EVE General Discussion

The reason for the Vagabonds popularity is simple: It's a good ship. Shield tanked, fast, decent range and enough powergrid and CPU to put a non gimpy fit on it. It works readily as a solo boat, makes a great heavy tackle/dps platform for a gang. Long story short: The vagabond has a "point". It has a role. Many of the others do not.

The weakness of several other platforms has as much to do with their weapons selection as anything else.

Lets talk Spaceships and Roles:

Vagabond: Role, skirmisher, heavy tackle. The vagabonds fitting options, general speed and DPS make it great for this role. It's a success! Medium Autocannons are in a great place in the meta as it now stands, which further boosts the capabilities of this ship, making it not only a great gang boat, but a great solo boat as well.

Munnin: Role, DPS, usually long range. Medium artillery is in a great place in this game. The strength of the munnin as a platform leans almost entirely on it's weapon system. If medium arty was to be nerfed hard in the near future? The munnin would become a trash ship no one uses.

Eagle: Suffers from the fact that medium rails are pretty garbage right now. Boost the rails and this ship will be right up there with the munnin as a long range DPS platform. In fact it would likely be a little bit better due to stiffer tank and better overall tracking on rails.

Cerberus: Suffers from powergrid issues. HML's are not really an option anymore, and a full rack of HAM's + a decent shield tank pretty much fucks up your fitting options. If I was going to do anything to this ship I'd drop the utility high, subtract a mid and add a low + add some PG. It may be worth mentioning that even with a full rack of HAM's + 3 BCS you are just going to be eaking out the same damage that a Vagabond does, are considerably slower and well.... This ship needs help. It could be a lovely ship however. There is potential there for it to be a great medium to large gang hac.

Ishtar: Was honestly in a decent place already. It's a baby dominix. It's a great PVE boat as well. The small buffs it is getting are more than enough to keep it competitive.

Deimos: Slow as hell with blasters. A rail setup could be interesting if medium rails weren't garbage.

Sacrilege: Drop a mid for a low and I'll fall in love with this ship. Tia.
Zealot: The best medium gang ahac in the game. I'm not even going to justify anything by typing it up.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Rifter is still the most popular frigate.
That must reflect the rifter performance right ?
Not the fact that is an iconic ship used in logos in hundreds of sites for the past 10 years (and in the ccp usb hub).

Popularity of a hull is only one metric of many that CCP looks at for balancing. It's a handy tool for red flagging certain ships for a closer look, but they can also determine what types of activity that those ships are used in to generate those numbers.

This whole thread is based on part of one sentence taken out of context.... and is a complete waste of time.

Well done.

Say what?

It is/was not. Domis were not putting up anything near ye old Drake extreme numbers on Tranquility, and not even for one month let alone multiple years. But, the timing definitely catered to the whines of a portion of the eve populace that started fuming over heavy Domi use in the friggin AT.

Meanwhile, to the OP, Draek tears are the best tears. The Drake is not now a bad ship. It's just not what it used to be, and so many expected it to stay. May it rot in perceived underpoweredness for another 3 years to balance out its overuse for all those years. Ironically, it and the Tengu were used heavily for multiple ATs but it did not get the warp speed nerf the Domi just got. Shame on CCP.

And as for your popularity does not equal power advantage argument, you're wrong. While popularity numbers may not line up perfectly with power valuations, to suggest that popularity is divergent from relative power of a ship is to postulate that collectively the eve player base doesn't make rational decisions. Notwithstanding occasional derps and comedy fittings, collectively, we are able to evaluate the relative merits of ships and gravitate toward using those that are best.

This happened with the Drake (for years). It wasn't being used so heavily because it was winning a beauty contest. That so many were so butthurt when it got trimmed further demonstrates that they got used to the cheap and easy button it was. People do not fly ships in large numbers if it sucks. People do fly ships in large numbers if has advantages over other alternative ships.

Thankfully atm we are not seeing any ship putting up the numbers of the former Drake. This leads me to believe that the balancing team is doing a decent job, even while I criticize their decisions often. However, with the upcoming HAC changes we may see huge Cerb numbers. All those Drake skilled pilots and the range mobility advantages the new Cerb will have will produce this. I still hold out hope it will get some trimming before hitting the game. But if it doesn't, and it indeed starts posting old Drake numbers in-game, I have more confidence in the new balancing team that the situation won't last for more than a couple months. Afterall, they dinged the Domi for one stinking AT.

You ignore the fact that it was lol Drake in the beginning because noobs kept bringing their pve regen purger Draeks, that tanked whole pve rooms, to pvp battles and expected them to perform the same way, and be appreciated for their anemic dps while they should never die. You also ignore the many changes in the game that shifted the power/value considerations toward Drakes.

When folks started realizing the power of the resist bonus married to logis, the ability to perma mwd it, the 70km sweet spot in range once probing killed off the sniper BSs, the introduction of rig sizing, etc., basically all the other changes in the game that took place over time, they realized Drakes were a very good value. So they started flying them in huge numbers. And, firewalling is a large fleet only, imperfect solution, to a game with no working dedicated anti missile ewar. But that's another issue.

What I was getting at was that people went after the hull, not the mechanics.

The Drake was the same as before. In itself, it was never overpowered or in need of a nerf.

CCP can balance the stats around 1v1 / small scale, but they need to leave the hulls alone when it comes to the larger 0.0 doctrines. Once we got to the point were buffer was pretty much dead 'cause you'd be alphaed through anyway, we started seeing damps etc.

Quoting for shame. Son, I am disappoint.

http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

Rifter's not even in the top 20 mate.

Where does your Data come from? Lets look at it (I'm curious as to how you can be so wrong, but think you're so right).

A failure to read is not a failure at all in General Discussion