"De-Optimization" of Ships

[Mallthus Hardbringer 0]

Background:

After returning to the game, my goal was to come into W2m with an optimal ship. To my joy, I saw that marauders could now fly. Because I was starting fresh, and after reading the w2m skills/bastion guide, I saved my iskies, trained for, and bought an optimal fleet Marauder/Golem. After half a year of effort, and spending 3x as much than on a non-optimal ship, I joyfully obtained my badge. To my dismay, the following points we commonly echoed in comms, and I would like to reply to each:

• Golem Pilots are Bad Pilots

For Incursions I have flown Basi, Scimi, NM, Mach, and Vindi (before Marauders were allowed). I have also flown Vargurs (again before allowed into incursions).I currently have a Basilisk that flys in w2m and this Golem pilot. I have been in Eve (on and off) since before warp to zero where I have flown (on other accounts) in W2M fleets, TDF, etc. I have been a MOM pilot for one of the largest alliances, long story short.... I'm not the absolute worst pilot.    

• Golems are useless at range

As a DPS, what is the point? How many Kronos can bash an TCRC tower while simultaneously lighting up targets 125 k away for snipers...Golems can. Using ranged ammo, Golems can hit out to 80 KM easily, while increasing the efficacy of every other ship in the fleet with TP boosts. This is a specious criticism. While it has less raw DPS than Kronos, and FAR Less range than a sniper, it does fill that middle range which is often called for (20-40k).. 

• Golems don't do anywhere near the damage of the other Marauders/DPS.

True, but they do far more (2x as much) as other non marauder battleships while in bastion, and at ranges .

After training Marauders 5, I immediately started training for Paladin.  However, not before W2M decided to list a marauder in a column other than MAR DPS (MAR stands for Marauder BTW). I realize the game changes, but this really? 

Let people know that in X months, Marauders will no longer be considered a Marauder >.<.

Had I known I would have stayed suboptimal for 250 hours and become a Paladin or Kronos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Zaphryn Kejah 32]

45 minutes ago, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

Background:

After returning to the game, my goal was to come into W2m with an optimal ship. To my joy, I saw that marauders could now fly. Because I was starting fresh, and after reading the w2m skills/bastion guide, I saved my iskies, trained for, and bought an optimal fleet Marauder/Golem. After half a year of effort, and spending 3x as much than on a non-optimal ship, I joyfully obtained my badge. To my dismay, the following points we commonly echoed in comms, and I would like to reply to each:

• Golem Pilots are Bad Pilots

For Incursions I have flown Basi, Scimi, NM, Mach, and Vindi (before Marauders were allowed). I have also flown Vargurs (again before allowed into incursions).I currently have a Basilisk that flys in w2m and this Golem pilot. I have been in Eve (on and off) since before warp to zero where I have flown (on other accounts) in W2M fleets, TDF, etc. I have been a MOM pilot for one of the largest alliances, long story short.... I'm not the absolute worst pilot.    

• Golems are useless at range

As a DPS, what is the point? How many Kronos can bash an TCRC tower while simultaneously lighting up targets 125 k away for snipers...Golems can. Using ranged ammo, Golems can hit out to 80 KM easily, while increasing the efficacy of every other ship in the fleet with TP boosts. This is a specious criticism. While it has less raw DPS than Kronos, and FAR Less range than a sniper, it does fill that middle range which is often called for (20-40k).. 

• Golems don't do anywhere near the damage of the other Marauders/DPS.

True, but they do far more (2x as much) as other non marauder battleships while in bastion, and at ranges .

After training Marauders 5, I immediately started training for Paladin.  However, not before W2M decided to list a marauder in a column other than MAR DPS (MAR stands for Marauder BTW). I realize the game changes, but this really? 

Let people know that in X months, Marauders will no longer be considered a Marauder >.<.

