T6 Abyss: The Ishtar

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You might be wondering why I didn’t start with the Gila, since that’s by far the most popular cruiser for T6 abyss (and abyss in general). The answer is that I think it’s boring. Also, the Ishtar’s my “main” T6 abyss ship. Write what you know, right? Anyway, here’s a T6 Ishtar guide!

The Basics

Like the Gila, the Ishtar’s a drone ship. However, while the Gila’s bonuses limit it to having just 2 (very powerful) medium drones active at a time, the Ishtar can field a full flight of 5 drones. With 125 bandwidth, the Ishtar can use a full flight of heavy drones or the more popular 2 Geckos, 2 mediums, and 1 light. The Gecko setup works well because the Geckos do a lot of damage and have a lot of tank while the light flies around and pops caches for you. If you’re comfortable dumping more ISK into the fit, a flight of good mutated weather-appropriate heavy navy drones will noticeably speed up clear times in rooms that aren’t heavy on drone aggro (albeit at the cost of making can popping less convenient).

If you use rolled heavies, I still recommend keeping a Gecko flight on standby for things like Angels. Thanks to the Ishtar’s massive drone bay, you’ll have no problem carrying two flights with plenty of room for spares. And thanks to the Ishtar’s tracking bonus, whatever heavy drones you use (including Geckos) will have no issues applying damage to most targets.

Virtually all T6 Ishtars are shield fit. This is because you can easily mount a ridiculous active tank with a Gist XL shield booster while using your plentiful lows for drone damage and application. Unfortunately, the Ishtar’s a difficult ship to downgrade for lower tiers, since it relies on bling not only to survive but to be able to fit all of its modules. While you can cheapify a T6 fit for T5 by not using implants, T4 setups are trickier. Though T6 armor fits do exist, they’re very difficult and expensive to pull off and outside the scope of this guide. If you can make a T6 armor Ishtar work, you don’t need this guide.

Weather and Weaknesses

The Ishtar’s main weakness is its lack of buffer. Seriously, Ishtars are paper thin: you’ll probably have a little over half the shield EHP of a comparably blingly Gila. With only 4 mid slots, shield Ishtars can also only realistically fit 1 large cap battery, making them vulnerable to heavy neut pressure that you can’t clear quickly, like in some nastier Vedmak rooms. Part of the reason that T6 Ishtars are shield-fit is the low buffer: you might just get deleted before armor reps land. The low buffer means that T6 Ishtar users tend to stick to gamma weather due to the 50% shield HP bonus. This isn’t a bad thing, since gamma filaments tend to be cheap and their mutaplasmid drops are good. Our drones also get a survivability boost, and Geckos do omni-damage anyway. Shield Ishtars can technically handle other weathers, but it requires a lot of bling and it’s still a risky proposition.

Drone aggro is also something to keep in mind. Angel, Tessera, and Vila rooms are the main culprits, though rats in most any room can and will switch to shooting your drones over time. Managing drone aggro is just a skill you learn over time, like heat management. It’s why I advise starting with Gecko flights: you really just have the 2 Geckos to focus on keeping alive and can sacrifice the rest without worrying too much. Fleet Valks/Warriors are cheap and the Ishtar has plenty of drone bay space to spare.

Overall, the Ishtar can consistently clear T6 gamma while being potentially cheaper than a T6 Gila and not relying on flimsy Valkyries for damage (gamma reduces explosive resists, so you want to use Minmatar drones). The Ishtar also has a unique quirk in that, for our purposes, it doesn’t need the HAC skill trained past I. All that skill gives the Ishtar is more drone control range and improved sentries, neither of which we care about in the abyss.

Fits

Most T6 Ishtar fits resemble something like this. Shield tank in the mids. Small weapons in the highs. Damage modules and an assault damage control in the lows (for giving you a few seconds to stabilize if you start eating massive damage). I will say that that particular linked fit is horrifically overblinged: you can handle T6 just fine with a B-Type hardener and booster. Below is a baseline fit that I recommend starting with, along with an example of a blingier upgraded fit:

In total, the baseline fit will run you roughly 3.5 to 4 billion ISK as of writing, depending on spare drones (which you should bring). Your eyes might be watering at this point, but that’s actually a good deal cheaper than what a lot of people run in T6 abyss.

