Overconfidence

I have been flying pretty "high and mighty" as of late. Not really many losses and been pushing APEX's dominance everywhere I go in low sec. Our reputation has been making it difficult to get in any fights. People think of us as "blobbers" and "ECM fags." Well, we are sometimes, but there is a lot of times I roam around solo. Just me and my 4 alts where I wouldn't consider myself a blob, I do pack ECM most times. :-) Last Sunday I had an incident that put me back on my heels. I got socked in the nose in an EVE sense and beaten at my own game of baiting.

There was a pilot flying around Passari and Mara who was in a Myrmidon. She was positive security status and seemed to be ratting. She was being very passive. Running when I locked her and sometimes running away when I just showed up in the belt. If she wanted a fight she would stick around I thought.

So I got comfortable with her in system running around the belts. I had my Raven and Brutix running around just ratting myself. I got so comfortable I went AFK with my ships sitting in the belts as I went to do sometimes for about 30 seconds. (I forgot what it was) Karok was on standby with his non scanning pilgrim (the cheaper fit) and Cloora in her Falcon. When I got back from my 30 second interlude, I see a red Myrm on my Brutix! JOY! She got confident and cocky and thinks her Myrm will best my lower tier BattleCruiser! I was still way up in shields on my shield tanked Brutix so I figure I am fine and she just went red on me.

I engage my guns on her at point blank range. I expect to tear into her armor quickly and she may have a triple rep active setup. I'll need the Pilgrim just in case to nuet her out. I mistake a slow moving armor tank for repping up as I move my eyes to my other screens looking at what I need to do. I see local spike up 4 more people. Not a problem my Falcon is now cloaked 50km off from Milonia and Karok has landed now with the Raven also on it's way. I notice now that my blasters are not really tearing into the Myrms armor like it should. Also she has ECM drones out on me. I have lost lock with the Brutix and my Brutix ECM drones are getting damaged from a Smartbomb? This is getting odd. Apparently she is a passive tanked smarty fit? My pilgrim is useless against this. A Dominix, Typhoon and Hurricane have now landed. I uncloak my Falcon and start with the JAMZ! The Domi drops Sentry drones so even when jammed, they still are firing at my Falcon. It hurts but my armor tank is holding for now. They quickly dismantle my Brutix and I warp Mil off in her pod. I start to get a few jams off on the battleships after I realize I am wasting my Gallente jammer on the damn Myrm, but the Sentry drones have gotten my Falcon into low armor and I must warp off and back in again. My poor Raven is next on their kill list as he keeps trying to apply the DEEPS to the Myrm. Besides being in the wrong ships for this engagement my lack of target swapping was my second biggest mistake I made in this fight. In order to make the best of the cards I was dealt. I suppose I should have moved everything over to the Domi as its drones were causing the biggest headache for me. With it out of the fight I would have had JAMZ! again and any other drones would get chewed up by my Falcon's smarties. I could have TDed the Cane and nueted the Domi (in case of active tank) and just hoped to tank the Phoon with my afterburner speed and my MAR II. The Raven could have also helped absorb any other damage left with its decent EHP while putting down the hurt with it's Torpedoes. Even if the Brutix would have still died then she could have shipped to a Logi or another Falcon.

Unfortunately that is NOT what I did. I started to give up. Thomas Ononion was on grid with me by this time and he diligently followed my orders to keep on the Myrm. We still hadn't killed it by the time the Pilgrim fell. I could not bring my Falcon back at this time as it would have been primaried and of little use. I made the 3rd mistake of the fight and upshipped Mil into her BAMF ship the Navy Mega. I counted on getting Karok into the Archon and just going Beserker Rage into the battlefield killing anything that dared stay on the battlefield. I sounded the Calvary charge and Thomas quickly told me to not come as he was already in armor. It was too late I canceled warp a second too late the Navy Mega was now in warp. Now I am in overdrive mode as I am trying to get the fat ass Archon to stop moving and align and warp to the battle. Thomas' Drake pops. The Navy Mega lands, the Archon  is still aligning. I figure I need to kill something to I STILL go after the Myrm. Well this time I'm in a Navy Mega of course I killed it. But now they are on my Navy Mega full bore. DAMNIT ARCHON GET INTO WARP!!! After my half of the Mega's EHP is now stripped away the Archon finally gets into warp! The mega has now tackled the Domi but has less then 1/4 armor left. Unfortunatly the capital ship lands 2 seconds after the Mega pops and they scatter into the wind as the arrival of the powerful ship.

As I have stated before, I sometimes take expensive losses well if I just was not able to do anything or it was still a good fight. If I make horrible mistakes, I get VERY upset with myself. So I was quite mad with this loss. The ISK was nothing I replaced all the ships with one Jita run. It was the fact I looked like a noob out there. I am NOT a noob and I think I am well skilled in what I do. These guys were probably laughing at me and I don't take kind to that. What I did was what me and Fang joke about what the we LOVE the enemy to do. You know those kung fu movies? The bad ones? Where there are a few good guys in the middle and they are surrounded by bad guys. The bad guys send one person in at a time to get thier butt kicked by the few good guys in the middle. That is what I did.

So, after some really quick research into these guys, I dec both corps...