The two best races right now are Minmatar and Tengu.

The two best races right now are Minmatar and Tengu.

The two best races right now are Minmatar and Tengu.

If you're a newbie wondering what race to train, the answer is always the same--train Minmatar.

Im not a huge expert in Amarr, but they have a lot of ships that I see as good.

Punisher and its line, Slicer, Arbitrator, Harbinger, Omen Navy Issue, Zealot, Geddon, Baddon, etc.

To the extent that Amarr ships might be seen as sub-par, I think that it is because they lack mids, and shield fits are king right now. Its why Gallente are generally seen as only one step better - because Gallente have slightly more mids. Armor needs a buff, then Amarr (and Gallente) will be better. They have a great weapon system.

This is the right answer, but for the wrong reason.

The real reason to train Minmatar is that they use all different things anyways. If you're fully trained for Minmatar, cross-training another race is as simple as training up racial ships and lasers/hybrids, because training Minmatar already maxed you out in turret, missile, drones, armor, shield, and speed support skills.

So, Min is always a good go-to race to train because everything you train for them (except the racial ship skills for the hulls themselves) will carry over into one or more races when you crosstrain.

Minmatar receives bonuses to all damage types, other races only receive bonuses to one or two.

It is purely based on playing stlye.

Low sec doing hit and runs, fleet warfare, Running L4's, incursions, WH, Industry Defense, High sec war, Jack of all trades.
You will find different races are more successful at different aspects.
Naming off one group as having the most awsome ships is a sign of a new player.
Eve has been around a long time now ccp knows more then you. They have done a real good job at balancing. Being around since 2003 has that effect on a game.

If you happen to see one race as the best: It is due to that ship matching your stlye of play.

Each of the four races has their gems and their stinkers. But which would you say has the greatest quantity of good ships, and which would you say has the greatest quantity of bad ships?

I do agree with Ireland,

the answers are always tainted with the replier's personal experience and playing field.

I think that races in general all have about as many "good" ships, when you consider the whole range from noobships to titans, and all their various applications. Each race has "the best" or FOTM ships in some role.

so weird. it seems like not that long ago people were saying LOL minmatar and NERF amarr.

I think you can agree with me on the fact the game is not exclusively null sec doctrines, nor WH's with dedicated bonus to armor ships making at some point Proteus being excellent in that specific area of the game.

On paper Gallente can absolutely deal with every single race in the game with their specific racial traits, in game we all know this is not true.
I'm probably amongst the players for a couple years now, who jump on each Gallente dev thread trying to put on the table difficulties gallente pilots have and still have the feeling the very first Gallente issues are not taken in consideration but just somewhat "covered" with fake bonuses and tools that still make them not the first choice you will do if you can fly all races like me, and I'm at first a very specialised gallente pilot before I realised I could have more fun if I trained other races so I wouldn't be stuck in a single restrictive game play/area of the game.

This, plus the Caldari ECM line.

If you're a newbie wondering what race to train, the answer is always the same--train Minmatar.

"Welcome to Eve. Please Choose Difficulty:

Easy
Medium
Hard
Minmatar"

Scrubs seem to forget so quickly.

Each of the four races has their gems and their stinkers. But which would you say has the greatest quantity of good ships, and which would you say has the greatest quantity of bad ships?

CCP claims that laser crystals are one of our "strengths" but in reality they're little more than a royal pain the arse. With other races switching ammunition not only changes range but also the type of damage done by the weapon. With laser crystals the ranges change but the damage type always stays the same. That's only half the problem, however.

The real problem is well known to every player who's tried to use lasers on one ship after playing with something like cannons on another: Optimal Range and Falloff. Well looky here, we've got eight - count 'em - eight different flavors of crystal to chose from so you can stay at optimum range with the flick of a few buttons, ain't that grand?

No, not it isn't, because you have to have all eight crystal types and you have to constantly be swapping them out every third shot in order to keep your shots at optimal range. Why? Because the falloff on lasers is a complete joke. Your typical Minmatar light cannon may only have 3km or so of optimal range but the falloff will reach out to 12km or more easily. That's a nice wide bracket that you can use that weapon in before having to worry about changing the ammunition. Now compare that to your typical Amarr light laser in the same area and you'll find that the average falloff bracket is less than 2km wide at best... and it hardly gets any better as the gun tier goes up, either.

An Amarr pilot most constantly be juggling between eight different crystals to get keep a their target from falling too far under or over because of these absurdly narrow falloff arcs. That's click time that you're not spending doing things like adjusting speed, heading, managing drones or tinkering with all your other modules. Basically, an Amarr player needs to train in Multitasking 5 first in order to keep their weapons even marginally effective.

The oddest thing is that, scientifically, it makes absolutely no sense. What is the range of coherence of a laser in a vacuum? In real life you'd have be pretty much underwater to have to fiddle with focusing crystals as much as we have to in EvE. It's absurd.

I can live with the monotone EM/Thermal damage type because striking down sinners and heretics with the powers of Lighting and Fire suits our culture just swimmingly. But I'd also like to see the falloff brackets for our lasers get a massive boost and the number of crystals needed reduced accordingly. What I'd really like to see is for the crystal list to be dropped down to just three types: short, medium, and long range. Then adjust our falloff brackets so that's all we would actually need.

That or just invent a special module that automatically switches them for us. That would be spiffy too.

It is purely based on playing stlye.