Let’s break down how the fits are put together, what you can change around, and what makes sense to upgrade.

Highs

The high slots on both fits are small artillery for a bit of extra damage. You can realistically use whatever small guns you want here, or leave it empty entirely. Artillery’s just more optimal due to it being capless, having decent range for an unbonused small weapon system, and having selectable damage types. The baseline fit just has Fusion ammo, which you should use nearly all the time anyway since it’s close-range ammo that primarily does explosive damage. The upgraded example adds Nuclear as a slight optimization in case the room has a lot of weapon disruption or you want to pop cans at slightly longer range while using rolled heavies. T2 ammo isn’t worth using. It has worse damage type distribution for the weather and offers negligible raw damage advantages.

A commenter on this post brought up using nosferatus instead of small turrets. I don’t personally think it’s worth it since truly dangerous neuting spawn combinations are fairly rare, though it may be worthwhile for you if the extra cap allows you to play aggressively enough that it outweighs the lost DPS. However, keep in mind that the Ishtar only has fitting room for small noses, which only have 9km optimal if you use Corpii A-Types. You don’t generally want to hug dangerous neuting rats that closely, especially in a drone ship.

Speaking of which, don’t bother with a Drone Link Augmentor. The Ishtar has pretty ridiculous drone control range as-is. Not that you have the CPU for one in the first place. Don’t bother with faction arty either; you actually lose DPS.

Mids

The mid slots are your shield tank, cap, an AB. Do not cheap out on the AB. Fed Navy’s actually quite cheap considering the total cost of the fit and gives you a substantial improvement over T2. Running a T2 AB on a multi-bil fit makes your Ishtar cry. Upgrading the AB to Gistum B-Type gives you another speed improvement (Corelum gives equivalent speed but is more expensive and might not fit depending on lows).

However, the first thing you should upgrade on this fit is the battery. Specifically, get a good mutated one with improved cap and neut resistance. If your active reps go down from getting neuted out, your ship (and pod) will quickly follow. Remember, you only have 1 battery doing all the work. A T6 Gila can readily fit 2.

As mentioned earlier, a Gist X-Type XL booster is complete (and expensive) overkill. A B-Type is perfectly fine. Same goes for the hardener (use Pithum there). Don’t use a Pith booster: the higher repping power is outweighed by your cap getting completely dumpstered if you can even fit the thing in the first place. If you have a choice, prioritize upgrading the hardener over the booster.

That said, be on the lookout for price shenanigans that make it upgrading a no-brainer. For example, a Gist A-Type XLSB is only 2 million ISK more expensive than a B-Type as of writing. If that’s still the case when you’re buying your fit, just get an A-Type. It still makes things more comfortable even if you don’t need it. This applies to every item on every fit in general, and it goes both ways. B-Type ABs suddenly costing billions for some reason? Go with a C-Type or Navy instead. If you use Pyfa, it’ll update every item on a fit to its cheapest equivalent-stat version if you press Ctrl+D by default.

If you want to run a bit cheaper, downgrading the hardener and booster to C-Types will make things more difficult, but it’s still completely viable.

Lows

The low slots are DDAs for damage, a drone application mod, and an assault damage control. The ADC’s there because sometimes you get unlucky and eat a few wrecking shots that punch through your reps. If that happens, the ADC will give you a few seconds to rep back up and address whatever’s hurting you so badly. If you want, you can roll the ADC. It’s a very easy module to mutate since its only rollable stats are duration, passive hull resists, and CPU. Just get the time to at least 12s and ignore everything else.

I don’t recommend rolling DDAs. It’s expensive (the mutas don’t even drop from abyss) and 4 faction ones already give you plenty of damage. I tried using 3 rolled DDAs at some point and didn’t really notice a difference. Dread Guri DDAs are still quite cheap, but keep an eye on stat equivalents if things change.

A module to keep an eye on is your Tracking Enhancer. The faction versions are dirt-cheap, and officer versions start at only ~340mil as of writing while providing considerable stat improvements as you go up officer tiers (10% tracking bonus for faction to 12.5% to 15% to 17.5% to 20% for officer). Now you can tell all your corpmates that you fly officer-fit ships. 😛

Rigs

Not much to say here. The EM rig’s for your EM hole and the cap rig’s to help with cap. I prefer semiconductors to cap control circuits, since more raw cap means a bigger safety net in dangerous neuting rooms that exceed your regen anyway.

