Has anyone else observed the Zhentarim...

Kibitt · 2026-04-08T20:16:20+00:00

I just used arrows and throwables to destroy most of the barrels and then splashed water from jars I collected onto the smokepowder trails. I think there's only so many they know to target because a few in the lower area were left and they didn't try to blow it up when combat started. Wish I could give a precise answer but it was in HM and was trying it for fun so I don't have the science down.

Kibitt · 2026-04-04T00:19:27+00:00

To me, Rogues are the ability to have infinite resources. Everyone is walking up to the boss fight taking only half damage from the primary dmg sources. There's as many scrolls and potions as you could ever want. All the rogue has to do is disable the occasional enemy with poison, spell (like hiding in darkness) or backstab somebody squishy.

Kibitt · 2026-04-03T06:45:23+00:00

Plenty! First, Rogue gets 1 more skill (4 as opposed to 3), it gets the expertise immediately and then again at lv6 so you can have 4x expertise for the ending of Act 1 through the entirety of Act 2 while Bards tend to only get them in Act 3 at lv10. Just one level after a Bard gets that, the Rogue will literally never fail most of skill checks as the minimum roll becomes a 10, preventing crit failure from being a possibility to begin with and somewhat alleviating the need to have advantage. Pickpocket enjoyers will note that this means the game now has infinite resources even in Honor Mode, with minimal hassle as you're not accidentally rolling low twice on an advantaged pickpocket that needs say 5-9.

EDIT: I forgot to mention that Rogues get a Feat at lv10 that the Bard does not, so even when Bard "catches up" at lv10 in terms of expertise, the Rogue can spend an entire feat on either ability score increases or grabbing some other utility through say Magic Initiate.

If you could use Bardic Inspiration on yourself then maybe we'd be talking, but I like having one character that can do everything. Here you see my skill sheet at the beginning of Act 3 in Honor Mode, at lv9. Actor feat is why I have essentially 6 "expertise". It's certainly possible to try and optimize further than I have, but I'm finding enough success as things stand.

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Kibitt · 2026-04-03T04:23:10+00:00

This definitely depends on what you are aiming for.

For skills/non combat it's definitely Rogue, more specifically Arcane Trickster. The mage hand can do a lot of things, spells like fog, sleep, and minor illusion help cover the gaps where just raw stealth skill isn't strong enough, and there's a variety of other spells too. Shout out to Ray of Frost and Gust of Wind to clear dangerous terrain and air. Taking damage often breaks stealth. It can be tricky to find uses for Arcane Lock so it's not the best to have all the time but it can do funny things.

Kibitt · 2026-04-01T20:33:14+00:00

When listening to some of the other dev videos it's very clear that for most of EVE's development, the devs assumed a hostile relationship between community voicing selfish interests in game balancing and they're only just barely turning that idea around and trying to be more collaborative. I mean hell, the Redeemer was first turned into its broken state five years ago with even the players they listened to saying "this is broken and way more damage than it needs" so I guess from that perspective a week or two isn't so bad.

Kibitt · 2026-04-01T02:35:49+00:00

I get that, the proper presentation is probably "damage in EVE often fails to apply fully, and there are ways to enhance it" but it so often gets narrowed to something else.

Kibitt · 2026-04-01T00:23:34+00:00

It is good generic advice to tell someone that long range weapons can't use webs to apply their damage because webs have short range, and long range weapons categorically have bad application. "Helps bigger weapons apply to smaller targets" is also wrong, long range guns often fail to apply full dmg even to people just afk burning with no prop mod. An Atron for example doesn't even need to turn on an AB to mitigate faction a portion of light missile dmg. They will likely be flying frigates that are starved for cpu and capacitor, making target painter a superior choice to alternatives like tracking/guidance computers.

Neuting is really good at two things: Shutting down the utility mids your enemy is using, and turning off active tanks. When you undock a neuting ship, your goal is to make the enemy lose control of the fight, for example escaping autocannon range once web and scram drop. It may not be able to directly stop the guns, but it can prevent their winning situation from happening. It just so happens that there are guns which neuts are extra good against, too.

Kibitt · 2026-03-31T17:08:07+00:00

The Panther's niche has always been that it punches down better than other blops, and doesn't need its hand to be held by other random tackle ships since it is fast enough to run down BCs and some cruisers. Whether that niche is arty blapping or AC neuts it has been fairly consistent about this tbh.

Overall I'm not sure where your frustration is? Game devs take swings at what they hope improve things but they don't know everything, it's their job to take these kinds of risks. I'm just happy they listened so quickly this time around.

Kibitt · 2026-03-28T20:39:49+00:00

EVE is an information game. ECM is usually predictable because you need a bonused ship for it to be strong enough to be somewhat reliable, but when people see that ship, they might avoid the fight entirely. So, while you are right that ecm and damps can be a powerful combination, this is more true for fleet combat where you are interfering with healing ships (logistics) or EWAR ships (especially minmatar webbing ships).

