Good evening.
I have been the world weekly #1 pilot on zkill for the Corax several times over the years, recently I have been dabbling in the vessel in preparation for hypothetical rebalancing/redesign of FW that has been discussed by CCP devs on livestream. Prior to the current round of flights, navy destroyers did not exist so the balance of FW pvp was considerably tighter than it is now. The Corax, while thoroughly mediocre, was capable of punching at its weight class in the right conditions. Once upon a time I proposed a fix to the Corax for more cpu and grid as before that change (many years ago now) the Corax was actually unable to fight frigates due to it not having enough grid or cpu to even fill all its slots except when exclusively using compact modules. Now I am proposing some updates to this woe ridden submarine as it is clear that time has left it behind and it is almost unusable again.
What compelled this post? Dying 5 times to the same thrasher pilot despite having 1. a DPS advantage at range, 2. a range advantage, 3. selectable damage type that was shooting in to his hole, 4. positional advantage because I could start the engagement on my terms
If you are flying a ship that is too slow, not enough EHP, not enough DPS AND kinetic locked AND shooting a kinetic hole and not having enough slots spare to actually control the battle, you have a ship that is functionally useless and should be buffed.
Some stats:
The observant will see it is: slowest in class, tied equal worst lock speed, 2nd worst sig radius, highest nominal non-navy shield hp but no resistance bonus so EM hole. It does have a marginally better than average inertia modifier which will never materialise because it is so slow. The relatively high native mass is irrelevant, you can’t slingshot/black hole anyone because you’re too slow.
The types of targets I could kill: unaware or inexperienced players that were slower to react than me, either by scram kiting and sitting in their deep falloff or by orbiting at super close range if I realized they had sniper guns.
The types of targets I couldn’t kill: anything with long range guns regardless of if I was close or orbiting. Anything with drones. Anything with blasters or AC’s with EMP loaded who just fit an AB instead of a mwd.
When you actually get down to it, the Corax has only a 50hp bonus over most of its competitors and has no ability to control the field against a similarly fit opponent that just decides to hit approach and overheat their afterburner. The kinetic lock also affords people the chance to refit when they see you, meaning you might be fighting someone with a 75% resist to kinetic and have no chance of survival. By being kinetic locked you are completely predictable as using other damage types is often worse than just piloting better and overheating with kinetic. The Corax has very low usage rates, with a few hundred thousand kills attributed to it over the 10+ years of the ships existence which is several hundred thousand fewer kills than the Talwar which was introduced in the same time period. So with it justifiably earning the dubious honour of being one of the worst ships in the game: how do you fix it?
First of all I would buff it’s speed to be more in line with other scram kiters. 255m/s means that catalysts, thrashers and navy coercer can still push in on you but they’re going to need a run-up or catch you turning to close the gap properly. As a catalyst has nearly double your dps, he doesn’t need to get that close to kill you. Most of the catalysts I killed were stuck using void at 6km because they didn’t ammo swap. Secondly I would increase the damage bonus to 6% per level for kinetic missiles. This turns in to about 13dps more without damage mods or rigs, 19 dps with t2 calefaction catalyst and 1x BCU II. I would give 3% per level to the other damage types. Do the same rebalance with the Talwar for consistency. Thirdly I would give the ship another 5 cpu, as last round they gave it much more grid than it needed but the ship still can’t competently fit modules without dipping in to expensive implants worth more than the whole fit or compact modules that are half the ships value (compact ballistic controls and medium compact shield extenders should honestly just drop a lot more, so much more that they drop in price to something more reasonable). 5 more CPU lets you use a 1% cpu implant and take Double BCU IIs, which trades EHP for damage at an inefficient ratio. For players who can leverage range control, it means faster kills. For everyone else, they just lose quicker, and maybe even lose fights they might have won otherwise. It becomes a choice that doesn’t require you to spend double your fit value on implants.
The Corax was a class-A example of designing ships with certain features just to make it fit a “theme”. It played on all the stereotypes about Caldari vessels but was a weak ship that everyone hated it when it came out. Then they gave it +50 hull, people still hated it, finally they tweaked it with extra cpu and grid and it became a ship some people wanted to fly. Now in the era of powercrept t1 destroyers with navy and pirate vessels just being explicitly better than them and capable of winning fights they should have lost (like the mamba) the Corax sits on the bottom of the stack, sharing the dirt with the dragoon. A series of small, rational and well reasoned changes to this ship can make it playable and enjoyable again, something less reliant on ignorance and poor opponent choices to get wins.
