Shereza
Center for Advanced Studies
Gallente Federation
166
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Posted - 2013.07.22 06:59:00 -
[1] - Quote
Firstly I appreciate leaving the deimos' MWD bonus intact. I was sad to see it disappear from the thorax, and it's been one of the reasons why I love my deimos on the odd occasion I fly it in a level 4 mission.
That said, the ishtar... I like that the hybrid damage bonus was replaced with the same range/tracking bonus that the dominix got, but I don't like the lack of a buff to the ishtar's CPU or the drone bay bonus remaining there.
As it stands an "all medium fit" ishtar built to try to maximize the potential of its drones, or at least packing 4 DDAs, is going to run short on CPU. While the removal of the hybrid damage bonus and the subsequent implied obligation to fit medium guns has been removed fitting small guns on the ishtar just doesn't feel right. Unfortunately with the ship using 317tf out of 356.25tf (even with using only a medium shield booster) there isn't much room for anything larger than small guns.
Giving the ishtar another 40tf probably wouldn't make it overpowered compared to the other HACs, and at that point the only HAC with less CPU output would be the zealot by a whole 5tf base.
I've also never been keen on drone bay bonuses, and would frankly rather see the bonus rolled into the core ship capacity, in part or in whole, and the bonus replaced with a bandwidth bonus. Drone bay bonuses, for many players, do little more than enhance ship utility while a bandwidth bonus would enhance functionality. Even if you did have to nerf said bandwidth first it would, to me at least, be nicer to have HAC training raise the ishtar's bandwidth from 75mb to 125mb instead of its bay space from 125m3 to 375m3.
Along those lines the drone "control range" bonus is also a bit underwhelming. it's nice, and 25km is nothing to sneeze at in a sentry build and especially in light of the optimal/tracking bonus which would conceivably let an ishtar punch out 800 rDPS at 50km+, but it doesn't scream out "train HAC past level 1 nao!!!" like some of the other HAC bonuses do. In point of fact it's about the only HAC that really doesn't require you to train the skill past level 1 for maximum functionality.
Frankly while I don't expect the drone bay bonus to disappear or be swapped out for a bandwidth bonus and related base ship attribute changes what I would like to see here is the range/tracking bonus swapped for either the bay space bonus or the "control range" bonus. Rearranging the skills like this wouldn't alter the ship's performance at all with HAC5 trained, but it would at least provide players incentive for training HAC past level 1.
Speaking of the control range bonus... Since skills are being renamed and regrouped is there any chance of having "drone control range" changed to something that more accurately reflects what it does? I mean given that it's the distance from your ship that the target has to be, and not your drones, in order for you to order your drones to interact with it, or rather control your drones, saying it's "drone control range" is a bit of a misnomer.  |