Drones

Oh boy, the fun stuff! As said earlier, you have 2 options for drones: a flight of 2 Geckos, 2 Republic Fleet Valkyries, and 1 Republic Fleet Warrior or a full flight of 5 heavies (mutated Republic Fleet Berserkers). Gamma weather means dealing explosive damage, which means Minmatar drones. Geckos do omni-damage, but they’re so strong it doesn’t matter much. Plus, they’re the only drones of their kind.

I recommend starting with a Gecko setup since it functionally just requires you to take care of 2 insanely tanky drones; the Valks and Warriors are expendable. Have the Warrior in a separate flight from your Geckos and Valks, and send it around popping cans on its own. Fleet/Navy drones are best since they have the most survivability and tracking. Bringing an unbonused T2 or Augmented Warrior into T6 abyss is just asking for it to die the second something looks at it funny, and it’s not like improving Warrior/Valk damage with this setup really does anything for you.

On that note, please don’t mutate your Valks or Warriors.

The second, more advanced option is a full flight of 5 heavy drones. Since we’re an Ishtar in T6 gamma, that means mutated Fleet Berserkers. I don’t recommend using unrolled heavies; Minmatar drones are the flimsiest and lowest-damage versions in every class. Unrolled Berserkers are easy to lose and won’t outpace Geckos. Obviously, mutate the Fleet version, not T2 or Aug. While Gila pilots with too much money can benefit from a flight of rolled Augs for Ephialtes rooms, trying that on an Ishtar gives you very little and leaves you with no room for any spare drones.

The benefit of Berserkers is that they exclusively deal explosive damage. Unlike Geckos, they can also be rolled. A well-rolled set will do similar damage to a Gecko flight on paper with better tracking and mobility, and take full advantage of the weather penalty for significantly higher effective DPS.

Rolled Berserkers do have a few downsides. Firstly, they’re expensive. While a mutated Gila flight only needs 2 good rolls, an Ishtar flight needs 5. And though Fleet Berserkers and heavy drone mutaplasmids are pretty cheap, the costs still add up. Secondly, you don’t have a Warrior for easy can popping. Sending a Berserker after cans means losing a fifth of your damage. Lastly, rolled Berserkers are still flimsy relative to Geckos. Do you really want to risk losing your expensive mutated heavies to an unlucky Angel room?

Fortunately, we can have our cake and eat it too thanks to the Ishtar’s enormous drone bay. If you want to make the jump from Geckos to rolled heavies, I recommend loading your drone bay with one Gecko flight, one rolled Berserker flight, and spares drones for both. The upgraded example fit above has my exact drone configuration. This way, you can use rolled heavies for faster clears in most rooms while having a sturdier Gecko flight on hand in case you run into an Angel, Vila, or Tessera room, or something else nasty. Or maybe the room has 4 cans and you want to get them all. This drone setup is what I suggest upgrading to, but only if you don’t mind spending the ISK and are already comfortable with managing drone aggro in an Ishtar.

To be clear, while rolled heavies offer a very noticeable performance improvement, they aren’t remotely necessary. I exclusively used Gecko flights for a long time and never had timer issues.

Implants

Implants are Crystals for tank along with a hardwiring for cap. Crystals are really cheap as of writing, so go with a full HG pod if you want. The Overmind ‘Goliath’ Drone Tuner T25-10S is a fantastic upgrade option for slot 7, since it gives a huge 25% bonus to drone HP while decreasing drone velocity by just 10%. It makes a big difference in managing drone aggro. You can also upgrade the cap implant if you want. The neurotoxin implant’s there because there isn’t really anything else that helps an Ishtar in that slot. It’s a dirt-cheap QoL improvement that makes you less likely to need to reroll drugs due to bad side effects.

There’s a ‘Yellowjacket’ drone implant for slot 9 that increases drone damage by 5% at the cost of 10% less tank, but it isn’t remotely worth the 10bil it currently costs.

