Changes to T3Ds, RIP Confessor and Snuff getting dunked

Upcoming T3D Changes, nerf bat hitting hard

So CCP have said in the latest o7 show that they are going to be nerfing T3 Destroyers. Personally, this makes me very sad, but I know that its the right thing to do. Now, I don't fly the Svipul (I would say because I'm not a rusty degenerate but I know a lot of people that would piss off), so I will be mainly referring to the Confessor in this post, however the same things mostly apply to both ships.

How things are now:

Currently, Confessors and Svipuls (how do you say that?) can easily fit 10MN AB's as well as decent active tank and guns. This makes them amazing for low sec FW solo roaming. My preferred fit  for the Confessor while streaming atm is something along the lines of two deadspace armour reps, Fed Navy 10MN AB and pure tank, giving me 80%+ resists across the board in defense mode and still 250 dps cold with Multi loaded. In speed mode overheated, I can do around 4kms without any links or implants of any kind. It's fucking sexy all round. What I love most about this fit is that its superb at taking on small gangs that you find in Black Rise, and when then when the Russians come to blob you in Placid/Essence you can simply switch into speed mode, heat AB and moonwalk out of the place. Thats not to say the fit dosnt have its weaknesses. Firstly, a 10MN AB means that if you try to turn around with it on, you're gonna be there for a while, giving targets a lot of time to burn out of your scram range and MWD away while trying to pick off high priority targets like logi or ewar. Another big flaw is that anything with neuts will absolutely rape you. Even a pesky neuting Tristan can make it so that you cant turn your AB on to get out.

However, despite these flaws in the fit, you have to admit the Confessor is a little OP. I think the fact that I have gone two straight streams without loosing one confessor, when normally I will loose ships several minutes after undocking them, that says enough.

How things are changing: 

So, how will the Confessor be nerfed? There are several changes, but CCP are going for the main thing that makes it so strong and unkillable in FW space, reducing the powergrid so it is much harder to fit a 10MN AB. Now, They are reducing the powergrid by 18 points on the Confessor, 19 on the Svipul, then reducing the CPU by 10 on both ships. My guess is that you will need to have at least two T2 powergrid rigs with AWU V and maybe even an implant to fit the 10MN AB after the nerf. This means the Confessor looses a lot of its actual tank, making it easier to break when brawling, which is another very strong point of the confessor. Or a 10MN may just not be viable to fit anymore. Now, like I have said, these changes make me said, because recently I have been having loads of fun with my Confessor, but I personally think that the ability to simply leave a fight whenever things look ugly and still have very strong tank and dps is a little much. I would think the Confessor will still have the ability to fit a 10MN AB, but at the expense of more tank. Whether this trade off be worth it or not we will have to wait and find out.

The speed and agility of the T3D's is also going to be reduced. Gorski Car posted a really useful google doc detailing the speed and agility changes for the Svipul and Confessor, so check that out for exact numbers:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1U1IKWm3pkmnkFGbYXTuSksYaU1P0wK9QV5kDgFqG9Ec/htmlview?sle=true#gid=0

Lastly CCP will be removing two of the turret slots on both of the T3D's and giving them a +50% damage bonus. This overall makes no difference to dps, but will mean less powergrid and CPU is taken up.

I think these changes are less detrimental but are still going to be hurtful. With a 10MN AB overheated in speed mode, you can catch up to any cruiser and most frigs that aren't geared for speed, giving you loads of utility in small gang combat for tackle and stringing fleets out. The T3D's will still be able to do this, but it will require a better skilled pilot to pull off.

Overall I think this is a good move from CCP and will be a good balance for T3D's, but they also need to be careful not to make it useless. Right now T3D's have it all: Tank, Deeps and Speed, but by reducing the powergrid too much it will take them all away instead of one, as I would assume is intended. Lets hope CCP have a soft touch here, as I personally would hate to see one of my favorite solo ships made redundant. If that is the case, lets just hope the Hecate is even more OP than the Confessor is now! Hull tanking fuck yea!

Even if the Hecate does end up being OP, its still going to be ugly ;_;

What should you fit now:

I dont actually think the new changes are going to be changing your fittings dramatically. Apart from changing the prop mod to something 1MN, everything else should stay the same. For the confessor, dual rep pulse is still going to be a mean thing to brawl with, it just means you're a lot more open to blobs now. 

