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I'll admit most of my fighting happens on gates, in small gangs, so the speed thing has never been an issue, I've never had to close vast distances and I'm very rarely solo.

Personal preference, AC's are good there is no denying that but they aren't for me, I just prefer blasters and gallente ships, and I love using active armour tanking. Though thinking about it, I don't really have a good reason why blasters should be used over AC's.

How to buff blasters to be on par with AC's without making them AC's, while taking into account Gallente's damage bonus AND Caldari's range bonus. Only real option I can think of is giving them a lot higher Alpha.

I'll man up and say that you guys have made some damn good points here, and I'll admit I've jumped into answers without fully considering all aspects beyond my own limited play experience and thinking how I'd personally use them. I'm wrong on some counts, but I still do believe the Rail changes have gone far enough. Blasters on the other hand yes they need a lot more work.

At the end of the day though I don't want to see a power creep with another FotM until something else gets buffed higher.

Ha you have caught me out there. Who doesn't want a bit extra to whatever they are using.

As for feedback, I was providing my insights and view on the current changes, it provoked discussion most of it negative yes, but it has further pointed out weaknesses and flaws, and has presented a clear case on more needing to done.

I'll happily admit you folks have got me thinking, and have pointed out many aspects I'd not considered fully and that my point of view when it came to blasters is flawed, and more importantly that I was wrong.

Now lets put flaming the hell out of me to one side (though I'm sure it's fun)


So what can be done? without making them AC clones. Again only thing I can think of is ramping up the alpha. Unless you wanted to rework all the Caldari/Gallente ship bonuses and take a look at the Minmatar as well.

And I'll maintain that fitting they are now fine, and open up a lot of new options and that ammo never really being a problem expect for the tech two stuff.

Ok, you can't say this:



if you follow it by:



Hybrids were highly competitive in the frig arena before this patch and don't need more boosts. This includes the Gallente, Caldari, as well as the pirate hybrid platforms.

However, as a Caldari hybrid user, I can confirm that for cruiser and above they were mostly limited to the PvE arena. I am not sure whether the current buffs are sufficient to make them a good weapon for existing ships, it will take a lot more than cursory testing to know for sure, maybe they will find a niche role in fleet engagements. At least it looks like the Naga will turn out to be a viable weapons platform.

There have been many interesting (at varying levels of practicality) suggestions in this thread on how to improve the ability of blaster ships to catch up to their targets. I hope that the devs seriously think through some of them and decide if they would be desirable/practical to implement.

Tell you what, you can keep your hope in your left hand... and stick the right out the window and wait for the birds to fill it with droppings and see which one is filled first. I'm betting on the right.

Not really. The boost is not near what it should be. Does not make it worth it at all to use blasters still.

Current fix won't cut it.

Here are my solutions:

The problem stems from the fastest, most agile race ALSO having the best ability to maintain a variety of range and keep DPS on a target.

There are two ways to correct this, and they must be followed closely:
1) Make Gallente the fastest race, with Minmatar being the most agile.
This makes Gallente terrifying when they are sprinting at you, and the Minmatar must use their manueverability to their advantage, while the Gallente ships are sprinting like a bull at a matador.

-or-

2) Make Gallente the falloff race, with a small buff to optimal. Projectiles will have to be retooled to having almost non-existent falloff.
This makes it so the Gallente will remain slower than the Minmatar AND less agile, but their falloff will still hit into the Minmatar ships regardless.
For example: Heavy Neutron Blaster II should hit 6km optimal with 8km falloff. 425mm Auto cannons should have 10km optimal with 1km falloff. This would force them into a very narrow gap to maintain damage on target, but since they are fast and agile, they are better equipped for this purpose.

With Gallente now having the closest range weapons by optimal, they will still be terrifying to get close to, as it should be, with Minmatar remaining the quick, agile race with a specific range they must maintain to be effective, and Amarr remaining the longest overall range.

In addition, these changes would also have to be brought into being, for the sake of tank balance:
Armor Rigs must only affect agility, not both agility AND speed.
Plates must follow these same rules.
Hybrid reload should be 5s, as it is a hybrid between laser and auto-cannons, it should have a mix between 10s and no reload.
Astronautic Rigs should affect shield HP, as no speed tank should have both speed and any form of HP as a "tank," and speed/agility modifiers already take up low slots, compromising armor tanking. It shouldn't be "speed and shield tank" it should be "speed or HP tank"

If the answer to your question is no, aren't you really just saying you believe these changes will not be successful?

I'm not asking for hybrids to dominate the battlefield, but it would be nice if hybrids presented enough usability to compose roughly a quarter of ships from any random pvp engagement. I think you and I can both realistically say it's well below 10%, maybe even below 5%. That's pathetic.

Heh, I'm not trying to make it personal. I think the popularity of canes in skirmish PvP and Sleipnirs in the last alliance tournament speaks for itself. I guess we just have to agree to disagree.

EDIT: Jesus, how could I forget rifters and vagabonds....?

I dont know why people are so pissed. The chages so far, while not the ultimate solution, are pretty damn good.

Clearly they arent looking to chage hybrids roles and/or make them mimic lasers/projectiles. These chages going live are a boost to their current roles. Ill take it - given that he said gallente ship tweaks are next. That is where the big canges will come from - the ship bonuses.

This is the right way to do it. Change guns first, see how they play. Once you have an idea on where the failures are, fix those holes with ship tweaks and bonuses. Doing it any other way will introduce too many variables that cant be evaluated properly.

Said another way -given these changes are slight, it suggests to me that we are going to get some pretty significant ship changes soon.

My predictioms for simple change we might see:

Most gal ships get larger utility space fo an extra flight of drones
Myrm and Eos get boosted bandwidth.
Active tavking cycles will be tweaked. Gallente in general will get some kind of tweak so we use our armor and structure better.
Perhaps the return of thr long web for certain ships.
I also think blaster ships at least should get some kind of overheat bonus for durqation andor module done. That wouls indirectly boost many things:damage, speed, tank, tackle, etc. That is a sship bonus that would be easy to fix,

Regardless, the changes need to ship-specific, and SIMPLE to code. The treatises here are mostly unrealistic because of their length.

Just my opinion.

Hrm, got a link where he said this? I suppose I just saw the agi/spd increases and figured that was it. If this is really true, maybe I should lay off a bit.