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**Antonio** · 12-04-2018, 10:04 PM,

They are in a perfect spot right now. I flew them and fought against them often in the past few months and I can say they're finally good after all these years.

I'm happy to see that VHFs aren't the absolute best snub class and that SHFs counter them in some scenarios. Which scenarios? Duels and small skirmishes. In larger fights (3v3 and onwards) VHFs are still the way to go due to how easy it is to hit an SHF, which is what makes them be in a good spot now and not overpowered. At the end of the day it's still very easy to shoot an SHF so it will die fast once focused, especially by multiple people. Often overlooked fact is that SHFs have a harder time against caps (except gbs) because they're much bigger and easier to instakill which is a bigger con than having extra dps against the massive defenses of capital ships (minus bomber torpedoes, see below). Also SHFs are newbie-friendly and more forgiving in most scenarios, and they're worse at surviving ganks because of their size.

If something needs to be nerfed it's probably the loss of bomber torpedoes which give them both anti-snub and anti-cap versatility. Fighter torpedoes are fine, but when an SHF can both shoot snubs and lob Novas or Scorchers at caps it can sometimes be too versatile. For those wanting to see capital armor upgrades gone be careful because I'm sure most of you don't understand how big of a nerf it would actually be (over 33% survivability loss for CAU VII vs AU). Also what about all those people who invested smaller armor upgrades into their SHFs that aren't the best to be put at capital ships? You'd force people to unmount and sell them and crash the market in terms of prices because everyone will start selling.

If they do lose capital armor upgrades which is a huge nerf, buff something else so they stay relevant - for example shield capacity, more turn rate across the board, extra CM slot, etc. We don't need them to be useless and VHFs to be the absolute gods of combat again, which I'll address now.

SHFs are good for a few patches and people want them nerfed already. Why does everything that even remotely presents danger to VHFs have to meet the nerf hammer immediately? VHFs don't even have to be countered by that weapon or class, it gets nerfed regardless. Examples? Gunboats nerfed through multiple patches for being too survivable and having too much anti-snub potential (given weaker shields, solarises nerfed), cruiser razors removed and gunboat razors nerfed into the ground to stop VHFs getting instakilled, cruiser solarises losing 500m/s despite being an already unpopular loadout, battleship flaks immediately nerfed after being able to instakill snubs, SNAC removed because it can instakill VHFs (not like we have 10 other instakills that can do the same and are much easier to pull off), light fighters nerfed immediately after becoming viable, now SHFs are the topic of discussion. On top of that we had aux slots which made VHFs even better at killing other classes, made HFs and LFs even more obsolete and also provided broken weapons such as starkillers and sidewinders. It took months to remove them after heavy persuasion.

I agree some of these are deserved nerfs (ex. llight fighters or flaks instakilling through the shield), but a nerf means putting something that's overpowered in a balanced state. It doesn't mean putting it in a useless state like what happened to light fighters or the SNAC. That's not balance, that's just mindlessly nerfing everything you see and not caring to fix it afterwards. Light fighters are still useless, heavy fighters are still just worse VHFs and no one's adressing them at all. SHFs were useless for the longest time and no one cared about them until now. While I think VHFs are the healthiest in terms of PvP enjoyment, VHFs don't have to be the absolute best class at everything at all times. They can be very good and jack-of-all-trades type, but others should be comparable in some way like SHFs.

Instead of nerfing anything that isn't a VHF, why not buff other snubs like light and heavy fighters instead? Make them relevant somehow just like SHFs are. For example this thread got no balance attention and light fighters are yet to receive any kind of a change to make them have a purpose rather than annoying at best with stuff like Feuerballs and Liberators. Some HFs got unique stuff like 7 class 10 guns or VHF powercores, but too many of them are still terrible.

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