|
Author |
Thread Statistics | Show CCP posts - 0 post(s) |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
106
|
Posted - 2015.01.29 02:46:18 -
[1] - Quote
Broken record here so I am just going to start a copy and paste into all the nerf Ishtar threads I can find.
-1
Again with the nerf Ishtar / sentry drone combination. Why is it that everyone misses the most logical first step in balancing this combination and jumps immediately to the nerfs instead?
Based on reading online the most common complaint with Ishtar / sentry combination is the ability to set them to aggressive mode which allows them to attack without the pilot needing a target lock or to set them to assist another ship in which case the Ishtar becomes nothing but a transport mechanism either of these allows them to drop and run away and hide.
While nerfs to damage, control range, bandwidth and various other ideas would solve the problme for the PvP crowd it would have an even larger and un-intended affect on the usefulness of the Ishtar for PvE. We don't care about PvE you say and my response is you should, this is a game that is played by many different types of players and we all have to share the same ships and equipment and the needs of ALL segments of the game need to be considered in any balance adjustment that is made.
As this applies to the Ishtar / sentry combination why start with the nerf bat big time when a simple change to drone use mechanics may solve the problem for the PvP crowd yet have minimal impact on the PvE crowd. Just one such idea is to remove the aggressive mode and the ability to assign drones to assist another ship, so what does this do for the situation. 1. It requires the drones pilot to have a target lock to be able to shoot anything. 2. It prevents them from dropping drones and running away like a scared baby. 3. It makes drones ships just as susceptible to EWAR as most other ships. 4. It would have minimal affect on the use of this combination in the PvE segment of the game.
So I say give these simply fixes that have minimal impact on the PvE side of the game a try first. When they are tried and IF they do not solve the balance issues for the PvP crowd then we can start to look at other things that can / should be done. |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
106
|
Posted - 2015.01.30 04:21:38 -
[2] - Quote
Nolak Ataru wrote:No, most of the "find a counter and stfu" is from people who have seen people complain about every ship in the game, and are tired of it. Off the top of my head, one easy way to mess with a Ishtar fleet is to fit a bunch of 425s to something, hyperspatial rig and add warp speed lowslots, and warp them in such a way that there's zero transversal between them and the Ishtar fleet. Then you just headshot the anchor and the FCs, and you continue to do that. Thinking outside the box again I see, perhaps that is why you and your mates do not have trouble with the Ishtar.
|
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
106
|
Posted - 2015.01.30 04:23:18 -
[3] - Quote
Biron Soringard wrote:Its not just 0.0 where Ishtars are a poblem. Lowsec is just as bad about Ishtars Online. They're not fun to fly, they're not fun to fight. They're an "I win" button, and that's the only reason people fly them. I beg to differ with you on this. After they nerfed the utility out of the rattlesnake the Ishtar has become one of my favorite ships. I guess it is all in what you expect.
|
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
108
|
Posted - 2015.01.31 05:53:51 -
[4] - Quote
Phaade wrote:How can you not see how broken Ishtars are? It's been dissected and explained numerous times. You obviously don't PvP...or PvE as it's the go to ship for that as well.
I really believe some people simply cannot grasp the concept of balance. Just a thought, perhaps he, like me and many others that have posted here have experienced this "Ishtar online" phenomenon and like me and the others we simply doe not believe you. Both sides are opinions and those opinions are based on our in game experiences, because we view this differently than you do does not make us wrong and it does not make us blind anymore than you are.
Let me deal with the "there are no counters to Ishtar online" theory with a few things that I have personally seen work extremely well. I do have another character that is in a low sec corp and we routinely face Ishtar fleets, granted nothing in the hundreds of ships size that nul sec players are reporting but I see no reason why these would not be effective even there.
First ignore the Ishtar and deal with the drones, and yes it really is that easy unless you care more about the Ishtar kill than driving the enemy out of your territory.
Any ship that can fit cruise missiles can be particularly deadly to a drones ship. They can warp in at ranges that have the sentries deep into fall off so they are not hitting particularly well which minimizes the damage you take. And in the ultimate PvP no no we have found that slightly modified mission fits and their active tanks are the most useful as it minimizes the need for reps, leaving more pilots for dps roles. Drones vanish quickly and the Ishtars warp off because they have nothing left to shoot with. But hey we miss the kills so if you care more about the kills then this is a fail procedure. But then based on the comments here you are failing anyway so what do you have to lose?
