These forums have been archived and are now read-only.

The new forums are live and can be found at https://forums.eveonline.com/

Player Features and Ideas Discussion

 
  • Topic is locked indefinitely.
 

Battleship and HAC pass

Author
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#41 - 2014-07-01 16:28:00 UTC  |  Edited by: Catherine Laartii
Daichi Yamato wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
So much missing the point in this thread.


There is more to eve than fleet fights at 100km.

Cassius Invictus wrote:
Ok I don't get one thing. How can Sacri be fine (OP? really?) in relation to Zealot?


right,

DPS: thanks to its drone bay, the sac isnt far behind the zealots dps with only one BCS. AND the sac can select its damage types.

Tank: the sac gets a better ehp tank than a zealot and with higher resists it responds better to logi than a zealot. Zealots dont do to well with big buffer tanks, they cant match the EHP and they lose their all important speed when they fit plates and trimarks.

Sac's are easy to set up for brawling with drones, double webs and a neut. Zealots are a mean fast kitey laser boat. if ur putting a sac-like buffer on ur zealot ur going to get raped by the first frig that comes ur way.

edit- but i dnt personally believe the sac to be OP. it just seems to come up in conversation. i dnt have a list of names unfortunately.

EDIT:
OP is a dumbass who was using null-sec.com browser fitting tool for stats. Despite its fancy UI, DON'T USE THIS SITE. Its dps stats are skewed.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#42 - 2014-07-01 16:32:56 UTC  |  Edited by: Daichi Yamato
a triple heat sink, heavy pulse zealot does 639dps with conflag.

a double BCS HAM sac with hammers does 674dps with rage.

post fit?
edited again cause was eft'ing without specs to V.

edit - yes, they guy i was replying to has clearly been trying to use his zealot for brawling. poor thing.

Catherine Laartii wrote:


What's that? You are shooting at tiny ranges with conflag on the zealot, so the comparison is bogus? The sacrilege reaches out further? Zealot with scorch loaded does over 600 dps at 33km range; at 28km optimal. It STILL has the sac beat out at range.


Dont think u have the zealot open. with scorch it gets 34km optimal with no range mods. What? oh and 456 dps.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs

Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#43 - 2014-07-01 16:55:01 UTC  |  Edited by: Catherine Laartii
Daichi Yamato wrote:
a triple heat sink, heavy pulse zealot does 639dps with conflag.

a double BCS HAM sac with hammers does 674dps with rage.

post fit?
edited again cause was eft'ing without specs to V.

edit - yes, they guy i was replying to has clearly been trying to use his zealot for brawling. poor thing.

Catherine Laartii wrote:


What's that? You are shooting at tiny ranges with conflag on the zealot, so the comparison is bogus? The sacrilege reaches out further? Zealot with scorch loaded does over 600 dps at 33km range; at 28km optimal. It STILL has the sac beat out at range.


Dont think u have the zealot open. with scorch it gets 34km optimal with no range mods. What? oh and 456 dps.

I rescind my earlier post, and vow to never use Null-sec hanger again until the end of time, unless they get on top of their math. They need to fix their sh*t.

My apologies for putting the zealot on a higher platform that it actually is. The positive about this is I'm much more impressed with the sacrilege now, and since it's a khanid boat, I liked it a whole lot more to start out with. +1 for correcting me.

For a sacrilege rebalance, would you prefer to have one if its highs moved to a low, or give the zealot a drone bay while dropping the sacrilege's, but sac gains another missile slot? A good point was made earlier about the zealot being able to pull more tank than the sacrilege, which is what I was mainly trying to address with the defenses.
Caleb Seremshur
Bloodhorn
Patchwork Freelancers
#44 - 2014-07-01 16:55:17 UTC
Applied dps will be lower on the sac against most targets. Compensated for by having a stronger tank.

It would be more appropriate to compare the sac to another missile thrower.

I don't personally use the zealot much but they do have a fleet doctrine built around them so I can only assume the have a use in some situation. Fwiw hacs have about 50% more ehp via resists than t1. Any hac with a hp/level either rep or bulk is going to have some seriously difficult balance juggling to do.

Seriously the new mordus are what t2 caldari ships should have been. Looong range. High damage.
Xequecal
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#45 - 2014-07-01 17:44:59 UTC  |  Edited by: Xequecal
Daichi Yamato wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
So much missing the point in this thread.


There is more to eve than fleet fights at 100km.


You'd have a point here except that in addition to being the best sniping cruiser, Ishtar is also the best brawling cruiser, and one of the best kiters as well, since you can just deploy sentries and burn away from them, letting them slaughter anyone that decides to chase you.

Seriously, an Ishtar with 5 heavy drones and no guns does more DPS than a 3-MFS Deimos with neutrons and faction antimatter. The Ishtar gets to load up on neuts on top of that as well. Oh, the Ogres also have five times the tracking and three times the optimal range of the blasters.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#46 - 2014-07-01 17:54:23 UTC
Xequecal wrote:
Daichi Yamato wrote:
Xequecal wrote:
So much missing the point in this thread.


