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[kalaratiri]

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IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you feel strongly about this change, either liking or disliking it, you should vote for CSM 8 and tell your representatives how you feel. CSM 8 will be taking office before the launch of Odyssey.
Vote from now until April 18th here.

Hey everyone, I know there's been a lot of questions raised by the Abaddon and Rokh changes, sorry for not having this thread ready earlier.

I'd like to chat with you guys a little bit about ship resistance bonuses, their place in the grand picture and what we want to do with them in Odyssey. I've talked in this forum before about our belief that 5% armor/shield resistance bonuses are one of the most powerful bonuses we give to significant numbers of ships. Resistances have the huge advantage of applying equally well as a buffer bonus, a magnifier of local reps, and a magnifier of incoming remote reps.
This imbalance was becoming more and more of a problem as we started work on battleships and command ships.

To understand why they are so powerful, we need to start with some quick math. Resistance bonuses are stronger than they first appear for the same reason that rate of fire bonuses are stronger than damage bonuses. This isn't entirely intuitive but it's something that long-time EVE theorycrafters have all gotten used to since it shows up so often in the context of our game.

The key thing to remember is that a 25% bonus that is applied by division (like resistances that divide incoming damage, or RoF which divides the duration between module activations) have a much bigger effect than a 25% bonus that applies by multiplication (like a weapon damage bonus or a bonus to raw hitpoints).

For example a 25% increase in armor hitpoints applies quite intuitively: (Base HP) * 1.25 = a 25% increase in total EHP.

In contrast a resistance bonus actually benefits your ships by decreasing incoming damage. So a ship with 25% resistance bonus takes 25% less damage from hostiles. This ends up applying to their effective hitpoints as: (Base HP) / 0.75 = a 33% increase in total EHP.

So while a 37.5% rep bonus increases effective repping by 37.5%, and a 50% armor hp bonus increases effective hitpoints by 50%, a 25% resistance bonus actually increases both by 33% (not the 25% that might be assumed at first glance).
In practice that means that for pure amount repped over time, a 25% resistance bonus is only 3% less powerful than a 37.5% rep bonus.
This is one of the main reasons that resistance bonuses completely overshadow local repair bonuses.

Resistance bonuses also have several other huge advantages over our other tanking bonuses. At the end of the day what tanking bonuses really do is keep you alive longer. Active bonuses are strongest when the damage you are taking is weaker, while passive EHP bonuses help more when incoming DPS is higher, but both serve to increase the amount of time you can remain on the battlefield under fire. Since it applies to both reps (local or remote) and to passive EHP, a resistance bonus dominates in most situations.

Ship resistance bonuses also have the huge advantage of not being stacking penalized in a bonus category that is very often a few layers deep into the stacking penalty once the ship is fully fitted.

Finally it's important to look at the value of these resistance bonuses combined with remote repair modules. Remote repair systems are extremely powerful in the current EVE meta, and I have stated in the past that we do not intend to increase the power of the highest end repair strategies (Tech Two Logistics and capital remote repairing) because they are on the edge of overpowered. Remote repair gameplay is some of the most fun gameplay we have (and is my personal favourite activity in 0.0) but is also responsible for discouraging fights and for forcing the rise of alpha-only strategies. Spidertanking strategies like Slowcat carriers are some of the post powerful tactics in the game, and it's no accident that those strategies rely entirely on resist bonused ships.


So we consider resistance bonuses to be a bit too powerful in modern EVE. The next question to answer was how exactly we should adjust them.

• Making them stacking penalized with modules and rigs would deal with most of the imbalance, but this would be the only ship bonuses stacking penalized with modules and the inconstancy adds its own kind of complexity to learning the game. Not ideal.
• Extending armor and shield repair bonuses to apply to remote reps would bring them much closer to balance with resist bonuses, but would also further empower the current remote rep tactics that are as strong as we feel we can allow them to be.
• Converting the resist bonuses to HP buffer bonuses would be much easier to balance as it affects a smaller set of mechanics, but that also removes what I think are a very iconic set of bonuses. The fact that the resistance bonus is so versatile is something we like about it, it's just the fact that it is so good at so many things that causes it to overshadow other bonuses. We also plan to continue using straight HP bonuses in the future as a defensive bonus with its own flavour distinct from the other defensive bonus options.

So our plan for Odyssey is to remove 1% per level from all the standard ship and subsystem resistance bonuses, setting them at 4% per level.

At 4% I believe these bonuses are still very powerful, and this may not actually go all the way we need it to. However I think it's an area we can make the small adjustment and then tweak further as necessary.
The fact that this is a very moderate shave off the top of the bonus instead of a more significant change is intentional, as we plan to watch the effects of this tweak on the ecosystem and learn from our observations.

This affects 44 ships total.

Shield:
Ibis, Taipan, Merlin, Worm, Harpy, Cambion, Moa, Gila, Eagle, Onyx, Broadsword, Drake, Ferox, Nighthawk, Vulture, Tengu, Loki, Skiff, Mackinaw, Hulk, Rokh, Scorpion Navy Issue, Rattlesnake, Chimera, Wyvern.

