Why not just give it a doomsday device, no really, since you are explaining absolutely nothing about how it would work better...

How about some more info on how it could be improved?

For you to even have to ask for a reason why they need additional mid-slots means you don't fly HACs. Those that fly HACs are already full aware that these poor Vagabonds that CCP left behind needs some immediate attention. And the reasons why have already been mention in many posts before this one but still the problems have not gotten resolved. So this post is more of a reminder to CCP that they need to address the pitiful state that the Minnie HACs are in atm.

What he or anyone else knows or does not know is not important. What is important is for us to understand A. why YOU think they need to be changed and B. what YOU think that change should be.

All those other posts are irrelevant to the discussion here since you have not bothered to provide links to them. And no it is not mine or anyone else's job to go and find the links it is your job as the one who started this post to provide us with the links, or a synopsis of the information they contain.

Setting that aside and moving back to the question at hand since the HAC's as a group have had their balance pass the obvious answer, even though you do not want to hear it, is that these ships are in the place that CCP wants them to be. If their capabilities do not fit your needs there are many other ships in the game fly one of those.

What he or anyone else knows or does not know is not important. What is important is for us to understand A. why YOU think they need to be changed and B. what YOU think that change should be.

All those other posts are irrelevant to the discussion here since you have not bothered to provide links to them. And no it is not mine or anyone else's job to go and find the links it is your job as the one who started this post to provide us with the links, or a synopsis of the information they contain.

Setting that aside and moving back to the question at hand since the HAC's as a group have had their balance pass the obvious answer, even though you do not want to hear it, is that these ships are in the place that CCP wants them to be. If their capabilities do not fit your needs there are many other ships in the game fly one of those.

Mid Arties have ridiculous PWG requirements and should also be address. That or give ships like the Munnin enough PWG to be able to fit them properly.

The complaint with that is that weapons should be designed to fit on the ships they are intended to be used. Medium sized ships shouldn't need bonuses to fit medium sized guns, they should just have stats that allow medium sized ships to fit them.

It seems like CCP have over the last several years resorted to gimping ships on fitting as a blunt instrument way of "balancing" them. If you can't actually put a reasonable combination of modules on a ship it's impossible for it to be overpowered even if it turns out that its bonuses or base stats are too powerful.

And it's crap. I can find a use for a ship with bad bonuses and adequate fitting, I can't do anything with a ship that I can't even put guns or a full tank on even it it has amazing bonuses.

Also Zealots are really godawful too.

"I'd use it despite the wasted bonus, because it is good and competitive when I can use it with that trait". What those buffs might look like, to what extent, or at all, might make for good discussion. But I do think there's potential there.

While this approach may make Hybrids best fit on Gal and Cal hulls, Lasers on Amarr and Projectiles on Minnie hulls. This is ultimately a poor balance approach. "blank" ships like the Gnosis should be the metric for determining if weapon systems are balanced.

If a cruiser sized Gnosis with average to average-good stats all round was created and release for balancing purposes on Sisi, one should expect it to be seen with all potential weapon types. Currently the very last thing you would EVER see someone fit it with would be Arties. Followed very sadly by Beams, Heavies, hams, Pulse, Autos, Rails, Blasters, and probably most commonly Rapid lights.

Why?

Arties require a horrendous amount of grid, and don't provide dps, alpha, or range that seems to compensate for it in the eyes of players. The problem is not with the Muninn, it is a great artillery ship with great artillery bonus's. Arties are just bad until you get to ships with LOLWUT grid and amazing arty bonus's like canes and fleet canes.

Fit a 650 arty stabber, then fit a 200 rail stabber. Cry. because the 200 rail stabber gets better stats, better t2 ammo, and only misses out on the cap that the rails use.

So in other words you saying don't fly Minnie HACs and fly something else? That happens to be what I and everyone else is doing anyway since Minnie HACs are a joke.

I'm not asking for them to be given Uberness (Deimos) like buff, just a small adjustment. They don't need the utility highs and goes unused most of the time anyways so why not give them a mid slot instead.

Mid Arties have ridiculous PWG requirements and should also be address. That or give ships like the Munnin enough PWG to be able to fit them properly.

Let's be fair here, either Med Proj or minnie HAC need some serious love.

Pick one, but don't try and deny there are issues, that's a bit like saying the earth is flat in 2016...

So in other words you saying don't fly Minnie HACs and fly something else? That happens to be what I and everyone else is doing anyway since Minnie HACs are a joke.

I'm not asking for them to be given Uberness (Deimos) like buff, just a small adjustment. They don't need the utility highs and goes unused most of the time anyways so why not give them a mid slot instead.[quote]
So how does this solve what you believe to be the problem?
Would that change address the specific problems that other players have with these ships or just yours?