There is more to eve than fleet fights at 100km.


You'd have a point here except that in addition to being the best sniping cruiser, Ishtar is also the best brawling cruiser, and one of the best kiters as well, since you can just deploy sentries and burn away from them, letting them slaughter anyone that decides to chase you.

Seriously, an Ishtar with 5 heavy drones and no guns does more DPS than a 3-MFS Deimos with neutrons and faction antimatter. The Ishtar gets to load up on neuts on top of that as well. Oh, the Ogres also have five times the tracking and three times the optimal range of the blasters.

I wouldn't be against knocking their drone bandwidth down to 100 and mebe some of their drone space. Domi should outperform it as a sentry boat, I think.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#47 - 2014-07-01 19:19:54 UTC
Caleb Seremshur wrote:
Applied dps will be lower on the sac against most targets. Compensated for by having a stronger tank.

It would be more appropriate to compare the sac to another missile thrower.

I don't personally use the zealot much but they do have a fleet doctrine built around them so I can only assume the have a use in some situation. Fwiw hacs have about 50% more ehp via resists than t1. Any hac with a hp/level either rep or bulk is going to have some seriously difficult balance juggling to do.

Seriously the new mordus are what t2 caldari ships should have been. Looong range. High damage.

True this. But to be fair, the sac can reliably fit a target painter most of the time, and is extremely flexible with its fittings due to generous amounts of capacitor, powergrid and CPU. Khanid ships tend to field an advantage over their caldari counterparts with actually being able to USE a lot of ewar in their mids. Double TP sacriliege isn't unheard of nor a bad fit in a fleet.
Phoenix Jones
Small-Arms Fire
#48 - 2014-07-01 19:36:49 UTC  |  Edited by: Phoenix Jones
I can't comment on the battleships but I can comment on the Ishtar Hac. There is a "minor" tweak that can be done, but requires 2 changes to happen.

1) Reduce Heavy Drone Bandwidth from 25 to 20.
2) Reduce the Bandwidth of the Vexor Navy and Ishtar from 125 to 100.

It stops (by chopping out 20% of the damage) the ishtar can do by making its bandwidth 100 (which is 4 sentry drones), vs 125 (which is 5 sentry drones), but does not decimate the Ishtar because it can still field a full flight of heavy drones.

The Stratios and the Myrmidon gain a damage output by having the ability to deploy another heavy, but still is restricted to deploying 4 sentries.

Yes the Ishtar is still a great brawler, kiter, etc, but now it loses 20% of its damage output when using sentry drones, but has exactly the same potential it has now using any other drone setup besides sentries. Ishtar is amazing, but the sentry cruiser needs to be reigned in.

I'd do that.

Updated: gila removed its at 20 now.

Yaay!!!!

Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#49 - 2014-07-01 23:17:58 UTC
Phoenix Jones wrote:
I can't comment on the battleships but I can comment on the Ishtar Hac. There is a "minor" tweak that can be done, but requires 2 changes to happen.

1) Reduce Heavy Drone Bandwidth from 25 to 20.
2) Reduce the Bandwidth of the Vexor Navy, Ishtar, Gila from 125 to 100.

It stops (by chopping out 20% of the damage) the ishtar can do by making its bandwidth 100 (which is 4 sentry drones), vs 125 (which is 5 sentry drones), but does not decimate the Ishtar because it can still field a full flight of heavy drones.

The Stratios and the Myrmidon gain a damage output by having the ability to deploy another heavy, but still is restricted to deploying 4 sentries.

Yes the Ishtar is still a great brawler, kiter, etc, but now it loses 20% of its damage output when using sentry drones, but has exactly the same potential it has now using any other drone setup besides sentries. Ishtar is amazing, but the sentry cruiser needs to be reigned in.

I'd do that.

Seems like a kind of roundabout way to make a minor fix. Why not just dump its bandwidth down to 100?
Doggy Dogwoofwoof
New Eden Corporation 98713347
#50 - 2014-07-02 03:02:07 UTC
Phoenix Jones wrote:
I can't comment on the battleships but I can comment on the Ishtar Hac. There is a "minor" tweak that can be done, but requires 2 changes to happen.

1) Reduce Heavy Drone Bandwidth from 25 to 20.
2) Reduce the Bandwidth of the Vexor Navy, Ishtar, Gila from 125 to 100.

It stops (by chopping out 20% of the damage) the ishtar can do by making its bandwidth 100 (which is 4 sentry drones), vs 125 (which is 5 sentry drones), but does not decimate the Ishtar because it can still field a full flight of heavy drones.

The Stratios and the Myrmidon gain a damage output by having the ability to deploy another heavy, but still is restricted to deploying 4 sentries.

