Given all the talk flying around the forums for the past few months on proto-stomps and fail matchmaking, I thought I'd share a simple, cost-effective, hard counter to shield-tanked protos. I'm sure a huge number of people have already figured this out, but I didn't see it in the rookie training grounds and if even one new player uses it, I'll consider this post a success.

Disclaimer: This build is a hard counter, meaning that it's not going to do very well or be very effective in any situation other than the one it's designed specifically to deal with. This built is meant for when your random team is getting stomped by two full proto CalLogi squads. You probably won't win, but you sure can keep them from making a profit. It only takes one death for the protobear to be operating at a loss. Make them operate at a loss for long enough, and it'll be impossible to run proto every pub match, evening the playing field.

Don't run this as your main fit, but keep it on hand and don't hesitate to switch to it. Then maybe, one day, we'll see a random team actually put some hurt on Internal Error and similar corporations running full CalLogi protos in random pub matches. If 16 randoms would fit intelligently against the FOTM enemy instead of just trying to DPS down a CalLogi using militia ARs, New Eden would be a very different place.

What you need (ignoring skill pre-reqs for brevity):
Grenades I
Mass Driver I
Nanocircuitry I

This is a very small amount of SP, and anyone should be able to take that much out of their core build in exchange for having a dedicated ISK destroyer and finger-in-eye machine. This requires no fitting skills.

The build: (414 EHP, 5,025 ISK per complete suit)
Militia Caldari medium frame with:
Mass Driver
MLT SMG
Flux grenade
2x MLT shield extenders
MLT armor plate
STD nanohive

The playstyle is simple and effective:
Optional beginning: Lure a single greedy proto away from the pack with your tasty-looking MLT suit and wait for him to come at you.
1. Cook a flux and throw it. 1.2k shield damage guarantees that they're now naked.
2. Spam the mass driver in their general direction. It shouldn't take more than 2 splash hits to drop them. It may be 3 or more if they've stacked up armor plates, but then they're moving so slowly that it's easy to chase and land follow up shots.
3. Out of mass driver clip? Swap to the SMG and spray and pray. Ideally, this only happens if you have more than one target.
4. Smile as your opponent loses 200k+ ISK
5. Repeat 1-4 until out of grenades.
6. Stand on a nanohive.
7. GOTO 1

In theory, you could also run this build on higher-tier suit to fit a PLC and go for the 1 shot splash kill after the flux, though the MD's RoF makes it more reliable.

Testimonials? Thoughts? Improvements?

Amen to that.