Now, there are a load of guides out there that talk about the basics of each ship and how you can make use of their weaknesses and strengths, but there are few guides that cover more than that. This is a niche I intend to fill.

Allow me to make a point: This guide is not directed at the absolute beginner. If you have less than a handful of hours in the game, you might find yourself equipped with all the pro knowledge and secrets I know, but unable to master the core game mechanics. Trust me, it’s not pleasant, I’m in this situation in Eve Online, and it is highly annoying.

If you have already come a fair way, have unlocked a few or maybe all ships and want to improve your skills to match those of the not-quite-as-casual players of this game, then you have come to the right place.

If you are a seasoned space captain and want to play the Protector in a slightly niche way, be sure to read through my segments on the pulse- and nearbeam loadouts, as these demand a significant shift in playstyle compared to the filthy meta loadout stock repair beam.

If you’re a Fractured Space mastermind, have made it to the leaderboard and want to have a quick laugh, you’re welcome. If you want to add to this guide (i.e. constructive criticism), you’re likewise welcome.

Without further delay, let us get underway by briefly summarizing the ship.

The Protector is a TDS light hull designed for support purposes. This translates to a hull strength of 6000 and armor values of 1000 all around. The speed of the Protector sits at 660, which is certainly quick, but it shares the sluggish TDS acceleration and deceleration with it’s brethren. This is important as it limits you in certain situations and it can be a hassle to wrestle this ship to a halt or move quickly out of dodge. The Protector’s energy reserves clock in at the standard 6000 units.

The Protector’s primary gun is its smart gun. It has the tracking projectiles found on other TDS ships, and unlike on certain ships (*cough* Equalizer *cough*) the tracking angle is actually quite decent. While many have over the years taken to mock the Protector’s lack of damage by comparing its DPS to that of the point defense system, it’s actually not the slouch it may seem. Especially when you notice that the DPS numbers on the point defense system are actually not bad either. Aiming for broken armor pays off nicely and it should be done wherever possible, but never at the cost of potentially exposing yourself to enemy fire!

There are essentially three playstyles connected to the three different repair beam loadouts. The first and most common is the stock repair beam. This ability (yes, it’s an ability and not a weapon, I checked) has a range of 17500 meters, not 20000 as some people will tell you. To get the maximum benefit out of the beam, lock up the ally you want to heal. The stock targeting button is “t”, but there is a special one that lets you target an ally only. It might be beneficial to learn these key bindings and/or reassign them to a hotkey of your liking. Also, make sure to always aim for broken armor facings, it will repair them quicker and thereby increase the survivability of your ally. Make sure that, when you fire your beam, you can keep it on target for the full duration. To accomplish that, make sure that your target is not moving into cover. Make sure that you have room to maneuver and move to keep your beam on target while your ally is moving into cover like the ♥♥♥♥♥ they are like any sensible player.

The repair nearbeam is a meme, but a meme with potential. It can output the highest burst heal in the game and has one of the highest healing per second values, but it severely lacks in the range department with a puny 7500 meters. This is a very significant drawback especially in PvP, as it forces your vulnerable ship close to your allies that might be too busy to cover you. I had games where I was forced to “suicide heal” people, by which I mean that I had trouble getting into healing range for even a single heal before the enemy killed me. If you run into skilled players, this beam can be a crippling K/D sink. Don’t get me wrong here: It can work, it can even work so well that you’ll have enemies ask you whether the ship got buffed, and it’s great for PvE, but in the majority of skilled PvP games you’ll have a bad time.

The repair pulsebeam is of similar memetic quality, and it will yield less rewards than the other two options (because support points are awarded for a certain amount of heal on a single target that you won’t accomplish in one go until very late game). However, it is the closest you’ll feel to being a logi player in Eve while not actually playing Eve. Not a single second passes where you’re not doing something, be it heal, look for the next healing target or the nearest enemy, check your position, arc shots around cover, and much more. If you’re hardcore into Fractured Space you might know that meme of a guy playing piano and comparing that to playing Fractured Space. That’s the closest you’ll get, and that’s why I love the pulsebeam as much as I do. It certainly is not for everybody, but if you like to micromanage, this might be to your liking. Be careful though, as the rapid firing of the pulsebeam will take a massive dump on your energy reserves. You’ll likely be forced to drop the shield bubble for the stationary shield buoy, which will cut down on your survivability.

I personally like to alternate between firing my repair pulsebeam and my heavy smartgun, because both have a comparable cooldown. So you’ll often find me picking a random target, arcing my shots around cover to hit him, and then switching to my heal target, and then back again, and so on. Therefor, as I state in the crew section of this guide, I equipped a tactical officer and turret traverse implants.

Your ability 1 is a shield bubble that will reduce incoming damage to you and any allied ship in a 5000 meter radius around the Protector. It does consume a steady stream of energy however, which in combination with your repair beam, point defense and disarm might leave you dry if you’re not careful. There is the option to trade the shield bubble out for a stationary one as I mentioned above. Obviously, this will negatively impact both its use as a defensive measure for you and your team, but it’s a tradeoff worth considering if you often find yourself dying because you’re out of energy for that disarm. It also pairs perfectly with a Gladiator I guess.

