Patch When? Discovery 5.2 Edition: Blog #2

[Haste]

• Battleship armor has been reduced by ~33%.
  

This is lame though. Any big important reason this was necessary?

Gameplay balance. There were too many instances where fights like sieges essentially turned into a Battleship arms race where everyone was just trying to one-up the other party with more Heavy Battleships. They were, objectively, when played properly in big doomstacks, absurdly powerful. I do think it's important to note that a huge amount of Battleships' HP is in their shields, which if anything got stronger. In addition, every other capital class now either has dramatically lower HP (Gunboats), engine weakspots with significant damage multipliers (Cruisers) or that plus a bunch more components (Battlecruisers). Battleships with their giant single health bar were (and are, still) tankier than any of those other classes, while having very strong shields.

Two things to consider are also:

• Snub DPS is generally going down by virtue of gun efficiencies being lowered quite significantly for all but the least-used guns. This bumps up anti-cap TTK and especially makes deshielding (as Debilitators are no exception) more difficult.
  
• Quite frankly the bigger change for Battleships in the cap environment is their strafe power consumption and Battlecruisers gaining consistent, long-range weapon options. If there's anything I'm personally concerned about it's Battlecruisers becoming a little too prevalent.
  

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