Yes the Ishtar is still a great brawler, kiter, etc, but now it loses 20% of its damage output when using sentry drones, but has exactly the same potential it has now using any other drone setup besides sentries. Ishtar is amazing, but the sentry cruiser needs to be reigned in.

I'd do that.

Your a bit late on the Gila, it only has 20 bandwith.
Meandering Milieu
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#51 - 2014-07-02 21:57:22 UTC
Catherine Laartii wrote:

Seems like a kind of roundabout way to make a minor fix. Why not just dump its bandwidth down to 100?


Because then it would be useless for drones, just like the proteus. You ever notice how in pvp a proteus is usually fit for two things? Massive tank, and long points.

Oh yeah, blaster proteus fits out there can reach 1k dps, but like the deimos, or most other blaster boats, actually applying it is an entirely different story.

You know what you almost never see? Proteus drone fits in pvp or pve. When it comes to drones, they are completely outclassed by... you guessed it, the ishtar and domi. The gallente T3 can't even drone properly. Though for pvp that may have recently changed with the Geckos, but because of that 25mb difference the ishtar is still better.

In an ishtar, with all skills at 5, gardes do 421 DPS, out to 30km. Funny thing that, anything moving at any sort of decent speed outside of that pretty much won't be hit, despite the 18km falloff. Funny thing? Anything moving at a decent speed ( Oh say, 400m/sec) inside of that radius also won't get hit. In PvE with two omnis scripted for tracking I've had gardes regularly miss Battleship rats orbiting at less than 200m/sec at 14km.

But enough rambling, let's summarize a few things, what really matters. Advantages Vs Disadvantages and reliable ways to pretty much ruin an ishtar's day:

Advantages to Drones:

  • Multiple Damage Types can be carried.
  • Multiple size drones can be carried to engage enemies of different ship classes.
  • Fitting is usually lenient. Shield or armor work well on the ishtar, vexor, myrmidon, and dominix, and all work well with drone mods in different ways.
  • Drones of all sizes do fairly good dps for their class.
  • Multiple types of drone in each class with different ranges, tracking, and MWD speeds.
  • Usefull in bot PvE and PvP
  • Require no ammo.
  • Auto-targeting, even if jammed, drones will work.


Disadvantages:


  • You have the only weapon system in the game that can be killed, leaving you helpless.
  • For the heaviest of drones, sentries or heavies, outside of carriers no ships have a drone bay capable of carrying all 4 types. You still have to pick your drones carefully.
  • At most you can carry 3 flights of BS sized drones, and doing so leaves you with no smaller sized drones should you need them.
  • If you need to make an emergency warp out, even if you are using combat drones instead of sentries, there is a good chance you will lose them before they make it back. With sentries it is guaranteed unless you were holding still.
  • Considering the above, since drones are the only real ammo a drone boat has, drone boats have the smallest amount of ammo compared to any other ship category.
  • If you are shield fit speed is a good advantage, unless you do get tackled. If you are armor fit there is so much out there that is faster than you that you should expect to be tackled.
  • The mighty garde dps is often praised, but if you use a drone with some range, say wardens (346), bouncers (371), curators (396, lol EM dmg), not only do you lose significant dps, but their tracking is truly terrible. Unless you are fielding multiple drone ships, they aren't really advisable, hence why most solo/small gang drone boats use combat drones.
  • Combat drones must fly to each and every target. Sorta like missiles, but worse.
  • Drones are the only main weapon system that can be scrammed and webbed, and they are useless once someone does it. Just say goodbye to that drone.
  • Drone UI is literally hitler.
  • Drone AI is literally that guy in the trailer park who wears tinfoil hats and shouts obscenities. He doesn't work, acts sporadically, and at the end of the day you find yourself screaming at him through a LED screen begging him to just act normal.
  • Because of the above two, if you are ewar'd, you don't always know what they will attack, or even if they will do so in unison.
  • Sometimes they won't even attack despite someone attacking you. You can be jammed and they will just sit there idle.
  • They will often continue to microwarp, missing shot after shot, for 10-15 seconds before finally slowing down.
  • Sentries are basically the only drone that continuously works reliably and is scalable to large or small combat, and if they lose anymore dps they will be worthless compared to heavies, which lose value after small gang pvp.
  • Drones cannot be overheated, and to this day there are no drone mods worth overheating.


Ways to ruin an ishtar's day:

  • Long points/webs. They can't outrun you if they are webbed/scrammed/pointed.
  • Kill their drones. No seriously tops they have 3 waves of drones. Bombers, smart bombs, or even fleet free fire will clear out sentries quickly, leaving ishtar's out of options fast.
  • Neuts. No cap, no MWD/AB, no mobility, dead ishtar.
  • Amarr ships. Shield or Armor, compared to other resists, EM is oddly the one resist often neglected by many ishtar fits, followed by therm. Lasers are cool.
  • Sniping fits. Rail tengus, or long range BSes can be a good counter for ishtars. If they can't risk getting up close, and you can pop their drones from afar, you win. Congrats.



