Patch Note Analysis:
Patch notes for Carnyx came out this week. Carnyx is to be released on the 2nd of June and will be introducing the new Caldari T3D, the Jackdaw. I am going to go through the three changes relevant to PvP and analyse them so you guys can get an idea of what's changing and how it will effect you in your pew pew activities.
It's that time again. Just prey for minimal nerf batting, as always.
First off, there are changes to Afterburners and Microwarpdrives coming. Basically, CCP are messing with the meta levels for both modules. For 1MN AB's, there is pretty much no change bar new names. There are new meta levels for 10MN and 100MN though. These new meta levels have lower fitting requirements to the other ones but higher activation cost. This is good as it means you now have more flexibility when fitting your cruisers and BS's to be able to squeeze in that T2 plate in exchange for slightly more cap strain. Google Docs for AB's.
For MWD's there is a little more going on. MWD's are now known as 5/50/500 MN to make your market searching a little easier and every class of MWD has a new meta level. This new meta level has higher fitting requirements than the other meta's but has the lowest sig radius bonus of even the T2 variants. 50MN and 500MN also have another new meta level with the lowest fitting requirements but the worst stats overall compared to the rest of the meta's and T2. T2 MWD's also now only reduce your cap slightly less. Overall this means you now have more choice with MWD's so you can choose depending on what specific stat effects your ship the most, eg if you need the low sig or if you have bad cap. Google Docs for MWD's.
A buff overall for AB's and even more for MWD's simply due to the flexibility and choice you now have with fitting.
Plates and Shield Extenders are also getting tweaked. The 50mm and micro class has been removed, but I doubt anyone will miss them.
For armour plates, on the whole the meta's have been buffed in terms of HP bonus, which is nice. There have also been some changes to fitting space in exchange for more/less mass in some cases. So again, more flexibility in fitting. Most notably though, T2 1600mm plates have had their powergrid requirement lowered, which it good news for T1 armour buffer cruisers, as they may not need to fit a powergrid rig anymore, but I havnt done the maths yet so dont hold me to it. Google Docs for Armour Plates.
Shield extenders have had some interesting changes. Small shield extenders got a very nice hp buff. There is also now a shield extender meta that gives a small sig radius bonus than any other. Even with the small shield extender buff though, I can still see medium shield extenders being better. Still though, this may lead way for some new interesting frig fits. Google Docs for Shield Extenders.
Similar to prop mods, you now have a lot more flexibility in terms of fittings with your buffer tank modules, and you can specifically go for meta versions with less mass/sig bonus if your fit benefits from it more than extra hp. I think this will lead us to seeing more variance in small gang and solo PvP fits, especially in frigates, as normally the difference between fitting a mod or not is one or two points.
Lastly, sentry drones have received heavy nerfs, You can see the exact numbers on the patch note page linked below, but gardes, curators and bouncers will deal slightly less damage and track significantly worse. Gardes have also had a major optimal range nerf in exchange for a large falloff buff.
This is yet another indirect Ishtar nerf and we will once again have to wait to see if this will be the final nail in the coffin for the Ishtar meta. Honestly I think not, as imo it's the utility of sentries, not the damage, that makes Ishtars so powerful. Though I could be wrong. It also means Rattlesnake fleets wont be as good unless we all start using Wardens but, they are shit anyways.
Patch notes
This is the first time I have gone through patch notes so I hope I did a good job.
Plates and Shield Extenders are also getting tweaked. The 50mm and micro class has been removed, but I doubt anyone will miss them.
For armour plates, on the whole the meta's have been buffed in terms of HP bonus, which is nice. There have also been some changes to fitting space in exchange for more/less mass in some cases. So again, more flexibility in fitting. Most notably though, T2 1600mm plates have had their powergrid requirement lowered, which it good news for T1 armour buffer cruisers, as they may not need to fit a powergrid rig anymore, but I havnt done the maths yet so dont hold me to it. Google Docs for Armour Plates.
Shield extenders have had some interesting changes. Small shield extenders got a very nice hp buff. There is also now a shield extender meta that gives a small sig radius bonus than any other. Even with the small shield extender buff though, I can still see medium shield extenders being better. Still though, this may lead way for some new interesting frig fits. Google Docs for Shield Extenders.