Drugs

Speaking of drugs, you’ll want to use Standard Blue Pill and a Hardshell to improve your shield reps. Specifically, you want to “preroll” the former: pop the drug, and if you get side effects you don’t want to deal with (like shield or cap penalties), hop into another clone in the same station and back to your abyss clone. This’ll wipe the booster and let you try again with no clone jump cooldown (since it’s in the same station). You’ll lose 900k ISK per clone jump unless you use a player structure; just be aware that you’ll lose any stored clones if the structure pops or the owner decides to yank the clone bay. Hardshell II is a good compromise between benefit and cost. It also has no side effects.

Potential Standard/Improved/Strong Blue Pill side effects include penalties to max shield, max cap, turret optimal, and missile explosion velocity. As you might expect, the shield and cap penalties are bad and warrant a reroll, while the turret optimal penalty doesn’t matter much and the missile penalty is irrelevant to an Ishtar.

A lot of pilots are tempted to just use Synth or not use drugs at all, but Standard provides a whopping 20% boost to shield repping power for a few million ISK an hour in extra run costs. Ishtars are also less likely to get side effects since we have a spare implant slot for Neurotoxin Recovery. Improved and Strong might provide higher bonuses, but I don’t think the extra overhead compared to Standard is worth it. The point is: don’t risk your multi-bil abyss setup to save a few mil in operating costs per hour.

Other Cargo

Every abyss fit should have nanite paste. Duh. The baseline fit has a Packrat MTU, since it represents a decent improvement over the basic version while still being cheap. A Magpie is the next logical step, but don’t get one unless you’re confident in your ability to remember to pick it up (we’ve all done it). The fancy new Consortium MTUs are very good but also ludicrously expensive.

When getting started with a new abyss fit, weather, or tier, I don’t recommend bothering with an MTU or side cans at all. Instead, just focus on building piloting experience and learning how to manage enemy spawns with your new toy. When you have more experience, the Ishtar can easily clear every side node in every room with time to spare.

The Ishtar has plenty of cargo space, so feel free to bring as much turret ammo and paste as you want.

Skills

Of course, you should train up every drone skill, especially Interfacing (which significantly boosts multiple stats including damage by a whopping 10% per level). Geckos and Fleet/Navy drones neither need nor benefit from faction Drone Specialization skills, so don’t bother training those. The Ishtar’s a far more SP-forgiving ship than people think, since you don’t actually need to train up HACs and all its hull bonuses come from the Gallente Cruiser skill (which you need to have at V to sit in an Ishtar in the first place). If you’re already flying a Gila, you’re in for a very easy cross-train.

Shield, cap, engineering, and navigation skills are all important as well, obviously.

More About Mutating

I already talked about using rolled Fleet Berserkers, but what actually makes for a “good” drone roll?

It’s actually pretty simple. Get as much damage as you can with positive or neutral tracking and not too much red in shield, velocity, and range. As for which mutaplasmid to use, I recommend firepower. Some people like navigation, but heavy drone firepower mutas are still quite cheap and offer the biggest potential damage increase. All drone mutas are named Exigent; there are no Decayed/Gravid/Unstable tiers or Glorified versions. Here’s an example of a good Fleet Berserker roll and one that I wouldn’t use:

As for rolling other Ishtar modules, using Gravid on a faction module offers good results without being as expensive as many Unstable mutas. Some people like to use Decayed mutas on T2 damage upgrades to imitate a faction version on the cheap, but that doesn’t work with DDAs due to them requiring special “Radical” mutas that don’t even drop from abyss.

Stats to focus on should be pretty self-explanatory. Green good, red bad, fitting red is fine unless it keeps you from onlining the module. It’s worth it to check the ingame contracts or a tool like MutaMarket for good rolled modules from other people, but I’ve had far more success just rolling my own stuff lately. I like to do it in batches of 5-10.

Tactics

First thing’s first: you’re in a thin ship even if your active reps are insane on paper. That means you need to get a feel for how much pressure your ship can take. A few unlucky chained wrecking shots from a Karen (Karybdis Tyrannos- the name’s kinda similar and it’s annoying) can punch through your reps and end you. Too much neuting can leave you both dead in the water and physically dead. If a wave looks rough, preemptively heat your hardener. Then heat your booster too if you’re still struggling. Shield hardeners overheat and cycle very slowly, so you have plenty of time. Make sure you don’t just permarun your booster unless you have to: it reps a lot per cycle, so pulse it and avoid overrepping (and draining your cap).

