Patch Notes Version 19.01 – Marauder Buffs, HAC Nerfs, Monitor Pilots Rejoice

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This morning, EVE Online’s latest patch brought us the second wave of expected changes in the new Reign Quadrant. With it, came some much-needed changes to Marauders, nerfs to heavy assault cruisers, buffs to select interdictors, among other things. One of the biggest things? CCP listened to our feedback. Let’s dig into some of these changes and see how they’ll impact your future journeys in New Eden.

MARAUDERS

In the initial update announcement, Bastions of War was intended to provide buffs to Marauders in general by increasing the rate of fire for all large weapons. With the buff also came an increase to the duration of the Bastion module. Increasing from 60 seconds to 90 seconds, this meant that Maruders would be even more stuck to the grid, vulnerable to attack. However, once the patch went live, we saw the duration of the Bastion module actually being reduced from its original 60-second timer down to 30 seconds. In addition to the Bastion changes, a smaller brush painted some ship-specific changes as well.

Bastion Module I:

  • Bastion now increases the rate of fire for all large weapons by 50% (100% DPS increase)
  • Bastion duration reduced from 60s to 30s

All Marauders class ships:

  • Lock range increased by 30%
  • Sensor strength increased by 8

Vargur:

  • 5% bonus to large projectile rate of fire changed to 7.5% large projectile damage

Paladin:

  • Amarr Battleship bonus to Capacitor Capacity changed to 10% reduction in Large Energy Turret capacitor need

Kronos:

  • Capacitor Capacity increased to 8000 GJ
  • Capacitor Recharge rate reduced to 17m and 30s

For ages, Marauder pilots have talked about being stuck on the grid for too long and they finally get their wish. We also see some love to the sensor strength and lock range, hopefully giving Marauders a nice place in not only PVE but PVP as well. Time will tell as the price of the ship has skyrocketed since the announced changes.

HEAVY ASSAULT CRUISERS & INTERDICTORS

There have been some slight nerfs to heavy asault cruisers, primarily in the category of their ability to tank. The duration of the Assault Damage Control was reduced by 25% (a change that also affects Assault Frigates). In addition, hull resists acrossed the board were reduced from 30% to 25% for Tech I and from 40% to 30% for Tech II. On just the HAC front, the reduction in microwarpdrive signature radius penalty was also removed. Overall, these changes hope to serve as a way to break the chokehold that HACs have on warfare in EVE Online. Their high mobility, high damage and low cost keep them at the forefront of every warzone, so we’ll see if this change has any impact on that or not.

We’re also seeing some buffs to interdictors (as long as they’re not the Sabre) with a 5% increase to the main tank HP on each one. The Eris also gets a buff to its rate of fire, providing a minor increase in overall DPS. Another buff/nerf, depending on your perspective, is to the Stasis Webification Probe (aka Wubbles). Initially, the area of effect was kept low with the activation time high. On Pando’s FC chat, Rise details that this was because they wanted to give the interdictor launching the probe a chance to get out of the probe before it came online. This caused the probe to be largely ineffective, however, as the majority of HAC doctrines prove to be too fast to be caught in these webs.

Wubbles (Stasis Webification Probe):

  • Web strength increased from 30% to 40%
  • Area of effect range increased from 10km to 15km
  • Warm-up Duration reduced from 3s to 2s

With an increase in effective strength and area of effect, along with a decrease in the warp-up duration, we could see these probes being used more often to try to pin down HAC fleets that are too fast for their own good. When combined with standard interdiction probes, the dual-threat could see slower doctrines with more tank, like Eagles, taking the lead away from the likes of the Muninn and the Cerberus. Keep an eye on your local battlefields to see where this change takes us.

MONITORS WITH CARGO BAYS

Another set of highly requested changes hit Tranquility today with the Monitor, the Flag Cruiser ship designed for fleet commanders. This ship now has a Drug Bay and a Charge Bay, meaning no more bugs with your scanner probes being put into a non-existent cargo bay, preventing you from warp. It also means that Monitors can be used more frequently with drugs allowing the lead anchor to go faster and match their fleet’s speeds. One final change impacts Monitors greatest of all: the removal of target painter resistance from structures. No longer do Monitor pilots need to spend their lives not getting themselves on structure killmails, something that many fleet commanders have rejoiced about today.

One final update is to a ship we’ve all come to know and love over the last few months, the Revelation, which sees its power grid reduced by 80,000 MW. Some of that power reduction is given back with a reduction to the power need of XL Beams by 10,000 MW and a reduction in CPU need by 10 tf. This seems aimed at keeping the Revelation’s guns in place but requiring pilots to sacrifice a little bit more elsewhere when it comes to fitting. Time will tell if this is something that will dethrone the Revelation as the current king of dreads.

And that’s pretty much it for this patch. Remarkably, almost everything in the patch notes was a needed change and we saw firsthand that, with CCP back from holiday, they’re prepared to keep making meaningful changes to the game and iterating on things based on our feedback. So keep those forum and reddit posts coming– CCP is listening.

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Redline XIII
Redline XIIIhttps://www.newedenpost.com/
I am a 4-year veteran of EVE Online. Though my exploits are not legendary, I have spent time in several nullsec alliances as a fleet commander and am the self-proclaimed Hero of the North. I am also the editor-in-chief of the New Eden Post, executive producer of our streaming platform, and a host of CrossTalk.

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