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Ivo Cortes
V0LTA
New Eden Alliance 99013733
#1 - 2016-04-10 22:57:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Ivo Cortes
Hello New Eden! Today I want to share my experiences about the upcoming Citadel expansion coming on 27th of April regarding the topic of dreadnoughts. I will cover multiple aspects as you will see below. To myself, I am a proud Naglfar pilot and tremendously exited about the changes. Please keep in mind that all numbers listened here are subject to change, but CCP Larikon told me that most of the numbers are already in the late testing phase and we can most likely only expect some minor fitting tweaks.

First, let us take a look about the general changes. The EHP of all capitals were greatly reduced. The base shield armor and hull hitpoints of all capitals declined by roughly 45% and the scan resolution of capitals were increased.
This was done because there are now capital shield extender and armor plates aviable, and if you just fit one of them then your primary tank buffer is already as strong as it used to be, and with two you get great survivability against DDs and the nasty alpha from the heavy fighters torpedo salvo, and you're pretty much forced to fit those if you intent to fight against supercaps if you don't want to get alphad. Great, I like it. Thanks to this change, you can now clearly distinguish dreads and carriers, who should fight against supercapitals, capitals or subcapitals, because you simply don't need the extra buffer if you don't fight against supercaps.
Oh, and you may ask why the shield extender gives 80k HP but the plate only 75k? Well, I assume this is because the summary of the natural shield resistances are only 110% while the natural armor resistances are 130% and therefore the gained EHP is nearly equal.

The scan resolution tweak is necessary because now dreads are vulnerable to electronic ewar, even in siege. They do however, get a 80% impedance towards electronic warfare, so the minor scan resolution tweak just makes sure you can compensate possible sensor dampeners, but without sensor dampeners, your locking time is very convenient. And while the previous complete ewar resistance was pretty nice, I think it's good that you now can actually counter dreads not just with neuts, because that was a pretty odd mechanic, all you could do was field Armageddons and Bhaalgorns, but now you have more weapons against the 'Goliath'.

Staying with the new siege mechanics, the sensor penalty and the reduced amount of locked targets in siege are gone, also a tweak I welcome. Of course, the old dreads were very powerful in siege, but as you're now more vulnerable in siege I am amazed that you don't get your scan resolution reduced anymore because previously this lead pretty much to at least one or two obligatory reserved midslots just to compensate the huge scan resolution penalty, while carriers had the benefit of enjoying frigate scan resolution in triage. I think it's just fair, that when you can apply capital repairs on an ally with frigate lock speed, that you also can apply capital DPS in at least battleship lock speed. And the removal of the limited amounts of locked targets in siege is long time overdue. But currently on the testserver both siege modules tech I and tech II don't provide any kind of penalty towards scan resolution or maximum amount of locked targets, I would like to see a clearer difference between those two types and therefore wouldn't averse a minor penalty on the T1 version.
You can now also apply remote assistance to sieged dreads, but with a very high impedance of 80% (numbers seem to fluctate a bit here), but this idea is awesome. So it's not anymore like "the sieged dreads against the world" but requires more cummunication with the support fleet. A high impedance is just fair here.

Another new toy for the dreads the new High Angle Weapons, short HAWs and they are surprisingly awesome. While the old bigger guns had a terrible tracking, those guns hit subcaps perfectly but duo to the compared low DPS output of around 3200 DPS with max skills, they're on the other hand vulnerable against dreads with anti capital guns with compared around 12000 DPS on the Naglfar with only T2 fitting. I love those new HAWs and they're a great tool against subcapitals, the tracking is awesome, just...i would like to see a minor buff to the DPS as i would say 3500 DPS should be good as otherwise you can field 2 vindicators who have the same DPS and just cost 800mil each. Unfortunately I can't fly a Phoenix as this ship uses rapid torpedo launchers as HAWs and I was unable to test their viability but I heard the application is still pretty bad without support, which is honestly in my opinion just fair and fits the style of the phoenix, and this leads us to the different racial dreads and their pros and cons.
Ivo Cortes
V0LTA
New Eden Alliance 99013733
#2 - 2016-04-10 22:58:32 UTC
The Phoenix recently came up as one of the strongest dreads, its native shield resistance bonus was unique and provided tank without using precious cap. Its 25s reload launcher were abused to instantly kill subcapitals with a tremendous amount of alpha damage, but the Phoenix was rendered completely useless against subcaps without a support fleet with webs and paints. And this should stay that way.
I know a lot of players who complained about the bad shape of the Revelation and I'm glad to see a buff with the new passive armor resistances, I hope I'll see it back on the field as deadly sniper with scorch ammunition :)
Now, Moros and Naglfar, with a weird design concept as both get a bonus to the self rep cycle time. Yet, I was unable to locate any usages for this bonus as this simply eats your cap faster but you end up cycling your reps anyways because self rep is not an issue on sieged dreads as long as they have cap. This also goes against the design philosophies of Minmatar and Gallente as both usually receive a bonus to the repair amount, and i would honestly love to see this bonus changed to rep amount, as in comparison to the Phoenix and the Revelation, who do get this bonus in another way as their repaired amount is simply worth more duo to the passive resistances and they also receive better DD survivability, and that without sacrificing any slots or cap. This is by far, my only issue I currently have because those rep cycle bonus never came in handy and just feels awkward.

Another, very controversal topic is the new feature that you now can't refit anymore with a weapon timer. In my opinion this is not a bad change because now dreads also receive more modules to survive the fight. Otherwise any attempt to balance all that would be voided because you can simply adept to every situation without a penalty, now you have a penalty, and if you commit to a fight you should be able to take the responsibility. On the other hand I can also understand the WH society who are limited duo to the fact that they only can field one dread and be able to go back into their home or 3 dreads but wont be able to go back into their home. This lack of being unable to bring in reinforment makes it very hard to use dreads efficiently and therefore the defender is nearly almost in an advantage because they can adept to the enemy's dread without worrying for reinforcement. Maybe you should reduce the weapon timer in WHs down to 30s? Because, technically CONCORD is not present and can't keep track of incidents in WH space and therefore you're more liberal here.


As next topic I would like to discuss other new modules and their stats.

T2 guns vs. faction guns: As in the current state, faction guns have slightly better tracking, better fitting requirements and a higher base damage but the specialization skill won't be applied to them, and therefore you're dealing 0,5% more damage with T2 guns if you have the specialization skill at lvl 3 and 5,2% more damage with lvl 5 plus you can use T2 ammunition. Great, I like that you can compensate lack of skills with faction guns but you will never be able to out-damage more skillpoints on a character.

repair modules: here you can clearly get an advantage with the faction modules as they're better in cap usage and rep amount, but that is ok because you only need the Capital Armor Repairing / Capital Shield Operation skill on lvl 4 to be able to use the T2 equivalents which is very grateful from CCP because currently those two skills are just not rewarding enough to spend the 40+ training time for lvl 5, therefore I consider this a fair deal.
Another thing are the new capital ancillary armor repairer and ancillary shield booster and I'm pretty amazed by those modules. They add a greater variety of possible fittings, especially since I'm a huge fan of dual ancillary shield boosters because this will make the Naglfar and Phoenix neut immune as you get over 100 cap booster charges in your new fleet hangar. The fitting costs on the other side are of course heavy which is totally fine.

cap booster and batteries: I'm pretty disappointed of those as the batteries don't provide enough buffer that I would consider them crucial enough to sacrifice a medslot. The cap boosters on the other hand provide very bad opportunities as well. Currently they give you 3200 GJ per cap booster, a T2 capital cap booster needs 82 seconds to fully consume all 6 cap boosters plus the 10s reload time at the end which only provides 234 GJ/s. In one siege cycle one cap booster can only fill up 70200 GJ of your capacitor, while this seems to be a lot, this is just enough to counter one Bhaalgorn but is definitely not enough to provide enough cap to significantly improof your cap to keep your self rep running. It is a good module for armor dreads because they have the spare medslots but I doubt it will be as good on shield dreads.

neutralizer and nosferatus: not much to add here honestly, they're good to alpha subcap capacitors, against capitals it'll take a while until a single neutralizer can dry out the capacitor of the other capital but it's enough to be a potentional threat.

propulsion modules: just useless for dreads :D you ruin your own tracking and you can't move in siege anyways. But wary of the AB speedtank carriers (no joke), as they can be nasty if they orbit at 500 and you don't have tracking computers and only capital guns.


Oh, and dreads now have a utility highslot, which is very nice. That offers great potential for cynos, smartbombs, entosis links (5x time penalty may be nasty though) or simply a trustworthy festival launcher.
Ivo Cortes
V0LTA
New Eden Alliance 99013733
#3 - 2016-04-10 22:59:22 UTC
Now to some real usage and experience I was able to gather. In the PvE section, I can say I'm amazed by the new WH sites as they're so much fun to clear now with HAWs. You can just warp to the site at 0 and you won't have any tracking issues with 3 tracking computers. You simply kill the frigates with a smartbomb in your utility highslot (advice faction ones or T2 for greater range as they orbit at around 7km).
Unfortunately I couldn't make such great experience with nullsec sites, too many ships who die too fast, and the elite frigates often orbit outside of smartbomb range and you need a grappler and maximum tracking or faction webs. Therefore the carrier will stay the king of nullsec ratting, especially with the new light fighters.

As on the logistic side, I'm glad dreads are now equal to carriers with their own fleet hangar and SMA (just, if you guys at CCP could add some tiny docking arrays like the Revelation has already on the front side that would be super cool).

PvP wise I'm overall very happy with these changes and all those new modules. This adds such a great variety of viable fittings and it's not anymore like the only variety on dreads you had was the amount of faction modules you can fit.


Those were my 2 cents to this topic, I hope you enjoyed it and I would love to hear your opinion regarding this topic. I hope I didn't missed anything.


Greetings

Ivo Cortes