Glass Cannons..... FIRE!

At Eve Vegas a new weapon type was revealed. Glass-cannon weapons! These would have the highest DPS of all equivalent sized guns but reduce all your resistances to zero! They are aiming to have them priced the same as faction guns. They are now on SiSi so I logged on to see how they do. I compared a few ships, just swapping the guns. Obviously the drawbacks mean that if you are fitting these you'll need to re-think your entire fit. DCU's and resistance mods are out. Buffer tank and DPS mods are in!

Autocannon Thrasher

Ahhhh the good old Thrasher. Already a nice DPS boat but what about with the new weapons?

With T2 Auto Cannons and faction DPS ammo - 311 DPS and 6,440 EHP in Client

With Blighted Auto Cannons and faction DPS ammo - 388 DPS and 5,508 EHP in Client

So that is a 25% jump in DPS with 15% less hitpoints. Might be worth it? Then again the price these guns will be? So no, not really.

Stealth Bomber

Now this is where I see a possible use.

With T2 Torpedo Launchers and Rage Torps - 487 DPS and 2065 EHP in Client

With Blighted Torpedo Launchers and Rage Torps - 608 DPS and 1987 EHP in Client

Again a 25% jump in DPS but only a 4% drop in effective hit points. Mmmmm might need to check the maths there. It was a Manticore.

Naga

A useful ship to bring to a structure bash.

With T2 Neutron Blasters and Void - 1291 DPS and 15,610 EHP

With Blighted Neutron Blasters and Void - 1614 DPS and 13,279 EHP

So, guess what, its a 25% jump in DPS again. Plus a 15% slide on the EHP. After I'd done this I thought the drop in EHP will be actually higher in use. I did these numbers docked so the EHP of the normal ship didn't take into account the active shield hardeners.

Vindicator

My highest DPS subcap. Lets be silly! I wonder if anyone will risk a Vindi for the increased DPS. Realising my mistake with the Naga I undocked the Vindi to get the proper results.

With T2 Neutron Blasters and Void - 1318 DPS* and 184,404 EHP

With Blighted Neutron Blasters and Void - 1646 DPS* and 78,344 EHP

25% jump in DPS but a massive 60% reduction in tankage!

* Gun damage, excludes drones

However the numbers above are just swapping the weapons. They actually need to be refit as there is no use for a DCU or tank resistance mods now. Oh yes.... 2300 DPS with Drones and same tank as before! Thats a massive increase by removing armour hardeners and the DCU and swapping to more damage, tracking or eWar mods.

So the use of Blighted weapons? You get the 25% more damage and 3x ammo storage (240 vs 70 on large blasters) plus better tracking (0.0886rad/sec vs 0.077rad/sec on T2 large blasters), less capacitor use (nearly 9GJ vs 12 GJ on T2 large blasters) and of course the 25% damage increase but things to consider are on top of the above stats Glass Cannon weapons have:-

• Shorter Optimals (5940m vs 7425m on T2 large blasters)
• Shorter Falloff (6000m vs 7500m on T2 large blasters)

The small versions I don't see being used much. May be in Hi-Sec Burner missions but not so much in PvP. Their price tag will make them prohibitive.

Stealth Bombers? Yes, I see this being their most popular use. Anything that cuts the time of a Faction War bunker bust, a POCO, iHub or unarmed PoS bash by 25% is going to be popular.

The SPKATT Battlecruisers (ships previously known as tier 3 BC) with their 1600 DPS looks tasty, same DPS as my Vindicator with normal T2 guns, but they are the true glass cannons. With the right fitting, implants and links you can nearly get a Destroyer hull to have the same EHP as one of those with Blighted weapons. However the potential DPS output means they might be popular with structure grinds. Just watch for bombs!

Battleships? I don't see it. The tank nerf is so strong that in PvP the extra DPS isn't going to make up for the reduced survivability. Remember Blighted weapons only come in super-short-range flavours. Plus the price of these guns will make your top rack break a billion on a normal BS. For a capital gank, may be. For a fleet fight? Nope.

Expect to see carebears in high-sec with these weapons and structure-grinding stealth bombers and DPS battlecruisers in low and null. I just cannot see many PvP ships using them outside your usual ISK-buying, pinata-flying, clueless noob. These weapons are basically for structure grinding and I'm not seeing any other real use for them.

The forum thread for Blighted Weapons soon reached half a dozen pages before the modules even showed up on SiSi. Why? Blighted? BLIGHTED? The name wasn't entirely popular. Now we have Stigmatic. Still time for a name change TBH!