I guess you can argue for or against using a 1MN AB from now on. Personally I dont really know yet. One of the main problems with a 10MN AB was that it could be difficult to stick to targets at close ranges because of your extremely long turning speed when it was on, but obviously the 1MN AB would allow you to stick to things a lot better provided you aren't duel webbed. However there is always the problem that comes with 1MN AB's that you can get easily kited. With sharpshooter mode and scorch ammo, you might be able to pick off that condor that has you pointed, but sometimes it wont be enough an and MWD would be needed to get off or catch a kiter.

Either way I'm looking forward to seeing how people will be fitting their T3D's from now on, we should see a bit more variation in how they are flown. It would be cool to hear all of your ideas on how they should be fit now, so leave a comment.

What I have been up to this week

So this section is meant to be about cool fights and roams I have had over the week, but due to the stuff with OE I havnt actually been up to much, so this week im going to dedicate this section to my poor Confessor who was tragically blobed on Friday's stream, as that seems to fit the T3D theme in this post. Next week I should have something more interesting to report to you all.

http://www.twitch.tv/kar_athri/c/6566231

This Confessor has lasted me a long time and had got many kills, I had really formed a bond with it ;_;

I guess the only thing that can kill a T3D is another T3D. Here are some cool km's that I had got with it:

Confessor vs Corax + Thrasher + Merlin:

https://zkillboard.com/kill/46045162/

https://zkillboard.com/kill/46045168/

https://zkillboard.com/kill/46045180/

Confessor vs  Caracal + Thrasher + Incursus x2
https://zkillboard.com/kill/45918048/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/45918129/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/45918156/
https://zkillboard.com/kill/45918177/

Now granted both of these gangs were shit fit but was still fun just stomping them all with my OP tank and dps.

I also have a nice little duel web Astero for solo PvP now. Will be streaming with it tonight so check it out, will report any awesome kills I get with it.

Again, will have more to talk about here next time hopefully, but as I'm between alliances right now I only have solo PvP to go off. I would love to go into detail about how I FC'ed a cruiser fleet or something at some point, just so you have an idea of what I'm going for.

The worst part is, all the shiny loot dropped!

On another note I'm still in an NPC corp. I'm thinking I might end up joining Snuffed Out as one of their corps invited me and I have a couple friends who joined as well. Every time I change alliance, a corp called DBD RELOADED invites me to join them. I know most of them from when I started my first alliance. They flatter me but I just need a way to tell them I'm too 1337 for them in a polite way. They are all flilthy rich though so if I did join the would probably pay for all my solo PvP adventures.

Actually got the CEO to read this, his responce was as follows:

Vestion Stenier-Tian > give it a read I mention you guys and how scrubbish you are
Duke Vayne > do you actually?
Vestion Stenier-Tian > yes
Duke Vayne > WOAH
Duke Vayne > now hold on
Duke Vayne > i didnt offer to pay your sub this time
Vestion Stenier-Tian > 'this time'

If I dont join Snuff I will probably rejoin my own corp Icendus Corux as CEO, chill there for a bit and recruit friends/cool looking people, then maybe after my exams are over start some proper recruitment drives and roams ect. Still weighing up the pros and cons of both options. Anyone have any thoughts on it?

Battle Report of the week

This section is going to be about some interesting fights that have been going on in gal/cal FW space between big alliances. I asked around for what something cool to post here and I got this:

https://zkillboard.com/related/30002813/201504150300/


So as you can probably tell the team separation here isn't great, there was a lot of third parting, but as I understand it here is a general overview of what happened:

At first it was a Snuffed Out T3 Armour fleet against a did He Say Jump Armour cruiser fleet of mainly Aug Navy's. Did He Say Jump grabbed an absolution and two guardians on Snuff while only loosing one VNI.

Then a little later a cal mil Moa fleet and a Shadow Cartel Gila fleet showed up to take on Snuff. Snuff blapped six Moa's but ended up losing three Proteus's and  three more Guardians to the Gila fleet. Shadow Cartel and Did He Say Jump came out of all of this with very minimal losses, while Snuff seems to have done got dunked. Triage was dropped but all of it got out safety.

Hopefully this is an accurate report of the fight, seeing as how I wanst actually there makes it slightly harder to get right, but I'm going off of what I was told and what the battle report says.