To preface this thread I’m going to say a few things: this is a semi-rant of the overall state of destroyers in the game. If you are one of the whining morons who can’t tolerate destroyers being a properly balanced and playable class or dislike venting/rants then tab out, close the page and forget this thread existed.
Destroyers as they are currently in the game are worthless. They can’t survive 20 seconds of moderate damage intake, they cost massive amounts of credits to repair, they take standards to fit out now and take forever and a year to respawn. This shouldn’t be classified as balanced. Destroyers or the proper class name “suppressors” are supposed to be able to dish out and take damage by the truck load - but with the recent overnerfs they have become almost unplayable altogether with my brief expedition back into PvP earlier today I found that not only are the majority of destroyers now useless in PvE, but also PvP (still). Destroyers overall I saw as appealing as they were another class I could use with my high ping and players with a lower ping didn’t have a significant advantage over me if they were to use the same class.
So just what changes made this class so bad?
The missile slot nerf of 1.4.9
Destroyer to Destroyer combat alone (excluding the glorious manouvers federation destroyers could pull off in the past) depended solely on the management of energy and your secondary slot. The static shield was (before 1.4.9) only viable as during dogfights you could replace the destroyed barrier moments after the first was shut down by your opponents, encouraging constant changing in positions and close range destroyed brawls/ambushes.
The ever growing bonus damage field
This field killed off destroyers almost completely when it first came out, as covert ops ships, the class renowned for already being overly effective at neutering destroyers could slaughter them with ease after the change, and any other class simply had to close range enemy destroyers to being eliminating them with ease. As of the time of this post, the field is sitting at 1250m wide, 500m wider than first stated and with none of the expansions of this field of bulls**t being listed in patch notes ever.
The constant mobility nerfs to all destroyers
Destroyer mobility was fine as it was before these nerfs hit over and over, yet mobility has been nerfed over and over for destroyers. Now despite the federation destroyers being hit hardest by these nerfs, both Jericho and Empire destroyers have suffered since these began rolling out. Now excuse me if any numbers or information is incorrect through this part as these nerfs have been rolling out for a long time now. If memory serves, my Sibyl could formerly hit 195m/s, which at the time was perfect. It was a good number for dodging halo launcher idiots in PvP, catching up to cargo ships in PvE and manoeuvring in Open Space. Now whilst using the Jericho capacitor Sibyl barely hits 147m/s, which as a destroyer main this loss was gigantic. Halos became undodgeable, the only way to effectively catch up to cargo ships was via the wormhole projector and Open space became nightmarish trying to navigate 20km long sectors.- and this was just from my view as a Jericho destroyer pilot.
Module/Weapon acquisition
Although I wasn’t able to play the game when the trade patch which implemented this idiotic change, I can without a doubt say this change was one of the worst changes made so far, and in terms of progression made destroyers a money pit and nothing more. Rare components of formerly essential modules frequently exceed 2000 standards and are rarely even listed when you want to go buy them. The grind for components themselves is stupendous as components and blueprints are rarely ever, if at all in the same cache rotation which then coupled with the limited amount of Iridium you can receive a day, the grind becomes unbearable. If the developers want destroyers to exist as a class - this change needs to be rolled back and owners of rare components given compensation.
Destroyers overall need to be rolled back and reworked. The bonus damage field makes destroyers more fragile than a harpy given the low manoeuvrability and gigantic hitbox, module acquisition changes that came with the “trade” system made properly fitting a destroyer nigh impossible and forced the g’thar’du and halo launcher to become more meta than ever before in public PvP and the manoeuvrability nerfs should never have happened to begin with. The only faction that should have received this nerf was the federation, instead now Jericho and Empire destroyers are literal floating bricks and Fed destroyers have the movement of Jericho destroyers before the nerfs. Of course however all of these thoughts are from a solo pilot who rarely squads for PvP - so yes I will acknowledge a waz’got can make a destroyer tank damage as if the bonus damage field never existed, but this is still unfair towards public players.
This needs to change.