If you are absolutely hellbent on nerfing the ishtar, nerf what you are actually mad about. It isn't the dps. It's the combination of DPS, tank, and mobility. Attack the tank/mobility, which you can do without touching bonuses or slot layouts, strictly through mass, base speed, base armor/shield, pwg/CPU, and so on. We already have someone claiming ~650 dps amarr hacs, ishtar's dps even with dmg mods is fine in comparison unless you are talking about a pve ishtar. The real problem is its overall tank and mobility.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#52 - 2014-07-02 22:52:48 UTC  |  Edited by: Catherine Laartii
Meandering Milieu wrote:

(big list of important things)

If you are absolutely hellbent on nerfing the ishtar, nerf what you are actually mad about. It isn't the dps. It's the combination of DPS, tank, and mobility. Attack the tank/mobility, which you can do without touching bonuses or slot layouts, strictly through mass, base speed, base armor/shield, pwg/CPU, and so on. We already have someone claiming ~650 dps amarr hacs, ishtar's dps even with dmg mods is fine in comparison unless you are talking about a pve ishtar. The real problem is its overall tank and mobility.

Fair enough points, but it's not *just* me who's hellbent on nerfing the ishtar. It's most people in the game who have flown or fought one, and have the presence of mind to realize that a cruiser that can do 500-600 dps out past 100km MIGHT be just a LITTLE overpowered, and could use a nerf.

If you don't believe me, try fitting one in EFT yourself with wardens or bouncers...or even gardes, and see how much dps you pull. 5 garde 2s (with range and damage mods, mind you) in space shoot out to almost 90km with 620 dps. Aside from the missile boats, which don't exactly count for much if you factor in damage application, there isn't a battleship in the game that can pull those numbers at that range. It is absolutely superior in every respect offensively, so either dropping the bandwidth down to 100 or dropping sentry dps wouldn't be asking too much, i don't think.
Kaerakh
Obscure Joke Implied
#53 - 2014-07-02 23:10:08 UTC
Catherine Laartii wrote:
Meandering Milieu wrote:

(big list of important things)


Yeah, you should actually read it. It's obvious by what you posted next that you haven't.

Catherine Laartii wrote:

Fair enough points, but it's not *just* me who's hellbent on nerfing the ishtar. It's most people in the game who have flown or fought one, and have the presence of mind to realize that a cruiser that can do 500-600 dps out past 100km MIGHT be just a LITTLE overpowered, and could use a nerf.


He addressed those points already. Actually read his damn post. You also, from what I can see of your killboard history, have never flown an Ishtar(I could be wrong, but you certainly don't do it often). Now you might claim to have an alt who does at this point, but I have nothing but faith to go off of for that. Reason this is relevant is that the likely hood you're just whining rather than posting a constructive point goes up significantly if you've only ever been on the receiving end. The validity of second hand information is even more suspect.

Catherine Laartii wrote:

If you don't believe me, try fitting one in EFT yourself with wardens or bouncers...or even gardes, and see how much dps you pull. 5 garde 2s (with range and damage mods, mind you) in space shoot out to almost 90km with 620 dps. Aside from the missile boats, which don't exactly count for much if you factor in damage application, there isn't a battleship in the game that can pull those numbers at that range. It is absolutely superior in every respect offensively, so either dropping the bandwidth down to 100 or dropping sentry dps wouldn't be asking too much, i don't think.

He addressed those points. Actually read the post. Roll
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#54 - 2014-07-03 00:57:21 UTC  |  Edited by: Catherine Laartii
Kaerakh wrote:

He addressed those points. Actually read the post. Roll

Yes he addressed them. I read his post. Nothing was solved by stating what they can and can't do. Sure, they have a long list of advantages and disadvantages, but the fact remains that they have abilities FAR in excess of their counterparts. Nowhere did I state that they were indestructible death machines and that drones are the holy grail of pvp and pve.

Let me put it this way...if they nerfed the range on sentries, either from the bonuses or the drones themselves, I would be completely fine with the ship. What I was saying earlier was about how overpowered it is with sentries specifically; Drones are a weird weapon system to begin with, and tend to mess things up for people in general since they follow a very different set of rules in combat.
Down in FW, we consistently maul with and get mauled by Tristans because of how strong they are as a primary drone platform. When they're launched at you, sure; you can deal with each of the drones as the come at you, or if you have friends you can wipe the floor with things pretty quickly, but they don't sacrifice anything from the parent ship to use bigger weapons. If they have a big drone bay and bandwidth, they can just field bigger drones. Small drone ships like frigates and destroyers are limited to a single drone weapon size, so they balance out pretty well. But above that with cruiser or larger, you have this absurd potential arsenal of excellent anti-frigate small drones to large, long-range attack platforms with sentries or brutal heavy drones that can turn you into a grease stain. Or the gecko, which is basically all heavy drone users use if they can field them.
The equivalent would be instead of having to use a mobile depot to swap my weapon systems on a cerb between fights, I could just magically swap them out from my cargohold. Their flexibility generally counterbalances the individual drones' vulnerability, as well as being a generally more efficient pvp weapon against slower or pinned targets due to the ability to swarm.

