Mangala with a certain sense of inevitability

[Garwulf74]

Great class. Got a lot of useful info from it. Looking forward to the more advanced classes now....EVIL GRIN!!

 

The Roam was fantastic BTW. Love swarming the bigger ships. Count me in for the public roams as well.

[Zael Serine]

At first i was a bit unsure about going to the class, After going i see that going to the class was a great choice, would recommend to others.

 

Will definitely try and join the public roams.

[Asem Da]

pre-class PVP experience: almost none

 

The class was great, I knew a lot from reading so much from PVP-U, E-UNI, and anywhere I could find, but the practical exercises were beyond useful. Even with all the book knowledge I gained from reading, I wouldn't have been able to get into the roam without the practical 

 

The Roam, oh my god, the roam. This was the best EVE experience I've had in the on and off 6 years I've been playing. I can't wait to get into more roams as an alumni.

 

Class 5/5

Roam 11/10

[rufen]

wow, really nice class!

 

Can't wait for an advance class to get on

 

I got a taste of organised PVP and I really like it!

[Rofelia Amphal]

The roam was fantastic.  Lots of action; lots of different types of fights.  Even the cyno derp and extraction was educational.  A true taste of null roaming.

 

Will do this again as an alumnus!

[Drak]

loved the class, and the roam was great. looking forward to future classes/roams. 

[Garret Sunkiller]

FANTASTIC ROAM & class. Got in on over 20 kills. Learned alot. Great instructors. Looking forward to coming on future roams. Thanks again!

[Nuclear Russian]

This roam gets a soviet seal of approval

[Onslaughtor]

Glad I could make the roam. Was really great to be back out roaming with you guys. If you do more roams in the area I won't hesitate to join up. <3

 

And for the record, free fire fights are the best.

[Mangala Solaris]

My roam enjoyed having a final fight with you guys just as you started your night.  Much love to you all, and I hope you get deeper into the pvp life now you have taken the excellent class run by Agony.

[BlueViper8907]

Fantastic class and roam! Still very new to Eve and this thrusted me headfirst into the fray. Loved every second of it! Thanks Agony!

[Doc Tor Dre]

The class and roam were epic fun!  The highlights for me were killing the Proteus and Tengu with our mighty T1 frigates.  Many, many thanks to Greygal, Rox and all the Agony staff for the time spent in preparation so we could have fun.  Thanks very much Agony!!

[Zor'katar]

Let's see... got one final blow, 2 top damage dealers, got on 16 total kills, and although I didn't get in on that 2B pod kill, I did do 2 damage to his Hound from my Reaper. I'll classify that as a success.

 

Great fun, thanks all. Sorry I had to leave while ROX's group was still besieged and logoffski'd. Hope they were able to get out ok. Will probably see you on an alumni roam sometime.

 

And thanks to RvB/Ganked and Brave Newbies. (Except for all the Talwars. Jerks.)

[Blitz]

(tl;dr version: This class/roam is awesomesauce..don't miss it if you plan to get into PVP)

My $0.02 regarding the course:

1. Class day:

 

Managing a class with more than 50 Students is a feat in itself. Delivering meaningful and valuable content while doing so is incredible. Even though I am not completely new to PVP I took away good information and a better understanding of fleet doctrine and the works behind that. Seeing that a lot of our corps guys take the same class we achieve a bit of uniformity in creating bookmarks, Comms and the like and this is priceless in a game where so many cultures/time-zones/languages  get thrown in the melting-pot. From my perspective I can only recommend any CEO/Director to make these classes a requirement for fleet OPs etc. (Yes, I was made to go as well  but I thoroughly enjoyed it)

 

2. Roam:

 

