A comment from Kyoko in the Sansha supercarrier thread made me wonder what people think of the current arrangement of ships on offer and their applications in combat. What ship class needs its role changed the most? Which ships deserve the most attention to make them again/more useful (or unique) pieces on the chess board of EVE warfare? Perhaps another way to ask the question is: What would you like to fly that you don't currently because its simply a broken ship? We can talk shop on the RP forums, right?
Disclaimer--I think PvE is better left to WoW.
Entire ship lines that are useless or near useless:
Destroyers with the very situational exception of the Thrasher. Sig radius of a cruiser, tank of a frigate.
Assault Frigates. Only about half of them are even usable. Ishkur is the tits. There's something to be said for the Wolf, Jag, and Vengeance. The rest are horrible.
Black Ops BS: Okay, the fuel bay helped IMMENSELY. Thank you CCP. But it still feels a bit pre-nerfed. The lack of CovOps cloak makes this ship a little less useful than a T3 in the same situation (provided CCP fixed the T3 back to being able to black ops bridge, which they may well not have done, I haven't checked). I could see where it'd be overpowered to give them one though. YMMV. Oh, and bridging recons is stupidly expensive fuel-wise. The fact that you can bridge 436.7 stealth bombers for the cost of one recon probably could use a touch of love.
Dreadnoughts: Since the changes to supercarriers and advent of fighter bombers (none of which I particularly find problematic), dreadnoughts are obsolete. There is exactly no reason to ever use one. You need a handful of dreads to equal the dps of a supercarrier. You need the dreads to immobilize themselves for several minutes at a stretch in order to use that DPS, and it's very much range-dependant. And doing that just paints a bullseye on your ass for a supercarrier counterdrop. I'm not hugely into the capitals online side of the game despite owning a supercarrier and previously having owned a dread/carrier, but it is very clear that these ships currently have no practical role in EVE, and should probably be looked at.
Specific ships that need love--note that I'm generally ignoring some of the t1 hulls because cheap t1 hulls probably should be a little gimpy (lolmoa).
Kitsune. It can't lock to half of its jam optimal. You can't take advantage of one of the built-in roles of the ship without using at least two module/rig slots for lock range modifiers.
Eagle. Rails are terrible. The Eagle is built for rails. Ergo, the ship sucks. Blaster eagles are moderately sort of okay in a few situations, but there are generally several other options to choose from that are far superior--for instance, for a pure Caldari pilot, the Drake.
Ishtar. This one's sticky. The ship itself isn't bad until you realize that the hybrid bonus on it is unusable with any sort of conventional fit because the ship has less CPU than a 1983 stopwatch. And never mind armor tanking it in PvP. This ship has the potential to be a monster--note that blasters are still blasters, so being able to use them on the Ishtar wouldn't really unbalance the ship terribly IMO.
Muninn. This ship is close to being great, but yet so far. The alpha is decent if you jam 720s on it, but your range is still meager and you're flying tankless. Your DPS is even worse if you're not simply alphaing things. Again, the Drake comes to mind as a ship that can project damage to similar ranges while still doing just about everything else better.
Pilgrim. Fucking useless. This ship has issues killing a solo shit-fit belt ratter, nevermind having any application in a pitched fight. They're a free killmail in any sort of situation where there are more than 3 pilots involved. And now that the Proteus is out there, there's really no reason to fly the Pilgrim--the Proteus does what the Pilgrim did far better--decloak on someone's face while they're ratting/plexing and melt them.
Arazu/Lachesis (and Keres/Maulus). The fact that people don't even try to fit damps on these ships anymore is probably worth a gander. Typical casualty of CCP overnerfing. IMO, keep damps crappy, but boost the bonuses on the dedicated damp boats such that they're actually useful for something other than keeping that drake from locking you at 80.