Hard tanked fast assault is another tactic that works particularly well. Small fast ships can get in close enough and move fast enough that the sentry drones simply cannot hit them. This forces the Ishtar pilots into a decision, leave sentries out that are dying but cannot hit anything, or move back in to recall the sentries and risk the swarms of fast attack ships. Definitely more risk in this one vs the long range above but it is still effective and we even get Ishtar kills out of it. The major drawback here is you must have a decent set of cloaky scouts to set up warp ins so the fast attacks do not die trying to get in tight. But what the hell if a group of retreaded carebears can pull this off it should be easy for you "serious" PvP pilots.
We have used various combinations of these two extremes as well and they are just as effective.
No these will not work for every group of players and they will not work in every situation but if you are willing to think and play out side your comfort zone you would probably find they are an effective counter many if not most situations.
But I still go back to an earlier post as the best option for the first attempt at balancing that which you all seem to think is broken. Eliminate aggressive mode and the ability to assign drones to assist another ship and lets see what happens, then adjust as needed from there. To those who say no to this idea as it would affect their PvE play. The changes being discussed here and in other sections of these forums as well as the internet in general will have far more negative impacts than these simple changes will so it is a decent compromise that PvE players should be willing to endorse. |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
122
|
Posted - 2015.02.06 03:09:00 -
[5] - Quote
Been awhile so I will inject this again.
Remove the ability to set drones to assist another ship. This eliminates the possibility that anyone in a sub cap ship can control more than 5 drones. It requires the (insert drones ship of choice here) pilot to stay close to the battle because they have to control their own drones.
Remove the aggressive mode. This prevents the drones from attacking an un-targeted ship. This makes the (insert drones ship here) and it's weapons as susceptible to EWAR as most other ships.
Besides the list of positive changes in the PvP arena these changes would have minimal affect on those who use drones for PvE activities. Yes the PvE crowd is going to complain about these changes and as a PvE player myself I will be first in line to say tough crap, sometimes we have to give because it is broken in the PvP arena.
On the other side of that is you as PvP players need to give as well and in this situation that means we try things that might balance the situation but have minimal impact on the PvE side of the game like my suggestions above before we jump off into the nerfs posted here, some of which would have huge impacts on the PvE side of the game. |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
123
|
Posted - 2015.02.06 07:49:10 -
[6] - Quote
Rain6637 Anhenka I understand your points, I do not believe you are correct but that is only my opinion. Before I go on based on my personal experience in low sec as well as that of 8 of my real life friends that live in nul the Ishtar / sentry combination is not OP, it is odd, it presents a unique challenge and it requires a unique response to counter it. We are few in number but there are many others posting here and on other sites that agree with us so I know we are not alone in our beliefs.
Having gotten through that let me proceed. Bottom line still remains unchanged, the nerfs/changes that are being generally discussed in this topic would nerf sentry drones in general and the Ishtar and Rattlesnake specifically to a point where they would be nearly useless for many PvE activities. While the vast majority of PvP players could not give a damn about the PvE crowd as long as we all have to share common ships and fittings the needs of the PvE crowd MUST be considered equally to those of the PvP crowd until such time as it is proven by real players on TQ that further changes must be made.
I have spent considerable time reading every post here as well as those on several other forums and despite your claims to the contrary the primary issues that come up repeatedly are the non-targeted damage ability, the immunity to EWAR both of which are a direct result of the aggressive mode, the abilities to assign drones to another ship or ships and then warp off or move out of range, tracking speeds and DPS output. Come to think of it the ability to assign drones to assist is also part of the immunity to EWAR that people complain about.
What my proposal is is a carefully though out set of changes that tries to address as many of the PvP related issues I have seen posted as possible while having as little impact on the PvE side as possible. Will these changes be enough to bring balance? well that all depends. To those who share my experiences and thoughts the answer is they are not needed at all. To others like the two of you it is likely they will not be enough.
And so we get back to my primary point. Instead of hitting an entire group of ships with a huge nerf bat, let us first take a small swing at it and then wait a bit and see how it all works out. If CCP makes my proposed changes and we are still having this conversation two months later then I will no doubt surprise the both of you as I will be lending my voice to the next logical progression in addressing these issues.
Last thought for now. It has been many releases since the Ishtar re-balance the fact that CCP has only made one small adjustment to the Ishtar and nothing since gives us a few clues on what they may be thinking.
A. CCP does not consider the Ishtar / sentry combo OP and no matter how much you complain it is likely that it will not see more changes.
B. trying to bring the balance that you seek to the Ishtar / sentries has broken so many other ships in the game that CCP has decided to let sleeping dogs lie as the saying goes, at least for now.