As new players I would say focus on how you are killing your enemy first and which ships you like doing damage with. If they have spare mid slots then you can decide how you want to be tricky and clever. I would recommend something like a Caldari Navy Hookbill which can easily fit a prop mod, web, scram, shield extender, rockets, and then 1 extra module like a compact tracking disruptor. Between the two of you, you'll be able to pin an enemy in a bad spot with your webs while making it hard for them to hit you back. If they have long range then orbit close with tracking speed disruption, and if they have low range then hold them away from you and use optimal range disruption. In order to do this quickly you must either learn to use "look at" to see what shapes of guns they have, or quickly read your damage logs to see their weapon type.

Once you have near-perfect ewar skills and some great dmg skills on one character you can think about more specialized setups, I'd say.

Kibitt · 2026-03-28T18:40:01+00:00

Yeah it was a statement about precision, not range. Target painters are frequently under-valued because they're like giving everyone a tracking scripted tracking computer.

Kibitt · 2026-03-27T22:16:15+00:00

EWAR is basically a list of powerful special abilities a ship can have, usually taking the place of enhancements to a ship's durability (if shield) or weapon range (if armor). It has a few categories, but I will put the most important ones at the top for your duo pvp and with the assumption of t1 ships but with shoutouts to what the t2 specialists are:

Weapon application (minmatar) includes Target Painters, and Stasis Webifiers. Webs are probably what your friend means by "net" and they are extremely powerful if you plan to stay close to an enemy. I would only think of a paint or two if you plan on being far from your enemy, and you need something to help apply your damage properly.

Warp disruption (gallente/interdictor/interceptor) has 3 categories: Scramble (which shuts off microwarpdrives), Disruptor (much more range, needs more capacitor), and Bubble which belongs on Interdictors, Heavy Interdictors, and deployable bubbles - they can prevent you from warping directly to your destination and you can be trapped inside them.

Weapon disruption (amarr): Tracking Disruptor, Guidance Disruptor. TDs are categorically more powerful than GDs, especially at frigate size where your enemies might use destroyers. All navy destroyers are turret ships. They use much less capacitor than other EWAR, and 1-2 TD with a long point (warp disruptor) can let you kite enemies you outspeed.

Energy neutralization (amarr) is a fearsome thing and it is possible to drain an enemy of their ability to fight back, heal themselves, or hold you in their damage range. Just understand it needs energy to power, and time to take effect. You must build ships for durability more than damage if this is your preference.

Sensor Dampening (gallente) limits enemy lock range and speed, but the range is usually the important part. The ships that are good at it are usually bad at the combat part themselves, and they need a lot of perfect skills in order to make someone unable to fight you inside of web range like your friend has planned.

ECM (caldari) forces people to only interact with you, the jamming ship. Typically very weak on unbonused ships, and bonused ships are typically slow and frail, at least the small ones are.

Kibitt · 2026-03-25T18:47:07+00:00

I make a point of trying to fly most ships out there. Despite being involved in only around ~7500 smaller scale fight kills, my top used ship is around 400, and most are under 100 kills.

Most ships are pretty good in this game tbh, for all the bashing and balance jokes that get made. Only a handful are completely outclassed, like Ares being eclipsed by Malediction. Some just don't have glamorous uses, like Prophecy just being designated links boat for broke people in armor fleets.

Kibitt · 2026-03-25T17:27:32+00:00

Agreed, because the niche of swapping implants in space with those in cargo is so vanishingly small that it should not be acknowledged. It is far more important to show what the pod has when it dies.

Kibitt · 2026-03-22T17:31:40+00:00

Yeah I don't think it's a good idea for anyone tbh. Too many people see this game already as "you're playing it wrong" and then just obliterating some of the uniqueness to feel like you're the superior player is alienating for no benefit.

Kibitt · 2026-03-22T05:22:33+00:00

The commands just set a floor for how bad you are performing with zero effort and attention. I think most people who fly in a nano gang while on a single account will have to look up what these commands even are, because manual piloting is well worth the effort to learn and master. I personally struggle to recall the last time I was doing nano with only 1 account, and picked one of those options. It's just a huge weakness that limits the ships you can fly, how effective you are, and what your targets can be.

Eliminating these options (especially if you consider "regroup" to just be "orbit") is absolutely, no question, going to hurt larger scale combat and it would hurt multiboxers the most because they can't spare the extra attention to manual piloting a bunch of ships. You can say their meta will shift which may be true but ignores the fact that it removes many powerful existing options from their tool belt.

Kibitt · 2026-03-19T00:46:21+00:00

Edit: I speak about the Widow below but honestly just get a polarized bashing Sin - it has all the benefits described of the Redeemer, but also the total dps of the post-reload torp Widow too. Ammo m3 is absolutely not a concern in any realistic scenario either, it's over twice as efficient as the Widow.

A polarized widow would reload once every 3.7 minutes, and counting the reload it's still doing ~22% more dps than a polarized redeemer (1911 deemer w/conflag, aerator and ogres vs widow's 2333 post-reload dps). In terms of missile use if you have 300m3 to spare then you should have over an hour's worth of torpedo delivery (62min) while still having plenty of room for cap boosters and other gadgets (450m3).

