Are Dakes viable in anything other than PVE? I have been running lvl 3's with my drake for a long time and I absolutely crush now. I am starting to pump all of my Shield skills up to level 5. I can already pilot a Raven, but I cannot use T2 things on it yet and most requirements are at their mins. What I want to know is am I wasting time getting all of these shield skills to level 5? Or will I be able to use that later on in the game when I am PVPing or doing some lvl 4s etc. I just wanna make my drake a beast!! I dont wanna get into a new ship that I can barely use

HML's are getting nerfed, aka Drakes are getting nerfed.

In pvp max skills are very important so you will for sure have use of them. I wouldn't bother with a drake though. Normally I would tell you to get a tengu, but now that heavy missiles are getting a 20% dps nerf I would advise going towards a cruise missile golem. For pvp caldari is average, but shield skills can be used for minmatar ships as well.

skills arent very important in pvp, your actual pvp skill is more important. Lots of caldari ships are useful for pvp such as blackbirds, falcons.

Also the HML nerf is only 10%

Shields can also be used on pvp domi... The ammount of mid slots a domi makes it a really great shield tank, and just put damage mods in lows.

PvE it depends on what npc's you're fighting. The nerf to HML's is enough to make the Tengu average. The drop in range alone will take away one of the Tengu's biggest strengths. Golem is nice but a long train.

If you fight in Sansha or Blood raider space I would recommend going Amarr. They have the better damage and resistences against those rats, and for the most part, large scale PvP is armor over shields. Not to mention with average shield skills you can fit an oracle to do 350dps from over 100km. That makes soloing anoms pretty simple.