I have two concerns with this change:
1. On a broad level, the stated intent of this change in the o7 show was to make specialized fleet roles like probing and tackling more important:
Quote:The big goal is that we want fleet combat to be more involved. we really want players to be able to shine and show off their skills, and we think this change gives a bigger opportunity for specialized fleet members who specialize in tackling, probing, cloaky movement around the grid, setting up warp locations, and scouts can really enhance fleet combat as a whole and you'll have to be a little bit more than just sort of nod off while the FC tells you what to F1 on.
Probing and tackling are already important roles in any fleet; what this change actually does is gets rid of the notion of a prober as a stand-alone role. The prober must also be a tackler, with all the risk that entails.
Instead of enriching fleet roles, we're collapsing them.2. My second concern is about a very particular, but rather common, scenario: trying to catch cloaky, nullified, nearly-unscannable off-grid T3 links ships. In some configurations these can perma-AB at over 1km/s, aligned out to another safespot. The current best practice is to get a prober with perfect skills, a bonused ship, and virtue probes and have him warp a squad of fast tackle (T1 frigates/interceptors or specialized tackle bombers) on top of the boosting ship, hoping that one of them will be able to catch him before he reacts and warps away.
Catching these ships is already extremely difficult, and will be nearly impossible under the proposed changes. No bonused scanning ship will be able to tackle them, as they have at a minimum 5s lock delay after decloaking. No unbonused ship will be able to scan them down. In the time it takes for the prober to warp to the target and then have the tackle squad warp to him the 1km/s probing ship will be out of range.
I have interests on both sides of this scenario, having hunted PL off-grid boosters with my perfect scanning alt during the recent Catch wars and with two of my own perfect combat boosting alts. I guess I won't mind having my boosting alts be effectively invulnerable for a while, but it does seem like poor balance.