[quote=Segraina Skyblazer]IMid Arties have ridiculous PWG requirements and should also be address. That or give ships like the Munnin enough PWG to be able to fit them properly.

So in other words, you're saying that even if CCP gave the Minnie HACs the extra mid slots that they would still suck?

The Muninn is just awful. Like pre-buff Deimos awful. You can't fit anything to it, it has a rubbish tank and it has wet noodle DPS.

You're unironically better off in a rupture, it's basically the same and if you die people won't laugh at you for flying a Muninn.

My natural instinct with everything is to buffer fit it. But when I did that with a muninn the result was I basically just had a rupture that cost ten times as much.

It's just not worth using.

You forget the tracking bonus that allows you to wreck frog/dessie fleets

The Muninn is just awful. Like pre-buff Deimos awful. You can't fit anything to it, it has a rubbish tank and it has wet noodle DPS.

You're unironically better off in a rupture, it's basically the same and if you die people won't laugh at you for flying a Muninn.

I laughed, because it's true.

I am not denying any thing. The TRUTH is in front of us all you have to do is look and you will see it. As a class the HAC's got their balance pass and since then the Ishtar has been adjusted on what 3 separate occasions and still the minnie ships have not been touched. From this evidence there are only 4 conclusion that can be drawn.
1. CCP believes these ships fit nicely into the niche they created for them so no adjustments are needed.
2. They are to busy with other more pressing issues to have the time for these ships, personally I doubt that since they have made adjustments to other ships along the way.
3. CCP has painted themselves into a corner with these ships and everything the try in their in house testing has proven to be worse for the game as a whole than what we have.
4. CCP is simply blind and stupid and cannot see that which you claim to be obvious.
I will leave it to each of you to decide which of these may apply.

The Vagabond needs a low moved to a mid, and the Muninn needs a high moved to a mid. This would wholesale fix both ships. End of story.

Given how long CCP let grossly underpowered things languish, history tells us that it's fairly obviously #2 & #4, in that order.

Well I fly dual passive shield tanked arty Lokis because it's the best option for what I'm doing. But If that Muninn had a 4th mid slot and a bit more PWG then I could save 800 mill easy and fly it instead of these expensive Lokis.

Is the point of this thread to make the rupture into a kiting arty hac?

If so - Don'e we already have enough kiting range HAC/BC/Cruiser and so on? How about we propose changes to make it a close in brawling HAC. The vagabond is the kiting minnie HAC. We don't need another. (I've always seen the rupture as a brawler)


Edit / add - Isn't the fitting requirement for artillary large to make you choose between speed and high alpha? I think a high speed AND high alpha HAC (relatively small sig radius) would be a bad idea.

Is the point of this thread to make the rupture into a kiting arty hac?

If so - Don'e we already have enough kiting range HAC/BC/Cruiser and so on? How about we propose changes to make it a close in brawling HAC. The vagabond is the kiting minnie HAC. We don't need another. (I've always seen the rupture as a brawler)


Edit / add - Isn't the fitting requirement for artillary large to make you choose between speed and high alpha? I think a high speed AND high alpha HAC (relatively small sig radius) would be a bad idea.

Save money now and fly a fleet hurricane. It is literally better at everything than the muninn except speed and sig, but adds MJD as a utility. Its almost the same price as well and i think it insures better. It has better tracking than a muninn, more alpha (through dmg bonus and 6 turrets), more EHP, more utility highs, and has very similar range with 25% optimal/falloff bonus.

Since i just saved you 800m, plz donate a portion to me for my informational services :)

That being said, in regards to the OP, no. At least in how you address it. Minny HACs do need a lot of love. The muninn's role has beem completely replaced by the fleet cane.

Dropping utility highs is not the answer though. Utility highs are minmatars niche. Very useful for neuts combined with capless weapons. This can be useful by capping out tackle that scrams you (vaga).

To fix the muninn, i propose dropping a turret and increasing damage bonus from 5% to 10%, maybe even 20%. Keep RoF the same at 5% per level. This would give it almost the same alpha, be easier to fit and you can move a high to a mid. You still keep the utility high which keeps it flexible and prevents it from becoming a stabber FI clone.

As to the vaga, up its speed or agility slightly, increase either the dmg or RoF bonus and add more fitting. Or another option would be to double the falloff bonus from 10% to 20% per level so medium acs can actually project decently.

The Vagabond was formerly THE premier kiting heavy tackle and frig/dessie killer.

I am not advocating returning it to OP speed status of yore; however, make it a skilled pilots ship of choice again.
Aside from speed....perhaps think outside the box and give it the option to fit missiles up top? Something different?

As far as the Muninn goes perhaps a painter bonus and the PG to fit arty without a sham tank?

I find it sad that both ships remain non-realistic options for serious pilots in 2016.