Now, I can make the same argument with missile in regards to damage projection, but it's bunk because drones have similar issues against fast ships...except when you can downsize on the fly if you have smaller drones in your bay. The fact remains if you look at it, that the ishtar is the most widely used HAC for the widest variety of tasks. it's simply better than its counterparts at what it does.
Kaerakh
Obscure Joke Implied
#55 - 2014-07-03 01:52:23 UTC
Catherine Laartii wrote:
Kaerakh wrote:

He addressed those points. Actually read the post. Roll

Yes he addressed them. I read his post. Nothing was solved by stating what they can and can't do. Sure, they have a long list of advantages and disadvantages, but the fact remains that they have abilities FAR in excess of their counterparts. Nowhere did I state that they were indestructible death machines and that drones are the holy grail of pvp and pve.

Let me put it this way...if they nerfed the range on sentries, either from the bonuses or the drones themselves, I would be completely fine with the ship. What I was saying earlier was about how overpowered it is with sentries specifically; Drones are a weird weapon system to begin with, and tend to mess things up for people in general since they follow a very different set of rules in combat.
Down in FW, we consistently maul with and get mauled by Tristans because of how strong they are as a primary drone platform. When they're launched at you, sure; you can deal with each of the drones as the come at you, or if you have friends you can wipe the floor with things pretty quickly, but they don't sacrifice anything from the parent ship to use bigger weapons. If they have a big drone bay and bandwidth, they can just field bigger drones. Small drone ships like frigates and destroyers are limited to a single drone weapon size, so they balance out pretty well. But above that with cruiser or larger, you have this absurd potential arsenal of excellent anti-frigate small drones to large, long-range attack platforms with sentries or brutal heavy drones that can turn you into a grease stain. Or the gecko, which is basically all heavy drone users use if they can field them.
The equivalent would be instead of having to use a mobile depot to swap my weapon systems on a cerb between fights, I could just magically swap them out from my cargohold. Their flexibility generally counterbalances the individual drones' vulnerability, as well as being a generally more efficient pvp weapon against slower or pinned targets due to the ability to swarm.

Now, I can make the same argument with missile in regards to damage projection, but it's bunk because drones have similar issues against fast ships...except when you can downsize on the fly if you have smaller drones in your bay. The fact remains if you look at it, that the ishtar is the most widely used HAC for the widest variety of tasks. it's simply better than its counterparts at what it does.


You can make the same exact argument against lasers and hybrids for their low or non existent reload times. Especially considering the environmental variables for pulling drones in(if my drones are more than 50k away I'm going to take pretty much all day to pull them in) and sacrifices in maneuverability(sentries(You either have to sit by them or abandon them and risk losing them).
With lasers and hybrids you can switch to a short range ammo for damage, you can switch to a long range ammo for you guessed it range, and you can even switch to an ammo type(from a tech 2 perspective) for tracking(usually in the form of faction ammo).

After looking over your killboard again now that I'm not on a phone I can tell you never use drones and have no idea what kind of consequences come with all those benefits. In fact, both of these hull types are among your least used hulls. This makes you hardly qualified to suggest balancing them.
Catherine Laartii
Doomheim
#56 - 2014-07-03 02:15:52 UTC
Kaerakh wrote:
Catherine Laartii wrote:
Kaerakh wrote:

He addressed those points. Actually read the post. Roll

Yes he addressed them. I read his post. Nothing was solved by stating what they can and can't do. Sure, they have a long list of advantages and disadvantages, but the fact remains that they have abilities FAR in excess of their counterparts. Nowhere did I state that they were indestructible death machines and that drones are the holy grail of pvp and pve.

Let me put it this way...if they nerfed the range on sentries, either from the bonuses or the drones themselves, I would be completely fine with the ship. What I was saying earlier was about how overpowered it is with sentries specifically; Drones are a weird weapon system to begin with, and tend to mess things up for people in general since they follow a very different set of rules in combat.
Down in FW, we consistently maul with and get mauled by Tristans because of how strong they are as a primary drone platform. When they're launched at you, sure; you can deal with each of the drones as the come at you, or if you have friends you can wipe the floor with things pretty quickly, but they don't sacrifice anything from the parent ship to use bigger weapons. If they have a big drone bay and bandwidth, they can just field bigger drones. Small drone ships like frigates and destroyers are limited to a single drone weapon size, so they balance out pretty well. But above that with cruiser or larger, you have this absurd potential arsenal of excellent anti-frigate small drones to large, long-range attack platforms with sentries or brutal heavy drones that can turn you into a grease stain. Or the gecko, which is basically all heavy drone users use if they can field them.
The equivalent would be instead of having to use a mobile depot to swap my weapon systems on a cerb between fights, I could just magically swap them out from my cargohold. Their flexibility generally counterbalances the individual drones' vulnerability, as well as being a generally more efficient pvp weapon against slower or pinned targets due to the ability to swarm.