C. further changes to the Ishtar in specific and drones in general are a part of whatever they are working on for nul / low and they are comfortable leaving them as is for now.
|
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
123
|
Posted - 2015.02.07 04:28:32 -
[7] - Quote
Rain6637 wrote:Rattlesnakes could have a rebuff to sentries to complement the sentry nerf, to preserve its role as a sentry boat.
As for Fozzie and current game design, it's time he works for Riot, I think.
And btw, lowsec PVP and drones... you mean to tell me you use sentries for your ships, and not fighters?
To deal with these in order so as not to confuse.
So they buff the snake to compensate what happens to the Domi twins? Answer, either they are left in a nearly useless state or CCP has to take another swing at a rebalance all of which opens up multiple chances for the next OP ship to step up and take over from the Ishtar. And all of this rebalance crap still would not address the simple fact that your changes would cripple or even destroy the Ishtar for many of the PvE roles it is used for. I wonder how you justify that when there are less drastic measures that could be tried first?
Fozzie is as Fozzie does and there is nothing that we can do about that. Beside laying all of this on Fozzie is short sighted and no doubt ignores the reality of the situation. Unless you think that everyone at CCP is so stupid and gullible that they will blindly follow where ever Fozzie leads no matter how bad it is. Personally I am sure that Fozzie and his ideas are reasonably well looked after and I think it is safe to say that if a majority of the folks at CCP thought one of his ideas was bad for the game we would not see it on TQ.
I was not aware that sub-cap ships were allowed to equip fighters simply because they are in low sec, wondering when this change happened and why it was not in the patch notes. Or was I having a Rip Van Winkle moment and slept through that part of class? No it must be a senior moment and I simply forgot that I read all about it, yeah that must be it.
With the moment of personal levity aside this comment does go a long ways to explain why you are having so many problems with the Ishtar and sentries. I mention low sec and fights and your mind immediately goes to carriers and why are these idiots not using fighters. This indicates a rather "stuck in a rut:" pattern on how to address problems and since the Ishtar / sentry is a very unique combination it takes an equally unique solution. These types of unique solutions do not often occur to those who have their minds stuck in a rut of what they have always done, and even if they do they quite often dismiss them because they do not fit into the pre-defined realm of what has worked in the past..
I said this before in a post, to handle the Ishtar think LONG range, or up close and personal. We use cruise missile, artillery and even the Rattlesnake with fits that can hit from 100k to 150k out and go after the drones, works like a champ. Or we use hard tanked fast attack and get in so close and so fast that the sentries cannot track and hit. In a particularity interesting twist we even use ships like the Tristan and Ishkur and use drones to kill drones it is all rather hysterical. Set yourself free, let your imagination run wild and I bet you will easily find a unique solution that works for the unique problem they call the Ishtar.
Looking back all of this noise about the Ishtar is quite like the arguments we heard about nerfs needed to the Domi when it came out of the balance pass. My how history seem to repeat itself. |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
126
|
Posted - 2015.02.08 04:20:32 -
[8] - Quote
Rain6637 wrote:Subcaps get fighters delegated from carriers. Fighter delegation and carrier support is endemic to lowsec PVP. Ah good to see your still stuck in your rut, everything I say goes completely over your head and you always land back on carriers. Did you ever, even for just one single second stop and think that maybe your addiction to carriers is the root cause of your problems?
|
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
143
|
Posted - 2015.02.10 03:53:44 -
[9] - Quote
Nolak Ataru wrote:Rain6637 wrote:Whatever gets sentries, and is small. A little earlier today, while roaming around Sisi, I was thinking about how sentries have better damage application than large blasters when it comes to shooting towers through forcefields. I'm currently on my laptop, but you gave me an idea. Do sentries suffer from "signature resolution" (I think that's what it's called) on their weapons? I.e. Neutron Blaster Cannon has a 400 meter sig resolution, doesn't do full damage to stuff with sig radius <400. Adding that + increasing NPC AI's reactiveness to EWAR would be something I would be able to get behind. Not sure what you mean here so an attempt at an answer.
Yes the drones themselves hava a sig radius 100meters.
As far as their guns are concerned they use the same formula for figuring damage as any other turret based weapo in in the game.
https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Garde_II |
Donnachadh
United Allegiance of Undesirables
146
|
Posted - 2015.02.11 03:53:06 -
[10] - Quote
Nolak Ataru wrote:Signature resolution =/= Signature Radius. Correction noted, thank you. |
|
|
|
|