I recently moved from doing level 3 missions to level 4, and it seems that the difficulty increase is huge. In level 3's I never had to consider stuff like proper damage type or inadequate tanking (I did level 3's in armor tanked Myrmidon). Now in level 4 missions, which I have been doing in armor tanked Dominix with sentries, there have been few missions that I just can't complete either because I can't do enough damage or because my tanking isn't strong enough. I've already lost about 0.5 standing towards Federation Navy because of this, which sucks.
At the moment I'm having trouble with two missions: Buzz Kill and Recon (1 of 3). In the former, I initially couldn't do enough damage to the cruisers until I changed to Bouncer I sentries. With their explosive damage I could actually destroy couple of the cruisers before they were too close for the Bouncers. I ended up warping back and forth to the mission area to get enough distance and that worked until the battlecruisers appeared. I could not sustain the amount of damage they did to me so I had to warp out.
In Recon the battleships do too much damage for me to handle. I trained Tech 2 armor hardeners in the hopes that the additional resistance boost would be enough but, sadly, no. I might just blitz this mission with a fast ship if I can't come up with a solution to handle the enemies. This would suck because I really want to get all the ISK I can from level 4 missions (bounties, salvage and salary).
I could also just decline all the missions that are too hard at the moment (there are plenty that I can finish without problems and get about 10mil ISK per mission), but that would just postpone the inevitable: having to learn to overcome obstacles like these.
Any suggestions and advice would be appreciated :)
My Dominix fitting at the moment:
[Dominix, Mameng]
Capacitor Power Relay II
Capacitor Power Relay II
Large Armor Repairer II
Armor EM Hardener II
Armor Thermic Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
LiF Fueled Booster Rockets
Cap Recharger II
Cap Recharger II
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I
Omnidirectional Tracking Link I
350mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge L
350mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge L
350mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge L
350mm Prototype I Gauss Gun, Antimatter Charge L
Drone Link Augmentor I
Drone Link Augmentor I
Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Large Auxiliary Nano Pump I
Large Sentry Damage Augmentor I
Garde I x5
Hammerhead I x5
Hobgoblin I x5
or
Bouncer I x5
Valkyrie I x5
Warrior I x5