Unfortunately I have no plans or interest to train Minnie BC to V since none of the Minnie BCs can do what I need them to do. I need a ship that is neut resistant with a strong shield tank. The next ship I'll try out if the Muninn and Vaga continues to suck is the Broadsword.

Let's be fair here, either Med Proj or minnie HAC need some serious love.

Pick one, but don't try and deny there are issues, that's a bit like saying the earth is flat in 2016...

Unfortunately I have no plans or interest to train Minnie BC to V since none of the Minnie BCs can do what I need them to do. I need a ship that is neut resistant with a strong shield tank. The next ship I'll try out if the Muninn and Vaga continues to suck is the Broadsword.

http://community.eveonline.com/news/news-channels/eve-online-news/damage-profiles-by-ship-group-and-weapon-type-in-2015/

Food for thought.

Minmatar HACs are the 2nd lowest damage in all HACs, bettering only laser HAC (zealot) by .2b damage.

Looking closer though, minmatar have 2 HACs which use projectiles, while Amarr has only 1 HAC that uses energy weapons. So you would expect projectiles to be further ahead than energy weapons. Yet even with 2 HACs using projectiles they still just barely creep past the zealot in combined damage for 2015. This is very clear that very few people are using minmatar HACs, or zealots for that matter.

The Broadsword is the best Minmatar HAC. Unlike the Muninn, it has a useful utility high slot that takes the place of a mid slot (or two). Of late, however, I have switched from the Broadsword to the Onyx

So based off your reasoning, im going to assume you are using these ships in wormholes. Even if the muninn got 4 mids it would not have a strong shield tank, nor be neut resistant. So if you dont care about having no drones and just want mids to fit a CB plus shield tank, then yea the broadsword would be your best bet. Or maybe a sleipnir (which you need minny BC to 5 for that)..

If however you want to pvp in an arty ship while roaming or want an alpha fleet, arty canes and fleet canes are your best bet and can still muster a decent shield tank (50-60k IIRC). As opposed to the muninn's 30-35k shield tank or 40k armor tank. I suppose arty cynabal would work as well, but im not a fan as it tends to outtrack itself.

Hybrids are .12B ahead of projectiles. If anything is to be taken out of this, it's that a very small set of ship makes that class and the rest is outclassed by other stuff.

EDIT : Reading the right line in a chart is hard...

To be perfectly fair, the muninn is sufficiently crap as to be almost weapon type agnostic. It matters little what you try and put on that ship, the slots sink it.

A 2 slot shield tank if I want a prop mod? Lolwut. It's not like minmatar T2 resists lend themselves to armor tanking. It needs another mid and arty as a whole just needs its grid sorting out.


For anyone not old enough to remember what happened over time was:

Arty needed huge grid, so minnie hulls had huge grid to support it. What players did however was abuse the grid by overtanking/neuts/etc and using low grid ACs. What then happened over time was the grid was reduced to reign in this abuse (and it was pretty bad). However arty fittings were not dropped in line with this. CCP solved the "extra grid" problem but made arty disgracefully hard to fit along with it.

This is exacerbated by the gulf between 650 & 720 guns in terms of effectiveness.

Do you mind if I ask you want you were using the Broadsword for? And why you switched to the Onyx?

The thing I don't get is why CCP insist on not doing anything to solve:

A) The over PWG requirements of medium Arties
B) The lack of proper mid-slots for both the Vaga & Muninn
C) The inconsistent tracking of medium ACs.

And then there's the Svipul that CCP made incredible by accident..........

Small gang, in your face brawling, catching kiters, etc. The same way you might use a Vagabond or AC Muninn, but better. I switched to the Onyx because it has better DPS application against long range kiters such as the Orthrus. I feel fairly confident of getting a kill against any MWD cruiser with 37.5 km of my Onyx. Not necessarily a solo kill, but a kill.

Of course, I also use it for tackling capitals if I find any. We had a nice capital fight in G5ED and B-R on NYE, which really tested out my Onyx. A friend and I baited with a Thanatos and my Onyx to draw in their Carriers, then dropped the hammer with our own big ships.

Lately, I have been using my Onyx and Devoter as HAC's and my Broadsword and Phobos as more traditional HIC's (i.e. Anti-capital).

A) As someone who has beat this horse to death in my own threads about the same topic, i can only speculate that CCP feels the PG requirements are the main drawback for the massive alpha you can get. Which, is fair to a point. However, this expectation fails when you realize that the only medium arty worth fitting are 720s, as 650s are near useless. Fun fact: A 280mm svipul has better alpha than a 650mm Muninn. It also doesnt help that all other long range turrets have 3 options.

Beam lasers:
Quad light beams
Focused medium beams
Heavy beams

Hybrids:
Dual 150mm railgun
200mm railgun
250mm railgun

Artillery:
720mm
650mm

The problem is, when flying arty, my motto is 720mm or none at all. 650s are underperforming by a clear margin and dont even save you that much grid if you do use them. This is the main issue with arty PG. If 650s werent utter ****, we would have fitting options. We dont though, so we are forced into using 720s and then deal with having no fitting and complain about arty fitting.

