Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Of course, if you try to turn one ship into another it will take a lot of work and it would be pointless. This is why I said they need more defined roles and buffs.

and what roles would those b? hopefully ones that can't be overshadowed by sentry ishtar. Only clean HACs i see are vagabond and Sacrelige. All the other HACs are trying to specialize in their weapon system when the sentry ishtar comes along and takes a nice little sentry dump on them.

Normally I'd share your sentiments, but there's a reason almost everyone is running ishtar doctrines, and it's fricken ridiculous. The only reason NOT to fly ishtars is for engagements where no one really gives a sh*t and everyone is just there for sh*ts and giggles.

Either Ishtars/VNIs need to get smacked down hard, or sentrys do. A 2.5% tracking/range nerf per level just won't cut it IMO.

the only problem with this is it only needs how far the Ishtar has to be from target. I can be beyond 200km from drones with 80km control range and shoot targets so long as the host target ship is within my control range. Which still means having drone control range mods can bring me back to 100km (max targeting range) which is too far for most HACs to hit.

Which is why you never see solo roaming blaster proteus out in space, ever, at all, right? You also never see them in WHs. They have a different niche.

You never see tengu fleets at all right, both rail and HM fit, right? They aren't used to great effect at all.

Never see cerb gangs do you? Oh wait.

Deimos, same as proteus. Except I actually do see those in large fleets. Deimos/Zealot/Legion/Proteus cruiser fleets are not uncommon.

Anyways the entire point of the post I made was that other cruisers can get the type of damage the ishtar does. What you seemed to ignore was my concession that they cannot manage the range or application outside of maybe scorch to gardes.

Speaking about the meta a bit:

If sentries are so powerful why was domi fleet dropped by CFC and several others, for baltec, which apparently gets less tracking and damage?

If they are so strong why does CFC not carry an ishtar doctrine? ( Several CFC alliances do, but cfc as a whole does not. )

If ishtars are the only ships worth flying, why do I see these fleets regularly amongst both my coalition and my enemies:

Harpies
Baltec ( Megathron/APOC)
NAPOC fleets.
Maelstrom fleets.
Brutix/Harbinger Fleets.
AHAC Fleets (Deimos/Zealot/Legion/Proteus)
Rupture fleets.
Tengu fleets.
Celestis fleets. ( Note these screw ishtars up pretty well )
Interceptor fleets (crows mostly)
Cerberus Fleets
Raven Fleets ( lol this one actually sucked but I've seen it two or three times. )
Comorant fleets.
Stealth bomber fleets ( and I mean a ton, like 120+. not even used for towers. )
General AF fleets.
And of course capital fleets.

There are probably more of these out there that I haven't seen before, but off the top of my head I've seen all of these fleets a number of times, and seen them perform well, do what they are meant to do, and even drive off fleets of similar size made of ishtars.

So yeah, totally dominating the meta there. The domi has been dropped by the CFC, and I have never even seen a domi fleet in combat on an enemy's side, and the ishtar is far from the only thing ever seen.

The arti maelstrom at least have zero versatility. That makes it a reasoanble ship. Horrible for everythginthat is not an alpha fleet.

The ishtar onother handis good at a trillion roles.

I wrote a longer reply, but it seems to have vanished ....

My main points were that the planned rebalance of the Ishtar seem to be almost solely about PvP, but this isn't the only part of Eve. For PvE, especially combat sites and L4 missions, the Ishtar is where it should be; able to be soloed and can work combat sites fast enough to compete with anyone else dropping in. Nerf the sentries then soloing will be very hard, impossible or very time consuming.

Instead of changing ships to "rebalance", why not look at a system-wide change to PvP in low sec? You could consider a handicapping system, varying in extent from 0.4 to 0.1, whereby an attacker's dps and hp is brought in balance with the attacked (but only in one direction, if a Venture, say, attacks a fleet or a Tengu, that's their problem). From skill and experience the best pilot/fleet will win (it works in golf). Seems odd, maybe, but it's just another type of rebalancing, but one that moves away from rebalancing ships in a way that serves one kind of use (in this case PvP) but undermines another.

Bottom line, leave the Ishtar alone, please.

What's worse is that if you aren't using heavies to rat you're doing it wrong. ( In nullsec, with the exception of a few instances in DED sites. ) If you are using an ishar for lvl 4s in highsec, you're doing it wrong. ( At this point use a domi / FNDfor 1.1k +dps).

If you actually want to do PvE, there are better options that won't likely get nerfed in a month, or get you ganked out of principle, and are easier on the training path.

The Dominix, for example, is a better option. If you have some cash, the Rattlesnake is even better.

But an Ishtar for PvE isn't the solution.