The last blog post talked about T1 cruisers with a promise of more to come. Now it's time to dive into the aspects of T2 cruisers and see if there are any changes which might help. Once again I'm not touching anything Amarr. There are four groups of T2 cruisers; Heavy assault ships, Heavy interdictors, Logistics, and Recons. HIC's and Logis are already in good shape and I'm not sure there is any need to dig into them for corrections. Instead I'm focusing on HACs and Recons.
Heavy Assault Ships: I see HAC's as the epitome of small gang damage output. There shouldn't be any snipers or kiting from HAC's. Instead they should be in your face brawlers with the highest damage output of all the cruiser options.
Cerberus- Remove the kinetic bonus and replace with generic damage bonus to all types. Change the 10% missile velocity to a 10% sig radius bonus. Drop the bonus to heavy missiles. This reduces overall range but makes for more better damage against same size or smaller ships. Add another hundred PG or so to allow decent fitting while using assault missiles. This changes the ship from a long range sniper to an up close missile brawler, something the Caldari are lacking.
Eagle- With the change to blasters the Eagle doesn't seem to be that bad off however it too needs a boost to PG to allow it to fit a tank and fit the best blasters. The Eagle will use higher resists to boost defense and range for it's blasters to allow it to fight in close while the Cerberus uses raw damage to kill it's foes.
Deimos- Most of the bonuses on the Deimos seem to fit it's role, but I'm not sure about the MWD cap bonus. While this makes the MWD more efficient it does nothing to help the Deimos close range. I think a better solution would be a 10% reduction to MWD sig radius per level. If cap is still a problem then simply increase the base cap power of the ship as a whole instead of using a bonus.
Ishtar- I'm a fan of the Ishtar even though I've never flown one simply because I like dedicated drone boats. I think the Ishtar could go a step further and be completely drone based though. Remove the 5% bonus to turret damage and instead I think putting in one extra drone per level would be interesting. Bandwidth would be the same but it would add some fun. I'm not sure if it would be unbalanced though so maybe just a 10% bonus to drone speed instead of the turret damage and boost the drone damage to a 15% bonus. One interesting note about the Ishtar is the 10 med/low slots but considering the focus on drones and only 3 turret mounts I think the extra slot is warranted.
Muninn- The only change I can see for the Muninn is to add one extra medium slot to give it the standard 9 of other HACs.
Vagabond- No changes here.
Recon ships: The recon ships are also pretty close to where they need to be but I can probably come up with a few suggestions.
Falcon/Rook- These ships are fairly well balanced as long as you are ok with ECM mechanics. I personally wouldn't mind some different ECM options other than preventing lock.
Arazu- Seems fairly well balanced.
Lachesis- The missile bonus on a Gallente ship is completely out of place. Instead put in a 10% bonus to medium hybrid turret rate of fire. Give it 5 turret slots and adjust PG and CPU as needed to fit rails for long range work.
Huginn- I think the TP bonus is somewhat silly, but if the high slot TP's come out then this will actually be a very effective ship. There is only 9 mid/low slots but with 6 high slots and having the option to put TP's in the high slot I think the Huginn strikes a good balance.
Rapier- No changes needed from what I can see.
The T2 ships are definitely in better shape than the T1 versions, but that makes sense since more thought was spent creating improved designs. Next will be T3 Cruisers which should be interesting considering their versatility and the perceptions some people have towards the Tengu.
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