Similar to prop mods, you now have a lot more flexibility in terms of fittings with your buffer tank modules, and you can specifically go for meta versions with less mass/sig bonus if your fit benefits from it more than extra hp. I think this will lead us to seeing more variance in small gang and solo PvP fits, especially in frigates, as normally the difference between fitting a mod or not is one or two points.
Lastly, sentry drones have received heavy nerfs, You can see the exact numbers on the patch note page linked below, but gardes, curators and bouncers will deal slightly less damage and track significantly worse. Gardes have also had a major optimal range nerf in exchange for a large falloff buff.
This is yet another indirect Ishtar nerf and we will once again have to wait to see if this will be the final nail in the coffin for the Ishtar meta. Honestly I think not, as imo it's the utility of sentries, not the damage, that makes Ishtars so powerful. Though I could be wrong. It also means Rattlesnake fleets wont be as good unless we all start using Wardens but, they are shit anyways.
Patch notes
This is the first time I have gone through patch notes so I hope I did a good job.
What Gate Camping Does for EVE:
Gate camping seems like one of those many things in eve that was made just to ruin your day. There is rarely anything you can do but watch your ship blow up. You can try to burn back to gate by all means, but any proper gate camp will have more than enough webs to prevent that from happening. I have lost cruisers and even BC's to gate camps when I was newer to the game and had less wit about myself, and being the butthurt newbie I was it could cause me to log off for the rest of the day. I mean, 30m was pretty much all I had back then as well. Not to see that doesn't sometimes still apply to me though. Although, while rampant gate camping can seem to be a plague on New Eden sometimes, I want to talk today about some of the benefits that gate camping indirectly has for the eve universe.
I think the most important thing to remember with gate camping is to think of what eve would be like without it. A lot of eve is about survival and being able to not get yourself killed, no matter what aspect you focus in, and that's one of the things that makes eve fun. Gate camping is one of those things that keeps you on your toes, among other things, and forces you to think about what you're doing. Think how easy hauling would be if no one gate camped. It would be so simple that you might even be able to go as far and say that it's boring! (/s) It's not just hauling or moving from A to B either. If you have ever taken out a small gang roam, you will know that finding a gate camp can be blessing to give your fleet members a gf, just jump in and start getting 1337 km's. Lastly, gate camping is the perfect place for solo PvPers to show off their mad skills. Think of how many solo PvP videos you have seen of marauders absolutely obliterating gate camps, I'm sure plenty come to mind. My point here is that, gate camps provide content, even though it often seems like they manage to suck out all the fun of everything.
I guess it's important to point out it's sometimes fun to be on the camping side as well.
Especially with that much Gallente swag.
However, it is important to point out that while gate camping has these benefits, that doesn't mean there is nothing wrong with gate camping, which is probably slightly more obvious. I don't mean in the sense of you not having as much fun because you were too lazy to scout, but I think the main problem with gate camping is its ability to kill alliances. There is a reason Oulley, a system in Placid, is called the system where alliances go to die. It's because Oulley is right next to a high sec trade hub, Orvolle and Oulley starts a pipe that leads to active low sec space, making the Oulley/Orvolle gate very active. This means any alliance that lives there cannot help but gate camp that gate. Now, this would normally be fine, who could blame them after all, but I have seen multiple entities live in that system and every single one of them have spent a large amount of their time camping this gate. This leads to stale, boring content of repeating the same thing to get a number bigger. It's a bit like mining in that sense, but in this case that number is on a killboard and not in your wallet. It's because of this that members get bored and leave and eventually the alliance becomes irrelevant. Either that or the CEO himself gets bored, steals all the moons and leaves for some other alliance, in one particular case. What sucks most about all of this is that these alliances had potential to make some real waves in the area, provide content for other growing entities and have more fun themselves. All in all, gate camping can mean a lot of content is missed out on.
