CCP Games has faced a problem with the last couple of EVE Online expansions. After the goodies accompanying the launch of an expansion end, so does the attention of many players. The developers have come up with a unique solution. Once the login rewards and free game time run out, drop more free content. And so, I woke up this morning to find a mini-expansion's worth of patch notes waiting on the launcher along with a dev blog. After a quick read, I think the mashup might prove useful. So here's part two of the effort covering additional ship rebalancing in Revenant.
The dev blog briefly mentioned some of the changes made to ships in today's patch.
A few ships, like the Ferox Navy Issue and the Eos were overperforming, which has been addressed by making them more engageable. Heavy assault cruisers have regained their MWD signature radius bonus to make them a bit more viable in the current meta, and various other ships, like the Ashimmu and Maulus Navy Issue, have been improved.
This update also introduces several changes aimed specifically at mining. Resources can now be compressed through the right-click menu instead of the compression window, exhumers and barges have improved locked targets, and excavators are now faster.
Normally I don't use quote boxes for patch notes. But for the explanations of the ship changes I'll change the format, at least for this post.
Ferox Navy Issue
The Ferox Navy Issue is overperforming, so we’re increasing the signature radius back up to the regular T1 Ferox amount and then nerfing the agility and targeting range slightly. We’re hoping the combination of sig and agility reduction will make them a bit more vulnerable to battleships and stealth bombers in fleet encounters. The Ferox Navy Issue loses the optimal bonus the regular T1 Ferox has so we are shaving a bit of max targeting range off as well.
- Signature Radius increased from 300m to 325m
- Agility nerfed from 0.66x to 0.69x
- Max Targeting Range reduced from 67500m to 60000m
Eos
Toning down the Eos somewhat. It has 11 mid-slots and low-slots combined, unlike all other Command Ships which have 10, which is even more powerful when you consider it is a drone ship. Seeing it start to become a little unhealthy in some places so we’re reducing the power of sentry drone fits slightly.
- Drone Optimal range per level reduced from 10% to 5%
Heavy Assault Cruisers
In the Uprising expansion, we made significant changes to HACs by removing or reducing long range bonuses and completely reworking the Muninn which was the most dominant ship in the game at the time. We feel like the meta has shifted now with more Battleships and Navy Battlecruisers being viable so that we can now add back the 50% MWD signature radius role bonus to HACs which we removed in early 2021.
- 50% reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty Role Bonus added back
Ashimmu
The Ashimmu has lower usage than the other pirate cruisers, so giving it the ability to field 5 medium drones, or 2 flights of light drones. And giving it some small speed improvements.
- Drone Bay and Drone Bandwidth increased from 40 Mbit/sec to 50 Mbit/sec
- Max Velocity increased from 208 to 215m/s
- Agility improved from 0.58x to 0.55x
Scythe
The Scythe has fitting issues, especially since it’s an entry level support cruiser so giving it a small amount of love there. Also boosting the mobility of the Scythe a bit to try and help it stand out from the Osprey more by improving its strengths.
- CPU increased from 285tf to 300tf
- Powergrid increased from 345MW to 375MW
- Max Velocity increased from 250m/s to 260m/s
- Agility improved from 0.6x to 0.57x
Vengeance
The Vengeance has low usage, so we’re giving it a small facelift with some extra damage (But still keeping the Hawk on top with kinetic damage missiles) and a bit more powergrid to help give it some more options.
- Rocket Damage Per Level of Amarr Frigate increased from 5% to 7.5%
- Powergrid increased from 43MW to 46MW
Cruor
The Cruor is underperforming relative to its peers. We’re giving it an extra drone to bump up its damage potential a bit, but have that DPS be destructible. We are then improving the Cruor’s mobility so it can better use the long-range web for catching kiting ships.
- Drone Bay and Bandwidth increased from 5m3 to 10m3 and 5 Mbit/sec to 10 Mbit/sec, respectively.
- Max Velocity increased from 330m/s to 340m/s
- Agility improved from 3.6x to 3.4x
Maulus Navy Issue
The Maulus Navy Issue currently has 1 less total slot than the other Navy EWAR Frigates, so we’re correcting that by giving it an extra high slot. The hope here is that this will improve its versatility and open up options like triple neut setups that its brother in spirit Tristan is capable of. Small PG boost to help fill that high slot, and then a small mobility improvement since it currently is the slowest navy frigate.
- Highslots increased from 2 to 3
- Powergrid increased from 35MW to 38MW
- Max Velocity incrased from 315m/s to 325m/s
We’re giving all mining barges and exhumers an extra few locked targets to improve quality of life when mining. Specifically, the Procurer and Skiff are getting a significant agility buff, which will bring down their align times by several seconds each, and an extra midslot. During the 2022 rebalance, the Procurer and Skiff both lost a slot each total, while the Covetor and Hulk gained one, when we rebalanced them around all having the same total number of slots. The Procurer and Skiff also had their agility nerfed a bit too much and so we are now correcting this and giving them back the slot they lost. Finally, we are improving the speed of Excavators to increase their effectiveness when mining, especially when mining further away asteroids, since the Rorqual is now a more supporting role and excavators are balanced around high wastage.
- 'Excavator' Mining Drone base velocity increased from 175m/s to 250m/s
- ‘Excavator’ Ice Harvesting Drone base velocity increased from 90m/s to 125m/s
- Max Locked Targets improved from 6 to 8
- Agility improved from 0.8x to 0.64x
- Midslots increased from 4 to 5
- Max Locked Targets improved from 5 to 6
- Agility improved from 0.8x to 0.64x
- Midslots increased from 2 to 3
Small buff to navy fighters doing longer PVE encounters like the Forsaken Sanctums and Teeming Hordes. Without obsoleting T2 Fighters which still have slightly higher DPS.
- Heavy Rocket ability charge count increased from 12 to 15.
Was being abused by new freshly injected characters to take advantage of the 20% damage boost in ships like Marauders and Dreadnoughts, or PVP smurf accounts rather than being used by new players. Removing the damage bonuses and increasing the attributes on it from +3 to +5, to compensate it, which should make it actually more useful for new players and remove the abuse cases.
- Removed 20% turret damage boost and 20% missile rate of fire boost.
- Increased attributes from +3 to +5.
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