So, when you've successfully nerfed Ishtars into oblivion, are you going to then beg for nerfs to whatever takes its place as the OP hull of choice? And when that hull goes the way of the drake, are you going to protest the next FOTM hull? When does it stop?

I would really like an honest answer to these questions from OP.

nerf everything!

Just a thought, perhaps he, like me and many others that have posted here have experienced this "Ishtar online" phenomenon and like me and the others we simply doe not believe you. Both sides are opinions and those opinions are based on our in game experiences, because we view this differently than you do does not make us wrong and it does not make us blind anymore than you are.


Let me deal with the "there are no counters to Ishtar online" theory with a few things that I have personally seen work extremely well. I do have another character that is in a low sec corp and we routinely face Ishtar fleets, granted nothing in the hundreds of ships size that nul sec players are reporting but I see no reason why these would not be effective even there.

First ignore the Ishtar and deal with the drones, and yes it really is that easy unless you care more about the Ishtar kill than driving the enemy out of your territory.

Any ship that can fit cruise missiles can be particularly deadly to a drones ship. They can warp in at ranges that have the sentries deep into fall off so they are not hitting particularly well which minimizes the damage you take. And in the ultimate PvP no no we have found that slightly modified mission fits and their active tanks are the most useful as it minimizes the need for reps, leaving more pilots for dps roles. Drones vanish quickly and the Ishtars warp off because they have nothing left to shoot with. But hey we miss the kills so if you care more about the kills then this is a fail procedure. But then based on the comments here you are failing anyway so what do you have to lose?

Hard tanked fast assault is another tactic that works particularly well. Small fast ships can get in close enough and move fast enough that the sentry drones simply cannot hit them. This forces the Ishtar pilots into a decision, leave sentries out that are dying but cannot hit anything, or move back in to recall the sentries and risk the swarms of fast attack ships. Definitely more risk in this one vs the long range above but it is still effective and we even get Ishtar kills out of it. The major drawback here is you must have a decent set of cloaky scouts to set up warp ins so the fast attacks do not die trying to get in tight. But what the hell if a group of retreaded carebears can pull this off it should be easy for you "serious" PvP pilots.

We have used various combinations of these two extremes as well and they are just as effective.

No these will not work for every group of players and they will not work in every situation but if you are willing to think and play out side your comfort zone you would probably find they are an effective counter in many if not most situations.

But I still go back to an earlier post as the best option for the first attempt at balancing that which you all seem to think is broken. Eliminate aggressive mode and the ability to assign drones to assist another ship and lets see what happens, then adjust as needed from there. To those who say no to this idea as it would affect their PvE play. The changes being discussed here and in other sections of these forums as well as the internet in general will have far more negative impacts than these simple changes will so it is a decent compromise that PvE players should be willing to endorse.