tl; dr version:
CCP nerfed things OP was fond of.

Actually OP hopes for discussion and opinions (clue: this is a forum). If you try really hard you might just manage to formulate one, and then you'd have something worth posting.

Actually OP hopes for discussion and opinions (clue: this is a forum). If you try really hard you might just manage to formulate one, and then you'd have something worth posting.

Posting in a stealth "Grrr Goons" thread.

Isn't it GRR N3/PL with their slowcat spam?

And T2 Sentries will lose 7% damage come summer. :(

OP must have forgot about that module called Stasis Webifier, which will magically make his gardes hit again!

8/7.5 = 6.7% OP.
That's about the same as T2 to Faction in nearly every mod in the game.
20% increase from T2 to Faction is crazy huge.
Welcome to the same as every other weapon system in the game now.

Here are some other mechanism turret users can use to enhance their range.

T2 long range ammo.
Lowslot tracking enhancers.
Rigs.
Implants.
Boosters.

Here are the other mechanisms drones users have to enhance their range.

Faction bonus over T2

---

Armour Hardener (A type), 12%.
MWD, 50% cap bonus.
Shield Hardeners, 25% bonus over T2
Scan Probe Launcher, 100% bonus over T2
All damage modules, 25% bonus over T2

Yes, there will be a net 7% loss of damage, but you also get a bonus 10% damage from the drone faction skills.

Yes, because sentries are a short range weapon system for use under 10k and Stasis Webifiers add optimal range to all weapon system don't they, genius.


The old bonus on omni's was good. However you are mistaken in that it was not excessive compared to the bonus increases offered by other comparable faction/deadspace gear. For example:


Faction bonus over T2

---

Armour Hardener (A type), 12%.
MWD, 50% cap bonus.
Shield Hardeners, 25% bonus over T2
Scan Probe Launcher, 100% bonus over T2
All damage modules, 25% bonus over T2


As you can see, I could go through EFT and find examples in almost every other category of gear where the bonus for elite gear easily exceeds 10%, (and none of this is even the best gear).

One glaring exception to this though is tracking computers and enhancers which have practically no bonus at all. So in that respect the change to Omni's might seem to be consistent. However, if you look a bit deeper you'll see that there are significant differences between turrets and drones that result in the downgrading of omni's having an excessively detrimental effect.

Here are some other mechanism turret users can use to enhance their range.

T2 long range ammo.
Lowslot tracking enhancers.
Rigs.
Implants.
Boosters.

Here are the other mechanisms drones users have to enhance their range.

Nothing.


Omni's were the only thing that drones users had for making Gardes usable for their only viable role (sniping). There's no point whatsoever using Gardes at close range since heavy drones do more dps and at close range the time to take for them to reach the target isn't an issue, especially not with a drone navigation computer or two, and this will be even less of an issue with the summer expansion where heavy drones will be made to travel faster.

Making the Omnis use cap also rules out using sentries in wspace where medium sized ships will commonly be capped out by the sleepers, so this change also destroys existing gameplay, and in general the obsession with making modules and weapons pointless on all ships apart from those which have specific bonuses to them (specifically drones and ewar) is clearly removing diversity and the potential for creativity in ship design.

Imo nerf was heavy handed and should be revised somewhat to prevent Gardes from being pointless on all except a couple of specific ships.

* Drone Scope Chip - tech 1 gives 15% optimal, tech 2 gives 20% optimal

All damage module are around 5% better compared to T2, that's it.

Stop puling numbers out of your butt.

[quote=Selene Voss]
@Mocam You make some reasonable points that I'd like to come back on.

Regarding the point about switching drones I'd just like to point out that very few boats have the drone storage capacity to be able to carry multiple sets of sentries. And on the issue of being able to use all T2 Sentries without needing to train the racial skill, my read of the Drone Assist blog suggests that is one of the things that will be changing in the summer expansion. The blog isn't completely clear on this point, but it is categorical in that the racial skill will now be where the T2 sentries get a lot of their current damage from.

I always snicker at "next expansion..." and other such 'future' based expectations. Oft times this it doesn't seem to synch well. You know: Expectations vs deliverables? It tends to be a bit like a manual transmission with the clutch giving out... *snicker*

"Wait and see" is best but avoid planning on what one thinks they'll get. :-)

Actually OP hopes for discussion and opinions (clue: this is a forum). If you try really hard you might just manage to formulate one, and then you'd have something worth posting.

Thanks for the tip. What is this, a lowslot module or a rig?


Heat Sink II. DamageMod +10%
Ammatar Navy Heat Sink. DamageMod +12.5%

10 - 12.5 = 2.5 increase
2.5 / 10 * 100 = 25%

Therefore faction damage mods are 25% better than T2 so you might want to consider learning some basic maths before you accuse others of pulling numbers out of their butts.

loosing patience.

I could have sworn they were balancing them based on having 7% less with max skills. I.e. if your not maxed now, the nerf is gonna be way more than 7%.

Actually, it's not even close to 25%

I made it perfectly clear that I was talking about how much greater the faction bonus was than the T2 bonus, _not_ how much greater the final dps, range, or whatever result is.

Your final outcome calculations are correct, but do absolutely nothing to disprove my actual point, which is that currently Federation Navy omni's do squat. If anything a final outcome calculation on T2 vs Fed Navy omnis would only serve to reinforce my point.

I could have sworn they were balancing them based on having 7% less with max skills. I.e. if your not maxed now, the nerf is gonna be way more than 7%.

tl; dr version:

CCP nerfed things OP was fond of.