Now, I can make the same argument with missile in regards to damage projection, but it's bunk because drones have similar issues against fast ships...except when you can downsize on the fly if you have smaller drones in your bay. The fact remains if you look at it, that the ishtar is the most widely used HAC for the widest variety of tasks. it's simply better than its counterparts at what it does.


You can make the same exact argument against lasers and hybrids for their low or non existent reload times. Especially considering the environmental variables for pulling drones in(if my drones are more than 50k away I'm going to take pretty much all day to pull them in) and sacrifices in maneuverability(sentries(You either have to sit by them or abandon them and risk losing them).
With lasers and hybrids you can switch to a short range ammo for damage, you can switch to a long range ammo for you guessed it range, and you can even switch to an ammo type(from a tech 2 perspective) for tracking(usually in the form of faction ammo).

After looking over your killboard again now that I'm not on a phone I can tell you never use drones and have no idea what kind of consequences come with all those benefits. In fact, both of these hull types are among your least used hulls. This makes you hardly qualified to suggest balancing them.

...I have been a front-line combat pilot in FW for roughly 4 years. You can stuff your personal opinion of my combat capabilities in the same place as your blind spots in this game that get you killed by things you don't know about, anticipate, or expect. I don't care either way since it's likely we won't run into each other, but you should check yourself when you bring the personal competency of the person you're debating into the discussion, because nothing constructive comes from making personal attacks. My personal preference for what I fly is a subjective decision for what I believe and work on in-game, and does not indicate objective ignorance of certain fields from nothing more than your extrapolation of my behavior from my killboard.

That being said, the TLDR version of what I stated earlier was that sentries on the ishtar shoot out too far for their damage and platform type. I will rest my argument on that because I genuinely feel from what I have seen and heard in the game over the years, especially since the rebalance, that sentry range and damage projection is overpowered, and should be dialed down. I will say no more on the subject with the ishtar, although I am more than willing to talk about the other ships.
Meandering Milieu
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#57 - 2014-07-03 02:52:22 UTC
I'm actually about to go to bed and haven't read everything, but a note about gardes hitting out to 90km with 600 or so dps:

Before the recent patch, I would rat with a sentry ishtar instead of heavies, mostly because at the time I lacked the skills for T2 heavies. Using gardes, 5 DDA IIs, and 3 Fed navy omnidirectional tracking links, I got:

805 dps ( Now 752 Post nerf. With fed navy DDAs you could get back your old dps.
~56km optimal
~35km falloff (used to be less falloff. )

Now I rat in fountain, where I live, which are serp rats. Standard strategy was warp in @50km, drop sentries, blap everything including frigs before they ever got to you. However an interesting thing happens in anomalies, you never quite warp in where you want to. Selecting warp @50km would land me anywhere from 25km off the rats to 70km off the rats. How did this work out for me?

Well if I was scripted optimal, which was the plan, I could barely hit anything other than frigs with their MWD until rats got into 65km. Once they hit 60 I started to hit reliably. At 55 I always hit... until they get within 24km.

When I landed @25 or so, I had to switch to tracking speed (30 second cycle time) to hit anything (and often couldn't kill frigs before they got too close to hit, and cruisers orbiting were a pain too. ) . Meanwhile, long range rats usually ended up pulling range by time I finished frigs, and afterwards I was completely tied up with close range rats. So you have to switch again (30 second cycle times. )

So basically at a distance, even with all that falloff, gardes have a difficulty hitting rats, let alone players. If they are scripted for optimal, they lack the tracking to be effective on anything but a BS without a prop mod. If they are tracking fit, they will still have difficulty with cruisers/frigs moving at player speeds (opposed to rat speeds) at close range, and will never touch anything with transversal past 45km tops.

But, for fun, with the new lowslot tracking mods, you can get gardes to have 620dps, 50km optimal, and 0.06 tracking. I predict that it would still have difficulty hitting anything with a prop mod at close to mid ranges. At distance it wouldn't hit much at all. This is at the expense of all its lowslots and no DCU, which would make someone bad at pvp.

The trick is for larger fleets (anything 7 ishtars and above) you use sentries for the same reason battleships are popular for fleet doctrines. Even if all their tracking is terrible, enough of them shooting will hit. For smaller gang stuff people use heavies because for pvp they are better in almost every way, unless you need a giant mass of F1 monkeys.

