Player Features and Ideas Discussion

Yeesh. Some good, some bad.

Deimos. Clearly you are trying to bludgeon this ship into a rail-kite setup. The new 50% off discount on MWD sig penalty, plus better rail DPS, and a MWD cap use bonus looks good on paper. We will see if it is, indeed, good for this role given the Thorax will also receive an equal boost from medium rail buff and is already a decent (if niche) rail kite option.

Vaga won't benefit greatly with this new role bonus in a brawling setup. Kiting...sure, a bonus to sig radius will help reduce its already bloated MWD sig and help it's tank.

Regarding your buff to the Ishtar? 2008's sniper sentry concept called and wants lack of mobility and lack of Attack BC's back. Also, lack of loki boosts, lack of T3's, lack of MJD's. I like things retro - 1950's housewife chic is good. But the role of this ship as a drone sniper is just gone. The meta has moved on.

The Ishtar also, as said a million times earlier in the thread, REALLY needs a CPU buff.

Sac changes are good. But then, any changes to the Sac would be good. Here the cap recharge bonus is clearly aimed at active tank brawlers, or to help with prolonged kiting. Not sure that it will be good at either. Again, the Scythe Fleet or even Caracal make brutal 600 DPS HAM brawlers.

Munnin and Eagle both suffer from the advent of Attack BC's. The Munnin has been obsoleted also by the advent of the Arty Scythe Fleet which does its job much better. AC fit Munnin AHACs...well, maybe. Stronger armour tank is going to see the Munnin slot in with a few sig tanking gangs.

Zealot is still going to be good. Especially now, with shield beam Zealot gangs being a really, really sweet concept to go along with shield rail Thoraxes.

Cerb...well, its an improvement. The missile velocity bonus will not so much help apply HML damage at 200km faster than your enemy gets to warp out, but will actually make HAM snipers viable. Altogether, looks interesting.

I think this is overall a missed opportunity. Concepts I'd have liked explored:
- EWAR drone bonuses on the Ishtar. 20% per level bonus to EWAR drone effectiveness? Make large neut drones and TD and SD drones...useful??
- MWD speed drone bonus. You can kite like a monster, and get tackled by a Slasher and be unable to escape. What a great way to spend 270M ISK.
- EWAR bonuses. I mean, these ships are supposed to be assault ships. They go into battle...and then promptly try kiting instead of attacking. Yep. I'm going to be more afraid of a Navy cruiser, a T3 or an Attack BC than these things, or a Geddon tbh. At least a Geddon is a) cheaper b) tankier c) has neuts. And d) you can plaster on a MJD and try your luck.

I'll be sticking to my Scythe Fleets, Stabber Fleets and Navy Omens.

MJD Vagabond would be rather annoying to catch. But otherwise I actually like this idea.

Sacrilege could use another low... A properly fit dual rep Sacrilege does barely any DPS.

Yeah but don't forget: you'd be able to jump out and if he does, then he's 100km away, and you won't have to worry anymore anyway.

Plus, since it'd be limited to HACs, it'd differentiate the Vaga from the Cynabal that much more.

Zealot is mostly fine in it's role as a pulse boat. Maybe a slight buff to make it viable compared to navy omens in small gangs, but it's perfectly viable in larger engagements. One sad thing is the fact that it still doesn't really support beams, with their massive fitting requirements and the fact that it isn't really suited for sniping/kiting (3 mids, not that fast). But I think that it's more a problem of beams than a problem related to the zealot. Beams have awful T2 munitions compared to the goodness of scorch and conflagrate. A standard shield beam fit will only hit at around 300 dps with aurora. Not speaking of shorter range munitions in a kiting configuration, because they are overshadowed by scorch pulses. A buff to beam range in addition to damage would maybe make it viable. Or Aurora damage ratio. Because right now there is no way this would compare to tier3 BCs (they are a huge problem to balance any other sniper ship).

The sacrilege already have a net advantage compared to other options (ham drakes). It can sig tank. But the fact that it's a very slight improvement in damage compared to the zealot for a MASSIVE loss in how easy it is to apply this damage is sad. I think it should get a slight damage buff to compensate and make it into a viable fleet option by making it worthwhile to embark the needed target painters and web in fleet. Also add RLM damage bonus, because why not? Also, the capacitor bonus is pretty bad, I think. the only reason you would have to need it would be active tanking, and if you active tank a sacrilege, you use cap boosters, because one repper isn't going to save your life. If you want to push the sacrilege as a solo boat instead of a fleet boat (which sounds awkward on a HAM boat, since HAMs really need ton of support to become effective, HM do not need reppers, only speed to kite, and sacrileges lack any rapid light missile bonus), you should add a repper bonus instead of a cap bonus. Or a repper cap consumption bonus, that would be new and interesting! And also make RLM bonused on it, since they're awesome for solo/small gang.

