Abyssal difficulty increased?

PvE Gameplay Center Missions
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I have been running T1 Dark Abyssal sites in a Hawk.

Is it just me or did the difficulty level suddenly jump?
I run a rocket fit and prior to the Catalyst expansion, I rarely had problems with most of the rooms, able to complete most runs in around 10 to 12 minutes and usually not breaking a sweat.

I have both Scourge Rage and Javelin rockets but honestly for most rooms just used regular Scourge rockets that I make myself. Of course there are the ‘danger’ spawns that would provide a challenge (still figuring out the best way to deal with the Devoted Knight and the Tessera) and several of the room require the Rage rockets for the added DPS but for the most part it was a fairly chill way do some missions and earn some isk (granted it is not all that rewarding, with an average of about 4 million isk per run).

With the Catalyst expansion, however, I am finding each run and many rooms to be a close call. I upgraded to polarized rocket launchers, which gives me over 400 DPS and I still barely make it out. The rogue drones (spark, ember and blastneedles) went from being the easiest room to arguably being the hardest. I’m not sure but I think the numbers increased (I guess I did not keep track but it feels that usually I would run into 5 of them. Now it seems 6 is more common). Prior to the expansion, I would only need to run my shield booster intermittently and never came close to armor. Now I run it continuously and in my last run got well into armor with the rogue drones.

Mostly I’m curious if I’ve just run into a bad string of difficult rooms (though if so it is a pretty long string) or if others have noticed that difficulty increase.

Hawk, Accipiter

Ballistic Control System II
Ballistic Control System II

1MN Y-S8 Compact Afterburner
Small Shield Booster II
Compact EM Shield Amplifier
Medium F-S9 Regolith Compact Shield Extender
Small Compact Pb-Acid Cap Battery

Polarized Rocket Launcher
Polarized Rocket Launcher
Polarized Rocket Launcher
Polarized Rocket Launcher
125mm Light Prototype Automatic Cannon

Small EM Shield Reinforcer II
Small Bay Loading Accelerator II

Mjolnir Rage Rocket x4776
Scourge Rocket x4352
Scourge Javelin Rocket x5000
Scourge Rage Rocket x4196

Phased Plasma S x4714

(note: I have a Gypsy implant to be able to fit this. I am not able to squeeze in a type II for the Shield Extender or the Cap Battery, even without the Auto cannon, which I admit is stupid but adds about 18 DPS and nothing else fits. Honestly, ideally I’d add a Nosferatu but can’t make that fit, either).

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That is the reason one. Reason two is you didnt adapt your fit to reason one.

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Maybe because while those polarized launchers increase your damage, they drop your resists to zero, so you take more damage at the same time. That’s why you’re barely making it out.

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Well then, that definitely explains it. I’ll admit I had no idea. Your scorn is earned but thanks! They are more expensive, aren’t all that much better so I just assumed the cost of the extra DPS was a more expensive launcher. I definitely will replace those polarized launchers.

Kind of embarrassing to start a topic to broadcast what an idiot I am.

I’m usually more careful than that but clearly didn’t look at the ‘show info’ tag. I looked on google and saw information about the decreased cycle time, increased damage, some discussion on rocket velocity/flight time. I somehow focused on that and my brain skipped over the whole ‘zero resists’.

I’m actually surprised that I survived the rooms I did, with no resists.

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I’m surprised too that you survived!

You now learned about polarized rocket; every short range weapon system has a poparized option that sets resistances to zero. Fun weapons if you can use them, but hard to find a way to use them well.

I like polarized torpedo bombers, but I’ve also heard someone in my alliance do PvE in polarized battleships. Gets you a whole lot of dps, if a bit risky.

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If you can outrun their guns, then you’re good to use polarized weapons. No need for resists if you never get hit.

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Good job on actually accomplishing a victory with no damage control and having paper thin tank. You might not have read the description, but you were able to pilot your way out of it. Kind of reminds me of the Gimli Glider. The Captain assumed he had enough fuel and he screwed up the math (in the old days the flight engineer would be one to double check the numbers and the FE was responsible for things like fuel conversions but when new aircraft eliminated the FE most airlines delegated the responsibility to the fuel tanker operators but Air Canada just kind of assumed everything would be fine) but he managed to land the plane and save all his passengers after that screw up. You got yourself into a mess, but were able to pilot your way out of a hull loss siutation.