Player Features and Ideas Discussion

My campaign for the fair rebalancing of minmatar ships continues. (my last thread can be found here.)

This time it's time for the hurricane. As I did with the rifter I'll give you some backstory on the issue.

Hurricane was my first battlecruiser. It was hugely popular for a long time, mainly because it was the cheapest and most isk efficient nano ship. This was back in the days when 1300 m/s was considered fast for a nano battlecruiser. It could field decent enough dps to be able to deal with alot of ships in the same class while having unmatched anti-frigate capabilities making it very hard to pin down because of the dual medium neuts. However, just like most popular ships, it created a kind of hype. People everywhere in the pvp community seemed to think the hurricane could beat anything because it was the best battlecruiser. I used to be one of them. After a year of flying hurricanes, I honestly thought they sucked. Why? Let's look at the other battlecruisers.

Nano cane was slow and didn't survive as well as my favourite ship, the nano stabber fleet issue. A myrmidon would just permatank it and laugh, a good drake pilot could kill any cane, armor harb with a cap booster was impossible to engage because it just tore your shield tank apart before you could do anything to its capacitor(scorch OP amarr victor). You could kill a cyclone in a nanocane and probably the prophecy too, these two were generally considered the worst of the t1 battlecruisers until a couple of months before they were rebalanced when stuff like ASB cyclones and blaster prophecys became popular. Brutix was fairly even with the cane, it all depended on piloting since generally the cane would be able to kite the brutix but the brutix would win in a brawl. AC ferox could actually make a pretty nasty opponent for a nanocane(before hybrid buff, post hybrid buff blaster ferox with null would rip a nanocane apart).

Armor cane was just all around crap. It couldn't hold itself in a brawl against any of the battlecruisers except perhaps the ferox. The HAM drake just straight up outganked and outtanked it. The old dualrep brutix could tank it long enough for its blasters to tear through the armor buffer. The myrmidon could just permatank it all day(medium neuts didnt really help because in order to fit them you had to downgrade your guns decreasing incoming dps on the myrm). Harbinger would make a good opponent but they were very underused. Mentioned blaster prophecy could kill an armor cane anyday. ASB cyclone just laughed at the armor cane.

So therefore I thought the hurricane was simply a bad ship. And this was BEFORE the rebalance.

If we look at it today there's just no dam reason to use the cane at all. It is slow, has a weak tank, subpar dps even though it has a double damage bonus and one of the utility highs have been removed and the other one pretty much rendered useless with the powergrid nerf. It's got selectable damage types, which puts it's dps on par with that of the harbinger. But so does the drake and myrmidon and those ships get more dps than the cane. Note that I haven't even tried to compare the cane to the ABCs because it's pointless.

In todays meta the only battlecruisers that the hurricane can compete against are the harbinger and brutix. In small scale pvp both these ships are debatably better all around than the cane since the cane has had alot of it's former versatility stripped and in fleets the cane is now completely obsolete.

TLDR
I'm tired of good minmatar ships that used to be viable getting nerfed into the dirt to later see their counterparts rise into the skies. Just look at the freaking myrmidon. It used to be good but a little underused, now CCP fozzie is buffing armor reps making a dualrep + AAR myrmidon with exile pill land at around 12-1300 dps tank post buff while putting out 600 dps. CCP have been saying all along that they think t1 battlecruisers are too good. Well 2 years ago the stats on the myrm would've belonged on a battleship (actually look at the dualrep tempest, it has similar stats as a myrm just more utility).

As a solution I'm therefore not going to suggest to buff the hurricane. I'm going to suggest nerfing all the other battlecruisers down to it's level. This wall of text became alot longer than I expected.

EDIT: I just want everyone to understand that I don't want the cane to be OP again, I just want it to be competetive with the other battlecruisers. Something that I think it currently is not.

The changes to the cane brought it moreless in line with the other BC's. It is not king-of-the-hill anymore, but the old cane and old drake were simply overpowered compared to cruiser and BC hulls.

I understand your disappointment that CCP is changing the meta by rebalancing the ships, and it means the old "favorites": Drake, Cane, Rifter, etc, are no longer the strongest ships of the moment. In one year, in two years, etc... CCP will continue to change the game and new FOTM's will arise.

And reminiscing about how the cane used to perform is completely IRRELEVANT. Focus on how the cane performs now in relation to its peer BC's. I'm under the impression it performs just fine!

What large engagement envelope would you be talking about for the hurricane? It cannot compete with any of the more common HACs, I can see a cane beating the eagle, cerb and muninn aswell as being on par with the deimos at least until 1.1, but these hulls are as underused as the hurricane itself. What other t2 hulls could you possibly put the cane against where the selectable damage type would give it a big advantage over the other battlecruisers (preferably big enough to actually win the fight)?

Drake with HML's and 3 BCU's has actually less DPS applied and on paper than a Cerberus with RLML. NERF CERBERUS OR BUFF DRAEKS!

I'd like to know what you'd be planning to fight in that ship and how you think it would go.

lol, you'll have more worries than just resistances when it comes to damage application onto AFs. Especially with the subpar tracking of autocannons.

I'm more disappointed in Hurricane Fleet Issue as it offers nothing new over normal Hurricane compared to Navy BCs of other races that have completely new bonuses/roles.
Cane FI offers plain 50% more hp (note they nerfed shield hp regen rate, so its passive tank is worse than on normal Cane) and an additional utility high slot and nothing more while Navy Drake has +high +2 launchers, Harbinger navy got +med and Brutix navy got +low in addition to their buffer buff. And IMO med and low slots are much more valuable than utility high. They could've added at least additional turret hardpoint...

But CCP chose the easy and lazy path.

The Drake and Hurricane deserved the changes they ended up receiving because they were literally the only two battlecruisers ever used in PvP. Please acknowledge that a balanced game should not penalize someone because they didn't 'start winmatar', and force them to crosstrain into another faction to be effective at all in any role whatsoever in PvP.

This is the exact same thing you're talking about with the Rifter- I can agree that it's not good to have things get overnerfed (Look at HMLs, for example- they are more or less completely dead, and if not, probably will be once the long range turret changes are implemented), or for that matter outright ignored when rebalancing sweeps go around, and that they should at least be on par with the things that are changed.

You spent a great deal of time in your OP defending it. It was positively broken prior to the rebalance and you were disputing that. That means that you simply didn't appreciate what its strengths were, which means you aren't going to appreciate what its strengths are now (because they're the same, just toned down)




no it isn't. Laser tracking is way worse than auto tracking, and auto tracking is only just worse than blaster tracking. Furthermore, blasters have to wait until the target is up close to do damage whereas autos can deal heavy damage to smaller targets on the approach.

Missiles will not do any appreciable damage to an ABing AF. Funny that you should mention an AB/web/scram/nos AF - The high tracking speed and high range of autocannons means that a hurricane can damage said AF before it gets in range (unlike, say, poorly-tracking lasers or short-range blasters).

...In fact, it bears asking how the hell an ABing assault frigate even got in scram range of a hurricane.

ABCs have no drones (save Talos, which has a single set of lights), very poor tank, and large guns (= no ability to apply damage against smaller and/or faster things).

Armor cane isn't as fast as nanocane, but it's certainly way faster than a prophecy or harby, in addition to its plentiful midslots. Brutix has no damage projection to speak of and isn't altogether that fast. Myrm has all the weaknesses it ever did.

You're arguing that the Cane has no role, but it clearly does. It's fast, versatile, and does a lot of damage.