Released this post a couple hours than I normally do - haven't been in all day today and yesterday.
Also sorry for no post last week, I was bed ridden ill. All better now though.
Changes have been announced to the Ishtar and the Drone Damage Amplifier. Upon first look they glance very interesting, but I am wondering will they actually solve the problem of drones?
Let's start with the Ishtar changes. One of its mid slots is being moved to its lows, it's getting a mass, agility, velocity and powergrid decrease. I think this is actually a very good direction to go in, as I have said before that simply nerfing the Ishtar's role bonuses or dps output wont solve the problem, which as we saw it didn't, but instead it had to have much more significant changes to counteract the overwhelming utility that comes with being a drone boat. However, it seems CCP have realized this and have gone for some of the core stats on the ship, most notably removing a med slot and adding a low slot, which I think is an extremely good idea to essentially eliminate large ishtar fleets from the meta, as their tank will no longer be able to hold. It also means though, the Ishtar wont be useless, but instead used in different ways. With an extra low slot, maybe the brawl Ishtar I have always dreamed of will finally be viable. I remember pulling around 800 dps and 50k ehp in EFT. With an extra low slot, maybe the tank wont be quite so shit.
Definitely something to look into for small gang, but I think the Ishtar's fleet days are over. For now it's Gila master race.
Next thing to talk about is the DDA changes. They are getting 2.5% nerf to the bonus damage they give, meaning drone boats across the board are receiving a nerf. This is CCP's attempt to shift EVE out of the current drone dominating meta, but honestly I think this is the wrong way to approach the problem.
Drones really are a special form of dealing damage for several reasons which turrets just cant do. Putting all your dps into drones opens up a couple things from the start. Firstly, your high slots no longer require guns. You can keep them empty and use all that fitting space somewhere else on the fit or you can fit other modules like neuts, remote reps or drone links. This simply gives drone boats so much more potential than gun boats when it comes to fleet comps. Secondly, drone boats are unique in that their main dps is separate from their hull. This gives them a potential longer range on their opponents than most guns can and it means the only job the actual hull has to do is be fast enough or tank enough to not die, while gun boats would have to into consideration their optimals and tracking speed a lot more. This leads me onto my last point as to why drone boats are fundamentally stronger than gun boats - drones do not have to take into consideration optimal ranges or tracking speed in most cases. Sentries can hit targets from most ranges, and most drone boats can store two flights to pick the best types depending on the fight, while any other type of drone that isn't Gallente can burn out to targets in fleet fights extremely quickly. This means range control is largely irrelevant when dealing with drone boats.
Still though, a DDA nerf isnt a terrible idea and arguably a step in the right direction. It will help to tone down the Tristan for example, as at the moment those cancerous double DDA kite fits are still eating my rail comets apart, and I would say the worm might not be as OP anymore but...that shit is always gonna be OP.
My main point in this is that if CCP want to balance drones then a quick fix dps nerf is not the way to go. More thought through changes will need to be introduced to really make a real difference. Personally I do not have the perfect solution to all of this. Maybe because that's because subconsciously I want drone boats and the glorious Gallente master race to continue standing dominant, who knows.
The most disheartening thing that can happen to a solo PvPer is spending time fitting up a shiny new ship, undocking, warping to a plex and then landing on a 20 man fleet with fast tackle. It has happened to me more than once and what's probably the most annoying thing is that it is easily avoided, as well as many classic things that will get you killing while solo PvPing in FW space. Today I'm going to go through some of these things and give ways to avoid falling prey to them. They are all quite straight forward and probably obvious to some, though a lot of them I never thought of until told, so hopefully this will prove useful to some.
Let's start with warping to complexes. This one is quite obvious but still useful for any newer PvPers out there. The main danger with plexes is that you warp to them and there is a gang there waiting for you, which quickly kills you before you can warp off. This happens either because you have not scanned the plex before warping or you have warped at 0km, both can be fatal mistakes. Scanning is again more obvious as you want to see if there are targets at the plex in the first place, but when I was new I would just directly warp to every individual plex, so if I was stupid enough to do it when I was new someone else has to be as well. You may have to warp to a celestial or a gate in order to get in scanning range of a plex sometimes. A nice tip when scanning plexes and trying to chose your fights is, if you see multiple ships at a plex and you cannot decide if you can take them all on solo or not, swap your d-scan to your drone overview and scan again. If you see no drones when you know the ships on scan can launch drones, you know these ships are together. If you see drones on scan, it's possible they are fighting, or they are waiting for targets to warp in, so it's still a risk but you can use this to help you determine going in or not.