Your second ability is your disarm. To a Protector, the disarm is holy. It is the one divine object that separates us Protector mains from a fiery, painful demise.

PRAISE BE THE DISARM!!

Now that we have this covered, how should you use it? Your initial thought might be to throw it at the biggest spaceship you can find, surely that must also do the most damage, right? Wrong. Look for the ship with the most damage output currently shooting someone, and disarm that one! Don’t throw it at the biggest damage dealer alive either, because he might not even be in range to shoot yet.

Sooner or later, an attack ship will flush you out of the safety of your cover. Do you use the disarm now? No. You use space rocks, the gamma station or even an ally to cut line of sight and block incoming fire. You might drop below half health. Surely now must be the time to use the disarm, right?? NO! Make sure that the enemy currently shooting you is the only one shooting you first! Disarming one target while three others are tearing through you won’t work for the next step. If all the above are true, then you cast your disarm. And then you quickly open your jump menu (that’s the tab button by default, but I recommend binding it to a mouse hotkey if possible, although for me that caused some weird glitches on occasion), and you jump out to safety. No need to bother jumping to the home base, the split second it might take you to find the correct jump point or spooling up the home-jump might mean a death by fire for you! But, if you managed to pull off the escape, you can put up your best troll face and ask “problem?” in match chat. Make sure to brace yourself against the tilt you just caused.

The last ability your ship has are syphon drones. I’m not quite sure on this one, but I think they exist solely to fulfill some sort of quota. It’s like there’s a rule over at ECG that says every healer must be able to self-heal. Every other healer can use their heals on themselves. The Protector however can’t, and so it receives these drones instead. Though, in practice they are about as useful as an ashtray on a motorbike, to quote our gnome overlord Jingles. The only legitimate use I see for them is to block an enemy that’s trying to heal in their forward station.

The Protector is a very vulnerable ship, just in case it was not blatantly obvious already.

To maximize your survivability, stay close to cover at any time possible. No need to go ahead of the team or even with them, you can just as easily hang back and enjoy the show while you keep your allies patched up. Only close the distance when you're being chased by a hostile and you are positive that your teammates can and will help you to deal with the pesky annoyance. Otherwise, jumping while in cover or while the enemy is disarmed is a way to get to safety, although you are leaving your allies without support and should consider jumping back in to support them.

Many people will tell you to "go cap!" in the Protector. Maybe you yourself want to leave that particular aspect of the game in your trusty two hands. I will tell you up front: In my experience the Protector is not the optimal capture ship. Sure, it's quick, but it's too vulnerable to roam the sectors and capture mines. I personally would leave that up to my teammates. The USR Disruptor does that much better. There are however a few situations where you should stay close to your teammates for the majority of the time and not make use of the beam’s maximum range:

The first and most common is gamma. In the classical Conquest gamma you need to contribute to the capture effort. It is very important that you do that! Don’t fall for the easy trap of “Oh, one ship won’t matter that much”! Through lengthy and frustrating research conducted on maximizing a pre-rework sniper’s impact in gamma, I can safely say that the only legitimate time you can stay outside of the bubble is when you can finish off a capping enemy ship in a few seconds at the very start of gamma, equalizing the score. And the Protector can not do that!

So instead you stick to cover, just like you did in the lanes. The difference is that your enemies are much closer now, and they might push through the passages in the station or flank around the ring at any given time. Be careful not to get caught when that happens, and move away from them. If you are forced away from the ring by multiple flanking adversaries, you are likely to die very soon. In that case, make sure to maximize your impact for your remaining lifespan, deal damage or heal as much as you can before dying. See you in the next life, captain.

The second case where you should stick close to your team is if the enemy has a cloaker. These guys are a huge threat to you because of their high alpha and/or high DPS and their ability to flank you without warning. If you get attacked by a cloaker, you’re pretty much boned and might you need to use your escape strategy. Remember what I told you about using the disarm? Now might be the time to run the checklist. But if the cloaker is damaged or if he screws up his attack, then you actually have a legit fighting chance against most of them. The exception here is the Basilisk, I still am of the opinion that it’s too strong against lights, but that’s another story. The most common cloaker is the USR Ghost anyways, and this guy has slow rockets that you can dodge by maneuvering wisely. You can also disarm him right after he fires his ambush or while he is firing a volley to reduce his burst damage to a manageable amount. The reason you want to stay close to your teammates is because they might be able to help you out. Now, granted, in a random or even in a premade team that won’t always happen. But even by yourself you stand a decent chance if he misses a salvo or two. Make sure to use your repair beam on the enemy Ghost so that he takes additional damage (Aim for broken armor!), and use every last bit of cover available to block the next salvo. You might be able to clutch it. But I digress, the safest way to deal with a Ghost is still the disarm jump. You should go for that if you can, and only engage if your disarm is on cooldown or if you’re very confident in your dodging skills.

The fourth case obviously is when you are using the repair nearbeam.

