I was following this thread with great interest. There have been many like it before. The number of voices raised for nerfing the mighty Moros only compares to the ones shouting for a better Naglfar. Not many seems to care for the Phoenix, maybe it is just to ugly to get any love? When you read the forums, you might think there's a consensus about that the dreads are, in fact, terribly unbalanced. You look at how they compare against each other and draw the conclusion that Moros and Revelations are both good, useful ships but the Phoenix pretty much useless. The Naglfar is ok, but only because it's vertical.
But should we really compare them like that? Why do we want them to be "balanced" so they all are exchangeable with each other? What if you actually like the fact that they all have their different use?
Is it that a Moros can do everything a Phoenix can (maybe not as well) but not vice versa? Is that what's unbalanced?
I don't fly dreads myself, so my thoughts might not carry much weight, but at the same time I hear so much about "how ships are" from people that have no clue of their own, but just pick up on what's written and take that for facts, so I thought I could at least have an opinion.
"The Phoenix is terrible!" - yes, if you look at it as a Caldari version of the Moros it is. But if your objective is to reinforce a POS and incapacitate some mods it's the perfect tool. It's quite tanky, it can adapt dmg type and it have a range that are suspiciously close to what you would need if you wanted to park it beside a POS and still reach any defence anchored.
Ok, you need to be there and actually press the F1 once in a while, but dread-sieges are not nearly as prolonged as BS ones, so the 'afk-ability' a Geddon have over, say a Raven, is not such a big deal with Dreads. Or so I would imagine.
"The Naglfar is sub par due to the split weapon system" - hmm.. maybe. But I see a trend here. Many Minmatar ships are a bit strange in that they don't lean heavy towards one specific doctrine (active/passive/armor/shield/nano/brick), it's almost like they are made to be platforms "for out of the box"-thinking...
Maybe the Naglfar is the same. A Naglfar should be able to do 7k dps with decent tracking and have room for RR and/or cap-transfers. Wait? What? you talking about utility high-slots on a dread? Maybe. As I said, I don't fly the darn things myslef, so this is just theorizing to make a point.
But maybe it's what happend here?
That leaves the Revelation. The Rev is considered equal to the Moros, but it don't have the dps nor the performance against sub-caps (lower tracking). On paper, the Moros seams to do everything the rev does, but better. So what raison d'être do the Rev have? With my they don't need to be exchangeable! thesis, the Moros, Phoenix and Naglfar all have their niche, but the Rev is only a laser version of the Moros. How fun is that?
So drop the idea that a dread is a dread is a dread for a moment.
- Moros - Versatile, sub-cap killer, capital blaster boat
- Phoenix - The ultimate POS-bash platform.
- Revelation - Good dps and flexible range, afk-able, ammo-less
- Naglfar - Experimentation platform, up for any task
I sort of like it like this.
You only need a "rebalance" if some ships are totally left out of the equation because they are surpassed in every way by some other ship. I don't think that's the case with dreads, they all have their flavor. Multiple flavors make interesting choices, and that's a cornerstone in any good game design.
4 comments:
I agree with you in these facts and im looking to outfit my nag pilot in Dbl Down to try a experiment platform with reps
I agree in principal, sad thing is that CCP seems to streamline EVE even more, to make it newbee friednly.
Another sad thing is that people complain about ships being unbalanced, especially when they are this far up the skill-ladder...
I guess that's the nature of the min-max driven average EVE player
Actually, it isn't that the Phoenix needs a balance adjustment, its that capital torps and cruise both have an explosion radius that's too large WRT the targets they are asked to shoot at (starbases, other caps).
The problem with people crapping on about the dreads is that dreads were, I believe, mostly expected to be anti-capital and anti-structure assets. Before w-space, that is mostly what you would see, with rare capital drops in k-space being structure fights, or dreads dropped on RR BS gangs or solo triage carriers.
With the advent of tanky T3's, rich people with Bhaalgorns and cap proliferation in w-space (as well as wormhole effects) dreads have moved into the small-gang PVP sphere, fighting on wormholes, in small numbers versus small gangs while at a POS they can't cyno away from, which has exposed the Phoenix and Nag as being suboptimal.
The blap titan only became a problem when titans proliferated; nowadays its all blap Moros in w-space because dreads proliferate, and people have figured out how to deploy dozens in C5-6 invasions.
You can web shit down with Vigilants or Vindicators to zero metres per second, TP the shit out of it, and blap it. Never, ever, ever do you see this in k-space where someone's going to log a super in and counter-drop your dread, and where tackled caps get everyone from 10 jumps around streaming in for a killmail whore.
So, yes, the Phoenix and Nag are bad at small gang blapping. Do we need to see capital missile systems buffed to make the Phoenix a blapwagon? Maybe.
Would it really hurt to make the Nag a gigantic fucking Tornado? Not really. Arty nags with 4 cannons would be the ultimate blap dread, sniping from 250km into a small gang composed of Vigilant-Proteus-Bhaal-Guards.
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