Warping at 10km to every plex is an extremely important habit to get into and slightly less obvious than just scanning before warping. This is because when warping to an acceleration gate is 0km, it is possible your ship will get caught on the gate and bounce, which will mess up your aligning and prevent you from warping. This makes you an easy target as not only can you not warp off, but your transversal is going to be very low, allowing for larger alpha from hostile guns.
Next up is docking and undocking on stations. Highsec trade hubs and certain blob-ridden systems in low sec (Heydieles) will often have station campers waiting for frigs or pods to try and dock or undock from their stations. They can be extremely frustrating and honestly I have lost a few too many implants to them. However there is a simple way to deal with them, the first one being to use insta-undocks and insta-docks (yes, they can still pop you while you are trying to dock up). Though you cant get bookmarks on every station, the rest of the time you just need to make sure your damage control is always on if you're in a frig, as there shouldn't be anything that can alpha you that way. The main problem comes if you're in a pod - then you would need a quiet station or a bookmark, but travelling in a pod can be just as dangerous, which we're going to go onto now.
Smartbombing is very common in the depths of FW space and is something you need to constantly look out for. It's extremely easy to jump into a shuttle then free burn from A to B but if you have implants in your day could quickly be ruined. For general travel, the best way to not get killed by smatbombers is to fit a T1 frig with a damage control. Smartbombs will not be able to kill you in one cycle. If you cannot get a T1 frig, then you need to warp to gates at different angles rather than directly from gate to gate. If you bounce to a celestial then to the gate, you will be out of range of the smartbombs. When you die and have to warp off, it is important not to warp directly to a station or gate as often people will be waiting for your pod to land there and kill you. This has happened to me before, I lost mid grade slaves, life is hard.
Last but not least is how to not die while fighting. This isn't the actual fighting, but helping to avoid blobs while in the middle of a fight. Having your d-scan window always open is a really good habit to get into, this means you will always know in advance when there are other ships about to enter the plex. Catching a fleet on d-scan early gives you time to burn away from your target in an attempt to get out of scram range and warp off. Sometimes this can be the difference between life and death. Especially be aware when you are going to fight a typical bait ship on its own such as a Punisher, as they are shit in solo PVP so it's rare to see them on their own.
So that's my advice for avoiding the most common ways of getting killed when roaming FW space. I hope this helps some of the newer pilots trying solo PvP out there, or maybe even some older ones.
This week there was a corp meeting. I thought, great, I love meetings. I join the ts and after 10 mins of the CEO asking for isk for supers, or something like that, I was told good luck in my eve life and banned from teamspeak, then kicked from corp. This was mainly because no slaves, didn't join fleets enough, and was streaming solo PvP while fleets were happening. Honestly I cant blame them. As far as I understand I left (or rather was kicked) on good terms though.
But it's ok, as I have gone back to my own corp, Icendus Corux, to rebuild it from the ground up for the third time. I have learnt a lot from my last two times running a corp and already I'm having fun this time, having recruited a couple guys and had a couple T1 frig/dessie roams. Give it a few months, and we shall be bigger than Snuff! Then we shall see who's laughing!
Nah, we will be scrubs, but at least we will be scrubs having fun!
Apart from that haven't really been up to much in eve, I was out all day today and yesterday, was at a University open day in Southampton, was really really fun. My only main problem amt is deciding between Chemistry and Physics.
This week we have more ECM fun but this time with an Ishkur trying to take on a couple T1 frigs. I decided to go into the fight as I intended to put my drones on the griffin and force it to warp off, then proceed to kill the other ships. What I did not think through though, was that the Griffin was going to start off far out of my lock range, giving it plenty of time to perma jam me before I could even think about putting drones on him.
Instead, I put my drones on the torm. The torm is a lot squishier than the Astero and deals the same if not more dps, Eventually the torm was forced to warp out, taking a lot of dps off of me and allowing me to hold out until long enough for RNG to finally smile upon me and get unjammed. I tried to put my drones of the Griffin, the first time I was out of drone control range (though I didn't realize that at the time, hence why I was confused) and the second time was too late, as the torm has warped back in and I was capped out. Had I been a bit luckier, the griffin would of died earlier, followed by the torm, and finishing with a relaxing explosion of the Astero. Either way though, fun fights were had.
For the first time ever (I think) we're doing a fit that isnt Gallente! I wont count the Confessor fit, because if the Hecate was out back then I would of done that instead.
