Saturday, December 20, 2014

Did I Say “Eww, Rebalance”?

As my Five Ships post may have indicated, I’m quite fond of a certain ship in particular, and a certain class of ship in general.  That ship, of course, is the Rapier.  Dual-webbed, I get 400 dps out of mine.  I love it.  I have three of them, one in each major staging area.  I love recons.  I love the Curse.  I really want to love the Lachesis, if I could only get some decent dps out of it.

So, I’m not gonna lie… I feel like CCP gave me an additional Christmas present with the announcement that the January Proteus expansion is going to include a recon rebalance.

This. Is. Awesome.

Let’s go right for the heart of the matter.  Combat recons (Curse, Arazu, Rook, Huginn) are all getting dscan immunity.  That’s right… for most circumstances in k-space, no warning about a combat recon about to land on you until it’s too late.  Can you imagine the tears and carnage incoming from ships as useful as recons becoming even more common and dangerous?

In an entirely unrelated occurrence, Curses jumped in price by 33% today.

I can’t wait to get my hands on a copy of EFT with the specs.  I’ll be curious to see what dps I can get out of my Rapier now, as well as how things change for the Curse.  Perhaps even the Arazu and Lachesis will be viable options now, from a DPS perspective.

Now, of course, all of these changes are subject to modification, and I’m sure they will change as the community gives feedback.  But I’m pleased that all of these changes appear to be buffs to a ship that was, in my opinion, a great ship made weak by time and the repeated cycles of rebalance that made T1 ships so much more powerful.

Yes, that’s right folks, CCP took a look at a ship class and didn’t pull out the nerf bat.  Then again, ECM still needs to be “looked at”, and that’ll almost certainly result in a significant nerf.

But I can’t wait for my first Rapier v. Rapier duel.  Or a Curse v. Curse… mmm…

I’ve been kicking around the idea of a “How to Fly a Rapier” post for a while now, but I think I’ll hold off for a bit.  Folks have also criticized me for flying an armor Curse, and I’ve been dabbling around with a shield version.  Best get those posts ready!


Blue skies ahead, recon snobs!

7 comments:

  1. The immunity to d-scan puzzles me. What problem is this change meant to solve?

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    1. For a while now, recon shops have been losing effectiveness relative to the other shop classes, particularly T1. CCP clearly wanted the dps and tank of T1 shops to be more on-par with T2, but opened up the higher classes to specialization. Recons were always envisioned as being able to gather intel, hence the name, and this change fits nicely with that.

      The single change I'd dscan immunity also allows CCP to test how players react to delayed local intel.

      I have a theory about what this means, which I'm writing up now. Suffice to say,I think this ability is a test of some principles that we'll be seeing shortly.

      Tl;dr...if you're a hunter, this is awesome. If you're a ratter, miner, or wh resident, headaches are incoming.

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    2. HC, really? Its all in the name man, Recon IE, Reconnaissance...

      selected excerpt from Wikipedia~
      ...when recruiting for organisations like the Special Reconnaissance Regiment (SRR); they (in this case snipers) are given precedence due to their skill and knowledge at evading enemies and capture; they are considered great assets in reconnaissance.

      ...skill and knowledge at evading enemies and capture... In EVE there is no skill book, module nor human knowledge that can evade Local. As Tal said, "Recons were always envisioned as being able to gather intel, hence the name..." and IRL one of Recons prime operating considerations and methodologies is avoiding detection... and you cannot do that in Empire space in EVE, period.

      My issue with this is that they picked the wrong ships... Recons will be heavily OP after this because IRL Recon forces are not strong enough to do any real damage to an enemy by direct action... they relay on sabotage... and THAT would be cool!!!

      If Recons were rebalanced to be very weak on attack and defense but could oh, say... lay Mine fields for instance... THAT would be a proper use.

      But to have a Cruiser, more over a FLEET of them (again NOT a RW possibilty in Recon) capable of 400+ DPS and with a half decent tank as an un-dscannable Ccout/Recon force? No... bad move on CCPs part.

      Of course Tal and a huge number of players are gonna LOVE this... ganking just got a massive buff... but it is a also a massively unbalanced buff and has the potential to do far more harm than good in the long term. 11 years in, people are heavily habituated to Local and, IMHO, will not easily give up perfect intel and this is not a good way to explore that option.

      CCP still needs to take a good hard look at RW military tactics and procedures and model EVE's mechanics off those examples...

      But... they did wanna really shake up the game and do things with unknown consequences, and by the gods, this will do just that...

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    3. Force recons can cov ops (dscan invisible + grid invisible until decloak). Can think of "dscan invisible only" as a "weaker" invisibility than cov ops for a tradeoff against combat strength for combat vs force recons. Of course, in this exact form this view is not precise because the combat recons will be completely dscan invisible even immediately after undocking or breaking gate cloak, or sitting near a plex beacon (where you can't cloak) etc. Hence some complaints and requests for tweaks.
      KN

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    4. See, the problem is that we already have ships that can do that kind of recce. They are called Cov Ops.

      Here's a radical idea. If these so-called recon ships basically can't, and there are other ships in the game that already do the job just as well, then why not get rid of recons all together?

      That, or make covert ops ships, well, able to do covert ops other than recce.

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  2. "CCP took a look at a ship class and didn’t pull out the nerf bat"

    I consider the removal of cap neutralizing bonus from Pilgrim as a nerf that easily outweighs any buffs. According to Rise it's not decided yet though.

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    1. I don't. Range is far more important. In a pilgrim, you have to expect at least a medium-length engagement due to the horrible dps. If you can neut the enemy or before he can get into weapon range, he's impotent.

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