CCP will be finishing the frigate ship balancing in the winter, blowing through destroyers, and moving straight to cruisers. The tech 1 versions of cruisers will be balanced with the winter expansion but this brings up a worrying question, "What are they going to do to the tech 2 versions?" Most importantly what are they going to do to the ships that have become a well established fleet doctrine?
When I think of that question four ships come to mind, the zealot, muninn, drake (I know its it not a tech 2 ship) and logistic ships. Lets look at the first three since they are the bulk of their respective fleet doctrines and the main damage dealers. The zealot in armor hac fleets, the muninn in sniper hac gangs and the drake in the drake army/blob fleet. These fleet doctrines were built around the very strengths of these ships, the small sig and speed of the zealot, the high alpha potential of the muninn and the cheap cost but good balance of dps and tank of the drake. If any of these things were to change than these fleets, which are very popular, would also be changed drastically or completely made useless.
Take the zealot for example. The standard ahac fleet is built around the idea of having has small as sig as possible while maintaining over 500 m/s speed making them extremely hard to hit by anything battleship size or up. These fleets also have excellent dps and moderate range given the use of scorch ammo on pulse lasers. The down side is the weaker tank and the need to be at close ranges to be able to put on full dps and the higher than average SP and skill requirement to fly this fleet well. Right now this fleet doctrine counters BS size fleets very well if they can get in under the guns of the BS's and this is why it has been used very widely by the DOTBROs as a counter to the alpha mael fleet of the GSF. Now, lets do some wild speculation shall we. CCP decides the zealot is just a bit over powered and nerfs the zealot in a way that it will not be able to fit the requirements of the ahac fleet. That would effectively kill this very used fleet and force players to look else where for a counter to the enemy fleet. It would do the opposite of what CCP is trying to do and that is make all ships want to be used not just the "best" ones. I for one am worried that CCP will make this mistake.
Sure you can argue that shaking things up a bit is good for the game and I completely agree but do not shake things up by nerfing one ship forcing players to look else where. Why not take a page from Blizzard's book. Recently Blizzard released a major patch for Diablo 3 that changed the way the classes could be played. Blizzard did not nerf the classes, except for a few OP chases, no, they buffed all the unused skills/runes to make them more attractive than just the 6 skills that worked best. They gave the players more variety through buffs instead of forcing them to change through nerfs. CCP should do the same, why not buff the unused ships to give players more choices in countering the enemy than just this one doctrine. Buff the Sacrilege or the Ishtar so that they can become a new ahac fleet doctrine that is also effective against another fleet in their own way. Players crave choices like this and we all have ships that we love for no other reason other than we do and if those ships become useful for their own fleet than that will make all of Eve a happier place. So CCP while some people might be calling for the nerf of some of these ships *cought drake cought* I hope they take the time to bring the other unused ship inline before breaking out the nerf bat.
The fourth ship(s) I mentioned are logistics and that is a post at another time...
No comments:
Post a Comment