Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Ferox needs damage bonus.

Drake needs universal missile damage bonus.

Myrm should have 125 bandwidth with 4 gun slots and 150 drone bay.
All rep bonuses need to go, changed to resistance, to benefit both repair or ehp. 7.5% repair bonus is almost identical to 5% resistance as far as dual rep goes with identical fits, look at dual rep Prophecy vs dual rep myrm, or abaddon vs hyp. If you really want to change the meta this is an A+ way to do it imo. People might start trying single rep buffer hybrid tanks (GASP), or something else new and exciting. I miss the days of armor brawling solo or in small gangs, but nowadays you just get nano'd. Hell even 5% shield resistances is better and more versatile than 7.5% boost bonus.

Dual Rep Myrmidon vs Dual Rep Prophecy (All skills lvl 5)
2x MAR
2x EANM II
1x DCU II
1x EXP Hardener
2x Medium nanobot
1x Medium Aux

525 DPS tanked with no heat on Prophecy vs 551 DPS tanked on Myrmidon
49K EHP Prophecy vs 41K EHP Myrm

Don't particularly like the looks of these changes. Here are some of my initial thoughts, although as always, I'll preface this by saying its SUPER hard to interpret ship changes from a wall of text stats. If you want us to generate meaningful feedback about your proposed changes, then please create a de-classified version of your internal Pyfa build so that people without autism spectrum disorders can actually play with potential fits and provide useful input.

- I see a lot of "x highslots, x turrets" in there. This makes me sad. Why are you hating so hard on utility highs? IMHO ~*every*~ BC should have at least one free high-- they're supposed to be flexible, workhorse T1 ships. It's one thing to leave specialized ships without utility slots, but T1 stuff should have them.

- If you just got through buffing cruiser speeds, why are you now trying to make most BCs handle worse?

- No more rapid light launcher Drakes? Sad times.

- Won't Cyclone DPS be pretty terrible with only 5 launchers and a 5% bonus? If you want it to "retain flexibility" but still be a viable ship why don't you give it 6 launcher slots at least?

- I don't like the Myrmidon changes. If you're gonna take a high slot then at least give it its 125mbit bandwidth back so it can field a full flight of heavies or sentries.

- Why are you changing the Harbinger at all? It's already the epitome of a what a BC should be-- flexible, capable, and practical without being overpowered.

- Why, in general, are you continuing to push active armor tanking bonuses on the Gallente BCs while making them even harder to shield tank? If you have some drastic change to armor tanking in mind, then it's silly to run BC changes by us before letting us know what they are. If you don't intend to completely rework active armor tanking, then you're simply removing some of the better fitting options for these ships by further committing them to armor tanks that don't work well with close-range weapons.

At the end of the day, ~*why*~ do you guys insist on continually nerfing tier 2 battlecruisers? Basically the pre-change balance was:

- Drake and Hurricane slightly overpowered (fixed already)
- Harbinger almost perfectly balanced
- Myrm slightly underwhelming except for ~*the triple rep fit*~
- Brutix, Ferox generally bad due to fitting requirements and pretty much exclusively used as close-range brawlers
- Cyclone and Prophecy objectively inferior to all other BCs and only ever used as bait (or as ASB gimmick-ships since the intro of ASBs, which notably have not been removed from the game yet)

You've already fixed the two marginally-overpowered BCs, now you're going to shaft what was probably the best-balanced one in the game while nerfing mobility and fitting flexibility for the whole lot and providing extremely marginal improvments to the worst ships? I swear it's like you guys hate fun. You already nerfed the Cane and Drake, why are you nerfing them both again? Why nerf the Harbinger ever? Here's an idea: instead of making all the BCs ****, why don't you bring the awful tier 1 BCs up to the level of their viable counterparts?

I think you need to re-evaluate your approach. Stop pigeon-holing ships. Let Gallente ships continue to choose between armor and shield tanks. Stop stripping away utility highslots. Stop nerfing mobility on already-clumsy ships. Either make all the BCs fun to fly like the Cane, Drake, and Harb are, or just can the whole class. Noone is going to fly BCs if they all perform like slightly-improved Prophecies.

I'm especially peeved that a ship that recently acquired a special place in my heart (the cloaking HAM Drake, which was the one totally awesome outcome of your previous rebalancing) will no longer be a thing. Shame on you, sirs, for destroying something so beautiful and practical.

The Hurricane is not overpowered, what the actual hell is wrong with people?

Good lord Grath sure is mad about very small changes to a good ship.

If you read the dev post a while back about standarizing the number of slots on battlecruisers you would already know that the Drake, Cane and Harb were all going to lose a slot. I feel in all cases the ship lost the slot that has the least impact on the ships viability.

The Harb definitely suffers the least from it's missing slot with the damage increase and still maintaining a utility high.

The Drake almost never used that slot before anyway so again is it really even noticeable.

The Hurricane your gun layout is completely unchanged you now have one utility high instead of two so 99% of the time that means one neut (like everyone else with utility highs) and everything else is unchanged and until now I have not seen anyone else make this point that, yes you lost grid in the last patch, but one of your highs is gone and your base fittings are unchanged from the last patch. Therefore, with that neut gone you just gained ~175 grid as well as some CPU. I find it hard to believe with the Cane already being one of the most mobile BCs a 2% mass increase is going to hurt it that badly. Of all the crying over nerfs I feel this one is by far the most exaggerated.

EDIT: If you would prefer the Cane lost a mid or low or a high and a turret (lolwhut) please explain.

Yes it did!
Drake was good in PVE, you know. It means tractor beam, salvager or a probe launcher for WH ninjas.
Also, considering future off-grid boosting nerf, T1 battlecruisers will be used for boosting in small gangs.

Oh right, EVE has PvE doesn't it, how cute.

Someone who's not an idiot.

Ferox with a 7/5/5 layout and range/damage bonus and Butix with a 7/5/5/ layout and tracking/damage would make for 2 great ships.