A Ingus
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Posted - 2009.11.10 19:14:00 -
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(I love cut and paste) OP, it appears you are talking about the Drake mainly. On other BCs you can construct a good tank, but it very much hurts your DPS, and vice versa. The Myrm used to be quite good, op even, but was nerfed, and harshly, because everyone cried about it fielding BS damage in 5 heavy/sentry drones, and not being a HAC like the Ishtar (100m3 bandwidth would be appropriate, but instead we have the fail Myrm in its present state).
Meanwhile the extreme Drake tanking option has been ignored. And the BS sized tank with a damn good damage option is still there for the Drake. The problem is not so much the Drake, as it is that all BCs have an out of balance hp sizes (particularly shield) and shield regen stat. If you look at BSs their shield regen is 2500 sec. The average BS base shield hp are between 5469-8500. Cruisers have a regen of 1250 sec. The average cruiser base shield is somewhere in the range of 860-1875 hp.
Now compare the above to BC base shield hp which ranges 3419-5469. This is a almost a BS sized shield, and in the case of the Drake it equals the shield of a BS (yes a BS meant to armor tank but a BS nonetheless), because it has the same shield hp as an Armageddon. However, all BCs also have an almost cruiser sized shield regen stat - 1400 sec. This is what leads to the "unkillable" shield regen lol Drake, and even the best in class smart pvp HAM+buffer Drake. If one was to see BCs as an intermediary between BSs and Cruisers, and ignore the fact that the shields are already skewed toward the the BS size in the range between, one would expect an 1875 sec regen.
So, you see it is not really the Drake per se that is out of balance. The fact that it receives the resist bonus and has the highest base shield hp only highlights the BC shield regen imbalance (btw, the Prophecy gets an armor resist bonus, but not a scorpion's armor hp size, so not equal to a Drake, and the Harbinger gets a scorpion's armor hp, but no resist bonus). The Drake can kill any other BC by simply outlasting it. I myself use a lol regen Drake for some Angel missions, particularly against angel frig swarms in buzzkill. I would not want to see the Drake passive shield option disappear.
However, imo the BC shield regen time should be increased to some degree (I don't know how much exactly, maybe somewhere in the range of 1500-1650) so that we don't have this tanking imbalance in ratters and missionining, and Drake pilots are forced to pvp with buffer that won't get a stupid cherry on top regen. Also, this would eliminate the stupidity of finding better shield tanks on BCs, particularly the Myrm, that have ship bonuses and slot layouts suggesting they were meant to armor tank.
As a footnote, in fact BC shield regen used to be a cruisers regen. Then there was some talk of 1500 being on the test server, or proposed. The whines when that was floated, so CCP backed away to 1400. But then came purger rigs, so the tank was even better than when the regen was a cruiser's 1250.
Point is the Drake would still be fine for passive regen tanking at 1500, because of the shield resists and size of the shield. Alternately or in addition the sizes of BC shield and armor could be slightly reduced. These would be an accross the board change for BCs. While these changes might be appropriate, will any of this happen?
No, I doubt CCP is even reading this. I would be happy if they were, but even then Caldari is the most represented race of toons in the game. Caldari has a very vocal, and "whiney" lobby. So I doubt they have much to worry about. The Drake will probably keep its out of balance tank. Caldari centric pilots can relax.
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