So, with my 2 i skilled into a brand new role of which i have little experience-Cal Logi. Dropsuit is lvl 4, hives lvl 5, reptool Lvl 4, uplinks & scanner lvl 1.

Ran a couple solo doms last night & had mixed results. While sometimes i could get into the group & support, yeilding nice wp payouts, sometime it was difficult to stay with blues or even get back to them once uplinks were drained. Worst thing i noticed was i was still going kdr positive, not exactly the indicator of a logi doing a logi's job.

So, i want to hear tips & tricks for:

Best fitting options & considerations
Equipment use
Hive placement
Rep tool use, &, if possible
Best practices for supporting randoms

Any help appreciated.

First, I'll put out there that I'm a Minmatar Logi (5) with maxed Dropsuit Upgrade skills (Armor, Shields, All Equipment, EWAR, etc.) and have been playing it since game release (2+ years). I haven't picked up the Caldari Logi so I will put upfront that I don't know how to run the Cal Logi, and have only made one fit on Protofits.com. But I'll try to give you some general advice.

Best fitting options & considerations:
The LogiBro Trinity has been Needle, Rep Tool, and Nanohive. However, people can use whichever variations of equipment that they need. However, the reason this is a powerful setup is it covers 3 main points: Rez, Repairs, and Resupply.

An alternate setup I would run would be Needle, Rep Tool, and Uplink. Dead people and freshly spawned people don't need ammo, they need a rally point.

However, most of these are 3 equipment setups, the standard amount for Gallente and Minmatar Logistics suits, while Amarr receives 3 at Advanced level. Caldari gets 3 only at proto. Running around with 2 equipment slots makes me uncomfortable and difficult (since I have always had 3; 4 at proto).

Hive placement:
The pulse from Hives are loud and the graphic goes through walls, generally making them easy targets, even though uplinks are priorities (for destruction). The best thing you can do is spread them apart. Sure, you could cluster them all up for extremely quick ammo resupplies, but a single flux would be able to take them out easily. Spread them at least 6 to 7m apart and in place where it's either difficult to shoot at or hard to flux.

Alternatively, keep the hives on you and when you hear a squadmate call out for ammo, drop one down for him. Another scenario would be keeping them while you gauge where the battlefront is moving to, and when friendlies bunker in to fire at the enemy, set down some nanohives to allows them to run back, resupply (and regen health), and continue holding the line.

Rep tool use:
This is the point where I'm not sure how to advise you. As a Minmatar Logistics, my bonus allows me to do some great rep work both in amount, and range. I have had some experience using rep tools on an Amarr Logistics (5), and it's terrible. I don't know how people do it. I've been spoiled.

Where you are at right now, use the BDR-8 Triage. Unless you have found yourself in numerous situations where quick repair time was needed in a vehicle, get that bonus to dropsuits. The penalty to vehicle and installation repair won't be missed.

You might not be able to buffer an armor tank heavy like a Min Logi can (but then again you might, feel free to prove me wrong ) but giving out repairs to your team to patch them up will be of great assistance. Triage points are a Logi's best friend (and best way to get WP).

Having your rep tool out will display nearby allies names and health. This will give you some great tactical information about friendly health bars and who needs health, as well as indirectly telling you where enemies might be. As an example, I was following a blueberry who was going to a supply depot area. There were two shotgun blasts and I watched my blueberry's shields deplete and then vanish. Using that intel, I told my squadmates we had 1 red - shotgun, possible scout - near the supply depot and moved to stop the advancing enemy (which turned out to be a scout along with 2 or 3 friends). No active or passive scans needed, just awareness.

When you get Rep Tool to 5, Proto rep tools have the ability to repair 2 targets at once. Again, go with the triage variant: the Six Kin. Avoid the Core Focused because while the repair rate seems amazing (it is the highest repping without a doubt), it can only repair 1 target at a time and has a range of 7.5m.

As per your KDR, if you are going positive, that's fine. Generally a logistics player is just that: logistics. Your mentality is to support your team with equipment, either deployable or handheld. If you run into an enemy squad of players and you gun them all down, great. But did you do that because nearby blues didn't have ammo? Did some die because they got targeted, and - with low health - were finished off? Weigh out the pros and cons of support and backup. Sometimes I've had my teammates go down because I didn't back them up (reinforce). Other times I've had my team slowly diminish because I wasn't focused on support (rez, rep, resupply, rally, recon). A general rule of thumb people use to measure how effective a logi was is by looking at the WP at the end of battle screen. 0/4? Yeah that's a bad KDR. But with a 4000 WP score, that logi was doing some work and definitely supporting his team. (There are even some logis who have posted 5000 and 6000 WP scores too.)