A Fleet of 60 little Frigates is a sight to behold.. and a actually has more punch to it than I'd imagined. That being said I do have to tip the hat to the Agony FC's and Greygal in particular. I haven't seen Comms discipline and fleet interaction between "strangers" work this well, considering there were quite a few new EVE players in fleet. The roam itself was a blast and judging by the high signup rate of Alumni I get the feeling the class roams are something most will jump on given the chance to repeat, me being no exception there. If the class/roam schedules allows I will definitely sign up again and enjoy the fun. I have to admit that taking a class that started at 1:30 am was a bit of a challenge but it made it easier for me to attend...and yes, around 7ish in the morning when we were still roaming about I had a few moments when even coffee failed. I also managed to get that little Griffin I fitted on class day as a last minute change to complement the ECM squad blown up in the end (last engagement). Greygal had promised they get primaried quickly and my devious plan was to get that popped, then slip into some DPS ship I had brought along in masses but that didn't work out primarily due to the excellent handling of the class/fleet. (One word of advice to those attending the class in the future.. if you have the skills to fly one of the E-War Frig's, do so.. it is a great addition to the masses of DPS ships and a lot of the guys that are just starting out won't be in the position to do so and you will keep your fleetmates alive just a tad longer. I got on 20 killmails in that Griffin during the night, so you don't need to worry about that either)

 

Last but not least I'd like to express my gratitude and thanks to all those dedicating their time and efforts to run classes for the Eve Community that are enjoyable, informative and help in so many ways.

@Greygal: Kudo's for your patience and superb classroom, you are most excellent ma'am

@Rox Ghengis:  Awesome FC'ing there in the face of a noobfleet

@Gizznitt: thanks for keeping me alive
@all the Alumni/ Scout's/Tackler/Baiters (you know who you are): It was awesome flying that roam and your participation did make a difference. Looking forward to flying with you again soon.

 

o7 Fly safe (I know you guys won't )

[One Two Buklemaschu]

Hi GreyGal,

 

First off a big thanks to you and Agony for the class and the roam opportunities. I will recomend this to any and all that are willing to listen to me harp on.

 

I found the class interesting. Having read the Reading materials (many twice) and having been out on plenty of PvP Fleets with E-Uni, and now living in LowSec it was less of an Introduction to PVP and more of an Introduction to the Agony 'Hydra' Philosophy... which i found particularly interesting...heck id have probably signed up for a class just on that. Given that your Hydra doctrine is publicly available on your wiki Im surprised i havnt seen attempts to put it into practice in E-Uni, as that seems like it would be a nice match up.

 

Still there are points in there that were new to me. Ive been known to fit a Sebo on tacklers, I think i will abandon that in future, unless were specifically putting a gate camp fleet together, and even then... Creating those bounce points during warp for Ewar ( I like to fly ewar ) particularly the timing to get the point in so close to the fight was something that i will be putting into practice.

 

Like many others I am now looking foward to the next Wolfpack or other 'itermediate' level classes.

 

The roam was really good. I got targeted and 'expressed' back to Stacmon fairly quickly in the first rumble with that RvB ganked fleet. Learning how much it sux to be primaried early in the fight is still a valuable leson right? The fight against the Brave Newbies went a lot better for me, and after a reminder from GreyGal i succesfully managed to put the warp away from targets and then warp back in to close range trick into use. Although AB frigates vs MWD talwars is a crazy game of yoyo's ...  it would have been nice if we could have trapped them in another bubble.

 

The choice of destination for the null roam was excellent, and it was going so well too, untill I had an overview mishap. We had jumped through into J5A-IX and a whole bunch of nastiness on the gate. The FC gave the order to reapproach the gate and Jump on contact.... but alas, i couldnt find the damn gate on the overview. (yes derp that i am still had things ordered by distance, and the overview was re-ordering too quickly ) I didnt think to try and use the onscreen gate bracket.

 

The advice afterwards was to either try and use the onscreen bracket, or have gates on a seperate travel only tab. Im E-Uni and we have a GTFO tab called pod Saver, im sure most of you have something similar, The E-Uni one just has planets and customes agents. Im considering extending it to include gates.

