Player Features and Ideas Discussion

A proposal for Energy Weapon Crystal changes.

TLDR: Change up the ratios of EM and Thermal damage in the T1 Crystals, break them up into 4 range brackets. Make damage to the crystals including T1 happen faster and adjust build costs to compensate. Also increase the time it takes to switch ammo on energy weapons. Remove the Tracking Penalty on Conflagration but increase its cap use.


Multifrequecy 60-80% EM 20-40% Thermal, -50% range

Gamma 20-40% EM / 60-80% Thermal, -50% range

Ultraviolet 60-80% EM 20-40% Thermal, -20% range, -30% activation

Xray 20-40% EM / 60-80% Thermal, -20% range, -30% activation

Standard 60-80% EM 20-40% Thermal, +20% range, -35% activation, (come up with a different name)

Infrared 20-40% EM / 60-80% Thermal, +20% range, -35% activation

Microwave 60-80% EM 20-40% Thermal, +50% range, -15% activation

Radio 20-40% EM / 60-80% Thermal, +50% range, -15% activation

Damage on the longer ranges ones need to be adjusted up to create meaningful choices when compared with Scorch and Aurora especially for the faction versions of the crystals.

Conflagration suffers from a tracking penalty on a weapons system that doesn't have great tracking anyway, on ships that have inherent poor range control due to both low speed and limited number of mid slots. I would suggest removing the tracking penalty and increasing the activation penalty in light of above changes.

If these changes seem to powerful, I would suggest having crystal damage happen faster, including on T1 crystals, with adjustments to build costs to compensate for actual usage of ammo. And or having the time it takes to change crystals be increased from 1 second to some where in the 2-5 second range. So you can't instantly switch damage types.

Honestly, Aurora crystal damage is rather sad when compared to the faction longer range crystals, though I will beat anyone who touches my Gleam crystals to a bloody pulp!

1st how the hell did you get 15000 likes?

2nd. I think they could both use a slight 5-10% damage buff but overall make sense as is. If the were under preforming in the meta then maybe a good damage boost for a cap use penalty?

80-99% Thermal looks much cooler since EM is the worst possible choice to use in PvE and PvP.

Gimme my Lux crystals!

EM is not the worst damage in PvE or PvP, if flying missions for the Amarr and fighting Sansha and Blood Raiders most of the time its pretty good.

In PvP EM is a great option for shooting T1 Shield tankers, though it does have issues with T2 Minmatar. The bigger problem in PvP is that if your enemy knows your using lasers then they can easily tank against you. Where Minmatar, Caldari, and Gallente have traditionally been much more flexible on what type of damage they apply depending on who they are shooting. And really 80-90% of the time you know who you are shooting before enter combat, definitely long enough in advance to change ammo.

As for lux crystals and such. I would be very happy if they introduced out of racial line damage types to all the guns, and also came up with a couple new interesting options for missiles.

However I think the bigger need is more variation in the T1 crystal line up so people will want to use them more in PvP. Currently they are only really useful in PvE where your mobility and your enemies mobility are in set patterns and swapping for the crystal with the right range is helpful.

In PvP either your enemy or you can dictate range. With Amarr most of the time its the enemy who is dictating range. If they are far your using Scorch, if there close your using IMF unless you can then control their traversal and you know they are weaker against Thermal, then you use conflag. This covers most of Amarr PvP... there are other options with AB, beams, and armor hacs, t3s but those are very specific doctrines and not most of Amarr PvP, and they would also benefit from the above suggested changes.

T1 Crystals are absolutely fine, no need to change them.

The description doesn't quite match the posted statistics for those crystals.
After reading the description, I was actually expecting a beam laser crystal that would reduce ROF and thus grant you a higher alpha, which sounded awesome to me.
But explosive damage on lasers? No, thanks.

I wish this was true. In theory, drones have this purpose, but the truth is most of them suck for pvp.

I think this is more true now that it was at one time. However the Thermal Kinetic of Blasters and Rails is much more favorable damage profile than some or all EM.

CCP keeps talking about doing a drone rebalance. They however have not talked about a Crystal rebalance.

It is the worst.

Here is just real examples:
If I fly in any space I use Mach/Minmatar ship and have 0 problems. I choose the damage I need and rock the juice.
If I fly Blaster ship I also have 0 problems because Kin/Thermal is a very good combo since rats never have high resists against them. Angels have Kin as the 2nd lowest resist, and 3rd is a Therm. Guristas have Kin and Thermal as the lowest, Serpentis, Mercs, Drones are the same - their lowest are Kin/Therm. So choosing Hybrids is a win - win combo.
If I fly Caldari ship I just choose the damage I need like on Minmatar ships.

All of those races have 0 problems in any space.

Now Amarr.
If I fly Laser ship I have problems with Angels, their highest resist is EM, then Therm; with Guristas - they have extremely high EM resist; Serpentis' have EM as 2nd highest resist, and 3rd is Therm.
This leaves only BR and Sansha as a viable target with low EM/Therm resists.

Basically you can't use Amarr ship in any space except their own, while any other race know nothing about those problems.

Moreover, in Amarr space you often get missions with Guristas. As I said before Guristas have the highest EM resist, you loose around 65% of damage against them.
So even within their space you have problems.

So please tell me, how EM is not the worst damage type?