Its true the top 100 killers in dust are only dropship pilots....and every match i've ever flown in or seen an ADs its usually no less than 30 kills

I'll never understand the attitude that says "if anything escapes death its OP." I've got 2 adv Logi and a proto logi. I got ammar minmatar and caldari assault. Gallente and minmatar scout. All of the basic heavy medium and light suits suits.Ammar setinel and minmat commando Madrugars and gunlogis. All the lavs, every turret at ADV except large missiles. And of course my beloved Incubus. All of the light weapons and side arms. And i have never on a consistent basis seen dropships at the top of the kill board no matter who i fly with, gun for or see fly against me (whether on the ground or in the air). As in more than one match a day. Maybe a week. I do squad up with Judge and Evo 7, and i've seen some really good dropship pilots in my time.

Heavies and scouts dominate each match kill wise, with the odd assault suit in there and perhaps a really good blaster tank.

That mythical KD ratio of dropships is only apparent in the fact that since i dont want to loose my ship i might get, lets say ten kills in one match and maybe 7 in another. Because i'll come in take out a few troops and then spend the rest of the match afterburning away from any AV. Or i'll recal and fight it out on the ground because theres too much AV up right now. The third macth when i do lose my ship my dropship went 17 and 1 but over several matches strung out over a long period of time.

Which is what you would expect of anyone risking 500,000 isk, you should "git gud" at keeping it alive, otherwise you would not be able to afford bringing them out.

Ratattis response to me keeping my very expensive asset alive over long period of time is that 'well it should die more often"

The most popular way to do this is to make sure the only fire and forget weapon in the game is ensured a kill. Make sure our only counter measure to any AV the afterburner is nerfed. I can dance and try to make a forge gunner or rail tank or another dropship miss, which is already hard to do seeing as the incubus is physically larger than tanks. I cannot make a swarm launcer miss unless i afterburn the hell out of dodge. 3 hits will kill my ship dead. currently 2 swam hits are gaurnteed. Rattati's efforts at makeing sure the third gets me is akin to buffing the shotgun so that instead of three or four shots to kill a proto heavy it should be one shot, because heavies dont die as often as scout suits.

Its only apparent how often dropships die to those who fly them. You can't balance off of lack of kniwledge, the numbers being used to quantify how dropship are used only tell half the story. If you dont factor in the time, effort, sp and skill requred to fly the damn things let alone 'git gud' how can you tell whether it balanced or not?

Ask yourself this, should we balancy the infantry suits around the kill board? Should we balance the game soley around the KD ratio top 100 players? Or should we use numbers and experience of in equal measure?

Truth be told swarms are extremely dangerous thats why pilots run away, in the same vien that snipers are dangerous and that when under sniper fire everybody in every suits uses cover. Yet i don't see snipers calling for a reduction in infantry sprint speed to make sure you can't get to cover in time. Because it wouldnt be balanced.

Some of the ideas i can get behind, such as assault swarm variants with more range, high speed but less DPS. I cannot get behind 3 wyrokamis volleys being garunteed hits.