Ships & Modules

Im confused... where did Battleship come into that comparison? Unless you are trying to show the ship that CAN tank more than 2 BC's?

Currently I am not aware of any armor tanking ships, active or not, that can hold off 2 BC's for 5 minutes, and be completely immune to Neuts at the same time. Hell, for all of the complaining in the past about Drakes being a pain to kill, now you have even more tank on some of these ships.

ASB's are a great concept, but they need tweaking, both in number and size equip able on ships. It's the combination of things on ASB that make them OP, not just the fact that its a clicky shield heal.

My Harby, Prophecy (yeah, im Amarr primary, Caldari secondary atm), and Zealot have all become next to useless against any BC ship out there with ASB's, as they can simply outlast me (depending on what I am up against, I can sometimes offer a decent active tank in the Zealot as long as no neuts reach me)
So now in order to have any fighting in that class of ship I must go to ASB's to hope to compete? Or bring friends while they can run solo?

Eh, I stand by it. More tweaking needs to be done. ;)

Its not a couple of minutes, its 54 seconds if I recall. And 7 BCs x ~500dps = 3500dps. That will alpha an ASB.

EDIT. ASBs are bad for small gatecamps if you are the attacker. They are great small gatecampees if you are being attacked. They help soloers and small gangs. I am glad they are here.

Though as I said in the part of my post that you didnt quote, multiple ASBs need to be looked at. And it IS unbalanced until they add an armor module like it.

It gives active tanking a place in situations where there are more than 2 enemy ships. That was needed.

A reasonable top end for a non-faction fit ASB Cyclone is ~5200 DPS tanked per ASB. My personal Cyclone tanks about 4200.

-Liang

Ed: And no, you aren't getting volleyed there. You might remember the discussion from a couple of weeks ago about a 100k DPS Loki that should have capped out around 25k DPS tanked.

Post that fit up. Id love to see it. If you want get them nerfed, spreading that fit around will do it.

But it sounds like to me that you are making an argument to nerf off-grid boosting though. At least that is my interpretation.

I dont have a problem with links. I just have a problem with offgrid links. They can be powerful if they are at risk. Right now they are not at risk.

I havent PvEd in years, I dont think, but I wouldnt use an ASB for pve because you simply dont need it, and the cap boosters take up cargo space. Sure, you could, but why?

But yeah - other boosters/reps are pretty useless now. Its why armor needs a similar-ish module.

Active tank revival is a good thing. They need to tweak it, but I am glad for the new options. Its been a while since we had a paradigm shift.

Welcome.

Permatanking (until you run out of cap boosters) even a single ganky ship of the same shipclass without downsides in some respect (like, capacitor for the old XL-SB Cyclone and slowness and capacitor of the old tri-rep Myrmidon) is just detrimental for PVP and balance in general. Of course, it is fun to use and abuse it vs people who take longer to adapt - but in a year it will be ASB this and ASB that.

Being able to tank a ship or two ships is nice, until it comes to that that they can also tank you until they run out of boosters. The solution is, of course, bring more people, and I dislike that solution.

As for active tank revival: I'm all for it. But an active tank does not need to even tank a single ganky ship of the same class for it to be "useful" or desirable on some ships and fits. The biggest grief with an active tank isn't the amount tanked - I don't think being able to sit there and completely tank the damage output of another ship in it's optimal is good for game balance - it is the difficulty of fitting an active tank in the first place. The slot, fitting and in some cases capacitor requirements are too large.

However, an active tank needs to have advantages and disadvantages. It needs to be killable in some realistic way. For instance, take the old XL-ASB Cyclone.

You could kill it if you kite for long enough (or neut it hard enough), because the ship, while being able to tank a lot and generally win up close vs a lot of ships, couldn't both MWD and tank for extended periods. I killed one with an artycane that way, a ship which should in theory lose. However, if he had tackled any BC right away, it would probably be a win for the Cyclone. That is good balance, in my view.

Agreed. In the old days of 3% bonus on CS (which are clumsier and more specialized then T3s), and T1 links - the bonuses were still very, very significant and worth having. On top of introducing T3s which are far handier boosters then CS (or BCs), the boost amount was increased by 33% accounting from 3% to 5% and T2 links.

