What I suggest is you look at the recommended certificates for the drake in EvEmon (skill training helper program) and train them up. This will help considerably. Most of the skills mentioned by Matt will be in there.

Ok well first thing is identify why you can't tank them?

I assume you are shield tanking and not armour tanking the Drake, because if not this is why.... so 2 questions.

Are you becoming cap unstable, and so can no longer run your active shield tank?

Or is it just you need to warp away and let your shields recharge?

if it's question one you need to work on energy management skills.

If Question 2, then shield management skills.

Energy management skills:

Energy Management

Energy Systems Operation

Energy Emissions Systems

and anything that will improve cap useage such as warp drive operation.

Shield management:

Shield Operation

Shield Management

Shield Upgrades

Tatical Shield Manipulation

Shield compensation.

And less so but also specific shield damage type compensations.

These are from memory as I'm at work!

These skills will strengthen your ability to absorb DPS for your current fitting, but will also allow you to fit more higher ranked modules as well.

If you are trying to fit your drake, look on battleclinic.com for Drake fits.

Try to fit your ship like this.

Import it to EFT (a link is on the side) and import your character using your limited API if you haven't already.

This will tell you where the gaps in your skills are, and from there you can use EVEMon (also linked at the side) to plan your training to fill those gaps...

Hope this helps any further questions let us know. But without your current fit it's hard to see where your going wrong.

Brief run down of module types...

the invulnerability field, this increases your resistance to damage accross the board.

Hardners, these produce a higher resistance but only to one of the four damage types

Booster, these recharge a chunk of your shield in exchange for capacitor useage.

Extenders, these increase your shield capacity at the expense of your signiture making it easier to hit you.

Rechargers, these increase the speed of your shield recharge, but weaken your total shield capacity.

Hardners, boosters and the invulnerability field are active modules which penalise you by using Capacitor charge, the others are Passive which penalise you in different ways.

First thing first. Your type of fit.

Drake is best as a shield tank. Don't try to change that up at this point in your career.

Secondly. You have two options at this point...active tank (using shield booster) or passive tank (using a large shield amount + shield regen mods).

As a personal opinion, and not just my own because it is one of the most notorious builds out there... a passive tank drank is easier to handle, as well as easier on the skills.

Saying that, here's what you should aim for generally.

---

7x Heavy launcher of your choice.

3x Large Shield Extender

3x Passive shield hardeners suited for your mission.

2-3x Shield Power Relays

1-2x Ballistic Control Unit

3x Medium Core Defense Field Purger (rigs)

You can sub out 2x Invuln Fields if you can passively keep them active without ever running out of capacitor.

Use 2x Shield Power Relays if your shield tank is holding, 3x if your having problems. This will cut your DPS more, but you need to stay alive most of all.

The rigs + shield power relays are most important here. The large shield extenders increase your shield capacity, and the relays + rigs your shield recharge. The trick here is that your shields regen at a percentage. So if you increase your shield amount, then you the amount in that percentage also increases.

For example... If your you regen 2% of your 2000 shield bank, you regen 40 shield points. If you regen 2% of your 8000 shield bank, you regen 160 shield points, in the same duration.

Once you have a ship fitted out like this, you should focus on training all the skills (first start with Battle Cruiser 4) that you need to fit T2 mods for what is listed above. I would save weapons for last because they take so long.

Happy hunting.

Hi Prasten, I would suggest getting your mates fit and training all the required skills at least to lvl 4, and most probably to lvl 5.

With a fit like the passive Drake (buffer shield tank, no shield boosters that need to be run when you get low shields) the level of the required skill for each module plays a big role in how efficient the fit works.

So yeah get his fit and look at what you can train and in what order to get the most efficient recharge rate.

Another thing to point out, is that the drake can tank like a motha, but when tanking for lvl 4's you will lose some dps and it may take a while to complete the mission. But at least you wont die!

I say get in the Raven, if Caldari ships and lvl 4's are your thing!