My problem is that pretty much everyone who started out missioning was, at some point or another, told to get a Drake, even if they didn't start Caldari. Case in point, i'm an Amarr pilot and I use missiles (Blasphemy I know, but missiles make such an awesome BOOM). The classic ship development told to newcomers is something like:
- Caracal
- Drake
- Raven
- CNR
- Golem if you're addicted
It makes perfect sense. Caldari are the well known kings of PvE mainly due to the Drake and the Raven. Infact if you're careful and don't mind spending about 10 minutes per battleship to break it's tank, you can solo Level 4's in a Drake. It's that powerful.
Hell I've told newbies to get into a Drake ASAP to provide them with funds even if they don't plan on remaining a missioner as their EVE "career". The Drake's tank is literally one of the highest non-capital tanks you can get in EVE, and because of this it is used extensively in both PvE and PvP. I used a Drake myself while grinding for Level 4 missions, and a well fit Drake can literally be ignored for hours in a L3 mission and still be at 50% shields when you come back. It may not punch very hard, but my god does it refuse to die. Because of this, you can make mistakes in a Drake and not lose it. I sure as hell made some mistakes (the classic "forgetting to bring any ammo" springs to mind here). But with such a huge tank you can afford to. Though I daresay the Drake made me a little lazy about tanking (two invulns and you're laughing all the way to the bank), making for a bit of a shock when I reached the Raven, but the Drake is still an excellent ship.
The sticky problem is that the Drake is the perfect safety net for new mission runners, and this proposed nerf is going to hit the PvE crowd way harder than the PvP crowd it's aimed at. Without its insane resists, the passive tank of the Drake is going to fall through the floor. This isn't as much as a problem for the PvP crowd who use Damage Controls like some sort of religion, but for the PvE guys it's going to be catastrophic. With the loss of the resist bonus, the passive tank on the Drake in unlikely to be enough for L3 missions, let alone L4's. L3's are going to require much more thinking on the part of the pilot, and while this isn't a terrible thing, I'm pretty sure it's going to result in a hell of a knock to the income of newcomers. With the 'safety net' of the Drake gone, one mistake during a mission is going to mean you lose that 30 million ISK ship, and that's going to make a sizable dent in a wallet only a few months old.
"But Seraph!" you say "The first rule of EVE is 'Don't fly what you can't afford to lose!'". And yes, you'd be right. But be honest. As a noob with no real choice, sometimes you have no option to take a risk to earn some cash. Otherwise you're going to be mining for months before you get anywhere. And mining is soul-destroying. By extension of this, you could even say that nerfing the Drake will result in more rage quit unsubscriptions. But that's probably thinking about this too deeply.
Besides, the numbers of Drakes used in PvP is likely to increase after this, due to the fact the kinetic bonus is being dropped for a missile speed bonus. This means that Drakes can now fire any damn missile they like without wasting a ship bonus, and it's going to be a shock for PvPers when those Drakes you filled your kinetic hole against, start punching you in your thermal resist really damn hard. Not only that but this speed increase will also increase the range of Drakes to something like 75 - 85km. Few ships can hit out that far besides snipers, but the Drake doesn't have the tracking problem a sniper does. So not only is that Drake punching you much harder, it's also doing it from further away, so you're basically tickling it. That loss of tank for the Drake doesn't seem so bad now you're only hitting him half the time.
Tl;dr = The Drake nerf may sound good in theory, but in practise it's just gonna screw over the new guys. And that's hardly fair on them ;)
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