Armor:
Impairor, Punisher, Vengeance, Malice, Malediction, Maller, Sacrilege, Mimir, Vangel, Devoter, Phobos, Prophecy, Absolution, Damnation, Loki, Legion, Proteus, Abaddon, Archon, Aeon.

While the majority of ships on this list rank among the more powerful in their classes, some (like the Eagle, Nighthawk and Vulture for instance) are already suffering. Those ships have problems that we believe to be separate from their resistance bonuses, and we are working hard to resolve those problems in the near future. Having the resistance bonus in a more balanced place will make our path to improving those ships much clearer.

We are as always interested to hear your feedback on these changes, and we will get them to you for testing on a test server as early as we can.

IMPORTANT NOTICE: If you feel strongly about this change, either liking or disliking it, you should vote for CSM 8 and tell your representatives how you feel. CSM 8 will be taking office before the launch of Odyssey.
Vote from now until April 18th here.

Follow up post

I'm going to throw this here since I have a feeling a lot of questions coming up will be along this line:

Why nerf things when you could buff things instead?
This is a question that comes up often in any thread where we are discussing decreasing the power of an item or ship. I can completely understand where it's coming from. Buffing things makes people happy in much larger numbers, it simply feels good to see the effectiveness of your equipment increase. Many other games rely on constantly improving gear to drive engagement in their content and that method of development can work very well for those games.

I'm going to start by quoting my answer to this question from the Heavy Missile thread before Retribution, because what I said there still applies.

When we are balancing in a game like Eve we always need to be conscious of the danger presented by power creep. In some games where the progression is tied to ever advancing gear stats power creep isn't a big issue as it is built into the whole premise of the game. In a sandbox like Eve player advancement is tied to individual freeform goals and we need to make sure that the tools available are both interesting and balanced. Any time we buff something in Eve, we are nerfing every other item in the game slightly by extension. In a case like this we believe that the best course of action is to adjust the Heavy Missiles downwards to achieve balance.

I would be lying if I said that we never allow power creep in EVE. It's quite simply much much easier to balance upwards and considering how powerful of a tool it is for creating short term customer satisfaction, some power creep is very hard to avoid. However we do need to be very mindful of how much we let ourselves indulge. There are cases where for the long term health of the game ecosystem we simply have to reduce the power of certain items and ships. We believe this is one of those times. I can promise you that we're committed to eating our vegetables and making adjustments either up or down based on our best estimation of what the game needs. We won't decrease the power of items and ships unless we deem it necessary but we also won't forget that our job is to manage the health of the game over the long term.

and

One thing I'll quickly mention is that 1 / 0.8 = 1.25. This means that the new bonus (20% resists at level 5) will actually equal a 25% increase in Effective Reps. Still very significant (in fact it's probably what a lot of people assumed the old bonus gave). However the difference between 25% and 37.5% is a lot more noticeable than the difference between 33% and 37.5%.

In relation to active v alpha

One thing I'll quickly mention is that 1 / 0.8 = 1.25. This means that the new bonus (20% resists at level 5) will actually equal a 25% increase in Effective Reps. Still very significant (in fact it's probably what a lot of people assumed the old bonus gave). However the difference between 25% and 37.5% is a lot more noticeable than the difference between 33% and 37.5%.

But that does not address that rep bonuses are only good against sustained DPS and not high alpha damage, where resistance bonuses are good for both.[/size

You are right that it doesn't. I completely admit that resist bonuses remain better than active tank bonuses for the vast majority of situations. As always we will be balancing ships with the relative power of different bonuses in mind. Having the resist bonus a bit closer in power is simply something that makes finding that balance over the large number of affected ships much more achievable.

[Lyn Farel]

Glad they finally noticed about "power creep".

[Vikarion]

The problem I see with their balancing efforts is that many of the ships getting hit with this are still less than overpowered. It's not just the Eagle and Vulture, for example. The Rokh is almost always inferior to a correctly fit Megathron, even for sniping, and the Abaddon is much less useful than the Armageddon (cap? What cap?). But, then, CCP is nerfing the Raven, too, apparently because it has too much EHP. Which shows that whoever is in charge of balancing does have some major blind spots.

[Katrina Oniseki]

The problem I see with their balancing efforts is that many of the ships getting hit with this are still less than overpowered. It's not just the Eagle and Vulture, for example. The Rokh is almost always inferior to a correctly fit Megathron, even for sniping, and the Abaddon is much less useful than the Armageddon (cap? What cap?). But, then, CCP is nerfing the Raven, too, apparently because it has too much EHP. Which shows that whoever is in charge of balancing does have some major blind spots.

How does the raven have too much EHP but not the Abaddon?

[Vikarion]

How does the raven have too much EHP but not the Abaddon?

