EVE General Discussion

Anyone done any testing to see if we should be altering light drones based on mission resists now?
ie is the default hobs for pve and warriors for pvp no longer true?
will the caldari and amarr drones see actual use?

I ran the numbers on most drones yesterday.

Here's how I see it shaking out.

Warriors are still the fastest light drone (5km/s MWD), and have the best tracking. However, they also have the lowest dps now.

Acolytes are slightly slower, and do slightly more dps (than warriors). However, they have a slightly longer range. To be honest, because they do EM damage and are reasonably fast, I think they're going to become the new PvP "standard".

Hornets are slower still, and do a bit more dps than acolytes, and have similar range. For missions against rats with kinetic weaknesses, these would probably be better than hobgoblins.

Hobgoblins still have the highest raw dps, but they are also the slowest light drone at just over 3km/s.

The real problem I see with light drones still is their "orbit speed" which is still under 1km/s for all of them. Light drones still will not be able to keep up (and continue firing) at a target moving faster than 1km/s, which is just about any frig or cruiser (or many BCs for that matter) with their MWD running. I haven't seen how effective the amarr/caldari drones are from hitting at longer ranges, or how this affects damage being applied to fast targets. My hopes in this regard have been tempered by 8 years of :ccp:

I did not run the numbers on the mediums and heavies, but other than the damage going up and the speed/tracking going down, there probably won't be much difference.

I did check out sentries a bit, and I have to say I'm pretty excited about how much better Curators seem to be. Sentries shake out totally different than other drones, because of the range bonuses. Wardens still have the best range, followed by bouncers, curators and grades. There seems to be two distinct groups of sentries: wardens/bouncers for long range and curators/gardes for shorter ranges. Curators still don't do garde dps, but their actual applied damage in PvP may be more due to the EM hole that lots of PvP ships have.

For PvP, we'll have to see how things develop. I don't think the prominence of minmatar/gallente drones will disappear entirely (at least not for a while), but other drone types can definitely compete now.

+1 thanks for the info Silvetica
ed. Shad0wsFury - but Silvetica asked :P