I've done a lot of BBs, taking control of it and doing series of 8 rituals, doing some fod with it, or attacking it for lvl 3+ swords.
I don't need anything from it anymore, but I still do it for friends that need rituals or swords.
Now, I'd like to give my honest opinion about it, and I'll go to the point. The Burning Blade needs to have a weak point.
When I've been in control of the BB, I've always, in any type of situation, felt all mighty. Wether it's against an experience Galeon crew, several Brig attacking at the same time, etc.
As long as you are a crew of 3 people on the BB or more, you are invicible.
To sink the Burning Blade, the best way I found is to spawn camp players (and skeletons), keeping it anchored, until no skeletons appear anymore. Then you can pressure it and kill it almost like a Galeon.
- With a solo Sloop, you have almost no chance to take down a crewed BB, whatever the size of the enemy crew.
- With a duo Sloop, things are stacked against you. You have to camp players for a while, keep the BB immobilized, keep the Sloop repaired and in the back blind spot of the BB.
- With a Brig, things are getting a bit better, you are not so severely outnumbered, but it is still a very hard fight most of the time.
- With a Galeon, it's not that much better, you have one more man, but if you take the fire, you're done for.
Keep in mind I'm still not talking about skill here, so I'll add that:
To even begin to think to sink a crewed Burning Blade, in my experience, you need to absolutely crush the enemies in terms of mechanics and skill, whatever the size of the BB crew.
Where am I going with all of this ?
I think the Burning Blade in it's current state, despite the situation I'm painting, is alright. It is an absolute beast, it's the best ship outthere, no questions asked, this is the entire point of it.
But it needs a weak spot.
Currently, you can apply canon pressure by shooting at it low on the sides, and... That's about it.
Burning Blades are extremely hard to immobilize with the hard masts and fast anchor. With 5 canons on each side, one broad side means instant death. After a hard 40min fight where you destroyed all skeletons and players on board, this is devastating.
Let's cut to the chase, I see 3 main issues with it:
- The masts are very hard to take down and players can focus on them since skeletons repair downstairs.
- The anchor is very fast to raise and players can focus on it since skeletons repair downstairs.
- There is no bottom hole at the back of it, therefore, it is impossible to apply pressure if the Burning Blade is running without taking the risk of loosing instantly to the broad side.
To fix these issues seems quite simple to me:
- Put regular masts on it. Maybe keep one hard mast on the back, near the wheel to prevent it from being totaly stopped too easily with chains shots. this would allow at least to slow it down.
- Put a Brigantine anchor on it (if it is hard to put a dynamic anchor adapting to the crew size, wich would be ideal)
- Make it so the "intermediary" holes on the back are bottom holes. This is absolutely necessary in my opinion to put any water in it in most situations where you are not just commiting suicide on the broad side.
I feel like these changes would make the Burning Blade doable with a skilled duo sloop against inexperienced crews, and it would leave room for less experienced Brigandine and Galeon crews to try to take it down when it is crewed by an average duo sloop.
In the current state of the event, I have to admit I'm a bit discouraged. A crewed Burning Blade is, most of the time, an almost insurmountable opponent for a duo sloop, or even for an average Brig/Galeon crew.
We could argue we are supposed to ally with other ships to take it down. I don't think it is a reasonable thing to ask in most cases. Trusted allies are not really a common thing on the seas, even less so in the time window of a Burning Blade stacking around.
Even worse, most of the time, when I saw a third party ship coming around, it just started to shoot the attacker's ship instead of the Burning Blade...
I'll let BBs roam freely from this day, I might be biased, but I'm under the impression that this will become the case for more and more people as time goes by. The BB is great. A bit too great imo.