Hmm... lets check the numbers because I was talking from memory and I think I was wrong:

Today Garde IIs:

Base damage: 50 thermal
Damage multiplier: 1.96

So base damage output: 98 thermal (50*1.96)

Tomorrow's Garde IIs - (based on the spreadsheet released in the blog)

Base damage: 64 thermal
Damage multiplier: 1.7
Benefit from up to 10% bonus from gallente drone specialisation V.

So base damage output: 119.68 thermal (64*1.7*1.1)

Now I might have my formulas wrong - but it looks to me as if the Garde IIs are actually getting a potential 20% damage BOOST in the summer (but it's more dependent on skills than today). Even without the drone specs you will still be doing 108.8 base damage which is an improvement over what we have today.

Good fun all round or did I completely miss something?

These numbers assume max skills:

Curator I - +15% tracking, -50% falloff, +18.15% damage
Warden I - +40% falloff, +12% damage
Garde I - +50% falloff, +2% damage
Bouncer I - +60% tracking, -12.5% optimal, +14.3% falloff, +2.86% damage

Curator II - +15% tracking, -50% falloff, +8.31% damage
Warden II - +40% falloff, +2.67% damage
Garde II - +50% falloff, -6.5% damage
Bouncer II - +60% tracking, -12.5% optimal, +14.3% falloff, -5.71% damage

You missed something.
Namely your assumption that the -7% figure is before skills is wrong.


https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4423945#post4423945

Been out of game for a while and recently returned, so had a load of changes to catch up on. Last night I couldn't at first work out why my Garde II's couldn't actually hit a single blasted thing, so I had to do a bit of research and discovered the Omnidirectional Tracking Link changes.

Cripes! After nine years of Eve on and off I've seen plenty of stuff nerfed, but never have I seen anything nerfed to such complete and utter pointlessness before.

Pre sentry nerf, Garde II's on a non-bonused ship with my (reasonable) drone skills had an optimal of 30k, which with 2 T2 Omnis went up to 45k. Considering that you've devoted two entire mid slots to it that doesn't seem remotely OP to me, especially when you consider that the sentries are static (and so by definition are really only useful for sniping), and that they're a BS class weapon and many NPC battleships don't even approach to within 45k anyway.

Post sentry nerf, same dual omni setup, my Garde II's now have an optimal of 34k unscripted, or 38.9k double range scripted. Their optimal was already pretty crap, 38.9k is sufficiently crap as to verge on pointlessness.

That's wtf number one.

Wtf number two is what the hell have they done to Federation Navy Omnis!

T2 Omnis used to give a 25% buff, Fed Navy's used to give 30%, that's an increase of 20% over the T2's, not too shabby, a faction module that's actually worth a damn. But not any more. Now the T2's give a 7.5% optimal buff, and the Fed Navy's give only 8%. Are you *&@$ing kidding me? A 0.5% bonus! For real? That's totally pointless! What the Jesus munching heckfire are you guys smoking over there!

it used to be the case that Fed Navy Omni's used to add a significant amount of optimal, for unbonused ships they were really what made using Gardes even viable in the first place. Now, two of them, double range scripted, give me a grand total of... wait for it.

600m

Yes, you read it right, 600m extra optimal!

Well for 60m isk that's just an utter joke and there's obviously no point fitting them over T2 at all anymore. It's also hard to see how Gardes could ever be even remotely viable on shield tanking ships anymore.

From what I can gather the sentries were nerfed because apparently when you have 200 Archons use them against an enemy they tend to do rather a lot of damage. Well guess what. If you have 200 of anything, all shooting at one other thing, then no matter what the shooting thing is, the thing being shot at isn't going to like it! I believe it was for similar reasons that Drakes and HML's were nerfed.

The problem with this is that if every ship/weapon in Eve is going to be balanced on the basis of how good it is when 200 of them are used in coordinated PvP to shoot at one other thing, then pretty soon there will be nothing left that's any good for PvE either.

I've heard rumours that the Gila is going to be nerfed to hell as well and lose a tonne of bandwidth.

Bloody hell :-(

Does anyone else thing this is too much? Is there some new mechanism to offset these changes that I've missed? If not then I think Fed Navy Omni's should be returned to 20% better than T2 just to make them worth fitting at all.

You have 2 options:

1. Deal with this disaster.
2. Quit the game.

Complaining on the forums will lead you nowhere with the dev's, and only attract propaganda people from the cartels and CCP.

Ah, and another one of the silent majority speaks up.

Don't worry. you are far from alone in your anger after an extremely detailed and logical analysis.
Unfortunately, your opinions will be ignored.

You have 2 options:

1. Deal with this disaster.
2. Quit the game.

The summer patch is going to substantially buff the DPS of T1 and faction sentry users.

Actually I see
Now 50 * 2{drone int} * 1.25 {sentry drone} * 1.96 multi = 245.
Nerfed 64 * 1.5 * 1.25 * 1.7 * 1.1 racial skill = 224

It's actually a 8.4% Nerf.

Edit: unless the actual multiplier is 1.7354 then it's only 6.5% Nerf.

Actually OP hopes for discussion and opinions (clue: this is a forum). If you try really hard you might just manage to formulate one, and then you'd have something worth posting.

OP must have forgot about that module called Stasis Webifier, which will magically make his gardes hit again!

because webs have 35km+ range

or do they.

Clearly the answer is to have a Rapier alt follow you in the web all the things!