Player Features and Ideas Discussion

You're talking broad nerfs to ships in every variety, not the specific 'we're gonna nerf this ship here, specifically, for this reason. ' Ehp, nano and speed nerfs affected everyone. But you never see ccp saying hmm....for it's class the hurricane has too much of a speed tank for all it's gank - whereas ships like the drake and the myrm have been nerfed specifically. Minmatar are ccp's baby.

See, once upon a time (2009 and prior), taking a Drake into PvP was something that got corps kicked from alliances.
On the odd occasion one was brought in, it was HAM'd to the nines or shunned with cries of "Begone, carebear!"
Drakes were seen as having abysmal DPS (or range, if HAM'd in a socially acceptable manner), pathetic speed, huge sig rad, and no purpose in battle outside of ablative bait.

They were easily blatted by sniper-bs squads, melee-bs squads and well... anything that could outrange them. Their only advantage was immunity to neuts and soaking up damage better applied to venting the hulls of other, less resiliant ships.

It's not unheard of for ships to be valuable in both PvE and PvP - it's when they're used en-masse that it looks bad.
That being said - how often have we seen clouds of Canes (GSF), hordes of HACs, busloads of battleships, flights of Falcons, reams of Rifters, and many other alliterative examples of numbers overcoming shortcomings of a given ship class.

Altering the FOTM is just chasing your tail. Within a year of wormhole farming, we'll probably see Drakes laughed out of space by squads of Tengus. Boost the unused ships - particularly those not used in PvE OR PvP (Tier 1 BC's, Blops) so that they have a feasible role once more.

Truth be told, however, Canes are pretty darn awesome. When did you last see a Ferox?

anyway a myrm or harb will eat a drake if its up close, the dps at range (and im talking point range here) is maybe about 50 or 60 less but the 'ewar' capabilities from midslots is so much better than the drakes. The cane is slightly different and i would take on a drake in one but fitted the standard way its bloody awesome: the tank on a drake with a point and web fitted is less than any of the other mentioned bc's btw, except the cane which has ever so slightly less but well... standard fit cane has better ewar capabilities than all the others.

They look balanced as it is, I really do think its a load of whiney wanna be pvpers that are getting upset with they're failfits and own failure to tackle and kill a 'pve' ship that 'obviously' shouldnt be any good at pvp.

I could not tell you the actual figures as eft does not show the same numbers as eve fitting screen so there would be a bit of give an take but armored up those 3 other bc's are better for solo work than the drake [just fyi harb pilots only dislike drakes cus a smart drake pilot will eep range; i know, i've done it and he whined like a little baby which was great fun til he called in his reps]

I really would ask CCP to concentrate on other aspects of the game, there is so much ship changing its getting stupid, for every buff or nerf something else changes; economically speaking they are spending waaaay too much time on attempted balancing than the actual game itself.

Drakes may be good in combat with a suitable pilot but lets not forget that ewar for the mids means it can be severely hampered up close. Blobs are blobs, and arty canes for instant damage are still better (imo) than drake blobs... its just almost everyone can fly a drake

*snip*

Does anyone actually have any reasonable evidence for this change breaking the Drake?
Bearing in mind the fact that a post-nerf Drake will have better long range performance, full selectable damage type, similar EHP to the other battlecruisers and can still fit both tank, gank and EWAR without having to compromise.

That really doesn't look too broken to me.

If you can't see how having the best EHP of all the BCs (by far) coupled with high DPS and range flexibility doesn't make them just as good in small gangs as in large, then I feel deeply sorry for you. One little line about how "CCP thinks they're fine in small gangs" doesn't make it true.


Actually, while these were never really OP - they got nerfed anyway via scan probe changes.
Counters to Drake blobs do actually exist already - they just involve ships that are 3-4x the price and skills required. Bit of a problem there, wouldn't you say? The fact is, the Drake is OP when you compare it to other BCs. The fact there's a battleship based counter isn't really relevent.


Want to know how to make things even worse than a (fairly light) nerf? Indiscriminate buffing. CCP laid a blanket buff on Minmatar, and we got the hilariously overpowered bullet spewing abombinations we all know and cross trained for today.
BCs are already overpowered in general, buffing the other 7 while leaving the Drake alone can't be good.

And as small gang warfare consitutes 90 percent of PVP, nerfing it to "balance" a very small part of pvp whilst unbalancing it for the vast majority of pvp is simply ludicrous.

Those numbers only tell that these whips are mostly used, not that theyre better.

I mean, if the caldari pilots would stop using goddamn missiles and train their rail guns (and use ships like the ferox, the rokh, the naga, etc.), they would realise they have more ships in their arsenal. Luckily, with the hybrid boost, it contributed to increase the use of these ships (remember those numbers have been took on a long period of time ie as couple of years, lots of changes have been made since)

I do agree though that because of their high alpha, minmattar ships are the most used in PvP and the ennemy have virtually no means of defending unless they use the same kind of strategy.

*snip* Your first post boils down to "hurrrrrr its one of the few caldari ships used, leave it alone." You realize it can be used and be OP right?

The tank on the drake will go down marginally. HAM setups will be much better (oh god you might have to fit a web or painter? how horrible). So you won't have an 85k EHP Tier 2 bc anymore. What you will have is a Tier 2 bc that can take advantage of both short and long range weapon systems quite effectively.

Hmm, debatable - it'll be more range-flexible than the sac but the gap in tank between the two ships will be reduced. The full selectable damage type really does tread on the Sacrilege in a big way though - that ship badly needs another low. =/

Edit: Yeah looking over that ^ you're right - it's not really debatable at all, the Drake does gain an even larger advantage. Still, hopefully that'll get looked at in the next round of balance changes.