Quayli Myung
Federal Navy Academy
Gallente Federation
0
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Posted - 2013.02.23 12:10:00 -
[1] - Quote
I'm Gallente because I liked the starting attribues of this particular race, but I soon started flying caldari because I wanted to passive shield tank (missiles seemed to complement this style of tanking so I soon began to focus on that as well). I like the idea that there have been more ships added that use missiles lately, but there are not many ships capable of passive shield tanking. Those who don't passive tank may not truly understand this. People are not upset about the drake simply because of a high slot. It takes a much longer time to effectively tank with passive shields than it does any other tank and to make that worse, there aren't many ships that do it well and the few that do require a lot of time retraining frigates etc because they may be for a different faction and/or use guns rather than missiles, etc. Anyone who has used a drake knows that their dps was already terrible to begin with. The DPS issue, if anything, is more of a "straw that broke the camels back" kind of thing. Passive tanking in itself is a drawback in some ways compared to other tanking since it requires fitting more slots all around just for that purpose and by default produces lower dps when compared to active tanking.
I think that people are upset because of the time spent training to be able to use a drake effectively and to now feel that they have basically wasted it. Firstly, there are very few ships available for you to use. Secondly, to passive tank effectively, it requires a lot of time maxing out several different skills that are primarily for passive shield tanking and now with the new faction bc skills, you are stuck even more with only being able to use your current faction and your class of ships...except that there is no faction that really specializes in passive shield tanking (like gallente specializes in armor tanking) so you will likely have to train even more if you need to find another ship that can tank effectively or if you want to have a passive tank HAC because drake is missiles while most other ships tend to use guns. Even among caldari, the number of ships that passive tank well are few and far inbetween. Hence the popularity of the drake...
When you talk roles, the drake already fit its role fine as it was. It was a lower tier command ship that countered its low dps to tank well so that it could do its main job more effectively - wing/fleet command. The popularity of the drake was not because it was just some awesome ship or that it was so much better than other ships, but I believe it was because there aren't many other passive shield tanking ships as accessible and effective at it to make it worthwhile. If you wanted to passive shield tank you were pretty much flying a drake because there weren't many other options available. The caldari seem to be the faction that caters the most towards passive shield capable ships so this just sealed its fate...
But the problem here is the mentality that if a certain ship has a high percentage of people using it, it must be overpowered. In an environment like Eve where you have so many roles and tactics in play...this should have been looked at from more angles than that. When you have a line of certificates angled at just this style of play it should not be a surprise that a high number of people would choose this ship when there really aren't many other alternatives within this niche tanking style. I hate the idea that I'll likely need to wait a month or so to train for the effective use of a command ship (although they don't look very promising) or even much longer to train some other faction to "try out" another ship that may or may not be effective at my preferred style of tanking.
I hope that one day there will be a faction that was dedicated more towards this style of tanking so that those who enjoy passive shield tanking wouldn't have to feel trapped in only being able to use a mere handful of ships. This way it wouldn't be so necessary to have to try other faction passive tank ships just to find one that works for you. |