So we have a very simple but effective T1 fit today. The tormentor is notorious for being OP when flown properly and I have seen this fit taking on other T1 frigs, comets and even me, as seen below:
During that fight, despite my high dps, I hardly dented his armour and he didn't have to rep once. Meanwhile his dps made short work of me, but granted my tank wasn't too strong.
The way this fit works is by using it's huge tank to outlast any opponent while keeping a low transveral to land plenty of dps.
The fitting is actually quite flexible, meaning if you're not part of the AWU V master race you can still throw this together quite easily.
The main counter to this fit is things getting under your guns, and your lack of speed dosn't help that, but if you can just keep in a straight line with multi loaded you should still apply your dps.
Also sorry for no post last week, I was bed ridden ill. All better now though.
Incoming Radical Changes to the Ishtar and Nerfs to DDA's - Will it Make a Difference?
Changes have been announced to the Ishtar and the Drone Damage Amplifier. Upon first look they glance very interesting, but I am wondering will they actually solve the problem of drones?
Let's start with the Ishtar changes. One of its mid slots is being moved to its lows, it's getting a mass, agility, velocity and powergrid decrease. I think this is actually a very good direction to go in, as I have said before that simply nerfing the Ishtar's role bonuses or dps output wont solve the problem, which as we saw it didn't, but instead it had to have much more significant changes to counteract the overwhelming utility that comes with being a drone boat. However, it seems CCP have realized this and have gone for some of the core stats on the ship, most notably removing a med slot and adding a low slot, which I think is an extremely good idea to essentially eliminate large ishtar fleets from the meta, as their tank will no longer be able to hold. It also means though, the Ishtar wont be useless, but instead used in different ways. With an extra low slot, maybe the brawl Ishtar I have always dreamed of will finally be viable. I remember pulling around 800 dps and 50k ehp in EFT. With an extra low slot, maybe the tank wont be quite so shit.
Definitely something to look into for small gang, but I think the Ishtar's fleet days are over. For now it's Gila master race.
A new meta starts now.
Next thing to talk about is the DDA changes. They are getting 2.5% nerf to the bonus damage they give, meaning drone boats across the board are receiving a nerf. This is CCP's attempt to shift EVE out of the current drone dominating meta, but honestly I think this is the wrong way to approach the problem.
Drones really are a special form of dealing damage for several reasons which turrets just cant do. Putting all your dps into drones opens up a couple things from the start. Firstly, your high slots no longer require guns. You can keep them empty and use all that fitting space somewhere else on the fit or you can fit other modules like neuts, remote reps or drone links. This simply gives drone boats so much more potential than gun boats when it comes to fleet comps. Secondly, drone boats are unique in that their main dps is separate from their hull. This gives them a potential longer range on their opponents than most guns can and it means the only job the actual hull has to do is be fast enough or tank enough to not die, while gun boats would have to into consideration their optimals and tracking speed a lot more. This leads me onto my last point as to why drone boats are fundamentally stronger than gun boats - drones do not have to take into consideration optimal ranges or tracking speed in most cases. Sentries can hit targets from most ranges, and most drone boats can store two flights to pick the best types depending on the fight, while any other type of drone that isn't Gallente can burn out to targets in fleet fights extremely quickly. This means range control is largely irrelevant when dealing with drone boats.
Still though, a DDA nerf isnt a terrible idea and arguably a step in the right direction. It will help to tone down the Tristan for example, as at the moment those cancerous double DDA kite fits are still eating my rail comets apart, and I would say the worm might not be as OP anymore but...that shit is always gonna be OP.
My main point in this is that if CCP want to balance drones then a quick fix dps nerf is not the way to go. More thought through changes will need to be introduced to really make a real difference. Personally I do not have the perfect solution to all of this. Maybe because that's because subconsciously I want drone boats and the glorious Gallente master race to continue standing dominant, who knows.
Solo Roaming - Tips to Avoiding Death
The most disheartening thing that can happen to a solo PvPer is spending time fitting up a shiny new ship, undocking, warping to a plex and then landing on a 20 man fleet with fast tackle. It has happened to me more than once and what's probably the most annoying thing is that it is easily avoided, as well as many classic things that will get you killing while solo PvPing in FW space. Today I'm going to go through some of these things and give ways to avoid falling prey to them. They are all quite straight forward and probably obvious to some, though a lot of them I never thought of until told, so hopefully this will prove useful to some.
Of course if you're solo PvPing in a Rokh then this may not all apply to you.