Had I known I would have stayed suboptimal for 250 hours and become a Paladin or Kronos.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand that those comments felt like an personal attack on you and I am sorry that you experianced it that way. The first comment is just taunting garbage. Actually somone needs to be a pretty good pilot to apply optimal damage with a Golem in an Incursion fleet. I am also not a fan of the other two harsh overstatements but consider them more of a joke. Even if they are as you wrote yourself partialy true.

The thing is that you need a total different skillset for Missiles than turrets and they still have worse dps, application and the Damage delay of the missile flight time. 

Thats why we wouldn't allow them when we started using Bastion marauders. 

Some time later we chose to allow them because we didn't want pilots who allready have a Golem and the skills needed to bring a beginner ship instead. We never wante'd somone to skill into it for WTM fleets.

The thing is that eve is not a static game and WTM is not a static community. The Game changes its rules and since we need to stay competitive against at least two other incursion fleets there will allways be changes for the better of one pilot and worse of the other. But those changes allways have the intention to improve efficiency and/or safty of the WTM fleets.

As an example Lots of pilots invested tens of billions in theire Leshaks and millions of skillpoints flying them optimaly before the Bastion buff which made the Leshak so useless for incursions that we don't allow them at all now.

At least you can sell the golem and the modules you don't need for other marauder fits so you dont loose any money. If you need help with that let us know.

[Eliz Marbly 93]

5 minutes ago, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

Golem Pilots are Bad Pilots

I won't say golem pilots are bad pilots; Its more of if you want to make the golem work in incursion context; 
1) you need to know what to shoot/ where to anchor (shoot reverse order to maximise dps)
2) you need to change your golem fit to maximized its effectiveness (not allowed for line pilots)
3) you need to know take risk in tcrcs (aka bastion the entire site)
4) you are also limited to battleship targets in terms of effective application (nowadays the frigate/cruisers are the bottlenecks in terms of site times)

If you happen to fly with @Venus Aeternum in a golem previously he does them perfectly; pulling aggro even over that badged kronos pilots in the entire site

Henceforth if you don't maximise all the above points; you are basically a vindicator w/o webs (2.4k dps) instead of a paladin (3.2k) or kronos (4k) you could potentially be flying
 

14 minutes ago, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

Golems are useless at range

 

31 minutes ago, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

Golems don't do anywhere near the damage of the other Marauders/DPS.

 

5) Main purpose of Kronos is basically just DPS. Golem can TP while doing slightly lesser dps but do remember missile main weakness is the travel time. Sure the target painter can help blooming the sig but in current fleet status there are only 1 or 2 golems in fleet at any time. 2 TP wont help to vastly improve site times if i were to compare to webs in terms of utility. Missile trade application time for max damage application. Thats why by the time your first missile hit the the rats; its died and you wasted next 3 cycles of missile damage whereby the other marauders does instant application (thats why you shoot reverse order but you dont get the benefit of the fleet focus fire)
That's why the a golem can bastion all the way in a tcrc if it jumps immediately once the ountuni is down; allowing the rest of the marauders to safely bastion until end of site.

Given the missile travel time compared to instant application of other marauders; golems are further degraded in terms of contests given how fast rats die. That is why golem is not an end game marauder hull for incursion in this one focus situation.
 

32 minutes ago, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

After training Marauders 5, I immediately started training for Paladin.  However, not before W2M decided to list a marauder in a column other than MAR DPS (MAR stands for Marauder BTW). I realize the game changes, but this really? 

Let people know that in X months, Marauders will no longer be considered a Marauder >.<.

Had I known I would have stayed suboptimal for 250 hours and become a Paladin or Kronos.

The initial implementation of the golem into WTM was to serve as a bridge for people who was already golem trained but doesn't want to fly the starters ships and allow them to transition to the other marauders much quickly namely Kronos, Paladin and Vargur. Hence that is why its was initially placed in DPS (Optimal) instead of Mar DPS. It was not meant to be an end-goal marauder class otherwise we would have lumped it in Mar DPS or Mar Sniper. 