Generally, it’s a good idea to prioritize neuting and webbing enemies, since they pressure your cap and make you take more damage, respectively. This is especially important in Karen and Overmind rooms: you want to clear as much EWAR support as you need to survive before focusing on the battleship. You also want to watch your drone healthbars to make sure they aren’t getting mulched by rooms like Angels and Tesseras.

As you get more experienced, you’ll get a feel for what kind of neuting your Ishtar can handle. Once you clear enough neuts that you think the rest are manageable, prioritize webs. Since Overminds and Karens have a lot of HP and represent the biggest threat in their rooms, it’s in your interest to start grinding them down as soon as high-priority EWAR is taken care of. Just make sure you can survive whatever’s left. In Overmind and Tessera rooms, you also want to eliminate RR drones (Plateforgers and Fieldweavers) before getting started on the big stuff.

You should also be aware of your resist profile. Being a T2 Gallente ship, the Ishtar gets extremely high kinetic and thermal resists, making enemies like Overminds that exclusively or primarily deal those damage types much less dangerous. However, your EM resist is low even with the rig and your explosive resist is badly hurt by the Gamma weather penalty. This means that enemies that deal a lot of EM or explosive can be surprisingly lethal. A good example of this is a big Blastneedle Tessella room.

Environmental Effects

If you’ve spent any time running abyss, you’re familiar with the clouds and towers that can spawn. The Ishtar is well-suited to take advantage of some of them. Blue clouds should be avoided if you’re fighting something like a Karen that hits hard with poor tracking, but smaller rats that have no trouble hitting you, like Ephialtes and Damaviks, can be engaged in blue clouds to kill them more quickly. Tracking pylons also help your drones and the rats land hits, but they boost turret tracking rather than increasing sig.

Deviant Automata Suppressors can also be exploited: the chip damage they deal to your drones is annoying, but they can also make Tessella rooms go by much more quickly and make Vila spawns less tedious for drone management by defanging the rats.

Red clouds are bad. They make your shield booster rep less but cycle much faster, thereby draining your cap. White clouds can be useful to reset Triglavian ramping damage, mitigate EDENCOM hits, and close the distance to things like Leshaks and Karen, but they also make your drones much less likely to actually hit rats in them.

Rats that want to run away from you, particularly Karen, can be herded through your own positioning. Ideally, you want Karen to stay out of white clouds and away from tracking pylons. For example, if you spawn and see a Karen room with a tracking pylon off to one side, you can move towards it to coax Karybdis in the other direction.

MTU Anchoring

MTUs aren’t just for picking up loot (though they’re certainly good at that). They can also be used to anchor yourself to a particular area you want to be in. For example, if you want to engage an Ephialtes room in a blue cloud next to a tracking pylon, you can plop down an MTU and orbit it to keep yourself in position.

Rooms

If you’re using rolled heavy drones, the rule of thumb is to use them for any room that isn’t Tesseras, Angels, or Vilas. If you’re in one of those rooms or otherwise expect to face high drone aggro, use your Gecko flight instead. I didn’t mention some rooms such as Rodivas just because I find them unremarkable. Karen and Overmind also aren’t in this section since they were mentioned previously.

Vedmaks and Damaviks

In my experience, the absolute trickiest room in a T6 Ishtar (and the only one that should give you any real trouble once you get some experience with the ship) is a really bad Starving Vedmak spawn. These guys will heavily neut you while dealing high, constantly increasing damage with excellent tracking and range. Basically, it’s a race to see if you can clear enough off the field before your cap and/or tank break. If you get a nasty room like this, I recommend popping your Hardshell if you haven’t already, preemptively heating your hardener, pulsing your rep heated, and kiting away from the Vedmaks while focusing down the Starvings. Once you get rid of a few, the room becomes much easier. This is a room where rolled Berserkers and mutated batteries really pull their weight.