In conclusion, gate camping does a very important job in the eve eco-system but at the same time can make whole pipe's stagnant of content. I don't really have a message of what the right thing is to do, and I wont give a step by step guide of how to manage your gate camping time, but I thought it would be interesting to analyse the pros and cons that gate camping provides for eve, make of it what you will.
I want to say if this post doesn't seem to be as meaty as other posts I am sorry, but I have had to do a lot of revision lately for my exams. One more week to go!
What's Going on With Me:
Apart from that, my final exam is this Friday!
Fit of the Week:
We're gonna do another comet fit this week because since the last time we did one I have changed what fit I like to fly, so I thought I should share.
As we can see, this fit makes use of the awesome power of hull tanking and mad deeps. Two mag stabs gives you 200 dps cold, which is pretty awesome. Your tank is also godly, over 7k ehp of buffer and then a small ancil rep to compliment that means you can take on most things as long as you can keep range control, and as you are not slowed down by armour tank, you normally can.
An alternative way to fit this is to meta 4 the DCU and get a nos, because if you ever get into the situation where you are being neuted, or you want to try and take on a cruiser with a medium neut, you can keep your guns pulsing. This does however require a 1% CPU implant.
This fit is tight for CPU but you have CPU management V anyways, right?
Lastly, I cannot stress enough that this fit requires the Police Pursuit skin for an extra 50% dps buff. Do not undock without it.
Fight of the Week:
More BS PvP to show off this week. Well, I say show off but it's more of me getting dunked by a small navy cruiser gang. I wanted to talk about this fight though because I think it highlights a very strong composition that I have actually used myself before in small gang and I also want to analyse what I did and see if anyone can point out if I could of done anything differently in the fight to come out with some kills.
I love my scream of hype at the start
So I jump into two VNI's, two ANI's and a Vexor. My first instinct is to go for the VNI as they have more dps and less tank than the ANI, I didnt see the Vexor at first, I should of gone for that. To my horror I was barely scratching the VNI and taking a lot of dps myself. That was when I noticed they were remote rep VNI's so I would not be able to break their buffer tank. Because of this, I switched to the squishier Vexor and neuted both VNI's to try and hurt their repping power. One of my main mistakes this fight was I waited far too long to turn on my cap booster. This would of been fine if it wasnt for the Sentinel keeping me capped out when I got low.
I didnt have enough dps to kill the vexor before their dps broke my reps, so I died without killing anything. I think there was problems on both fronts of dps and tank here, the cap problems meant I couldnt keep my reps constant enough to apply my dps, and it seemed even when I was up I wasnt doing as much damage as I would of liked.
There was no way I could of escaped as there were three scrams on me and I was already in hull, giving me no time to try and cap anything out. Overall I dont think there is much of I could of done with my fit, so I may consider buffer tank from now on, but I'm also interested in what you guys think of the fight.
Battle Report of the Week:
For some reason whenever I try to get a br from zkill atm it always bugs for no reason and I'm not sure how to fix it. Basically, everything from Scope Works is repeated, just ignore it.
Anyway, caps got dunked in Ostingelle this week, belonging to the ex-OE corp Scope Works. It seems SC manage to catch the caps what looks like pos bashing, but I'm not sure, and proceeded to drop plenty of blops and some caps. Scope Works managed to take out a couple blops on their way out but didnt come close to making up for their loss of 11b.
If I'm honest I wanted to find something a little less one sided but this was the first semi-interesting br I could find and I have my last three exams next week, so haven't had as much time as I would like, hopefully this will do you guys.
The RR setup is really nasty. RR vexors (not even the navy issue version) can put out a decent amount of reps and normally have a cargo full of capboosters to keep them going for ages.
ReplyDeleteBest thing you probably could have done in that situation is started by heading back towards the gate, that would do a couple of things:
1. Give you a chance to deagress and jump if shit hit the fan and you couldn't mjd
2. Could cause your opponents to delay engaging in case you jumped (if they didnt have tackle waiting on the other side)
Both options allow you to potentially split the fleet, which is pretty critical in an RR setup. If the fleet split it would probably have been possible to neut down one vni whilst killing another ship on grid.
But yeah, shitty setup to fight against solo, and a great one to fly with as a small gang!