As a result, it's both easier to use links and they are more powerful, when no boost, especially no boost to link effectiveness was really needed.

Regardless... let's keep this about ASB.



Agreed. It is always bad for balance when the amount of choices, be it viable ships or viable fittings, or viable gang compositions goes down. It is doubly alarming when ships start to be fit contrary to their ship bonuses as a norm, such as active armour tank bonused ships fitting an active shield tank (or even passive shield tank).

Fits should have more counters then "bring more people or the same fit".

This is not even mentioning how detrimental being able to fully tank even one ship of the same shipclass, much less a gang, without any counters available is for PVP in general. Which is why any future tank boosts should not go towards boosting the amount tanked by some crazy amount. There are other parameters of tanked ships you can boost to make them more attractive to use.

Just remove ASB, solved.

It didn't improve the game in any, simply skewed the tank balance to favour shields even more, which was exactly the opposite of what was needed.

Your fit is bad. With Standard Blue Pill you can squeeze 5k+ per ASB, not both ASBs heated.

-Liang

Ed: And either way, CCP just made a dev post saying ASBs are too string. /shrug

Just to be clear again - I think multiple ASB fits need tweaking, but I really like the new mechanic.

I do want to point some things out though. Branko you make some good points, but I want to compare them to the current "buffer" paradigm.



You mean like buffer? Because right now buffer is the "more of the same fit." Buffer Drakes and Canes etc (the cruiser class too) have ruled small gang for too long now. And people have been flying Shield buffer Hypes, Shield buffer Myrms, and Shield buffer Brutix for years. The fact that people are fitting ASBs to Myrms and Brutix is not a testament to the overpoweredness of ASBs, it is a testament to the shittyness of active armor tanking in general. ASBs actually give you MORE options and MORE diverse gangs. Here are some typical "counter hull bonus" buffer fits that you see around now:

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13441529

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=12107168

And to be fair, ill link battleships with buffer and "combo" tanks that you see on some "Kil2 Solo Fits." (which it turns I was flying too):

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=13455583 (2 separate fights where enemies brought 2 battleships each time to our home system and got blobbed). ASB would not have saved any of the ships here - with the possible exception of making the DNI last a bit longer if it was dual XL fit.



This is simply not the case in every situation. They are not always a trump card. All you have to do is survive to the reload and then they die. Even if your dps is anemic (like my awesome-sauce 51 dps with faction iridium Atron vs MASB atron):

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14380830

ASB fits, especially dual ASB fits, usually dont have secondary tanking mods. They NEVER have secondary cap mods. The Cyclone fit that Liang posted earlier is all well and good, but once a single neut turns off its two Invulns, its hosed. Neuts still work. They just arent all-powerful. Even without neuts, its cap only lasts 2 mins. Then it dies. Even a "normal" repper/booster fit should win 1 v 1 against an ASB fit because ASB dps is generally gimped it it fits an oversized booster (Liang's does ~451 dps - my dual rep thorax with standard exile can tank that). Now, you might have an issue with multiple ASB fits, but as I said - those might need tweaking.

But ASB is not all powerful in all situations and it cant always tank gangs of 6-7 BCs. As I was typing in this thread last night and not paying attention, I derped into a gate camp in my (allegedly) all-powerful ASB Brutix. The result? Webbed, scrammed, neuted, alphaed because I had no buffer and my invuln was off. To be fair, I might have made it back to the gate if I had turned on my MWD before I was scrammed instead of just overheating it and not turning it on (dont play when you are tired and arguing or the forums kids )

http://eve-kill.net/?a=kill_detail&kll_id=14399984

Are ASBs powerful? Yes. Was active tanking before them lackluster and/or limited? Yes. The ASB revives it. But they arent all-powerful. People will have to adapt. It will actually be "less of the same" buffer buffer buffer setups and we will see a different dynamic in small gangs. Thank the stars. I really hope this is the start of a paradigm shift for small gangs.

Now if they would just give us a good armor module that is similar.

IMHO, of course.

EDIT: Turns out, I agree with CCP Fozzie. ;)