Greetings.
With the wonderful set of patch notes we received yesterday, there lurked a sinister line item that nearly went unnoticed. After the PvP community picked our collective jaws up off of the floor, we headed over to /r/pitchforkemporium to get ready for the incoming dark ages and began rage-posting on reddit and the FDev forums.
As usual for FDev, they posted the patch notes then went radio silent for the rest of the day, providing no context or justification for the changes or even attempting to ameliorate the forum storm that had been kicked up.
What did this change do?
Drag munitions is an effect for seeker missiles and frag cannons that, when applied, makes the victim ship behave as if it had 0 pips to engines for 5 seconds (with no cooldown). Ships with 0 pips cannot turn easily to avoid incoming damage or to get their weapons back on their attacker. As-is, this effect was strong because of the window it gave to land a big round of DPS on your opponent with little risk to yourself. Mostly it was used on packhounds and seekers as these weapons do not have to be aimed. Annoying, but generally considered to be balanced because you could get away from it or mitigate with countermeasures.
But, according to the FDev brain trust, this was not strong enough. The change pushed to servers today retains all of the previous effects and adds another one: no boosting during the 5 second effect window. Previously, you could boost to get out of the drag effect a bit, making it so you wouldn't simply drift like an idiot. With this change, you can be hit every 5 seconds and be unable to boost or maneuver effectively for an entire fight against a skilled opponent and there is nothing you can do but leave.
How does this affect PvP?
It will be similar to how the heat meta used to be where the first person to land the effect on an opponent wins by default. Once struck, you will have a fraction of the agility of your opponent, who is now free to dump every bit of damage they want into you and you can do nothing about it other than leave the fight or die. This single change has the potential to turn FA-off fights against skilled opponents into shield stacked, 4-0-2 pip, face-tanking due to the absolute disadvantage you will have if you don't also run drag munitions and build your ship to survive such a fight.
Victims of ganking will now likely not be capable of escaping where they were able to previously. Before, you could be reasonably evasive and avoid a lot of incoming damage by boosting around unpredictably and that is no longer possible, so to survive, you need to tank every bit of damage coming your way. For all but the most well prepared players, people will be dying where they otherwise wouldn't be.
What are we going to do about it?
We're going to do what we usually do, which is shoot people with them. SDC/Nomads/Prism and others will be dispatching our most elite content delivery specialists to busy areas around the bubble to demonstrate to other players just how broken these weapons are. We will not be shooting other PvPers with them (just like with SpicyBois) and will be solely shooting players minding their own business, imploring them to take to the forums to voice their opinions on the new changes.
As always, when FDev pushes the fix, the carnage will stop.
Happy ganking, friends.
With the wonderful set of patch notes we received yesterday, there lurked a sinister line item that nearly went unnoticed. After the PvP community picked our collective jaws up off of the floor, we headed over to /r/pitchforkemporium to get ready for the incoming dark ages and began rage-posting on reddit and the FDev forums.
As usual for FDev, they posted the patch notes then went radio silent for the rest of the day, providing no context or justification for the changes or even attempting to ameliorate the forum storm that had been kicked up.
What did this change do?
Drag munitions is an effect for seeker missiles and frag cannons that, when applied, makes the victim ship behave as if it had 0 pips to engines for 5 seconds (with no cooldown). Ships with 0 pips cannot turn easily to avoid incoming damage or to get their weapons back on their attacker. As-is, this effect was strong because of the window it gave to land a big round of DPS on your opponent with little risk to yourself. Mostly it was used on packhounds and seekers as these weapons do not have to be aimed. Annoying, but generally considered to be balanced because you could get away from it or mitigate with countermeasures.
But, according to the FDev brain trust, this was not strong enough. The change pushed to servers today retains all of the previous effects and adds another one: no boosting during the 5 second effect window. Previously, you could boost to get out of the drag effect a bit, making it so you wouldn't simply drift like an idiot. With this change, you can be hit every 5 seconds and be unable to boost or maneuver effectively for an entire fight against a skilled opponent and there is nothing you can do but leave.
How does this affect PvP?
It will be similar to how the heat meta used to be where the first person to land the effect on an opponent wins by default. Once struck, you will have a fraction of the agility of your opponent, who is now free to dump every bit of damage they want into you and you can do nothing about it other than leave the fight or die. This single change has the potential to turn FA-off fights against skilled opponents into shield stacked, 4-0-2 pip, face-tanking due to the absolute disadvantage you will have if you don't also run drag munitions and build your ship to survive such a fight.
Victims of ganking will now likely not be capable of escaping where they were able to previously. Before, you could be reasonably evasive and avoid a lot of incoming damage by boosting around unpredictably and that is no longer possible, so to survive, you need to tank every bit of damage coming your way. For all but the most well prepared players, people will be dying where they otherwise wouldn't be.
What are we going to do about it?
We're going to do what we usually do, which is shoot people with them. SDC/Nomads/Prism and others will be dispatching our most elite content delivery specialists to busy areas around the bubble to demonstrate to other players just how broken these weapons are. We will not be shooting other PvPers with them (just like with SpicyBois) and will be solely shooting players minding their own business, imploring them to take to the forums to voice their opinions on the new changes.
As always, when FDev pushes the fix, the carnage will stop.
Happy ganking, friends.
