Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I have been looking for effective HAC counters to the deimos on Sisi.

First of all, let me be open about this. I prefer the get-in-close-and-blast-away style of fighting so I am happy to finally see a local rep a ship that can get a point and hold it like a terrier.

I am also concerned about game balance.

So I fitted up 2 zealots and tried them in turn against a willing sport on Sisi. He was in a DR deimos.

Note that a zealot in my view is a fleet ship, having no rep bonus etc. Not ideal for the role, but I wanted to see...

Here are the results:
brawl fit: single rep + AB + 2 heat sinks + resists (active thermal).
zealot lost, but not my much - deimos was in 2/3 structure. I had to blap his ec-600 drones quickly in order to keep a scram on him and dictate range. At 8.5km the zealot was in optimal for conflagration. the deimos's damage was very reduced.

Kite fit: single rep, 2 polycarbons, MWD and warp distruptor gave the zealot a 3 m/s base speed advantage over the deimos.
In the end the zealot lost, probably more because I'm not an expert at maintaining range. Again, deimos was in structure. Even when he got me scrammed, I lasted quite a long time and caused him some pain.

In both cases, the zealot was pushing EM damage into what I assumed was his weakest resist.

Given that the deimos is designed for the job of brawling, it didn't easily overwhelm the zealot. I think it won fairly, as it should. But by no means by a wide margin.

I think the deimos is a powerful, strong ship able to hold a point for a long timem but I don't think it's OP.

/MC

I have just tried the cerberus with HMLs. It's pretty good!. 300 dps (with my rubbish missile skills) at 100km+ is pretty nice, and it's quick enough to stay out of range.

A few of these hurling pain into a brawl could work well.

I also think it's a very effective counter to falcons.

Sweet ship.

I was thinking ant-falcon since with a falcon all you really want to do is force it off the field while you kill it's DPS friends. It doesn't really matter whether the missile land or not. If he seems them coming he's going to bounce or lose a ship.

Hmm, hadn't thought of HAMs at 40km.. (!!)

Re the nerf, maybe, but before that a brawling ship couldn't get in range of a missile ship and railguns etc had no role at all.

But what CCP takes away with one hand, it gives with the other. Cruise missiles are amazing when coupled with a target painter or 2. As mentioned before, I lost a fleet-boosted dual rep deimos to 2 cruise ravens. I got to them from 100km, but by the time I was there I was in low armour and the next 2 volleys destroyed the ship.

No neuts, just applied cruise missile dps.

Anyone have any comments about the Sacrilege changes? Most of the recent discussion seems to be about the Deimos, Vagabond and Eagle.

Exactly. Every other T2 ship has something that it does par excelence. When T2 roles rely on being better at number than T1 and nothing else they fall by the wayside. Look at the Taranis After the Atron buff - sure, it was ever so slightly better at everything, but you don't run a Taranis in a fleet most of the time, you use it solo. Soloers die a lot, so telling them they can spend 3x more to get a tiny increase in numbers wasn't enough. people started flying the T1.

Hell, AFs are even the fast heavy tackle kings whule being T1+numbers. What about HACs will make them compelling to fly in a landscape like was talked up at FF 2013? What is their specialization? So far we're seeing that they play better with logistics (which need to be looked at) and don't get put in time-out as often by ECM (which is an un-fun mechanic that needs to be gutted and overhauled).

Why am I going to shell out T2 premiums outside of an SRP to fly these? Sure, I can do some really sick stuff with a Deimos, but I could do slightly less insane things with 6 thoraxes and have enough ISK left over for a Rifter.

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Off-topic: Rigs. Is there a rebalance coming for rigs? The current meta at cruiser and up of "patch resists/trimark/CDFE" with the occasional PG/CPU rig is really unhealthy. Are there any plans to make trimarks/CDFEs not the obvious default choice on a ship?

Wasn't the Sacrilege already capable of this though? It has worse cap recharge than before and the range bonus vs blaster Deimos ships does nothing for it. The only thing I've noticed with the pg increase is that you can fit medium nos/neut rather than small. It's tank is also worse than before thanks to the global resist bonus nerf.

Someone was asking about the sacrilege?

I tried one with dual rep, 1 ballistic, 5 heavy assaults and 1 heavy pulse, web and scram.

It's epic :-)

Killed an ishtar then evaded a vaga + deimos because I had to go out to dinner.

nice ship.

Because we all fly with a $15/month alt in skirmish links. Like i said earlier, not everyone can/is willing to pay for a booster alt, so arguing "this ship is so great, you only have to spend 1.5b on a ship for your alt and its implants!" is invalid.

Its invalid on a frig, someone who has the isk to go out soloing in a hac either is daft or has a link alts (or is super rich, i.e can easily afford a link alt).

Hacs will be flown with link 90% and more of the time they are used.

Regardless of whether or not this is true now, it is CCP's stated goal that links will be brought on grid. I certainly don't see links being used on HACs 90+% of the time once that is true, so it's perfectly reasonable to evaluate them without links.