 

I've had issues in the past in fleets dealing with a heavily populated Overview, some of the problems lie with my 10+ year old pc, but by far the largest is issues with its operator. Im guessing that this is something that experience helps mitigate. However It would be really good if there was something in the recommended reading, or in the class content related to not just setting up the overview (i was using the recomended agony settings) but also to how to use the overview efficiently, when to switch tabs, how to find a specific target in the heat of battle,

 

Unfortunately for me, but fortunately for the rest of the class, the fleet didnt get whelped, and actually carried on racking up the kills without me and a few others reduced to listeneing in from Stacmon. Just as i was getting really depressed and thinking that i was going to miss all the fun, those in stacmon were directed to Barleguet, and then later guided through to KNK. where we rejoined the main fleet after the logofski games to escape that mishap with the juicy cyno that was too juicy

 

Once again we snagged a few kills, It was really interesting to see just how effective the Agony Skirmishers were, and how devestating a swarm of frigates can be when flying the right doctrine.

 

Then just because it was still 7am and the day was still young i tagged along with an extended side roam...the opportunity to have at some E-Uni guys didnt bear into my decision at all.... Id have gone with regadless...honest ... E-Uni didnt swallow the bait, so we turned 10 mins into an hour down another pipe where we eventually got a talos, and a nice fight to finish up with. Where i learnt the leson of how awesome it is to be primaried at the very end of a fight as your trying to extract.

 

So over all 3 ship loses, 2 pods, 14 kill assists. including 2 strategic cruisers and 'that pod'. but thats all irrelevant because I measure success by how much fun i had, and i sure had a blast this weekend with Agony.

 

Its just a shame that E-Uni is so strict about us fleeting up with 'out of corps', meaning im going to have to miss roams as an Alumni, untill Ive graduated out of E-Uni

 

o7 Fly (w)Reckless

[ROX Genghis]

The students and alumni did an amazing job on this roam.  Fleet discipline was awesome in space and on comms.  Thank you all for coming and I hope to see you attend future Agony class roams and public roams as alumni.

 

I've posted an After Action Report in a new thread for visibility here:

http://www.agony-unl...-roam-july-6-7/

[Barrett]

Right on!

 

 Epic time, thanks for flying and the superb information on PVP Combat!

Can't wait till the next event.

[Othran]

I left while people were having a logoffski break, was 5am and with the mild jet-lag I already had I wasn't totally compos mentis - had I been then I'd never have warped to a cyno on the station Logged in on Sunday to find a whole load of ex-corpmates bubbling station and taking the piss so I JC'd out and went out in the sun for a sleep.

 

I'd prefer not to fight mass Talwar fleets @ point blank range in a ranis again, that plan sucks more than my (now) non-existant piloting skills

 

Nice hearing you all again and thanks to everyone who put the time in to make the class & roam happen.

[Zistiel]

I want to thank everybody for the best two days i ever had in EVE....

Only thing i have for the way you teach and fly/handle your fleets is respect.

All small tips were extremely usefull and FC's were very calm and forgiving while handling 60+ crazy frig pilots.

Greygal, Rox, Caldak, the Skirmishers and everybody else... thank you all

 

Special thanks go out to Blitzkrieg for giving me a brand new fitted Kestrel for free when i lost mine in a station bubble [thatdamncyno™ ]

Also to Jalisco for the amazing and overly entertaining poetry break.

 

All in all an amazing class+roam, will definately join you every chance i get.

[Shilien Deis]

I was present as an Alumus for both the theory part and the roam mostly because I took such a long break from EVE and, besides getting reacquainted with the material I was curious about any changes that might have happened in my absence from New Eden. Also, my graduation roam lacked in targets.

The theory part was all fine, mostly because the source material is very well structured and reading it once or twice is more then enough to get you ready to be cared for by the Agony members present in the fleet.

 

But the roam, oh, the roam was everything I wanted it to be and more. While I was not a huge fan of the first two brawls I can see how that can relieve the tension some players that are new to PvP might have. Try your best. Ship exploded? Try to save the pod. Podded? Update your clone and reship. And try to learn from your mistakes and see if you could have done something a bit different to not get killed while still being an efficient part of the fleet.

 

The clustercyno was a taste of something that can screw you up and how you need to recover from it.

 

The last part of the roam where I managed to get secondary point on the Tengu right before Caldak went down in a blaze of glory was, in my opinion, my greatest contribution to the fleet and it made me laugh so hard I probably woke my neighbors up.

 

Cheers for a great experience and thanks to all the skirmishers that took really good care of us both in finding targets and babysitting us on so many levels.