Thank you for explaining the reasons in more detail. I think this specific thing is the most important one:
They simply did too much damage too quickly before, fights were over most of the time before the spool up kicked in really, because they were already too strong before the spoolup boni. Lowering the initial damage is a logical result.
As for HighTier Abyss: There are so many other ships that struggle in the Abyss for various reasons: Blasterships simply lack the range/projection and when shooting with Null-Ammo (longrange) only, their DPS is too low for the highest tiers.All their other benefits like tracking/rawdps simply canāt outweight that. Railguns are meh because their mediocre tracking plus rather low rawdps isnāt the best combination to begin with. Others are simply not beefy enough to withstand the high amounts of incoming damage and neut pressure while being unable to dominate a fight while kiting through superior speed/agility, because it is an Arena where you canāt kite forever plus face lots and lots of scram/webs in there that can outrun you any time, namely Cynabal/Orthrus.
Fact is, you simply canāt re-design every ship for that specific time-sensitive arena-combat scenario where you need to be able to fight back a multitude of possible threat scenarios. Some ships who are specialized in certain fields (speed, agility, trackingā¦) will simply not be able to do them, period. If the Ikitursa is now limited to T4 as well, thats not game-breaking at all, other HACs also struggle with T5 (Eagle, Muninn, Deimosā¦), others are limited to one single type of Abyss (Zealot, Phantasm) while again others run all of them rather easily (Sacrilege, Gila). It simply isnāt possible to balance a spool-up weapon system properly to work in an environment under hard time-pressure without making it as OP as the trigships were in PvP previously (and might still be).
Hey Swift - The ramp is too slow to compensate for the lack of early DPS. Early in any fight you get the most amount of DPS, tank and cap pressure. Before the nerf, trigs were starting out with half the DPS of most other ships half the price. In PVP and more so in abyss, time is critical. So it takes you now well over a minute to get to a DPS level thatās somewhat acceptable. That severely compromises survivability in early fights as it can be easily tanked. A gnosis or brutix can put out over 1200 dps and tank the Ikitursa spool long enough to kill it twice over.
Yes, the trig ships could kill things before their spooling was significant, but they were not dealing that much DPS, 600 or so. Most ships that were facing them did no have a tank significant enough to take on a high DPS ship anyway. These Trig ships also cost an enormous amount of ISK vs their competitors, so the price reflected the capabilities. I do not think it does anymore and demand will drop to nearly zero except for structure bashing where time on field is long and guaranteed.
Now you have to put 3 sinks on it to make it remotely relevant, which again, makes you lose a low slot, significantly compromising survivability.
Regarding the Ikitursa abyss, there is no fit now that will work really. I have been flying it in abyss for a while. Beyond 3 sink fits there is nothing you can do really. With a 3 sink fit in T5 timeout is very likely. In T4 its possible, depending on the rooms. It was iffy before and required a high skill level to complete successfully.
Yes, EVE is a complex ecosystem that takes a lot of consideration to balance well. I still think that the a better way to go would have been to implement a decreasing rate of DPS spool the closer you got to max dps. Or maybe have a bell curve DPS spool, with DPS spool rate dropping after you hit 50% of max DPS. I think that would balance out the ship for both short term and long term fights, without making it nearly useless early on with 220 dps with two sinks, which is less than a frigate. I think that would make people try harder for that extra dps beyond the 50% of max.
Maybe take a look at that last suggestion and see if that might be a better compromise and fits better in what you are trying to achieve.
I did not say to design or redesign anything for abyss. The ships that can be effectively used in abyss are very limited already. Everything else is just a square peg in a round hole.
The time constraint is not only viable for abyss, its also very important for PVP. I think we will see trig ships drop to structure bashing role, which will be reflected in the market demand and all things trig. My guess is volumes will drop to less than half of what it is currently.
So no problem then if the Ikitursa canāt run T5 Firestorms any more, fine. Many other ships canāt, some ships can, you are free to pick one of those who can.