Cerb is way too slow, but if you make it faster, it will just overshadow caracal/navy caracals. Instead, I think it should be a cruiser sized missile brawler, a role that isn't filled right now, since caracals and navy caracals are way too fragile. Remove all range bonuses, swap the resist bonus with the eagle and add a damage or explosion velocity/radius bonus.

For the same reason, the eagle should not become a blaster/short range railgun brawler. This role is already filled by a lot of ships. Instead, it should be a long range railgun platform at cruiser size, something new. Remove the resist bonus, add something like an agility bonus (while keeping it slow if they want to make it into a sniper and not a kitter, or they could fix the speed to enable both roles). It should have an overwhelming agility advantage compared to tier3 cruisers to make up for the lost damage. The same observations I did for the beam zealot applies here: you either have an awful range for a sniper/kiter (CN AM) with short range munitions, and don't even have decent dps to go with it, or you have decent range (contrary to beams and the zealot, you at least can reach a good range), but sacrificing all your dps. The problem is still tier3 BCs. No way you could compare with them with those stats. I really think the way to balance sniper hacs is to nerf tier3 BCs really hard. They should not be close in term of agility and speed. At all. They should be heavier than other BCs, not lighter. Unless you fix tier3 BCs, there is no way you can fix sniper hacs without breaking the balance somewhere else with med long range guns being used at closer range. Of course, sniper hacs should not have more damage than tier3 BCs, but they should be made competitive by giving them a ton of mobility compared to those. We're comparing a BC and a cruiser here. An eagle and a naga have roughly the same speed. How is this even conceivable?

All the problems I talked about for the eagle and beam zealot applies to the munnin. But if those are fixed, the munnin should go the same way the eagle goes, but with less damage/range and more alpha. Buff it's agility by a ton to make it a viable option by allowing it to warp quickly where you want it to be on the battlefield.

The vagabond was pretty okay as a nano gang ship, and the added shield boost also pushes it as a very viable solo ship. Maybe a tad bit too much.

The deimos should become fine in small gangs (awesome with blasters, able to zip around with MWD on), and competitive in larger fleets because of it's range flexibility compared to a zealot when fitted with railguns. Didn't need that utility high anyway. I think the mwd capacitor bonus should be switched to a generic propulsion capacitor bonus, though, because you should have the choice of propulsion. Not that a reduction in AB capacitor consumption would be massive, but right now, it seems like you're only pushing MWD play on it.

The ishtar is mostly fine as a smaller sig dominix, the swap towards drone tracking is going to make it into a fleet staple, like for the dominix. Pretty happy about this one, since it was never designed for small scale anyway. Massive up for pve too, though. And ishtar multiboxing may have been already a bit too good there. Should become used a lot more. Sad that non-sentry drones aren't pushed at all, though. Could add a drone speed & warp speed in addition to tracking & optimal, maybe by pushing the drone bay into base stats.

But to be fair, this should be posted in a tier3 BC rebalance thread, not in a hac one. Those are the main problem with hacs viability right now. I think we should go back to them before jumping into tech2 rebalance, because they play a huge role in hacs rebalance. Before their introduction, the medium guns change could have been enough to push the eagle, beam zealot and muninn into use...

Please CCP add more CPU to the Ishtar!

T2 ships are supposed to be specialized. Recons, interceptors, bombers, dictors, hictors, EAFs, logistics, command ships, and black ops all possess unique capabilities - specialized Ewar, enhanced tackling, unique weapons, etc - that give you a theoretical reason to use them over T1 ships. Paying 200 million isk for a cruiserthat gets 60km webs is not outrageous. Paying 200 million isk for a cruiser that's a moderately more powerful (but also fatter) version of a regular cruiser is problematic, especially when I can pay a third that for a moderately more powerful version of a regular cruiser that is also faster and/or tougher.

CCP really ought to sit down and figure what unique capabilities they want for Assault Ships/Heavy Assault Ships before they rework them. Then they need to make sure that the intended roles are viable when inserted into the present metagame. Unique capabilities do not necessarily need to be represented by hull-limited modules or weird role bonuses, but bringing out a T2 ship should be something you do because you can't do the job properly with a T1 ship.

i do not think that eagle will be any better with these changes, no one will use it anyway.

it is just too slow for any use.

All these people crying out for the Vaga to be an arty platform, why?

The Muninn just needs to become less ****, keep the Vaga as an AC platform.

Just to reiterate though, the changes to the Vagabond are **** and only make it worse, it loses a little speed and gains a **** bonus that will only be used in a heavy tackle role, all the Vaga needs is a DPS and projection buff, possibly add like 30 grid to make it a little less of a ***** to fit, you dont need to change anything else on it.

Hey guys, another short update.

Spent most of the day yesterday on prep for the Alliance Tournament and of course today and tomorrow will be spent on 64 total AT matches. Fozzie and I are still talking a lot about this rebalance and have some good ideas going forward but because of the tournament you will have to wait until the start of the work week.

Check out the AT in the meantime =)