EVE General Discussion

Oh no :sadpanda:

On my 2nd day for Shield Operation V.... and after all that time for Caldari Cruisers.. Which is the better logi again? Basilisk or Scimitar

10% bonus to Drone hitpoints and damage becomes 10% bonus to Light, Medium, and Heavy Drone hitpoints and damage, 5% bonus to Sentry Drone hitpoints and damage
All bouncers Optimal Range reduced by approximately 15%, falloff increased by the amount taken away from optimal

HAHAHAH RIP ISHTAR HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

time to start training loki and T2 arty

And you know that teeny tiny fact where medium rails can track fairly well at 20Km, and deal decent do out at 90 something with spike.

Let's looks around...

Most popular fleet AF: Harpy (74 km spike optimal **** yeah!)
Most popular fleet t1 cruiser: Moa (budget Eagle)
Most popular fleet t2 non drone cruiser: Eagle (Budget Tengu)
Most popular t3 cruiser: Tengu
Most popular t2 BC: Vulture.

I'm sure this level of popularity has absolutely nothing to do with their weapon system. Loki's problem mainly lie in the fact that their weapon system has a much smaller effective range, and has far lower tracking at closer range, and lower overall DPS. And twice the reload timer of hybrids.

The math must be really complicated, taking months and months to "balance" one ship. Imagine the earth shaking task before them in making the entire inventory balanced one in relation to the other! Probably easier to build a tesseract in your living room!

Then...maybe all those layoffs weren't such a good idea after all...who knows? Thems that does ain't talkin'.

You sure can't compare Caldari rails with Gallente rails (and tracking bonuses + drones) at 20km. It is also almost pointless to use those ships with blasters when you look at Gallente close range bonuses ( + drones again). What is left is just the range in a game where the best tank is speed/mobility. Would you pick an Eagle over Deimos for brawling? No, you'll go for a Moa because of the shield doctrine and lack of other shield tank options. Notice the "non drone" in most popular... I had no idea "non drone" is a ship quality. You can pecker to hilarious doom a rail fitted "non drone" with any frigate of your choice that has a point and drones. I doesn't even need weapons in it's high slots so you can very well launch probes while doing so.
The "over use" of the ships you have listed is due to the optimal/range bonuses/ slot layout makes them ideal for far away engagements in any common sense shield fleet doctrine. At closer range there are plenty of ships that offer tackling/damage bonuses so each fleet has a wide array of ships to chose from. Also don't forget that all the ships you listed will have shield tanks, which is seldom available (or preferred) for their Minmatar (and sometimes Gallente) counter candidates. The 7% rail nerf isn't going to change anything because there are no other options for ranged combat other than drones and also the Tengu tank nerf isn't going to change much when it is the ONLY option for a decent t3 shield tank that can rival with Proteus and Legion.

I other words, a shield fleet doctrine is always going to prefer the ships you listed because it lacks other options. I'm pretty sure an extra medium or low slot on some Minmatar ships and also some rethought bonuses for Loki's defensive system would have been more effective than a nerf bat. In the current situation the Caldari optimal bonuses for rails leaves them the still the only solo option for long range engagement because nobody is going to chose the low tracking/medium slot lacking combo of the Nado when thinking of a decent shield fleet, not even if you buff arty damage by 100%.

I conclusion it is a nerf just for the sake of nerfing it doesn't balance anything, it just slowly pushes shield tanking/rail combo further inside its very own niche because it offers no other choices.

Poasting in a secret Ishtar thread:

The "nerf" isn't hard enough.

Sentries shouldn't be available on a cruiser-sized hull.

Fix: Increase the sentries' volume, then up the drone bays of battleships.

Bingo-presto - you've done a service to all.

Just train everything and become nerf proof.

It's overstating things to call this change a tengu *nerf*. It's an adjustment that seeks to make self tanking a little more viable (smaller sig and larger buffer) and buffer tanking less abusable. That's all.

You'll still have 100mn self-repping, cap-stable, 700dps tengus. Proteus' will still be a great deal more viable for gank dps than (say) deimos or zealot because the buffer will still be enormous. Nothing has really changed.

No tears are necessary here. There's not really anything to see.

They used to be laughably bad. And then CCP buffed basically everything about them, and they became amazing in comparison to just about any other weapon system with the exception of t2 pulse lasers, and those have very limited large scale application.

Sorry, but it was needed, they were being used on basically every fleet comp in null because of their excellent damage and versatility of ranges.

Harpy fleets with spike pounding away at targets 75km+ away, with the option of switching to close range ammo and still effectively brawling at 10.

Tengu fleets were doing the same at ranges of around 15-100Km, and Moa/Eagle fleets at ranges that long as well.

So sorry about the mission nerf side effect, but it was inevitable. P.S: Crosstraining is good.