EVE Online Gets the Bastions of War Update for Marauders

CCP launched the Bastions of War update today which seeks to make marauder class battleships more powerful.

Here come the marauders

The changes for marauder class battleships are:

All Marauders class ships:

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

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

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

We will see how this changes the marauder state of play in New Eden.

In order to celebrate this update CCP would like to sell you a new pack for $35 that has marauder (and recon) SKINs and skill books as well as some Omega time.

In addition, there were the following changes to try and nerf the ubiquitous null sec heavy assault cruiser doctrines that have dominated the war.

Assault Damage Controls:

• Duration reduced by 25%
• Passive hull resist bonus reduced from 30% to 25% for Tech I and from 40% to 30% for Tech II

Heavy Assault Cruisers:

• Removed the reduction in Microwarpdrive signature radius penalty

CCP also took a pass on interdictors in an attempt to make the Sabre a little less dominant in the category, buffing the other three hulls in the segment.

Eris:

• The reduction in plate mass penalty increased from 15% to 20%
• Bonus to the rate of fire increased from 5% to 7.5%

Flycatcher:

• Bonus to Shield HP increased from 10% to 15%

Heretic

• Bonus to Armor HP increased from 10% to 15%

In addition to that, CCP took another pass at web bubbles, an interdictor item, to try and make them more viable.  Now they web harder and further and faster.

Stasis Webification Probes:

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

The Revelation dreadnought, currently the dominant hull in the dread meta, got some changes.

Revelation:

• Power Grid reduced from 780,000 MW to 700,000 MW
• XL Beam Power need reduced by 10,000 MW
• XL Beam CPU need reduced by 10 tf

And, finally, the Monitor fleet command hull got some buffs to help out your FC.

Monitor:

• Added a Drug Bay and a Charge Bay
• Removed Target Painter Resistance from Structures.

That second sounds more like a change to structures, but since the Monitor can only mount a target painter, the price of its durability, up until now your fleet commander has been out of luck if they wanted to get on structure kills.  Now the FC and all the Vigil and Hyena pilots can whore on citadels kills.

These changes and a couple of other minor items, can be found in the patch notes for today’s update.