So what you have really proven is that an ishtar can get some seriously intimidating stats for pve by sacrificing a lot of utility, safety, and mobility mods, and still hit terribly against any player that isn't webbed and scrammed.

Truth is, in my experience at least, most pvp ishtars fit 1 damage mod at most. The rest is usually tank/nanoes/speed/stabs. In the mids it is usually shield tank/tackle/prop/ewar. Nobody in pvp except maybe a solo guy trying to harass you is pulling 90km with gardes. And even if that one solo guy is doing that, he's bad, and should feel bad, because he'd get the same results with fewer drone mods by using bouncers or wardens. Allowing him to fit better tank/mobility, and maybe not get ganked like the pleb he is.
Daichi Yamato
Jabbersnarks and Wonderglass
#58 - 2014-07-03 03:51:13 UTC
u forgot how u can drop drones and then move as fast as u like to reduce incoming dps whilst leaving outgoing dps un affected.

what if it is the range, application and dps i have issue with? no other HAC can hit that hard, that far and with that much application. and then the ishtar can kite and brawl as well as the best of them too.

Id rather not nerf drones themselves as other drone boats are doing fine. and im reluctant to completely remove the sentry bonuses of the ishtar because thats what its for. a 100mbit drone bay takes away 20% of its drone dps, turning 780 ogre dps to 620, or 600ish bouncer/curator dps at ~100km to 500ish. thats still bloody decent.

it wouldnt be as useless as a drone fit proteus, as the drone fit proteus doesnt get the same range and application, or even damage bonuses. The myrm does just fine with a 100mbit drone bay with no range or application bonuses.

its only armour ishtars that dont have three or more DDA's, and they sometimes take sentry rigs instead of trimarks.

EVE FAQ "7.2 CAN I AVOID PVP COMPLETELY? No; there are no systems or locations in New Eden where PvP may be completely avoided"

Daichi Yamato's version of structure based decs

Xequecal
KarmaFleet
Goonswarm Federation
#59 - 2014-07-03 04:12:05 UTC  |  Edited by: Xequecal
Quote:
Ways to ruin an ishtar's day:

Long points/webs. They can't outrun you if they are webbed/scrammed/pointed.
Kill their drones. No seriously tops they have 3 waves of drones. Bombers, smart bombs, or even fleet free fire will clear out sentries quickly, leaving ishtar's out of options fast.
Neuts. No cap, no MWD/AB, no mobility, dead ishtar.
Amarr ships. Shield or Armor, compared to other resists, EM is oddly the one resist often neglected by many ishtar fits, followed by therm. Lasers are cool.
Sniping fits. Rail tengus, or long range BSes can be a good counter for ishtars. If they can't risk getting up close, and you can pop their drones from afar, you win. Congrats.


1. Rail tengus are a horrible counter. Standard fleet Ishtar tank is 2 LSE, invuln, EM rig. This has 95% kinetic resist, railguns don't do ****. Of course, the Tengu also has monster kin resists, so at range neither ship does much to the other. If the Ishtars can close in and apply some EM damage, though, Tengus are ******.

The other medium sized turrets can not even hit an Ishtar at 130km, so those are out.

2. Sniping battleships? The Mega has the same problem as the Tengu. Artillery with long range T2 ammo cannot track Ishtars, even at 130km. Proton L has a 96km optimal, if you want to shoot to 130 with it on a Mael that means 3 range mods and no tank.

Amarr battleships are the best counter, EM damage and good tracking. They have their own set of problems though. First, just using an Apoc is a significant cost versus using a Mega, which has 120% of the ehp, DPS, and range, and is just massively superior in general when damage type is not considered. Second, Amarr ships have huge SP requirements. AWU V is mandatory for Tachyons, as is controlled bursts V and cap skills. An Apoc needs to inject just to run its guns, it has over double a Mega's cap drain. BS V is also needed due to the Apoc having a range bonus. A fleet of Megas all have the same range, IV Megas just do 5% less than V Megas. IV Apocs have to go down an ammo type not to lose half their DPS at V range, resulting in a 10-15% DPS loss.

Apocs are still a counter, but it really helps the Ishtar that its only real counter has so many problems.

3. Ishtars don't need cap charges so they can carry spare drones in cargo and mobile depot refit them in. They're not limited to 3 waves.

4. Medium lasers are also an SP nightmare, unfortunately. The FOTM nomen fit needs AWU V and energy weapon rigging V to fly. Lasers are the least used weapons for a reason.

5. The Ishtar really promotes elitism. It requires tons of SP to fly, (9 million SP for a 130km sniping Ishtar) but so do all if its counters. That puts PvP with Ishtars on a whole different tier.
Meandering Milieu
The Scope
Gallente Federation
#60 - 2014-07-03 20:01:04 UTC
Xequecal wrote:


1. Rail tengus are a horrible counter. Standard fleet Ishtar tank is 2 LSE, invuln, EM rig. This has 95% kinetic resist, railguns don't do ****. Of course, the Tengu also has monster kin resists, so at range neither ship does much to the other. If the Ishtars can close in and apply some EM damage, though, Tengus are ******.


