I've seen a lot of references to the nerf to Whisper on the forums here, but I cannot find anything in the last FAQ about Whisper. Is the nerf being referenced to the decloak happening at start of activation instead of before the maneuver dial is revealed (and not to Whisper himself)?

Yes.

When you could activate at PS 9 and see most of the board state, you could decide which way to decloak given your selected maneuver and almost never be in anyone's arc. A Well flown Whisper could solo entire lists single handedly if all the opponents moved before her.

And nowadays, with the prevalence of torps, bombs, regen, and autodamage effects, she wouldn't make a dent on the current meta even in her pre-nerfed state...

Yes.

Some have argued that in this current meta of unlimited bombs, tanky chassis, great dials on clunky chunks, regen and turrets, pre-nerf Whisper might just be good and no longer OP. I heard @Starslinger72 ask the FFD designers such a question on the Scum and Villany podcast a week or so ago. They disagreed, but hey, what do they really know? Thankfully, for my own investigation, @Stoneface was nice enough to send me a pre-nerf Whisper Decloak card for fun tourney, and she flew (now I'm not a Whisper expert pilot by any means) OK against the meta dominators in similar pilot's hands, but she was not OP as most everything doesn't give a crap about arcs. However, her decloak with perfect info did assist on getting better range shots or keeping in the best enemy ships range band for staying alive.

It's sad when a truly OP mechanic from Wave 4 is no longer OP with the drastic game shifts that have occurred from Wave 7 on. I'm also betting that although the Kylo Silencer is going to be quite fun on the kitchen table, and great against other good arced ships, it will simply not be anywhere near competitive in this current meta. Sure, meta's are fluid, but the bombs and ordinance seem to keep coming, and coming, and coming, and coming in the new waves.

To me the biggest problem with the Phantom in the first place was the ability to equip Fire Control System on a ship that does not have the Target Lock action. It allowed her to fire and miss while stripping tokens, get a lock, then kick in Gunner for a massive attack against usually tokenless opponents. Take away some of her offense and her free focus ability does not kick in as often. 4 Greens is easier to punch through when there is no focus token backing it up.

If FCS had the wording, "must have the Target Lock icon on your action bar to equip," I think Whisper would have been strong but not quite OP.

34 minutes ago, pickirk01 said:

To me the biggest problem with the Phantom in the first place was the ability to equip Fire Control System on a ship that does not have the Target Lock action. It allowed her to fire and miss while stripping tokens, get a lock, then kick in Gunner for a massive attack against usually tokenless opponents. Take away some of her offense and her free focus ability does not kick in as often. 4 Greens is easier to punch through when there is no focus token backing it up.

If FCS had the wording, "must have the Target Lock icon on your action bar to equip," I think Whisper would have been strong but not quite OP.

When she came out, it's true, focus and four greens was tough. Now?

And if FCS had that wording, why even print it?

Just now, clanofwolves said:

When she came out, it's true, focus and four greens was tough. Now?

And if FCS had that wording, why even print it?

Every other ship with the system slot has the Target Lock icon except the Phantom. They can all get locks with or without FCS, but FCS gives action economy. By allowing the Phantom to get locks by equipping FCS, it is like a 2 point discount on that card for that one ship only.

20 minutes ago, pickirk01 said:

Every other ship with the system slot has the Target Lock icon except the Phantom. They can all get locks with or without FCS, but FCS gives action economy. By allowing the Phantom to get locks by equipping FCS, it is like a 2 point discount on that card for that one ship only.

yeah......and?

It made her really good for a time, but she never got the high top table wins (even pre-nerf), nor has she done much more than assist the Empire "hang on" to the edges of top 16 in recent years.

I still think the decloak change was a buff, haha.

Now you can decloak and block/action deny ANY ship.

The only problem is, in addition to the plethora of high PS turrets, almost all the top meta lists recently run upgrades that care nothing about being blocked (because why would you NOT run upgrades that make it easier to not lose).

Attani Mindlink, Expertise, PS10 Unlimited no way to deny bombs/actions Nym, high occurrence of PS10 Kylo Decimator, these are making it really hard for Whisper to be a good choice, as she cant use her decloak (or supporting ships) to out-action her counters anymore.

I really think they need to add one extra defense dice to the cloak action with the Red Dice power creep going on.

26 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

yeah......and?

I guess I am not understanding what you are asking. I will try to put it differently maybe that will clear up what I am getting at.

As written, any ship with a system slot can equip this and gets free target locks after performing an attack.

If the extra line - "You must have the Target Lock Icon on your action bar to equip this" - was added, the only affected ships would be the Phantom and the yet to come out B/SF-17 as they do not have the Target Lock action. Almost all top builds of Whisper included Fire Control System, and combined with Gunner, it gave her a powerful edge in making sure she "hit" which triggered her ability to get a free focus after an attack. Combine that with Advanced Cloaking Device and she would almost always have 4 greens and a focus token and possibly an evade token depending on her action. This meant she almost always did more damage than she took even when she didn't dodge all arcs.

By requiring the ship to have TL action to equip FCS, Phantoms could have only equipped it by sacrificing Advanced Cloaking Device for Targeting Computer as their modification and this would have severely hampered the defense. Without the free target locks, which are more and more powerful the more red dice you throw - like say the 4-5 that a phantom throws - then Phantom pilots would have had to choose between less offense or far less defense.

So my point was, in hind sight, if FCS had had different wording, Whisper might never have been the monster she became.

17 minutes ago, phild0 said:

I think the decloak change was a buff.

Now you can decloak and block/action deny ANY ship.

The only problem is, in addition to the plethora of high PS turrets, almost all the top meta lists recently run upgrades that care nothing about being blocked (because why would you NOT run upgrades that make it easier to not lose).

Attani Mindlink, Expertise, PS10 Unlimited no way to deny bombs/actions Nym, high occurrence of PS10 Kylo Decimator, these are making it really hard for Whisper to be a good choice, as she cant use her decloak (or supporting ships) to out-action her counters anymore.

Agreed. By precise positioning, you could block a Phantom's decloak options and force it to just performs its normal maneuver and stay cloaked so it couldn't shoot. Now they are always free to plan knowing what their decloak options are.

50 minutes ago, clanofwolves said:

yeah......and?

It made her really good for a time, but she never got the high top table wins (even pre-nerf), nor has she done much more than assist the Empire "hang on" to the edges of top 16 in recent years.

There's top-tables wins, and then there's just dominate a bunch of local metas. Balance isn't just for the tournaments, but also for folks [Tuesday] night games.