Warping to Complexes:
Let's start with warping to complexes. This one is quite obvious but still useful for any newer PvPers out there. The main danger with plexes is that you warp to them and there is a gang there waiting for you, which quickly kills you before you can warp off. This happens either because you have not scanned the plex before warping or you have warped at 0km, both can be fatal mistakes. Scanning is again more obvious as you want to see if there are targets at the plex in the first place, but when I was new I would just directly warp to every individual plex, so if I was stupid enough to do it when I was new someone else has to be as well. You may have to warp to a celestial or a gate in order to get in scanning range of a plex sometimes. A nice tip when scanning plexes and trying to chose your fights is, if you see multiple ships at a plex and you cannot decide if you can take them all on solo or not, swap your d-scan to your drone overview and scan again. If you see no drones when you know the ships on scan can launch drones, you know these ships are together. If you see drones on scan, it's possible they are fighting, or they are waiting for targets to warp in, so it's still a risk but you can use this to help you determine going in or not.
Warping at 10km to every plex is an extremely important habit to get into and slightly less obvious than just scanning before warping. This is because when warping to an acceleration gate is 0km, it is possible your ship will get caught on the gate and bounce, which will mess up your aligning and prevent you from warping. This makes you an easy target as not only can you not warp off, but your transversal is going to be very low, allowing for larger alpha from hostile guns.
Docking and Undocking:
Don't be this kid
Smartbombers:
While Fighting:
So that's my advice for avoiding the most common ways of getting killed when roaming FW space. I hope this helps some of the newer pilots trying solo PvP out there, or maybe even some older ones.
What's going on with me:
This week there was a corp meeting. I thought, great, I love meetings. I join the ts and after 10 mins of the CEO asking for isk for supers, or something like that, I was told good luck in my eve life and banned from teamspeak, then kicked from corp. This was mainly because no slaves, didn't join fleets enough, and was streaming solo PvP while fleets were happening. Honestly I cant blame them. As far as I understand I left (or rather was kicked) on good terms though.
But it's ok, as I have gone back to my own corp, Icendus Corux, to rebuild it from the ground up for the third time. I have learnt a lot from my last two times running a corp and already I'm having fun this time, having recruited a couple guys and had a couple T1 frig/dessie roams. Give it a few months, and we shall be bigger than Snuff! Then we shall see who's laughing!
I almost feel bad for such an obvious plug but...yes, we're recruiting.
Nah, we will be scrubs, but at least we will be scrubs having fun!
Apart from that haven't really been up to much in eve, I was out all day today and yesterday, was at a University open day in Southampton, was really really fun. My only main problem amt is deciding between Chemistry and Physics.
Fight of the week:
This week we have more ECM fun but this time with an Ishkur trying to take on a couple T1 frigs. I decided to go into the fight as I intended to put my drones on the griffin and force it to warp off, then proceed to kill the other ships. What I did not think through though, was that the Griffin was going to start off far out of my lock range, giving it plenty of time to perma jam me before I could even think about putting drones on him.
Instead, I put my drones on the torm. The torm is a lot squishier than the Astero and deals the same if not more dps, Eventually the torm was forced to warp out, taking a lot of dps off of me and allowing me to hold out until long enough for RNG to finally smile upon me and get unjammed. I tried to put my drones of the Griffin, the first time I was out of drone control range (though I didn't realize that at the time, hence why I was confused) and the second time was too late, as the torm has warped back in and I was capped out. Had I been a bit luckier, the griffin would of died earlier, followed by the torm, and finishing with a relaxing explosion of the Astero. Either way though, fun fights were had.
Fit of the week:
For the first time ever (I think) we're doing a fit that isnt Gallente! I wont count the Confessor fit, because if the Hecate was out back then I would of done that instead.
So we have a very simple but effective T1 fit today. The tormentor is notorious for being OP when flown properly and I have seen this fit taking on other T1 frigs, comets and even me, as seen below:
It was lag I swear
During that fight, despite my high dps, I hardly dented his armour and he didn't have to rep once. Meanwhile his dps made short work of me, but granted my tank wasn't too strong.
The way this fit works is by using it's huge tank to outlast any opponent while keeping a low transveral to land plenty of dps.
The fitting is actually quite flexible, meaning if you're not part of the AWU V master race you can still throw this together quite easily.
The main counter to this fit is things getting under your guns, and your lack of speed dosn't help that, but if you can just keep in a straight line with multi loaded you should still apply your dps.
I decided to go into the fight as I intended to put my drones on the griffin and force it to warp off, incorrect as you didn't know the Griffin was there prior to entering the plex as it was cloaked, it only decloaked when you had entered. As for the tormentor, it warped off as I forgot to put more manure paste in my hold and ran out.lol
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