I said for killing their drones. Drone ships are unique in that they can be driven off the field by destroying their weapon system. I've personally seen and participated in fleets where 40-50 T1 BCs (Brutix/Harby) were capable of driving off a 30man ishtar/logi fleet. We couldn't catch them, we couldn't hit them or apply dps. We killed their drones, they had to run, we win and accomplish our other objectives. Killing drones works. To address:

Quote:
3. Ishtars don't need cap charges so they can carry spare drones in cargo and mobile depot refit them in. They're not limited to 3 waves.


Yeah that can work, probably easier in small roams than in big fleet fights though. So you're looking at a reload time of a minute or two while depots online.

Quote:

2. Sniping battleships? The Mega has the same problem as the Tengu. Artillery with long range T2 ammo cannot track Ishtars, even at 130km. Proton L has a 96km optimal, if you want to shoot to 130 with it on a Mael that means 3 range mods and no tank.

Amarr battleships are the best counter, EM damage and good tracking. They have their own set of problems though. First, just using an Apoc is a significant cost versus using a Mega, which has 120% of the ehp, DPS, and range, and is just massively superior in general when damage type is not considered. Second, Amarr ships have huge SP requirements. AWU V is mandatory for Tachyons, as is controlled bursts V and cap skills. An Apoc needs to inject just to run its guns, it has over double a Mega's cap drain. BS V is also needed due to the Apoc having a range bonus. A fleet of Megas all have the same range, IV Megas just do 5% less than V Megas. IV Apocs have to go down an ammo type not to lose half their DPS at V range, resulting in a 10-15% DPS loss.

Apocs are still a counter, but it really helps the Ishtar that its only real counter has so many problems.


Note the tengus and sniping battleships were said for the ability to kill off drones with free fire. The number of fleets I've seen where BSes had the logi to withstand the ishtar damage, but not the tackle to hold them down, or the dps to break the ishtar's logi, are too many to count. How many times have I seen these BS fleets give up or run because they can't kill the ships, when killing their drones would accomplish the objectives. I'm not lying when I say that a megathron can kill a sentry drone, and a lot of them firing at will can clear out a large number quickly. Even if the ishtars warp off, refil at depots, and come back, they have a limited number of drones.


Quote:
4. Medium lasers are also an SP nightmare, unfortunately. The FOTM nomen fit needs AWU V and energy weapon rigging V to fly. Lasers are the least used weapons for a reason.

5. The Ishtar really promotes elitism.


In my opinion if you fly a HAC with less than AWU V you need to make training it to V a priority. It's a long skill sure, but HACs are T2 ships. You wouldn't complain that most HAC fits require T2 guns. You wouldn't complain that the FOTM mission fits require T2 large guns. You wouldn't complain that flying a T3 properly requires all subsystems at V. You wouldn't complain that faction pirate ships require too much SP or are too powerful.

And if lasers are super SP intensive at the moment, does that make Amarr HACs promote elitism too? Do Marauders, command ships, and BLOPs promote elitism? Does the ishtar promote elitism if you are a gallente pilot from birth, like me, and all of your training has always gone into gallente, and so that 9m specialized SP didn't require you to go out of your way? If the ishtar requires so much SP to fly properly, isn't its power justified somewhat?

And what is the problem with promoting some elitism? Thorax, Vexor, Domi, Megathron, Celestis, Tristan, Myrm and Brutix. Gallente has tons of ships that aren't terribly skill intensive to fly decently. Maybe not perfectly, but decently.

And if the SP is too much, I blame that mostly on drone skills requiring too much SP, since the rest of the skills are pretty much Core skills and racial cruiser V. Further, because of that being able to fly an ishtar helps you with every ship you will ever fly, as most of it is core skills, and drones of some sort are secondary weapons on nearly every ship in the game.

As for all of it's counters requiring a lot of SP? 200+ man proteus fleets usually require obscene numbers or obscene SP to beat. Supercap fleets too. Hell capital fleets too. If your entire argument is that T1 BS/BC/cruiser fleets have a hard time countering AHAC fleets, then I don't know what to say. I thought that was the whole point. High resist, high damage, high speed, low sig. That is literally every AHAC doctrine.

Don't let my sperging fool you though. I do agree the ishtar is powerful. I even think it might be a little bit too powerful, though I feel people like to overlook its weaknesses and view it through rose tinted glasses. However, I think it can be properly rebalanced entirely by messing with base stats, such as mass, base speed, raw armor/shield, cap amount/recharge, pwg, and so on. You don't need to kill its bandwidth or hull bonuses in order to kill its amazing mobility/tank/dps combo. You could tone it down tons while still leaving it powerful, versatile, fun, and specialized.