Every race in EVE Online has high points. Of the lot, Amarr are the least popular amongst players, mostly because of how EVE was in the early days. The distastefulness that players presumably feel for slavery and religious extremism may also have something to do with it. Despite these peccadilloes, Amarr have a bevy of interesting options and there is ample reason to play them. I provide ten such reasons below.

10. Lasers

Laser turrets are one of the best weapon systems in EVE Online, right now, generally eclipsing hybrid turrets and missiles except against particular types of NPC ships. For PvE, they excel at hitting out to great distances, even with their nominally short-ranged pulse laser versions. This is especially apparent with tech two ammunition like Scorch, that allows pulse lasers to blur the line between close and long range weaponry.

Lasers have great tracking, and can put the hurt on small ships even when they get relatively close. They also deal great damage, though the variety is limited to various combinations of EM and Thermal damage, so getting through armor-tanked ships (or many tech two Minmatar ships) in PvP can be tough without help. On the plus side, they generally chew through Caldari ship shields darn fast, and EM damage can actually end up being the least tanked resistance in a surprising number of cases.

Instead of consuming ammunition with each shot, lasers use crystals that are not expended. At least, tech one crystals are not. More advanced ammunition like tech two or faction ammo will have a random chance of breaking after being fired a couple hundred times. Still, most players use tech one ammo, and those never run out. As you can imagine, this is a godsend when running missions or hunting NPCs. Nobody enjoys ammo runs. The other great thing about them is that they instantly switch, rather than taking a few seconds to reload. This lets you always use your best ammunition type based on the range at which you are fighting.

9. The Capacitor Race

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style="font-style: italic;">The Amarr rely on their thick armor and deadly lasers to compensate for their lack of agility.

Amarr ships have the best capacitors in the game. On average, they store much more and regenerate accordingly faster than their counterparts of the same ship classes amongst the other races. This is good, because even though Amarr laser turrets guzzle capacitor, Amarr still tend to come out ahead of the game.

Interestingly, the supposedly inflexible Amarr can come up with some pretty interesting ship fittings if they forgo lasers for projectiles or a non-primary weapon system like energy neutralizers or smartbombs. All that capacitor comes in handy.

The Amarr ship roster includes the Curse, Pilgrim, and Sentinel, all boasting bonuses to energy neutralizer and energy vampire use. Instead of turning off a ship's weaponry, like an ECM ship, they turn off everything. This makes them some of the most effective non-damage ships in the game. Well, maybe not the Sentinel.

8. Great At Drones

The Amarr are second only to Gallente in the drone department. They are the only race other than Gallente to have sub-capital ships with bonuses to drone use, which is nice. Their ships also tend to have much larger drone bays than usual, though not always more bandwidth. The extra drone bay space allows them greater freedom to choose what drones to bring, and allowing them to keep an extra flight of ECM drones for when they need to make a quick escape.

7. Thick Armor

Amarr are the passive armor tank race, meaning that they specialize in having a lot of armor hit points and using armor plating, rather than having a fast armor repair rate. Nevertheless, their high capacitor still leaves active armor repairing open as an eminently acceptable option, especially in missions or if they are using projectile turrets instead of lasers. Amarr ships tend to have a lot of power grid for fitting armor plates and repairers, and can usually do this wile still using oversized laser turrets or energy weapon grid rigs.

Amarr have some fantastic ships when it comes to armor tanking. The Punisher, Maller, Prophecy, Abaddon, Damnation, Absolution, and Devoter all have bonuses to armor resistance, making them an excellent option for when remote repairing might be used. Since remote repairing is much in vogue, some of these ships are seeing a bit of a renaissance.

6. Fantastic Tech Two Cruisers

While some other races have tech two cruisers that are kind of blase (Caldari heavy assault cruisers) or overspecialized (Gallente recons), the Amarr tech two cruisers are all excellent. They boast useful bonuses, forgiving fitting specs, and get better the more skillpoints one invests into them.

The Pilgrim and Curse are both splendid, and can be fit in a variety of ways depending on what you want to emphasize. The Sacrilege is a solid mission-runner with a roaring missile damage output. The Devoter is one of the better heavy interdictors because it is nearly un-killable. Finally, the Zealot is absolutely fantastic, and gives the Minmatar Vagabond a run for its money as the best heavy assault cruiser.

5. Better Than In Years

For many years, Amarr had problems. Their ships could not fit the weapons they needed to function. Lasers did crappy damage. Half of their battleships didn't really do anything, and forget about their sole battlecruiser option. Their heavy assault ships were wretched. Nobody could tell if their electronic warfare was functioning correctly or not, because it was so bad.

None of this is the case anymore. Amarr ships are great, with excellent fittings and hull bonuses. Lasers are one of the better weapon systems. The Prophecy still doesn't actually do anything, but that is okay because now we have the Harbinger to lay on the pain, and the battleships are fantastic. Any memories of the Amarr that you may have from the EVE Online of days gone by are probably obsolete. They're great.

4. Great Battleships

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style="font-style: italic;">Like I said, God is literally on their side.

While many of the tech one frigates and cruisers available to the Amarr are a bit underwhelming, especially in PvP, the Amarr have some of the best damn battleships. Whether it is killing frigates, hunting NPCs, sniping in PvP, fighting on station undock points, or remote repairing with other ships, the Amarr battleships can do it all.

The Armageddon is a great mission runner and can be repurposed to do nearly anything. The Apocalypse has endless capacitor and great fitting, making it one of the best ships for battleship fleet PvP, especially for things like shooting POS. The Abaddon can tank and lay out a ton of damage very quickly, at least until it runs out of capacitor, making it one of the best ships for screwing around on a station undock when outnumbered by enemy ships.

3. Focused Fitting Slot Layout

Sure, most Amarr ships have a minimal number of middle fitting slots. They make up for this by having a surplus of high and low slots. The low slots can be filled with armor tanking modules, damage or tracking enhancers, or whatever. The high slots are usually used for a full complement of lasers, though a spare energy neutralizer or smartbomb always comes in handy.

Leave the tackling to the other guys, you're too busy dealing damage. And shrugging damage off without blinking, probably.

2. Great High-Skill Options

While sometimes slandered as not being especially newbie friendly because of the sometimes unexciting tech one ship options, the Amarr ships and weapons reward players that have been around for a while. The closer your skills get to maximized, the better you will get. This is not necessarily the case with other races (Minmatar excepted), that can often experience exaggerated diminishing returns when specializing in certain roles.

Things that particularly benefit from maxing out the training include fitting skills like Advanced Weapon Upgrades, ship skills when the hull in question has a bonus to armor resistances, and the Recon Ships skill if you like that class of ships.

1. God Is Literally On Their Side

A few weeks ago, I wrote about how I thought that the Amarr backstory was kind of boring. I was lying. Amarr are amazing. Their ships are generally beautiful, and look like something from the inside of a baroque church. Their empress is possibly psychic, or possibly possessed by some sort of Jovian mind control. The slavery thing is kind of distasteful, but it is over-emphasized and is really just a means to an end: reclaiming the universe for God, who might actually have told them to do so. Their society may not resemble anything that I would personally want to live in, but they do have a pretty tough situation, what with God telling them to reclaim the universe and all. Plus they recently started reforming their slavery situation. If science fiction is your thing, you could do worse than to go read up on the Amarr.


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Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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