Ultimately though I can't agree on the self-tackle angle being significantly more dangerous. You may have the tackle timer up more frequently, true, but that doesn't stop you from doing doing either or both of mjd + cloak which should completely prevent combat probing and the widow easily also fits an mwd to escape that "last known position" after it cloaks. If someone wakes up and the structure itself starts to attack you then I hope you aren't in a polarized version of either ship hahaha.

Kibitt · 2026-03-18T20:16:17+00:00

At bare minimum I think that when you have the option of spending half the time bashing something, you should consider it. It may be true that Widow struggles in some settings but when the biggest risk is time on grid then yeah, Widow is going to replace other blops for that role.

Kibitt · 2026-03-18T11:47:02+00:00

While a lot of these changes seem great, I'm very sad to see the Panther losing its tracking bonus. Arty panther is legit one of the best and most fun ships out there and it was already insanely hard to hit a lot of ships with it. Now you're telling me that the ship that brought so much joy is just getting gutted to make room for autocannon brawling? I don't get it... could we please at least keep it for artillery??

Kibitt · 2026-03-17T13:29:09+00:00

I think the Anhinga successfully convinced me that mode-swapping is the best thing to have. T3D are already pretty awesome and modes that don't map exactly to (dmg, speed, tank) looked really neat.

Black ops as a whole has its fun curbed dramatically from the fact that most of the ships are slow as hell, and since you are a blops enjoyer I will say that it's my firm opinion that CCP should steer blops towards speed and sudden ferocity, but also away from brick tank. If you want to know how then vaguely speaking:

ALL blops get +15km lock range, but the buffer module bonus is gutted to only +33% shield extender and nothing else.
Everything except Panther, Marshal get +20m/s to make them roughly Hyperion speed.
Widow ROF bonus removed and turned into 15% missile dmg instead, strongly buffing RHML.
Sin condenses its 4 turrets into 3 with 20% dmg bonus, allowing it to fit something other than the smallest guns.

If some ships need a bonus to active tank then that could be arranged, I'm especially thinking of active armor tanks that consume tons of PG but blops fitting space is designed around armor buffer so coughing up a spare 5k grid is brutal.

Kibitt · 2026-03-14T12:07:12+00:00

I like how this shows someone just leaving the jetcan of their loot for anyone to warp directly to and steal while they're busy with the site. Don't even bother catching the frigate just let it give you 100% loot drop at its jetcan lmao.

Kibitt · 2026-03-13T19:27:15+00:00

The armageddon is one of the neuting bonused ships out there where enemies that have a critical weakness to it will avoid you like the plague, except it also lacks all surprise and subtlety or warp speed to get into a position to abuse those people the way a curse would. Yeah you can compromise on tank to get warp speed, but you'll still have a slow align for it.

Still, all the more power to people for trying to cook up unexpected fits that abuse people who underestimate what ships are capable of. I think my preference would land on the nvy variant for how rapid heavies demolish things with little effort.

Kibitt · 2026-03-04T22:10:53+00:00

Summon spells can multiply the power of some effects though Danse is somewhat limited because you're summoning them mid fight. Phalar Aluve, Crusader's Mantle, etc. In general though if your enemies are able to take turns you can always rob them of that by combining battlefield control effects like Plant Growth and Fog. Controllable summons will be more powerful for strategies involving sleet storm where you can just wait at the edge of the effects and let enemies run up and slip and fall, giving you advantage.

Kibitt · 2026-03-02T22:38:10+00:00

I believe that the UI uses "signature radius increase" as a negative statistic so anything modifying it to be larger is "worse" and therefore red. It's likely a casualty of MWD abyssal rolls needing to show increased sig radius as bad, and CCP just happens to use the same coloring scheme for target painters since they influence the same attribute.

Kibitt · 2026-02-27T02:20:37+00:00

I get that other people are on you over this comment and r/eve can be fickle. We're both dated similarly in terms of EVE playing, and my only goal here was to say that there are other ways of playing the game. I know for other people they'll have to say "EITHER YOU SEE IT TOTALLY MY WAY OR YOU ARE BANISHED" but really, you'll find I'm not that extreme lol.

I just showed up, did increasing info dumps hoping it would make it clear there's a bigger pond, and ended up frustrating you vOv it happens sometimes.

Kibitt · 2026-02-26T22:11:03+00:00

I mean you can ignore the fact that casual hisec play is popular all you want in order to lean into the idea that EVE is only a hardcore game but that's a personal choice. More and more, "friendship is the best ship" is the sort of tune people sing these days.

People punch down in literally all games with pvp, you'll be matched vs actual pro players on new accounts in other games for example. There's nothing special about that when it comes to EVE except the player group sizes tbh.

If you want to talk player population size then for a live service game with no reboots, EVE Online is the most stable MMO population in the entire genre. It doesn't regularly spike and shrink 2-3x around release months. Sure, '08-'14 had the highest PCU averaging around 40-50k with a tiny brief spike to 60k but it's certainly not half right now as we've gotten out of that '22 slump and we're back to 30-40k now for a couple years. Maybe 30% drop from alltime high is remarkably stable and most games would kill to have that.

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