Ikitursas have their place, namely in Fleets where time isnāt the worst issue because you are able to hold the field reliably (have the superior tank and remote repairing abilities) and use the ramp-up to break your opponents repairs/buffer at some point. Can be against structures, can also be against enemy heavy tanked ships. Even in the past, the best Ikitursa-Doctrines had only one Entropic Radiation Sink and used the other lowslots for superior tank, simply because the initial damage wasnāt nessessary as these ships had one job: hold the field until they had spooled up to break the opponent. That wonāt change and no fight where these ships are fielded will be estimated to be decided within 2 minutes.
Ugh, the market movements and prices are a very good indication of demand, destruction and generally usefulness or lack thereof of items. Not going to bother explaining that to you.
Ships like the Leshak are not really even the ideal ship for structure bashing anyway. At least not without some support that can fire longer range. Leshaks are vulnerable to anything with a range over 60km or so. And, of course, having to switch fire to enemies just restarts the spool and defeats the whole idea of all that massive DPS.
Well I wont complain if the Veles Entropic Disintegrator falls below 120m ISK
My Drekavac would appear to be now starting on a miserable 329 DPS with Heavy Entropic Disintegrator II. Which is a pathetic level. Even my Eagleā¦which is known for not having the highest DPS aroundā¦can manage 460 DPS.
OK so the Drekevac ācanā get to over 1000 DPSā¦after a minute or so. But heck, I can get an instant 1100 DPS even out of a Gnosis with blasters or 950 DPS out of a Gnosis with lasers. My Zealot can do 730 DPS straight off. Even a lowly T2 Ferox starts out at 510 DPS. What genius at CCP decided that an already low starting point for an already expensive Drekavac or Leshak wasnāt low enough ?
All it does is confirm my preference for Amarr ships.
You get almost 2x the Optimal Range of a Harbinger (HeavyPulse+Conflag), almost 2x the Tracking, almost 2x the eHP, the much better cap situation, the ability to send out RRs and use neuts with much lower cap usage. Better agility, lower signature, twice the cargo for carrying capboosters, more maxspeed with any Propmod.
AND will surpass the Harbinger in DPS in under a minuteā¦
If you canāt stay alive long enough to use your spoolup ability, you maybe use the ship wrong in this situation or the wrong ship for the situation. Skill issue detected.
Harbinger with Aurora has optimal range 74km ( Drek has 41km with Mystic )ā¦and the Harbinger has 435 DPS even with Auroraā¦compared to the Drek starting DPS of 329.
So the Harbinger can be shooting at the Drekavac for 30km or so before the Drekavac even has it in range.
Oh, hold on its worse even than that, as using Mystic at 41km the DPS starts at only 229.
Hmmā¦not really. Harbinger gives 63K EHPā¦Drek gives 100K EHP. So its 1.5 times more.
Just warp off dummy, the Harbinger canāt tackle you from 74km. Not even counted that a 1on1 Harbinger Fit using HeavyBeams is probably a pretty crap nonsense fit. No MWD or No CapBattery or No 1600er plate or no 3 trimarks, because PG simply doesnāt fit for all of that. What exactly do you want to fight with that? Idiots that approach you for 50km in a straight line?
The only eHP that count in a fight where the Dreka is designed for is armor eHP. And thats roughly 45k vs 90k when both are using 3 trimarks and a 1600er plate.
Er noā¦I even corrected that and pointed out that in order to fire at the Harbinger even at 41km the Drekavac has to use Mysticā¦which only starts at 229 DPS. Then in order to fire Occult at closer than 16km range the Drekavac would have to swap ammo and thus re-spool all over again from 329 DPSā¦which would be pointless as by that stage Mystic would already have spooled to more than that.
The Jita Bloc has trained its members to whine about the inefficacy of their primary preferred weapons and tactics exceptionally well. Whether itās the terrible inefficiency of the massed Triglavian ship fleets they employ, the utter inconvenience of having to defend their stations for so many timers, or the inherent unfairness of the war declaration exploits they use (when someone else discovers how to do them too), their ability to lobby the developers for more gib-me-dats is unrivaled across the gameās social mediasphere.