Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I get what you're trying to say, and I know you "think" you are right, but the fact is the Cruor is not now, and would not be a worse Daredevil. The Daredevil is an extremely powerful ship, but the Cruor is one of only a few ships that can reliably give it a run for its money in a straight brawl. Sure there's not a lot of "unique" difference between the two ships, other than the fact that the Cruor also uses neuts, and doesn't do nearly as much damage, but why is that so terrible? The Nos bonus proposed is fine by me, and that alone gives it something unique, but...

That can't be stressed enough. Needing to fit two webs, in combination with the serious lack of slots on the Cruor will mean the ship never gets used. Please try to argue why two webs won't be necessary - I'll stop you now and point out that pretty well all of the strongest PVP frigates/fits at the moment are either sporting dual webs, or the aforementioned 90% web.

Web range bonus will be awesome on the Ashimmu and Bhaalgorn. But the Cruor is essentially dead. All the Cruor really needed was a speed and agility boost and a slight buff to damage. This change makes zero sense to me and I'm curious what the thought process behind it was.

The way I see it if the Cruor is brawl fit it can't (or rather it shouldn't) use its extended web range as that would simply help its target escape as the web range is longer than the scram range. Once it scrams it's target it's not really more effective than any other laser brawler, especially if they aren't active tanked, have their own nos, have a cap booster or have non-cap reliant DPS (rockets/drones/autocannons)... then there's always the option to not get within the nos/neut range since 1 unbonused web isn't really going to dictate range. It's also not that tanky so there's also the option to just blap it with high DPS before its nos starts to have any real impact.

If it's range fit... why aren't you in a Hyena?

Anyway, my Cruor will be collecting dust but I'll be looking forward to finally flying the Ashimmu assuming it gets the web range bonus.

I've been thinking the same thing about thought process. I'm not super familiar with Rise background but seem to remember he was a pvper. I want to understand how the Cruor changes came about. I'm hoping major changes like these are actually discussed from a pvp perspective and not just a lore/consistency one.

Indeed speed control is extremely strong, that's why we had a winmatar theme before the rebalance, and why midslot heavy frigates are so powerful in the meta. Yet the Comet have none of that and is widely regarded as one of the best pvp frigate. You can't make all ships with 4 mid slots or 90% web bonus just because everyone want to use its toy for brawling, and that's even not necessary, because 3 midslots are largely *enough*. Your target can't kill you by fleeing, and the nos assure the Cruor a strong position for anything too close.

In fact, this debate remind me the time when people asked their blaster ships to be the fastest because they wouldn't catch anything otherwise. That's a nonsense. Everyone complain its ships aren't fast enough or don't have enough mid slots. People just never have enough of these.

Speed and speed controle is extremely powerful in the game and very hard to balance, yet a bit overrated ; and you can't make all the ships have the same speed, that would be boring. Of course, the lack of speed controle put you in a more passive place where you can't always kill the target if she doesn't want to fight. But most of the time, when she decides to flee its too late.

Giving speed controle to any ship will turn it into a brawling monster, until all ships have speed controle and that means nothing anymore. This is not the solution.

And the magic nos have a lot of potential to make this frigate OP, so I understand the removal of the almost OP web. Also, keep in mind that anything caught too close will quickly be unable to run its prop mod.

WHAT? now your really high. brawling in scram range is ALLLLLL the ashimmu does right now. it is to SLOW to do ANYTHING else. i cant beleive you are arguing for the amazing 160 dps the ashimmu can put out. when most other cruisers these days are pushing 400, nay 600 dps these days. the ashimmu does not do damage. the ashimmu does not kite. the ashimmu gets a target. latches on a like a tick ONLY because it has 90% webs. and nuets the crap out of it. IN NO OTHER CIRCUMSTANCE IS THE ASHIMMU EVER USED. with the exception of baiting a fight so people can kill a 140mil mini legion.

what ccp and you are suggest is the that the ashimmu will be cursed just like the cruor in having to sacrifice 2 mids for webing power to hold down ONE target. and many people are going to argue that "you dont need your cap injector anymore you have a nos bro!" really? what is the 12gj's of cap stealing gonna do for your cap heavy ship? NOTHING.

First off, I am coming from a "I usually fly solo (usually without links, sometimes with...but don't want to depend upon them) in low sec looking for a decent fight" perspective...I will try to gank unwary fw people but generally far more entertained by someone who shoots back.

What has made the t1 frigates worthwhile since the rebalancing is that you can fit them properly...you still have reasonable constraints on pg/cpu but allows for the flexibility for various good fits / theories. The faction frigs seem to suffer from the design philosophy "oh god, these will be op" so seem to have a fitting gimp factor built into them. IMO the faction frigs should be head and shoulders above the t1's - you should be able to fit a brawler top to bottom in t2 modules, for example. Pimp should be just that...you want to augment a specific characteristic...not something you need just to be competitive (faction AB's on a cruor or succubus just to catch up with people for example). Pirate faction frigs should be like very high end cars...very expensive with tangible benefits.

So, quite frankly I did not wade through 79 pages of replies to this post but have been pondering the faction frigs and why I fly them (or not) and this is my 2 isks worth:

Across the board:

Make the rig calibration 400 (and drop the req. calibration on damage rigs by 50 so everyone can buff damage if they desire on any frigate).

Buff the armor / shield resists slightly (particularly Succubus and Cruor)...I hear the argument that these are t1 frigs...true, but they require 2x the sp to fly the hull properly. Make them slightly better than the t1 but under t2. Combined with the rigs they should be as tanky and competitive against an AF if brawler fit (try to go toe to toe with a good enyo or hawk pilot in a cruor...it almost always ends very badly).

