Friday 20 May 2016

Dread Meta

I don't really know what to say about dreads in the new capital meta except I can't see much of a space for them.

Like I said before, this all comes down o the uber damage projection of carriers, what with the 3500-5500km lock range and the ability to drive fighters across the grid (albeit maybe slow-ish-ly).

What this means is, yet again, dreads are stuck as a static weapon with yuge tanking capacity (I sometimes feel like Pyfa lies when it says the Phoenix has 120K DPS tank....really?) and asically the usual DPS as per yuzu berries.

The High Angle Weapons (I think this clunky term has been dropped? who knows?) like the Quad 800mm's, Rapid Torps, etc, provide a bit of variety for blap dreads. And of course, blap titans. The blapping is gud, but DPS is 3500 to 4500 and as per usual blap dreads, you ideally need some tackle and paints to really make these stand out. But that's also true of BS weapons anyway.

So I guess it's nice that you can get T2 weapons and get Barrage, Scorch, Javs and Null into your dreads, and project 60-90km at 2800-3900 DPS.

This is necessary because you're kind of stuck in place for ever. Unlike carriers. I mean, carriers used to be stuck in place more or less, slowboating about at sub-100m speeds, but now they get MWDs and ABs and can push fighters 5,500km. If your carrier can tank 5,000 DPS, it can boat out of dread range before it's tank fails.

So, I guess it doesn't really matter how you fit your Dreads. Wormhole brawl or not, you'll be leaving the Dreads at home.

I really think that, as I said before, the whole Siege/Triage module causing a static "stand your ground" fight is maybe now a bit obsoleted, even before you factor in the presence of Supers and Titans and the obvious advantages they get.

In a new era of mobile capital warfare, why would you maintain static lockdowns? Is there really anything wrng with capital ships moving about the field, dishing out atrocious DPS? I mean, caps besides carriers and supers. Dreads, in particular.

The same goes for the FAXs. Whilst everyone should, as before Citadel, be training to the Apostle (or Minokawa or maybe Ninazu) because armour capital supremacy has been handily maintained here, the FAX has also been lumbered with a frankly obsolescent gameplay "feature" that utterly destroys gameplay options for developing truly interesting capital meta.

I mean, OK, so you want to bring a FAX. A FAX can, absent decent neuts (and now with capital capacitor boosters and batteries, this is less a threat), tank 3-4 dreads for 3-5 minutes without much heat. Not too different than a pre-Citadel faction fit triage carrier, really. But it's stuck in place for 5 minutes and its major threats (carriers) can kite off (however slowly) and can also pack capital neuts (a threat). The friendly fleet has to stay within range of reps.

Dreads face the same issues, except they've basically become so amazingly unbalanced in tank vs gank (45-120,000 DPS active tanks vs 4-6K gank)that a dread fight is now a basically fruitless exercise, sans neuts. Thank goodness for capital neuts, right?

I think the Dreadnought meta is pretty out of whack. Aside from bringing Dreads in to monster subcaps, or maybe shoot a structure or two, there's nothing to really recommend them as more than a niche boat. Not that dreads ganking caps on undock won't still happen, but beyond that why get stuck in place when you could be driving fighters across the grid?

Fit 'em how you want, but my prediction is that they are unwieldy, compromised dinosaurs and we'll see them given up in favour of carriers.

2 comments:

  1. To be completely honest, Dreads were designed for POS bashing and sorta somewhat Titan killing. It was their original intended purpose. A Titan you want to kill is still going nowhere quickly and POS's/Citadels still haven't been fit with afterburners. Dreads MOVED into a subcap killing position but have never had that as their intended purpose and CCP has pretty steadily moved them away from that position. The introduction of HABs weren't inteded to turn Dreads into blappy mcblappy faces all over subcaps, they were more designed to give Dreads SOMETHING in the face of a subcapital attack.

    Dreads are still your best/fastest option for blapping a structure as fast as humanly possible without risking a Titan. They're still bangier for buck en masse for ganking a Titan. While the stand and deliver mechanics of old certainly need to be phased out, Dreads aren't in an awkward position, they're in the same position they've always been in. They are the things you grab when your target isn't going to move. They're the cheapest DPS per ISK you'll get with a more than reasonable survivability.

    Dreads aren't in a perfect place but I'd hesitate to say they're in a bad place as they were never intended to be the toy you bring out when you want to shoot moving targets anyways. No matter how god damn satisfying it is to watch that god damn brick tanked Armageddon disintegrate.

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    Replies
    1. The same position they've always been in, as you say, has now turned into an awkward position. You're agreeing by disagreeing, here, without addressing either the problems with a new capital meta where carriers can solo camp gates and be instalock faggotry, and dreads have to sit still for 5 minutes (blappy fit or not).

      The only role carriers cannot fill in the new capital era is shooting a POS stick itself. But you can clear off the batteries and then bring in a couple of Vexor Navy issues to AFK it. The new Citadels, you don't need dreads for (aside from the Keepstar, where you're just going to lose a couple as a cost of sieging).

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