Oneiros. Not a terrible ship per se, but when you compare it to the frequency of use of the other three, you realize something's up. The Basi/Guardian cap transfer ability makes circle-jerking them a perfect counter to neuting, and thus the logi of choice on logi gangs. The Scimi is nimble, fast, and has low sig radius, making it ideal for fast-moving shield skirmish gangs. The Oneiros has none of the above. It doesn't tank particularly well, and it offers no real bonus over the Guardian besides being accessible to Gallente pilots who haven't cross-trained Amarr. The only good thing I can really say about the Oneiros is it's a hilarious ship to comedy fit. You can get some scary results out of a gang of half a dozen Oneiros sporting Valk IIs and ACs, using the midslots for ewar and fitting 2 reps each. But then again no one's going to engage 6 logis anyway.
Legion. It should ring a bell somewhere that the only Legion fits used in PvP at all are the HAM buffer fit and the can't-be-probed ganglink fit. Oh, and the remote sensor boosted instalock kit that can be done just as well with the Loki. With turrets, you're better off buying 4 Zealots. With a cloak sub, you're better off flying just about anything else. With the cloak+bubble immune fit, I don't even know what you're supposed to do with it, but it's horrible. Sat next to either of the other three, the Legion lacks what the other three have as a strength--versatility. And the fact that the majority of the subsytems are simply not good for anything is a problem. It's the only T3 in my hangar that I don't have backup subsystems for, and arguably any time I'm using it, I'd be just as well off or better in a Loki or Proteus--either of those can fit the same sort of buffer, same sort of DPS, AND offer their ewar bonuses of long-range web/scram.
The fact that the Ferox is a better ship when fitted with ACs/Lasers should be a hint to CCP.
Eos: Why would anyone fly this ship? I've been able to fly it since 2008 but the only time I've ever sat in one was during the last tourney when my team decided that the best counter to the fotm missile spam was to stack as many damps as possible. I've looked at this ship as an alternative to the Deimos--it can get the same DPS, better buffer, and fit a gang link while doing it for about the same price--but doing that ignores most of the bonuses on the ship. Long story short, CCP should recognize that active tank bonuses on Fleet Commands are useless. And if they fix the Arazu/Lach/Keres/Maulus to allow them to field damps with some modicum of utility, this ship will be infinitely more useful. As it is, I don't think I've seen one of these in space on TQ since they nerfed the drone bay.
Astarte: Armor tank+active tank bonus+blasters=head scratcher of a combo. Rigs that slow you down, tank that needs cap to run on a boat that sucks down cap with the MWD/guns, guns that require you to be blaring that MWD to get into/stay in range...this ship has too many problems for the pricetag. Yes, it's a fucking meat grinder. But you'll almost never live long enough to get into range to use it. I've owned three over the course of the last three years. None survived more than 24 hours.
Claymore: This ship is still good, don't get me wrong. But the active tank bonus is not. It's never used. I'm not sure what to replace it with, but it could probably use some looking into.
Panther: As much as I like the fact that with HG Snakes, Black Ops 5, a pimped-out fit, gang links, and a stroke of brilliant luck, you stand a snowball's chance in hell of bumping a capital off of a station with this ship, the speed bonus is...well it's not terribly useful on a 500m isk battleship.
There are probably a few I'm forgetting, but just off the top of my head, these are the ships that need help or review. Others are of questionable use for PvP, but very useful for PvE, so I'll leave them off.
Oh, and one other side comment. Since the advent of T3, RR Battleships are very much out of vogue. You can get way beyond BS buffer, low-end BS DPS, and cruiser mobility/sig radius out of T3s. Add a few logis to the mix, and you have an incredibly nasty gang capable of shredding an RR BS gang. I'm not sure where I'm going with that observation, but it's readily apparent from watching the trends of gangs we've faced/flown over the course of the last 18 months in Syndicate.
Oh, and do something about Drakes please. Seeing 30 people in drakes steamroll a 70 man fleet...something's wrong with that. Drakeblobs are the new Vagablob. In 5s and 6s, Drakes are dangerous, but not unengageable. In 50s and 60s, they are very much untouchable. Much unlike the old nanoblobs, there are really no good counters to the Drakeblob.
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Topic: Rebalancing Ship Classes (Read 6552 times)