Ok, I guess I must not have been very clear. My point was that the Abaddon, among others, is NOT overpowered - because of other drawbacks - and thus, does not need less EHP. Yet CCP is nerfing it anyway, just as they are nerfing the Raven, which is actually very under-powered.

[kalaratiri]

Um. What?

Raven gets a minor ehp reduction, a huge speed increase, a seventh mid slot and there are torp/cruise reworks on the way. Exactly what about that is nerfing the Raven? There are actually people worrying that the Raven will be a better shield tanker than the Maelstrom after these changes.

Sure it loses a little base ehp, but if that's a real problem then use your 7th mid and fix it.

[Desiderya]

http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

Check #1 battleship. Not bad for a ship that's 'almost always inferior to the Megathron'. Now, with Tiericide base EHP are going to be more close as well, but still. I don't think changing the resist bonus is pulling things out of their ass.

[BloodBird]

Top 20 ships. 2 Gallente hulls (Tier 3 BC and T3 cruiser) at about 10% of all the entries. 5 Caldari ships, 3 Amarr and the remaining 10, standing at 50%, for Minmatar.

Something tells me I was not very far off on my estimates for what the null-powers love flying. Sadly one of the cutest T3's I know of, the Tengu, seems to be relegated to farming-boat. Shame, I'd love to see more HAM-Tengu's risked in combat.

[Vikarion]

http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20

Check #1 battleship. Not bad for a ship that's 'almost always inferior to the Megathron'. Now, with Tiericide base EHP are going to be more close as well, but still. I don't think changing the resist bonus is pulling things out of their ass.

Yeah, thing is, Caldari is still one of the most trained races, and Rokh is their only Hybrid BS. So yes, it's the most used. But in terms of tanking and damage on target, the Megathron can usually be fit to outperform the Rokh in all but extreme circumstances. Remember, just because something is used a lot, doesn't mean it is the best.

I can fly every race's sub-capital combat ships just about perfectly. I won't make claims to being the best PvPer, but I will say that once you get into the battleship line, the Caldari options are a couple steps below all the others.

[Desiderya]

It depends on a lot of factors, really. Many of these Rokhs will be smartbomb fits, but I don't think numbers as massive as these ( 45k vs 17k ) can be discarded as easy.
The new Megathron might outperform the new Rokh (EHP differences will be smaller) but at the moment it really looks like someone's put a bit of thought into that.
Now, without having BS pvp experience I'd say that for any big clusterfuck brawl I'd favor range and ehp over raw dps or tracking. Because my personal piloting skills suck so much ass that I can't outmaneuver being primaried by 20 guys in point blank range. I also hate sitting on theoretical awesome dps and still have to move into range between each primary. possibly wasting potential. Smaller scale and it's vastly different.

[Vikarion]

It depends on a lot of factors, really. Many of these Rokhs will be smartbomb fits, but I don't think numbers as massive as these ( 45k vs 17k ) can be discarded as easy.
The new Megathron might outperform the new Rokh (EHP differences will be smaller) but at the moment it really looks like someone's put a bit of thought into that.
Now, without having BS pvp experience I'd say that for any big clusterfuck brawl I'd favor range and ehp over raw dps or tracking. Because my personal piloting skills suck so much ass that I can't outmaneuver being primaried by 20 guys in point blank range. I also hate sitting on theoretical awesome dps and still have to move into range between each primary. possibly wasting potential. Smaller scale and it's vastly different.

In small gang warfare, you are either on top of the enemy, or you aren't. If you are, the tracking bonus of the Megathron is much more important, since large blasters still miss easily. If you aren't, a Rokh is much less effective than an Armageddon. I'm not saying that a Rokh won't outperform a Megathron in regards to range in the 15-30 km range - of course it will. But that doesn't matter, because an Armageddon, an Abaddon, and many other ships will also outdo both in that situation. So, if you are going to be close, take a Megathron. If you are going to possibly be further away, use an Armageddon or Abaddon. Under no circumstance is the Rokh the best choice, or even second best. And EHP doesn't really matter, because the Rokh's tank is not better than the Megathron's by much, if any, and pales in comparison to that managed by Amarrian BS's.

In regards to sniping, the Rokh can reach out to 249 km. Problem is, almost no one fights or snipes at that range, AND if someone gets close to a Rokh in that situation, it's dead. OTOH, the Megathron has better tracking, can still fit to hit out very far, and can also carry a lot more in terms of defense and drones. But, actually, the current Apoc is a much better sniper than either in terms of range + dps.

So, in other words, the Rokh, well-used or not, is not a good combat ship in comparison to its competitors.

[Esna Pitoojee]

Keep in mind that one-on-one comparisons do not always reflect fleet doctrine usage. The reason the Drake became so incredibly popular for a while wasn't that it was the absolute best-performing battlecruiser, it was that it required relatively little skill (both SP and piloting) to use it effectively in large numbers.

[orange]

And the variance in engagement size really makes balancing difficult.

What is balanced at 1-on-1, is not balanced at 10-v-10, and definitely not balanced at 100-v-100.