Eve Online is a game with a lot of information to absorb and it also changes based on what CCP thinks needs to change (some changes most of the playerbase liked, others the player base hated).
Here’s the thing: they were overpowered in a lot of respects. Seriously, prior to the last nerf, CCP had to nerf them because bots in faction warfare would just put stabs in their low slots to farm LP, so CCP made it where you couldn’t contest a site with a WCS on your ship because these sits were meant to be about generating PvP. WCS are about avoiding PvP.
Moving on, the old passive stackable WCS were something frequently used by AFK ratters and botters. CCP has stated they want gameplay to be more active and they also want to do what they reasonably can do to make botting harder.
Coming back to avoiding PvP. Not everyone likes PvP. That’s fine, but on Eve Online, being able to completely avoid PvP isn’t supposed to be an option. CCP has made that clear for years. You’d find players who would put 3 WCS on an Astero and even with a faction scram, you weren’t catching that ship.
When I returned to Eve, I was moving stuff out of low-sec (when I left I was in faction warfare). I literally fitted my Megathron with shield tank and 8 WCSs that allowed me to bust through small gate camps because they needed 9 points of warp scramble strength to catch me. I mocked 2 camps as I went by. I highly doubt that’s what CCP intended for WCSs…
CCP changed WCS because they weren’t working as intended. Just like the change to nullifiers. My biggest complaint to their release was that they didn’t spend enough time on the test server before dropping it… and then had to do a bunch of hotfixes on the live game because of it. But I don’t have any real complaints about the changes to WCS.
You’re new here, so let me give you a bit of information about align time. Align times work on whole seconds. Because of how the coding works, there is no difference in having an align time of 4.1 seconds and 5 seconds. So if that last nanofiber (or IS) isn’t dropping you down into the next level, you’re better off with something else in that slot.
With the advice out of the way, I’ll also point out: this quote explains why the change was good. There is an actual choice here. Do I fit for align time or do I fit to protect myself from 2 points of warp scramble strength for a few seconds? That’s actually a good thing. I think having multiple answers to the same fitting question is a good thing. It allows players to consider how they want to approach the problem instead of just blindly following the meta.
They are useful. Especially on expedition frigates, exploration ships, etc. Not every hunter out there fits a faction scram. And against the hunters who don’t fit faction scrams, you can still get away. Which in all honesty means you’ll get away from most hunters. Yes, there are a lot of bling out there… but its not everyone.
Bare in mind, you can also fit a WCS to a DST (Deep Space Transport which gets a hull bonus of 2 warp core strength (basically a passive WCS). This will give you 4 points of warp core strength for 10 (T1) to 15(T2) seconds, which is enough to break a faction scram.
Let’s also move onto the Venture, the T1 mining frigate. With the Venture, if you use T2 miners (not Deep Cores), you’ll get a mining yield of 8.52 m3/second if you fit a Mining Laser Upgrade 2 in the single low slot. Or you can yield 7.81 m3/second and fit a WCS to keep you alive. Again, you can make a choice: yield or potential survival.
When you look at the expedition frigates (T2 versions of the Venture), you’ll find losing that one Mining Laser Upgrade is even less of a yield change because of stacking penalties. Here, you might want the added safety of that WCS; especially in the Prospect that has no drone bay.
Another consideration with the Prospect and the Venture is that they can be used for gas harvesting. There is no low slot module that improves gas harvesting. So you can either fit a Damage Control unit to have more tank against rats, a nanofiber to decrease your align time from 5 seconds down to 4, or a WCS to save you from a solo hunter who isn’t using a faction scram. Again, choices are good.
TL;DR: Convincing argument points:
- Warp Core Stabilizer stacking greatly benefitted non-active gameplay like AFK ratting/mining and botting; things CCP doesn’t want.
- Warp Core Stabilizers (in general) directly countered the intended purpose of faction warfare sites.
- Warp Core Stabilizer stacking allowed for people to basically avoid PVP and thus damaged the PvP content of the game.
If your counter to the last point is that people shouldn’t have to PvP if they don’t want to, you’re playing the wrong game. Eve is a game unlike any other and that’s why it has such a loyal playerbase. If you don’t like the forced PvP aspect, that’s okay; not every game is meant to cater to you.