The way i see it, CCP has a couple options:

Leave 650s in their terrible position and just decrease arty grid requirements across the board. (Unlikely)

Create a new low tier arty turret. Make the current 650 into a dual 280mm with significantly better tracking and fitting. Make a "new" 650 with more alpha, the same tracking as current stats and same fitting. For the most part 720s are in a good spot. Maybe drop fitting requirements by 5% or so.

Or buff 650s to be usable and drop their grid requirements more.. Mainly increase their alpha, but reduce RoF slightly. Arty isnt aboit dps, its about alpha. Having a dps orientated arty turret isnt arty, its a railgun.

B) I honestly doubt we will see a 5 mid vaga. Its resist profile and tank bonus, plus speed will make it an extremely tanky kiter. Around 60-80k EHP after an XLASB magazine plus LSE and invuln. As a brawler, sure it would work great, but the vaga was never supposed to be better at brawling than kiting.

C) Medium acs need more base falloff and they would be in a better spot. 15-20% would be a good start.

In regards to the svipul *puts on tinfoil hat*. I think CCP purposely made t3ds OP to try and push people into bigger ships. Ive found BCs very effective at killing t3ds. They are rediculously oppressive to other frigs, and you cannot engage most using the usual tactics you use against other dessies when youre flying a frig.

Lol where are you going to fit that TP tho?

I agree with everything you stated in this post except for the Vagabond.

With the emergence of the HICs after the WDF changes, the kiting meta is coming to an end. With that realization, I'd prefer it if CCP reintroduce the Vagabond as a brawler by dropping it's speed a bit and adding that 5th mid slot. In the days of it's former glory that's what the Vaga was famous for, yes?

As for the Svipul, that ship is doomed to end up the the current Muninn in due time. If it's one thing that CCP is consistent in doing is knocking off any ship that Minnie has at the top, straight to the bottom.

The former glory of the vaga saw it more as a kiter. Only recently (i think retribution expansion) has it become better at brawling than kiting (mainly because medium a/c's are garbage for kiting). However, i don't believe the vaga is actually that great of a brawler. It works, don't get me wrong, but its still sub-par, especially compared to real brawlers like a deimos.

The muninn is actually better suited to brawling with its bonuses. 425mm a/c's with tracking bonus and optimal bonus actually have decent range and damage (in the confines of brawling anyway). No one can really brawl with it that well because of its slot layout. I've made a FW dual rep brawler muninn which actually worked ok, but it really needs that 4th mid for a web, so i can upgrade to an MWD for nullsec.

[Muninn, Brawler]
Medium Armor Repairer II
Medium Armor Repairer II
Damage Control II
Armor Explosive Hardener II
Armor Kinetic Hardener II
Gyrostabilizer II

10MN Afterburner II
Faint Epsilon Warp Scrambler I
Medium Capacitor Booster II, Navy Cap Booster 800

425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
425mm AutoCannon II, Republic Fleet EMP M
Medium Energy Neutralizer II

Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II
Medium Auxiliary Nano Pump II

Hobgoblin II x5

Dps is alittle weak (480ish), but you have a medium neut, which most other HAC's can't fit and gives it an advantage over a deimos. Since it can neut and shoot into the explosive or EM hole. With standard exile and OH reps (cold hardeners) you can still get about a 700dps tank. Overheating hardeners can get you near 900dps omni tank. So the potential is there for a good brawler, it just needs a 4th mid to make it happen. Little more dps wouldn't hurt either.

I see, you're the thinking outside the box type. I never thought about using 425s or ACs period on the Muninn. I'm guessing 425s are what you're using on your Hurricane Fleets as well? I can see a ship with a Optimal and Tracking bonus to be potentially potent when using med ACs with the proper slot layouts. Now more than ever I want the Muninn to be given a 4th mid slot.


Edit: Gosh that Hurricane Fleet Issue has 10% Medium Projectile Turret tracking speed per level???

Let's be fair here, either Med Proj or minnie HAC need some serious love.

Pick one, but don't try and deny there are issues, that's a bit like saying the earth is flat in 2016...

This is getting old now. I mean c'mon, how long will you keep Minnie HACs below sea level of usefulness is beyond me. In most cases now, pilots just flat out give up on using Minnie HACs in favor of the either the Deimos/Sacrilege/Ishtar for brawling and Ishtar/Zealot/Eagle/Cerberus for sniping.

Is that a coincidence? I don't think so. Why? Well for one they don't have wasted utility highs like the Minnie HACs do. So for starters I purpose that you get rid of the wasted utility high-slot on the Minnie HACs and give them an additional mid-slot.