EVE Alliance Tournament Discussion

There's a reason the only real effective use of armour ships in this tournament were the highest DPS single ships in the game (Vindis and Kronos) And they still lose to ASB Sleipnirs.

It's also uncounterable except with very high dps (generally more than a single ship can provide) other than waiting for charges to run out. This brings ships with ASB close to the status of solopwnmobiles. This is not fixing any problems but creating more of them. When the only counter to ASBs is fitting an ASB yourself or bringing more people then something is wrong.

What CCP should have done is give the players ways to increase their burst tank using cap-dependent modules. I suggested scripts for shield boosters / armor repairers that increase tank by a factor of 2-4 while decreasing cap efficiency. This would achieve similar results as ASBs but in a manner that can be countered and is more fluid. It also wouldn't leave armor out of the equation.

here the thing about asbs that some people here seemed to not have mentioned. On alot of ships they end up taking the place of extenders. So while impractical for an arena 250km in diameter verry high alpha ships can kill asb fit ships simply by doing enough dmg with each volley to burnt through the shields. In the 6 mans esp when looking at asb logis pl tested a couple setups who basic purpose was to 1 or 2 shot the other teams asb logi bc it only had about 10-12k ehp. on tq this isnt so much of an issue. So while yes you can come up with some insane tank numbers with asbs on say a 2 on 2 fight if one side is in say dual asb fit vs an alpha/kite fit. depending on which ships they are, if they are running dual asbs on one side and kiting alpha ships on the other it just a matter of a few shots to kill one of the other sides ships bc each time you shot yes they are at full shield but you take chunks out of the armor/hull. So while it is verry good in small gang stuff, it doesn't scale well. As ive said
the issue is not the asb but the fact that armour even before the asb was **** for active tanking and the ships that had active tanking armour bonuses where seldom used.

Absolutly correct, the new ASB is great you get much more bang for your buck but on the other hand it makes any other sort of active tanking in small/med scale nearly obsolete. Just imagine a nano Tempest, 100MN Tengu etc with x-large ASB, kiting ships control range and won't get that much damage, the ASB extend your EHP to amounts that aren't funny.
Some Numbers:
A Sleipnir has with 1 x-large ASB about 200k EHP using all the 13 booster
A Cane has with 1 x-large ASB about 100k EHP using all the 13 booster
and so on.
The hard counter to that will be a Blob or high Alpha/DPS Tier 3 BC and god i hate those ships already. In fact the Tier 3 BC will be soon a major problem as the only counter to them are the same numbers of Tier 3 BC (or in 0.0 sniper BS with bubbling the Tier 3) or expansive Tech 3 CR which in case your opponent will happily trade vs his cheap Tier 3 BC. Tier 3 vs Tier 3 fights aren't fun fights it's just stupid get range, avoid transversal and hit F1 and even more worrying it's bringing the numbers game to small/med scale.

The only good thing is you can't fit a x-large ASB on a Drake without crippling that ship to much, i can't imagine what EVE would look like if you could.

There is no such thing as a armor passive tank. Passive tank refers only to a shield's natural regeneration. This can be increased with various mods and rigs. The Mrym for example can field a particularly impressive passive shield tank. As armor does not regenerate on its own its nonsensical.

Armor can be a buffer tank (plates, trimarks, resist) or it can be active (armor reps, resist, respective rigs).

Sheild has more options. Any shield tank will have a passive aspect though depending on the set up can be negligible. So a shield can have buffer (extenders, resists, rigs), passive (rechargers, rigs, and that low slot mod whose name escapes me) and active.

So bottom line is that armor repping currently sucks. The worst part about it is that the ships that have an armor rep bonus are all meant to fight close in. So that's in neut range. Further you have to sacrifice an incredible amount of slots to make it work. Your also slow as hell. So you get scrammed, webbed, neuted, can't control range and die. The Mrym is the only viable BC armor repper and has to sacrifice 2 mid slots just to make it work. And with smart pilots you'll stuggle to beat the neut cycle with you cap boosters. Now I can get better performance out of aux shield boosters with far less commitment of slots. Even on the Mrym that is freaking bonused for armor repping! You don't see a problem with this?

So NO having a viable armor repping mod would not dumb the game down. CCP came up with a great mod as its un neutable. Unfortunately they gave it to winmatar because that is what everyone flies.

Nano ships were not overpowered because they were killable. That's your logic right there.

Took me a days thinking about this, but I think you both are quite right on this matter tbh. Personally I like the idea of going out solo, active tanking. In fact, I love it. But I wonder if that repping power isn't too powerful as is. Was just talking to a guy on Skype right now, and he's so excited over getting into the Sleipnir. Myself having seen what it did pre-rig, pre-hp buff days, and sitting with multiple Command Ship 5-characters.. I just feel it's a shadow of its former self today (not to mention my poor old dual-MAR Absolution and Pilgrims). And the main culprit in this I believe is the extra tank power added by rigs and the hp boost.

Perhaps it's about time to reduce hp overboard on all ships.
And the balance between active tanking shield vs armor, should be looked at.

Its not the only counter but the eve populace at large will simply sit and cry about it until somebody shows them how to beat it since they're too lazy to work it out on their own.

Everybody else just puts in testing and practice on the test server until they understand what the mod can and can't do.

The counter is fairly obvious, bring enough DPS to just chew through the tank. That is nothing new and every active setup has the same problem. The major difference between ASB and the old fashioned way is you can be completely neut immune. ASB is limited to small scale and med scale up to 20, the big blob warfare in 0.0 don't have to bother about the ASB.

The major problem with ASB are x-large dual fits on BS, take the Maelstrom as example and watch this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMU2SsF0IZk&feature=youtu.be at the very end. Granted Kovorix is no newb :) and he knows how to fight but you can't take on so many enemies with an old fashioned Maelstrom as the neuts would have killed him rather quick.

Anyway i like the ASB a lot but i don't want to be small and med scale to develop into blob warfare as the hard counter to ASB is the blob. Btw. the ASB is making the Curse and other neut ships useless for small scale fights.

Sure the Curse is often the primary in small scale fights but it has a major role if you face a skirmish gang with say 2 to 4 Scimis. With a dampener Drake+Curse setup you can beat those skirmish logi setup without needing any logis on your own. I don't have to explain to you what happens to the Rapier, Huginn and the odd Loki in such fights, they are dampned/neuted to hell and in case of the Rapier, Huginn primary too. Of course you have to make sure some scimis are dampned too, to beat the RR. After that it's a clean up job, damp and neut the Scimis either forcing them out of the fight or into your own optimal range.

The ASB will make small scale skirmish logi setups history, except the standard Drake+Scimi and so the Curse.