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[Kasuko]

Time for another update.

We discussed the Marauder situation further and came with the following changes:


Shield, armor and hull 30% resistance boosts have been removed on the Bastion Module - instead, all Marauders will now get proper tech2 resists. This will allow Marauders to have better RR use outside Bastion and reduce overall tanking effectiveness inside the mode.

We have removed all tanking bonuses on the Marauders hulls (Armor Repairer amount on the Paladin and Kronos, Shield Boost amount on the Golem and Vargur). Instead, we are giving them 7.5% bonus to the velocity factor of stasis webifiers per level. This will not only help reducing their tanking effectiveness, be more in theme with the ship role itself and help anyone using them with short range weapons. We are not giving them a full 10% per level back as this would be extremely powerful in conjunction with the other bonuses / Bastion. We are going to leave the full 10% web strength amount on the Serpentis ships for now and see how things evolve with time.

Also, we are removing the mass penalty on the Bastion mode. Tests have shown you can't really turn when it's active anyway, and we don't want to have players abuse that to collapse wormholes.

-CCP Ytterbium

[Katrina Oniseki]

All of my rage. These changes do not please the Kat.

[kalaratiri]

Yeah, not a fan here. No point having such wildly split bonuses. Web bonus would make sense if Marauders were supposed to MJD across the field and then kill things with short range guns, but the Bastion effects are obviously intended for medium-to-sniper range.

I prefered the old version ._.

[Steffanie Saissore]

I'll confess right now that I don't really understand the maths and the numbers at play here as well as I ought to. However, from what I've been seeing and reading, I guess the big issue is what is a marauder supposed to be?

I have to distinctly different views...the first is sort of based on the word itself, that of a warrior (or gang) rushing into a settlement and raiding it while undefended. So in that case, I first viewed the marauder class as something that sneaked in behind the enemy and raided targets of opportunity by getting in close and unleashing hell from its guns.

The other one I have, given that it is a battleship hull, was more of a stealthy sniper; still going behind enemy lines as it were and then from range destroying targets and sneaking off.

The bastion mode change seemed to support the second concept of a marauder that I had and it is one that I do prefer...I do like long range to in-close and personal.  But then these next wave of changes show up and the bonus to webbers is back or added.

To me, it feels like there is an attempt to make the marauder a brawler and a sniper; yet not really good at either since you can't hot-swap guns and fits once you're out in space.

Just my two cents on the subject; I still think the concept is cool, but I want it to be a useful and neat concept else what's the point?

[Victoria Stecker]

Seems like they just took most of the worth out of the bastion module. Previously, it gave a hefty range bonus and the potential for a monster fuckoff local tank. Now it gives range.

The bonus to non-bastion resists while nerfing active tanking means that these will be better in remote-rep situations, but I think it will be hard to justify giving up that RR just for the range bonus in PVP. And I think it's a decent nerf to the PVE ability of these ships, with or without bastion.

[Caellach Marellus]

Pretty sure they just appeased the incursion community with that one. It's a slight nerf to L4's in terms of tanking but they already tank excellently there.

[Repentence Tyrathlion]

I'm too lazy to try and run the numbers for the overall difference here, but this looks like a straight up nerf.  Pretty sure the web thing was brought back due to whining, I saw more than a little of it in the Eve-o thread.

And as Steffie says, it's pretty damned weird.  Bastion is supertanky, cool, and all about the snipey-snipey.  And yet they suddenly give us web bonuses to go with it...

I get that they're trying to make it so that they can switch between mobile brawler and fixed firepoint, but it seems kind of crude in application.  Almost feels like they'd be better off going for sniper mode, mobile mode, brawler mode, but I can imagine that getting something to work with three modes would cause meltdowns in implementation and UI.

[Anabella Rella]

I'm getting the the feeling that CCP really doesn't know what it wants the Marauders to be.

It apparently bugged the hell out of someone that an entire class of ships existed purely aimed at PVE so, they decided to "fix" that issue in this round of balancing by giving them attributes to make them (at least somewhat) viable in PVP.  The problem is that the two combat styles are complete opposites. I just don't see any way to have a single set of bonuses on the hulls that would equally benefit both styles.

That being said, the original proposed changes sounded very interesting. I really wanted to try them out. With the revisons I don't see the point in the whole exercise. I'm no numbers whiz or doctrine expert by any means but, it seems to me that what the revisions create is a class of ships that are less effective than before in PVE and are gimped for PVP due to capabilities and price.

[Lyn Farel]

The first draft was probably the FIRST time CCP really impressed me by trying to find proper role/flavour/niche to a ship, unlike the pretty shallow and generic bonuses they seem to give most of the other ships in the game, always going for the obsolete ship and buffing it, thus making the other ships overstepping on the same function obsolete in turn, and never even trying to find clear cut roles for their ships (yeah, just a generic tasteless soup of +5% DMG or +5% tank here and there).

Besides the fact that the numbers sounded just plain wrong (10K tank ? Seriously ?), the idea sounded fine in itself.

Now it just sounds... completely shallow. But that 90% web was one of the most important thing for me to run missions in a BS. Without one, it's a nightmare.

[Silas Vitalia]

This will get nerfed to shit after release.

[Katrina Oniseki]

The problem is that the two combat styles are complete opposites. I just don't see any way to have a single set of bonuses on the hulls that would equally benefit both styles.

The only way to appease both styles is to offer simple tank and damage bonuses. That, however, is not 'specialized' enough for T2.

[Silas Vitalia]

Hey.... isn't there already an expensive 1 bil plus battleship that has a webbing bonus? Hmmm.

Maybe we don't need more of that?

[Lyn Farel]

Sure thing, that's why i didn't mind the first draft (except for the ludicrous numbers).

[Morwen Lagann]

This will get nerfed to shit after release.

Protip: pre-release nerfs are not "after release".

And yeah. Not happy with this new set of changes. If they wanted to reduce the SUPAHTANK they could've just reduced the resist bonus from the Bastion module to like, 10-15% instead of 30.

Definitely agreeing with Lyn. They had something unique and very 'niche'... and then threw it away. Really terrible choice there.

[Anabella Rella]

I know this is kind of off-topic but, I think that what this whole rebalancing process has shown is that there are just too many ships in the game right now that are competing for a fairly limited, fixed set of roles. This fundamental problem's been exaggerated by the new (in many cases unbalanced) ships introduced over time that have, in practical terms, obsoleted what's come before. The Attack BCs are a prime example of this. Unfortunately when CCP does propose something original for a class of ships or modules they don't seem to have the will to carry through. I don't know if this is due to player resistance, post-Incarna risk aversion or something else entirely.

Once introduced into the game it's nearly impossible to flat out remove ships/modules so, CCP really needs to embrace innovation and come up with some exciting new capabilities/uses for the existing assets. The original Marauder proposal would have been a nice start.