The third situation is co-op. In a co-op game you can afford to be more aggressive because you’ll learn to predict the AI’s behavior. Make sure that you’re not the vanguard, have an ally between you and the enemy at all times, and you should be fine because the guy closer to them will draw their agro. But you also need to be able to tell when you need to run and when you need to push, which is really tricky and I honestly kinda struggle to explain it in written form. Let’s just say, you need to know which enemies are a particularly high threat to you and how many enemies with what abilities and what damage are in the sector. Similarily, you need to know if one of your allies is hard-countered by an enemy and whether or not you are outnumbered and/or outgunned. It is a skill I honestly can’t teach in written form, and I think the only legitimate way to acquire said skill is by playing and learning the limits of your ship and your skill to effectively exploit your ship’s limits.

Generally, the ship synergizes well with everything that's able to camp. Because the Protector is so reliant on cover, it needs allies to prevent the enemy from flanking or rushing you. The ship needs protection, and it gives great heals in return. Because of this, any mobile composition will struggle to match well with a Protector, for multiple reasons:

Firstly, your beam. I've lost count of the instances where an ally blinked away from my heal beam, and lights that are constanttly moving require more effort to keep the beam on target.

Secondly, mobile ships tend to be less tanky or have less weapon range, which means they are less effective at forming a "battle line" of ships that the enemy will struggle to pass through and hurt you.

I personally would pick the Protector in a dual heavy composition or a composition with ships like the Venturer at my side. The Venturer, much like the Protector, needs cover and careful positioning because it lacks the damage to effectively 1v1 an attack ship. The Venturer can asl heal you if he's competent, and shield you, which is nice. Another ship I'd imagine pairs well with the Protector is the Displacer, becasue it can use it's crowd-control abilities to move a flanking eemy away from you and thereby save your skin. The Centurion is also a good partner-in-crime, because he acts as the linchpin of a team in gamma with his shield and his core overload. In return he requires heals to play aggressively, which you can (and should) provide in return.


Consequently, the same concept applies to counterpicking a Protector: It struggles against a variety of mobile ships. Examples are the Zarek Hunter, TDS Sentinel and the TDS Persecutor. all these ships excel at sneaking into advantageous positions and can catch the Protector off guard, flushing it out of cover and into the guns of the waiting teammates. The Zarek Furion is also worthy of a mention, simply becasue of it's insane DPS and the ability to boost into position. While the ship's lack of armor means it dies quickly when focussed, the same also applies to the Protector. If your teammates don't help you out, your only hope against the Furion is the disarm-jump-combo.

Other ships that can pose a threat against the Protector are the Zarek Centurion and the TDS Aegis. The Centurion is frequently used to aggressively push towards the enemy side of gamma and can damage ships with it's core overload, as well as push them out of cover. And the Aegis can significantly damage the Protector with it's death bubble particle accelerator, as well as fire around cover using its sartguns.

I want to quickly touch on the upgrades you pick in a match. If you find yourself focused a lot, I recommend investing in defense upgrades. If you’re not the focus target then the utility upgrade should be a no-brainer.

The first priority you should have as a Protector is to decrease your repair beam cooldown, followed shortly by increasing your health pool. Therefor you should stick to captains such as Clara Reisette, who give you the maximum damage reduction. A utility officer should be in your crew too. Next priority is a repair guy, not because he increases your repairs (Repair officers only modify the repairs you receive!) but because he grants you broken armor damage reduction. Next depends on your preference: A jump core officer, engineer and navigation officer are all valid picks.

For implants, the bread and butter of every light crew should be 5x the +200 HP implant. This grants you a total of 1000 additional hitpoints, a huge amount especially early game (late game that can change because your HP pool is increased with each upgrade). The rest is more variable: Utility cooldown, jump preparation reduction, broken armor damage reduction, capture rate, maneuverability, turn rate, forward thrust – all these are legit choices.

If you use any of the loadouts, this changes. If you run the nearbeam, your priority changes from heals first, survivability second to survivability first, heals second. Therefor, I’d recommend maybe dropping the utility officer and associated implants for something else, maybe a jump core officer or navigator. Anything that increases your survivability is valuable!

I personally rock the pulsebeam, and because of that I can share a actual build with you this time instead of spouting general recommendations. Here is my build:


I run a tactical officer and associated turret traverse implants because I often found myself waiting for my beam turret to turn around on the target I wanted to heal. I mentioned before that I like to alternate between healing and shooting out of cover, and for that purpose this build works perfectly fine. A comms officer helps with the energy thirsty beam, I found that one practically mandatory even with the stationary shield bubble equipped.

So that's it! You've made it this far. As a summary I'd like to quickly summarize the ship in a sort of mantra. For the Protector, I'd go with "Powerful heals but vulnerable ship!" or something like that.

The Protector is a ship with many different playstyles available to you in the form of the repair beam loadouts. Definitely one of the better loadout designs by ECG. I thoroughly enjoy each and every game I play with this ship, and I hope you do too.

As a final tip: I am one of these people that love listening to music while playing the game. I found Lindsey Stirling to be a great addition to my gameplay. I actually got better results and felt less frustrated by the occasional misplay when listening to her songs or other similar ones. No, I am not on Lindsey’s payroll. Stop asking pls.

All that’s left now is to wish you a good game. Have fun, and praise the disarm.