Specifics:

Cruor - keep the web % bonus, skip the web range bonus, buff the damage and give it more speed. Drop one utility high and add a low. Give it Nuet / Nos range bonus and drop the amount drained bonus (pre-nerf nos is interesting as a role bonus...).

Succubus...fix the cap. More speed...right now it is like an overpriced version of a very bad assault ship. Drop one high and add a mid. Buff PG/CPU.

Worm...I am intrigued about proposed changes. I'll withhold judgment till I see what more creative people come up with in terms of fits, etc. Right now it is too slow and too anemic to be effective in frig pvp.

Dram - leave it alone...it is fine as is since the last rebalancing. Still good enough to be a faction frigate.

Daredevil - leave it alone...it is fine as is. Though I would like to see the high dropped and replaced by a low slot...a fairly worthless HS, imo. I hear people whining about the 90% webs being OP...figure out the counter or run...you shouldn't be able to fight every frig out there in any one frig. Does need a bit of pg/cpu...maybe drop the damage bonus a bit to accommodate this. The only thing that makes this frig competitive is the 90% web...otherwise it is pretty squishy.

General question here: Why does CCP insist on making lazor boats with nuets/nos the worst in terms of cap? Fix this...it's silly and makes me wonder about the general intelligence level of amarr engineers. "Gee Bob, I have an idea...lets be able to shoot our LAYZZOR BEEAMS and AB around at 850 m/s for 44s in a fight...doesn't that seem effective...? Great Idea, Tom, God be praised you are here with such good ideas - and let's have 32s w/ an MWD if we want to go the crazy speed of 1100 m/s."

Finally editorial commentary on links for frigate fighting (or cruisers for that matter). Stop the madness. Make it so links have to be on grid, make them progressively more effective the more people are in fleet up to a squad strength or something...ie if solo with a booster, they have to be on grid with you and you only get 20% effective boosts or something. Have the booster show up on killmails. Not against links...just their current iteration.

Alright I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt here, and assume you didn't realize you were planting a nail in your coffin by mentioning the Comet. Which I should point out would be picked over the Cruor in virtually every situation once effectiveness bonus is gone. But, let us compare the 2 ships shall we; the Comet is faster, the Comet can fit a better tank, and even when rail fit can do 220ish DPS at the edge of scram range.

Let's compare that to a similarly fit Cruor, and we'll give it the benefit of Pulse Lasers for the extra damage, about 600 less ehp, about 300m/s slower, and barely cracks 160DPS with multi (with a 4.3km optimal) or you can use scorch to hit out to 13km for a whopping 130 DPS. There is a huge difference in comparison between the comet, which I can agree is strong right now, and the Cruor.

In almost all cases, Cruor becomes outmatched by pretty well every T1 frigate with a web if the web change goes through. Sadly even the "OP" Nos isn't saving the Cruor. And before you try to claim that this Cruor would cap out said comet before it loses, just no. The longest range NOS on the market is 10km (Faction) and the Comet above with heated web is still going to hold you outside that range, and for as long as it needs to kill you (not long.)

Your web range bonus is completely meaningless inside 13km, and outside of that what are you planning to do? Web your targets into warp? Try and coax that mwd ship who is still faster than you (even while webbed) to come closer? Honestly it's like you've never played this game before.

You're mistaking a request for them to not make it a terrible dust collector, with the misguided thought that everyone supposedly wants it to be an op pmwnmobile.

Edit: Additionally arguing that it's an ewar ship is ridiculous, making it the only pirate frig that's considered "ewar." Here's a thought, lets remove web effectiveness from the dd, and give it a damp bonus, lets scrap that ab bonus on the suc and give it a td bonus, lets remove drone bonus from the worm and give it an ecm bonus - congratulations all the pirate frigs become dust collectors, because there are t1/t2 ships that do all these things better for a fraction of the cost.

Why pigeonhole a ship like that? These are pirate faction ships, they should have some competence in combat situations. The Cruor should not be an overpriced Hyena (exageration I know.)

Sorry for clarity purposes, I did not say the comet was fitting a scram just used that range as an example for damage output which is where a lot of fights currently take place. To make it easier for you, and more specific, using a disruptor at 12.5 km inside heated web range the comet still out damages the cruor with about 195 DPS.

The comet is not a great exampel for what you are trying to explain here because many of those dual web setups are relying on scram kiting, which is literally the same range that comet is reliably applying DPS at anyway, so they get exactly zero benefit from having the dual webs. On the contrary if the cruor were to keep its web effectiveness it could actually hold the comet so it can apply neut/nos and do something meaningful (other than die.)

I agree the web bonus is powerful, I'm not arguing that, but give me one situation where the Cruor is going to do anything meaningful to a ship outside the normal oh web range, other than web and warp disrupt, and I'll consider situations outside of it's standard engagement profile which is scram kiting or rather kiting inside 13ish km's.

Edit: I'll add one more thing here - if Rise were insistant on keeping the web-range bonus, one, if not two things would need to happen - either scrap the NOS idea entirely, and give the neuts/nos a range bonus and/or remove the energy turret damage bonus, and give it an optimal bonus - the only other situations where the web range bonus has any use is in fleets, and frankly that should be left to a hyena/rapier.

Scram range is a poor choice of bonus for the cruor, anyone can see that is the case. Blood raiders should stick with a web strength bonus and nuet/nos bonus. Just increase the base stats and layout of the ship.

The reason the ship is not being used has nothing to do with the bonuses at all. This nuet bonus will go a long way to massively helping the ship out, then just alter the base stats to make the ship a bit faster. Nothing more is needed.