The following link above was in the wtm in game channel MOTD from December until we did a recent change to streamline the wtm ships. However the new incoming patch might cause the golem to become more relevant but WTM CC will need to test them before deciding any changes to the golem.

I hope you understand what i'm trying to bring across the reason why golem are bad for incursion and not saying golem are for bad pilots. Rather it requires a lot effort and knowledge in order to maximise their effectiveness; otherwise its just a bad platform to use for the end game incursions especially in 1 focus situation where we contest other communities basically every day

 

[Malcolm Galora 373]

The common ground most people agree on is they are not bad, in fact they are pretty good. They are just not as good for an optimized fleet of turret marauders. It takes a bit of piloting skill to make good use of them along side the other marauders, while still being leaps and bounds ahead of nightmare/mach and even a lot of vindis.

Golems were reclassified as intermediate, by no means are they bad. They should just not be your endgoal for incursions.

[niki lasvegas 537]

9 hours ago, Reortsed said:

Actually somone needs to be a pretty good pilot to apply optimal damage with a Golem in an Incursion fleet.

This : ) 

Golem is probably the hardest ship to efficiently fly that WTM allows. A pilot who is doing that is anything but bad.

Simply put: in incursions missiles are not as useful as turrets because of flight time, application and reloading time. Especially with a boat that can not move much if they actually want to do damage. Nowadays its more apparent than ever, when all sansha ships are just blowing up after a few seconds. At least WTM decided to allow them back which in itself was not an easy decision from them (much respect).

Pretty good application on the tower tho' Until you need to hit reload. 

About changing doctrines: well thats just how EVE works. As was written above Leshaks are just about the best example for that. I am sure that at some point an update will drastically change Incursions again. Maybe not soon tho' 

Edited March 7, 2022 by niki lasvegas

[Vertizor 2]

I think I have about as many hours in Golem in WTM fleets as anyone.

On 3/7/2022 at 12:05 AM, Mallthus Hardbringer said:

Background:

After returning to the game, my goal was to come into W2m with an optimal ship. To my joy, I saw that marauders could now fly. Because I was starting fresh, and after reading the w2m skills/bastion guide, I saved my iskies, trained for, and bought an optimal fleet Marauder/Golem. After half a year of effort, and spending 3x as much than on a non-optimal ship, I joyfully obtained my badge. To my dismay, the following points we commonly echoed in comms, and I would like to reply to each:

• Golem Pilots are Bad Pilots

Not better or worse than any other pilots.  People like to meme a lot.  But, Golem is harder to fly correctly than many other shooty ships, due to needing to stay actively ahead of the fleet on targets or waste volleys.  And if wasting volleys, they are indeed bad.

• Golems are useless at range

 Not at all.  In fact, their application at range is how a well-flown Golem can/should pull agro in PP room 1 and 2, and NRF wave 1.

But their delayed application does make them markedly inferior for some things - especially NRF contests, where they will contribute much less than a turret ship to the fleet's success.

• Golems don't do anywhere near the damage of the other Marauders/DPS.

This is simply not true, and anyone that says this is mistaken.  A properly kitted Kronos should do more dps than a properly kitted Golem.  A properly kitted Golem (especially w/ rumored 4th BCS - but really even w/o) should do more than either of the other marauders ... if you aren't wasting volleys via poor target selection/switching.

I feel it is worth making another point here.  I started flying with WTM in December.  Since then, Golem has always been a DPS queue ship, not Marauder DPS.  I understand the reason for that; it does not perform as well as the only other ship in the Mar_DPS queue, hands down.  The recent change to intermediate was a bit disappointing to be honest - I thought the DPS queue, as an optimal hull, was a pretty good place for it.  But, hopefully the change helps other people in the same position as you were months ago, to choose to train towards a different marauder that meshes better with WTM fleets.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Mallthus Hardbringer 0]

Excellent responses, thanks for taking the time to elaborate. It seems I was not piloting it correct for the fleet, and what you all say makes sense.

I have no idea what it would take to organize a fleet like this, and really appreciate all that you do. Thanks!