Since there is no EVE forum post for the “Bastions of War” update, i’m going to put this all in here.
As i suspected when i first saw the changes from the “Bastion of War” update, these are more PVE focused, because a main complaint for PVE was “why fly a marauder, when a [insert pirate battleship here] can do nearly the same thing cheaper and better?”. With these changes, its a pretty big buff to PVE’ing in a marauder and certainly places them ahead of any other battleship for PVE. I’m not really going to talk about my thoughts on those changes as CCP Rise made it pretty clear their intent. It does suck for some pvp applications, but in other ways is a buff for other pvp applications (mainly ESS cheese).
What i primarily wanted to discuss here was the Kronos and marauder HP distribution. A chronic issue with Kronos is over-repping (meaning some/most of your rep is wasted because only a portion is needed to get back to 100% HP).
To start, as this horse has been beaten to death already, i think most/all of us can agree that the Kronos would really shine with a 5th mid and -1 low. It diversifies the marauder armor line-up and follows with the existing Gallente battleship theme (more mids than amarr), with things like the Hyperion, Domi, Navy Domi all having more mids than everything in the amarr line-up. Would be cool if CCP finally made this change to make the Kronos a bit more viable for PVP, and doesn’t really affect PVE.
Hitpoint Distribution
Anyway, going back to the main meat and potatoes for this post. Marauder HP distribution. Keep in mind, this discussion is about raw HP values, NOT EHP values.
The Kronos, and to a lesser extent, the rest of the marauders all have issues with overrepping. I’m going to list the raw HP values of each marauder for shield, armor and hull to give you an idea on current distributions.
Kronos
Shield: 9.12k
Armor: 9.88k
Hull: 11.9k
Total Raw HP = 30.9k
Paladin
Shield: 8.62k
Armor: 11k
Hull: 10.6k
Total Raw HP = 30.22k
Vargur
Shield: 10.4k
Armor: 9.12k
Hull: 8.62k
Total Raw HP = 28.14
Golem
Shield: 11k
Armor: 8.38k
Hull: 9.62k
Total Raw HP = 29k
As you can see, marauder RAW HP values are all roughly the same with some fluctuation due to “lore flavoring” (Such as minmatar being the lowest).
The main thing i wanted to point out was the Kronos’ HP distribution, take a good look at how its distributed. Keep in mind, the Kronos has an active armor rep bonus. Its HP distribution does not do its active tank bonus any justice because it has the lowest primary HP pool out of any of the marauders at 9.88k armor HP.
Why is it so low you might ask?
Because for “lore reasons”, it has nearly 12k raw HP in hull tank (Gallente have higher hull buffers). Now ask yourself, are you ever going to hull tank a marauder that has a god tier active rep bonus? No. The answer using any logical train of thought is no.
If we go a step farther and think about their use in PVE, no one is going to use hull tanking in PVE either. So it serves no benefit either way.
The entire design of the ship class is active tanking and in the case of the Kronos, armor active tanking.
We can still keep with gallente “lore reasons” of having higher hull HP, but you can strip some of that hull hp back into armor or strip some shield hp into armor to at least keep the kronos competitive in raw primary tank buffer.
The Kronos is the poster child for this imbalance, but also just in general, all the marauders could see some redistribution as they all can suffer from this same issue. Not to mention, having some extra buffer does help those juicy reps actually land and get a full rep out under heavier alpha/pressure.
To end this, i’ll just throw out an example so you see what i mean with the redistribution:
Kronos changes from this:
Kronos
Shield: 9.12k
Armor: 9.88k
Hull: 11.9k
To this (mild example):
Kronos
Shield: 8.62k (-500 HP)
Armor: 10.88k (+1000 HP)
Hull: 11.4k (-500 HP)
Raw HP stays the same, but armor HP went up by 1k HP by removing 500 HP from hull and shield. It still keeps the “lore flavor” by having the highest hull HP, but now has a better usable armor tank for its rep bonus but its raw armor HP is still lower than the Paladin.
This same principle can be applied to all the other marauders to give them a passive buff to buffer for their primary tank to get the full benefit of their active reps when in bastion.