Tesseras (Rogue Drone Battlecruisers)

Tessera rooms are notorious for killing drones, but there are a few tricks you can use. Firstly, only 1 Tessera will ever shoot your drones at a time, and it’ll always be the same Tessera until it dies, even if you recall and relaunch all your drones. This means you always know which ship’s going after your drones, and you can focus on taking it down. Also, take advantage of the fact that Geckos are really tough and Tessera rooms have no webs other than some weak frigates you can clear at the very beginning of the room. You can easily recall and replace a Gecko that risks taking armor damage. And even if you miscalculate and the Gecko takes way more damage than you expected, it’ll still probably live.

Angels

Angel rooms aren’t too bad as far as tanking goes, but they can be really annoying for Ishtars due to the large amount of webs combined with fast, well-applying rats that love shooting drones. If a drone starts getting primaried and you start recalling it, it might just not get to you in time. Consider approaching your own drone to get to it faster if that’s the case. Drones also tend to automatically switch targets if they can’t catch up to their assigned one, so keep an eye out for that. While you should generally prioritize Cynabals, especially Elite ones, consider smacking a few Dramiels if you’re not in any danger. They’re really thin targets that have webs and can kill drones quickly. Echos are similar; you can easily wipe one off grid at the beginning of the room before the rest of the rats get in range.

Leshaks

Leshak rooms aren’t usually a problem: just focus renewings and starvings; they start off badly damaged and go down quickly. However, a room with a lot of blindings can obliterate your lock range and make you unable to target anything you can’t reach out of your ship and touch. Fortunately, the Ishtar’s a drone ship. If you order your drones to attack a target, they’ll keep attacking it even if you lose the lock. They’ll also autonomously attack other rats in the room, meaning you’re still clearing the room even if your lock range is in the toilet. Tanglings try to follow your ship around to web you, so at least that’s convenient.

Vila Vedmaks and Damaviks

Vila rooms (they have Triglavians that launch drones) aren’t particularly dangerous, but they can deal a shocking amount of damage to your drones if the rats’ drones start focusing them. Don’t bother attacking the drones yourself; they disconnect when the Triglavian rat that launched them dies. If drone aggro gets really bad, recall all your drones and relaunch after the trigs start focusing you again. Deviant Automata Suppressors are very nice to have in these rooms.

Ephialtes

In Ephialtes and some Damavik rooms (which feature a lot of relatively weak enemies), consider assigning 1 Gecko to 1 rat. This helps avoid losing damage from your drones needing to burn between targets.

CONCORD / EDENCOM

CONCORD rooms aren’t an issue for most T6 Ishtar fits. This is largely due to your resist profile: your extremely high kinetic resist mitigates a lot of their damage. Just be careful getting close to your drones in heavy EDENCOM rooms. Their chain lightning will bounce off you and onto your drones, potentially killing them quickly.

One way that CONCORD/EDENCOM rooms can get dangerous is if RNG gives you a lot of rats, particularly Marshals, that shoot into your explosive hole. It’s already a resist hole for the Ishtar, and the gamma weather penalty just exacerbates it. If you’re not confident in your ability to tank a CONCORD room, the best tactic is often to just turn your ship around and burn away while overheating your hardener and clearing support and dangerous rats. As previously mentioned, Tessella (rogue drone frigate) rooms can also have a lot of rats that shoot into your explosive hole (they have “Blast” in the name).

The Weird Stuff

Other T6 Ishtar fits do exist: there’s the “Pogtar,” which is a propless passive shield fit that can do T6 abyss, along with active versions that trade the AB for a shield extender for more buffer. In lower tiers, you might see cheap shield Ishtars and even armor Ishtars running around. However, the standard, tried-and-true T6 Ishtar is still going to be an active shield fit.

The Bottom Line

The Ishtar may be a harder ship to fly than a Gila (not that that’s a high bar), but it can also be a lot more fun, especially in challenging content like T6 abyss. It takes drones, which are already a strong weapon system in abyss, and makes them even better, while also having great survivability without too much bling if you know what you’re doing. It’s also just better at Gammas than the Gila due to not having to rely on weak Valkyries in that weather and not having any timer issues as consequence. T6 gammas are also generally a great filament to run: they’re cheaper than many others and drop pretty valuable mutaplasmids. They certainly tend to be more lucrative than T6 exotics.

And above all else, get used to your shield bar looking like this: