Ships & Modules

The Drake is the most-used battlecruiser in the game. The tengu is the most-used T3 in the game. Why? Most people see half the story: they're overpowered. The other half of the story… there are no other good pvp shield tanks available to Caldari pilots.

People call for nerfs of the Tengu and Drake, but in my opinion, they are not the problem, they are the manifestation of the problem. The real problem lies in the "Passive Tank". Armor pilots are forced to choose between reps and buffer. We shield pilots are "forced" to choose between reps and… buffer and reps combined?

Now let's examine how this problem has been counteracted:

We know the backbone of all fleets is made up of our Tank n' Gank ships… the ships that can deal and take damage. Usually, this position falls to the larger ships, Battlecruisers and Battleships.

14 T1 BC/BS have more low slots than mid slots, and 10 T1 BC/BS have more mid slots than low slots. Furthermore "necessary modules" go in the mid slots. (Before you even mention it… yes, damage mods go in the low slots. But in pvp, more gank is helpful, propulsion and/or disruption are necessary).

Of these 10 ships that have more mids than lows, 6 receive damage bonuses – the Cyclone, Tornado, Drake, Naga, Maelstrom, and Raven. Of these 6 damage dealers, one receives a tank bonus… our good friend the Drake. (The maelstrom receives a bonus to shield boosting, but this does not affect its passive tank).

So when it comes down to it, the real problem is not being addressed. Instead, the selection of ships capable of exploiting the problem has been reduced. There is talk of the Drake finally being "balanced", but think about the effect of this change. Without a backbone, what happens to shield fleets?

To avoid this post being classified as ranting or trolling, it's necessary that I propose something constructive:

The shield buffer tank should be just that – a buffer tank. The Drake is criticized because it has the best of both worlds, enough buffer to last a while against larger forces, and a fast enough recharge to absorb against small forces.

Look at the EHP/Damage of a standard Drake vs. a standard Harbinger, each with propulsion and point. You get comparable statistics. But obviously, if the two ships were to 1v1, the Drake's shields would be recharging to absorb half the Harb's damage.

So what do I propose? First, the shield recharge on a buffer tank should be negligible. Quite simply, a Shield Extender should add recharge time to the shield, proportionate to the amount of EHP it adds. This way, it is simply adding hitpoints, not also adding to your ability to repair hitpoints. But wait, what about our PvE friends? Don't they deserve a Drake capable of use on missions? Well, how many other T1 Battlecruisers are capable of solo tanking lvl 4's, with only T2 equipment? A Drake can tank a lvl 3 using resistance, shield rechargers, and shield power relays. A T1 Battlecruiser does not need to tank lvl 4's… you have Battleships and T2's for that.

If the change to Shield Extenders were applied, it would significantly imbalance EVE. There are already more ships capable of armor tanking than shield tanking, and this could push it over the top. However, this imbalance would be an opportunity to reevaluate the entire line of shield ships. At present state of affairs, Caldari has two overpowered ships, the Drake and Tengu, a few ships with a tactical niche (ECM) and a plethora of ships that are almost incapable of PVP. How many people use the Eagle or Cerberus? How often do you see the Raven saddled up for fleet warfare? A pilot of any race should have the ability to choose between a variety of relatively equal ships.

The "band-aid" approach has long been applied to Shield Tanking. All the fixes reduce the ability to exploit the problem, but the problem still remains: Passive Shield Tanks are capable of having he best of both worlds – buffering and repairing all in one.

My buffer drake tanks 210 dps, according to EVEHQ. How's that for recharge?

You're missing my point. I have 100k buffer. If I'm fighitng an armor tank with an equal buffer, I'm neutralizing a substantial portion of his DPS, while he's neutralizing none of mine.

Because the CFC uses the Drake as one of it's main fleet comps and quite a few powerblocs in nullsec use the Tengu. Oh and the Tengu and Drake are both pretty good at PvE for their isk/SP investment.

The root cause of the whole problem is that shield recharge isn't given in hp/s, but in "seconds to 100%". This isn't just counterintuitive (whose bright idea was it, anyway), but also means that shield extenders don't just add shield hp, they also add recharge capability (in hp/s).

The solution should be simple: Separate shield capacity and shield regeneration. Adding a shield extender should add capacity, but leave shield regeneration (in hp/s) the same. Adding a shield recharger should add to shield regeneration (and much more than it does now) while leaving shield hp the same.

Right now, there's virtually no point in fitting shield rechargers anyway, since you'll get much more of a benefit by adding another extender (the sig increase is usually negligible).

So again someone says one being superior to the other is diversity. In order to get some recovery on armor I have to fit an armor repairer in addition to plates and using cap. I wish I could overload my EANMs.

Let me clarify here a bit - when I buffer tank a ship, I expect my defense to be its EHP. Whether it be a buffered Drake, Abaddon, Rokh, Moa, Harbinger... it's irrelevent. For each ship, if you buffer fit it, you're making your main defense the raw EHP of it. However, the shield ships of those, in addition to their raw EHP, also receive a free recharge bonus.



In large-scale warfare, what's the difference? Negligible. But what about small gangs, or even 1v1? If my (for example) Rokh, with a straight-up buffer tank gets 165 ehp, it also recharges to repair 168.7 hitpoints per second. So if I'm facing an armor tank, I'm nullifying a significant portion of his DPS, while he nullifies none of mine. Free reps with my buffer.

I couldn't agree more with Exploited Engineer: A shield buffer should be just that - A shield buffer.

There ya go.

well, yeah that works too.

The regen on a drake realy does make a difference.

Today we were bombed in our drakes, and yes quite a few died, but most didn't. Minutes later my tank was already back at 70%.
In a similar scenario with armor, the armor whole armor fleet had to have it's armor repaired by logis.

Also if an armor and a drake ship go toe to toe, both doing 500 dps, the armor ship will be actually doing only 300 dps, Which is quite significant where I live.

The real thing about the drake is the way how regen and buffering works: smaller ships have a lower recharge time on their shield, but because the drake is able to fit the equivalent of a battleship tankbuffer this recharge translates in a lot of HP repaired.