When news of this latest nerf was announced, the reaction from Titan pilots was immediate and hysterical - it was also (as are so many things in EVE) My Fault:
“Dear CCP if do this nerf then gief back to all pilots titan skills cuz we spend 5 bil for skill and 100 bils = for titan and wasting like 3 month + for make skill AND NOW WE CANT USE THIS SHIP cuz this MITANI not have skill and isk to take titan
MR MITANI go play PREPELIX ONLINE and stop cry to CCP cuz u guys (goon) cant fly titans
OR MAKE SERVER FOR GOONS AND LET US PLAY FAIR
And CCp what prefer to have 6-7k players( goons) or 60k players ??????
Think before do wrong changes”
The hard fact is that the fault lies with the people who used Titans to annihilate subcaps en masse, and then had the poor judgment to laugh about it, congratulate themselves, and keep doing it. If the blappers hadn't gone whole-hog abusing an obviously broken mechanic, this nerf would have never happened.
They may tell themselves that the inarguable imbalance of blapping Titans was a sign of their 'skill' or 'superiority' - the same excuses offered forth throughout the history of the Titan, justifying Remote Doomsdays, AoE Doomsdays, etc etc.
Ultimately, the nemesis of titans was the poor impulse control of their own pilots - the inability, when faced with what amounted to a free bar, not to drink themselves into blundering violence and to assault the other guests.
Will This Actually Help?
The changes are explicitly intended to stop Titans from being used as a counter to subcapitals, leaving them more focused as an anti-capital counter. Their gun tracking is reduced to that of a dreadnought in siege mode, the number of targets they can lock is reduced to three, and most importantly their base scan resolution is set to 5. This appears to be an ‘emergency nerf’ as it’s outside of the usual expansion release cycle, which demonstrates the intensity of the abuse.
The scan resolution hit is an interesting choice on CCP’s part. Scan resolution governs lock-time, which scales based on the size of the target. Even stacking sensor boosters, it will now take a prohibitive amount of time for a Titan to lock a smaller ship. While a triple-boosted Titan might be able to lock a battleship in thirty seconds, the most offensive cases of blapping - the losses of frigates, interdictors and cruisers to Titan guns - should become a thing of the past. The tactical implications of Titans no longer being able to kill dictors is significant, as dictors are the most common form of supercapital tackler on the battlefield. That said, the scan resolution change can be gotten around by stacking target painters on the supercarriers which inevitably support Titans; if they stack target painters on a target before a Titan locks them, we’re back to blapping.
Many commentators are coming to the conclusion that Titans have no business on the battlefield whatsoever, and should be revamped into a new, entirely noncombatant role, or have the ability to lock subcaps removed entirely. The most significant advocate of this reform is - perhaps ironically - Shadoo from Pandemic Legion, one of the pioneers of blapping. Personally, I don’t object to Titans being limited to an anti-capital role and still fielded in combat, but I won’t shed a tear if something as drastic as Shadoo’s plan ends up eventually implemented. The past six years has proven that abuse from Titans is as inevitable in EVE as screwups on patch days.
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