Revenant Major Update Patch Notes: Ship Balancing

I woke up this morning to find when CCP Games labels something as major, they are not joking around. Today's Revenant Major Update for EVE Online features quite a few topics that deserve their own posts. The fourth in the series will feature balance changes to specific ships and classes of ships.

According to the news article announcing today's patch, address complaints for nerfs to your favorite ships to the Council of Stellar Management.

Following discussions at the latest CSM summit, several ship balance adjustments have been made. Heavy interdiction cruisers can now fit cynosural field generators, adding new strategic options for fleet commanders. Also, ECM burst jammer restrictions have been tightened to prevent unintended abuse.

In addition to listing the changes, the patch notes also explained why certain ships received the nerfs or buffs in today's patch.

Eos

We’re making some adjustments to the Eos to specifically target the amount of damage and tracking that it has with sentry drones, while avoiding nerfing regular drone fits. This makes it more similar to the Ishtar which also has lower bonuses for sentry drones.

• 10% bonus to drone damage and hitpoints per level of Gallente battlecruiser has now been split into 2 separate bonuses.
• 10% bonus to heavy drone, medium drone, and light drone hitpoints and damage.
• 5% bonus to sentry drone damage and hitpoints.
  
  
• 7.5% bonus to drone tracking per level of command ships has now been split into 2 separate bonuses.
• 7.5% bonus to heavy drone, medium drone and light drone tracking.
• 5% bonus to sentry drone tracking.

Orca

The Orca had a higher align time than the Rorqual, so we are correcting this by giving it a significant buff to agility which should have it now be more comparable to the Rorqual and a reinforced bulkhead fitted Bowhead. We need to be careful not to obsolete Freighters, Deep Space Transports as hauling platforms but we feel like we can make this change now since both of those classes are also receiving warp speed boosts at the same time.

Taking into the account the 25% warp speed buff that it is getting, it should feel significantly more mobile when travelling between systems and mining locations.

• Agility multiplier improved from 2.6x to 2.0x

All other changes

• Heavy Interdiction Cruisers
• All HICs can now fit the regular Cynosural Field Generator.
  
  
• Interdictors
• Reduced the web strength of the Stasis Webification Probes launched by Interdictors from 40% to 20%, to reduce how effective they are against brawlers and sig tanking fleet compositions.
  
  
• Burst Jammers (ECM Burst)
• Can now only be fitted to Battleship Hulls, Hauler Hulls and Command Ships.
  
  
• A009 C13 Wormholes reduced lifetime from 16h to 4.5h.