October 30, 2013

My Beloved Sabre and Rubicon

I'm pretty excited for the interdictor rebalance in the Rubicon expansion. The Sabre is my favorite ship to fly in EVE, but due to the nature of interdictors it is also my most commonly lost ship in EVE.

The triple bubble magazine is intriguing-it will give a solo dictor pilot the ability to secondary bubble a target, which is especially useful for hunting covert ops ships that cycle mwd and cloak -- in these situations a secondary bubble allows a solo dictor to keep the cloaked target bubbled on field longer (if hes good) and gives a chance for a decloak that may not have existed before.

I rarely fly double bubble dictors, except when tackling supers, and hate the trade offs of fitting multiple interdiction sphere launchers. The CPU that is freed should make for some interesting probe fits (not that there aren't some crazy ones already out there).

The 10% per level reduction in signature bloom when spooling your MWD is huge. Combined with the EHP boost it gives dictors a chance to close in on large ships and get under the tracking of guns. Once under the guns, it is generally pretty easy to kill battleships (assuming they don't have neuts or get help, as eating through their shield/armor even in a DPS Sabre takes awhile) and even battlecruisers (except some of the missile boats). Closing into close range was previously a mixture of piloting and luck. Assuming your target sat still and allowed it, you had to spiral into close range to get scram/web. Too steep of an approach would get you killed, especially with battlecruisers as you moved through the optimal of their guns. You could prolong your life by cutting the mwd, but the decrease in speed was often just as deadly as the signature bloom.

For fleets the warp speed decrease will be noticed, but not in a catastrophic way. This nerf can always be offset by warp speed rigs. For small gang and solo work the warp speed reduction will be minimal. Being a Sabre snob, I'm not as excited for the buff to combat capabilities of the other interdictors, but I know there are many out there who are excited to start flying the other races as something other than throwaway bubblers.

The bonus to EHP will put the interdictor back at the top of the small ship foodchain. Since the buff to T1 destroyers, it was fairly easy to lose an small gang/combat fit interdictor in a 1v1 engagement to a good thrasher pilot with nothing to lose. This balancing should give the advantage back to the interdictors; expect to see them in greater numbers after Rubicon.

Link to Interdictor Rebalance Thread:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=286842

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