^ Nice points but I believe they'll divide cruisers into gank and tank categories where only tank can reach 35-40k ehp and gank >400dps.

As for Tormentor I still don't get what they did. How should it fight with only 2 turrets and tank lesser than a Punisher? What is the niche of that ship?

Well, my opinion is that the new Merlin looks OP compared to the Bantam because we haven't seen what they are intending for the Bantam yet. Take the Tormentor. Previously it was so atrociously useless it would never get used even if you got one in the training missions. It got a buff, it is now a Death Prawn.

Another opinion of mine is that if this is the way things are going, every rebalanced ship getting more power and DPS, then CCP better hurry up and buff the low-tier cruisers ASAP. You'd be mad to roll around in a Ruppy with Merlins like that shunting about the place - you will get pwned time and time again.

It seems that CCP's idea of balance is just add DPS to everything and increase the power creep of the game much faster. This may be a way of drawing ISK out of the game in some fashion via ship insurance, as in a few years you'll need to insure your ship in case you want to undock in highsec - you will last about ten seconds before a noobship alphas your vindicator.

Well, maybe not that bad, but you get the idea. It seems frigates are heading for near 200DPS / 8K tank envelope, cruisers must be heading for an average 400DPS / 30K tank envelope, leaving BC's in the 600 / 60K range and BS's in the 800 / 90K.

I actually like some of these changes, assuming that the CCP balance cycle stays fast , and they don't focus on unbalancing the T1 frigs and leave the cruisers untouched for too long. With the rest of the low-tier T1 frigs to come, I'd hope that the low-tier Cruisers get a look at fairly quickly because the cycle has to be iterative - and in my opinion CCP's devs need to take their egoes out of it and be prepared to take a step back with things if they go to far in the next iteration.

I am keen to see the Navitas, Burst and Bantam buffed, and the Scythe, Bellicose, Augoror and Moa given some TLC, and quick.

It seems really odd to me that CCP took the racial weapon for the Caldari away from their primary T1 knockaround frigate. In essence, it seems as though what they have done is given the Caldari what amounts to a blaster pvp platform. If they were going to change the way that the Merlin fights so dramattically, why not do it in a way that didn't remove the racial weapon component from the ship?

Increase hacs damage to that of tier 2 battlecruisers. Keep ehp @ half that of teir 2 bc's.

Stop asking valid and logical questions.

Technically, the Caldari racial weapon system isn't just the missiles, it's hybrid weapons as well - after all, they have just as many hybrid platforms as they do missile ones, it's just that missiles dominated for a long time.

So these ships were drastically reworked but their T2 variants still have:

- Speed and inertia based on the older T1 variants. This results in T1 having better stats.
- Both Vengeance and Harpy have damage bonus tied to Assault Ships skill which is not always trained to V. Though it may be compensated by 3 turrets instead of 4 it's still weird.
- Capacitors. Merlins capacitor is superior to Harpy's. In case of Punisher it is somewhat balanced out by recharge times.

Still it looks like some of the developers downgraded the ships...

Should CCP buff respective AFs to the level of those frigates?