Low sec doing hit and runs, fleet warfare, Running L4's, incursions, WH, Industry Defense, High sec war, Jack of all trades.
You will find different races are more successful at different aspects.
Naming off one group as having the most awsome ships is a sign of a new player.
Eve has been around a long time now ccp knows more then you. They have done a real good job at balancing. Being around since 2003 has that effect on a game.

If you happen to see one race as the best: It is due to that ship matching your stlye of play.

And if you're worried about Scorch not tracking within a range but before reaching MF range, grab a set of Radios. IIRC, they don't suffer tracking pentalties and have the same tracking as MF. So up until they're in MF range, use them.

you don't win because :Minmatar:

And no - the Rifter doesn't suck, it's just a change from it being the only competitive T1 frig to one amongst many - people used to their I-win button for years may need time to adapt to that.

Naw, the Rifter is pretty garbage now.

-Liang

But it wasn't before?

The only ships they ever engaged is the other Frigate that just got buffed?

Tracking, Speed, Low Sig, Range, Neut / Nos slot, choice in tanking it, Scan Res. Seems like everything that was great about the Rifter is still there.

Ed: Also, Minmatar as a whole is pretty bad.

Define 'bad', please.

I'd call anything that can disengage at will pretty good, regardless of any disadvantages (which they don't have have, currently).

You can't just compare the ship to how it was. You have to compare it to the way it is.

In yesterday's frigate metagame, it was pretty darn good. Arguably the best. In today's frigate metagame it's complete garbage.

Ed: Really, if you are flying a Rifter, you are doing it *wrong*.

Unless you are shooting drones or Nos'ing to keep on tackle or using small sig to dodge gun fire or using superior range / speed to kite around blaster or engaging a T2 Ships with certain high resists.


Same can be said about dozens of ships you defend. Think I saw the Moa on that list of yours as a good ship. You know the one with the fat sig, crap cap, less speed then a shield can, middle of the road damage and half a drone bay.

Rifter could use a bit more CPU but it is not a bad ship just not the best, it has flexibility and advantages in other area's.

they don't really have that much going for them.

I'm not arguing for a Minmatar boost at all - but they are pretty bad on the whole.

Ed: Really, if I thought they were any good, you'd see me flying them

...

Actually, you do in a way, since they're the race most likely ro be able to disengage at will. They're easiest to just poke some ship to see what happens and if things go wrong, you just 'do a barrel roll', so either you win or you disengage, but you don't lose.

Naw, the Rifter is pretty garbage now.

-Liang

Ed: Also, Minmatar as a whole is pretty bad. There's a reason I listed so few "good" ships for them. But, dominance at the BC level provides an overinflated view of how "awesome" they are since that's the most common PVP ship.

True, Minmatar is terrible because of shield meta (including new ASB), speed, capless weapons, loose fitting requirements and awesome slot layout. The Tornado, Tempest, Phoon, Mael, Rupture, Stabber, Rifter, Cyclone, Cane, Command ships, Jag, Wolf, Vaga and SFI are all terrible ships and need to be buffed, and have all needed buffs for the last few years.

Indeed, Minmatar are the definition of terrible as everyone knows.

I honestly was poking fun there because I thought you were not being 100% serious.

But not everyone flys ships in the same circumstances as you (or me). LOL Battleships get flown all of the time in small gangs. Saw both Maels and Phoons tonight...

Your statement about Minmatar, while I dont agree with it, is certainly an opinion you are entitled to. Your statement that because you choose not to fly them means it is "barely even a passable race" just seems - not like something that you would actually argue...

If I am to understand this right...

Amarr are (typically) terrible solo, but great in fleets?

The Cyclone, with the ASB's, is pretty epic. For a couple of minutes. With the correct boosts. If you can tank and jump or dock. If you can't satisfy these conditions, you just prolong the generation of a lossmail.

I agree the Moa is getting pretty epic with the ASB's these days.

Overall, I think the Angel race are the best ships.

If I am to understand this right...

Amarr are (typically) terrible solo, but great in fleets?

It's the nature of the weapon system.

Look at this picture. Blue's view of Red is Amarr's view of the whole world. Red's view of Blue is Gallente's view of the whole world.

The Tormentor, Executioner, and Slicer are all very good in solo frigate battles though: the first two because they can kite in scram range with a web, the last because it can kite in warp disrupt range with an MWD. In a world with blasters and autocannons in it, if you're using a crystal with less range than Scorch then you're probably getting significantly out-DPSed.

Go ahead and post "ridiculous" weapon properties. Undoubtedly it's going to look something like this:
- Awesome DPS (LOLFalloff, LOLHail)
- Great Range (Only if you count the ability to hit instead of the ability to deal damage. See Amarr for great range)
- Damage Type Selection (It's such a shame everyone covers resist holes these days)
- Capless (True, useful when you're abandoning the race's greatest trait: the ability to GTFO)

PS: Learn to format a post.

-Liang

Ed: BTW, I think you'd do well to actually go see what you can do with the other races. They're pretty awesome. Also, I don't fly Minmatar because I think they're overhyped crap for the most part. Also, the Cyclone is epic.

Way how this topic has evolved is very misleading for new pilots like myself. Then I want to ask question - can one be objective at all about which is good or bad ship? To be honest, after reading comments I've come to conclusion that my choice of lasers and amarr ships in general is quite bad. As far as I understand - most important is context. So I was planning to do occasional missions and mostly exploration, therefore I looked upon Legion as perfect candidate for swiss army like ship... and now it doesn't look appealing any more.

Way how this topic has evolved is very misleading for new pilots like myself. Then I want to ask question - can one be objective at all about which is good or bad ship? To be honest, after reading comments I've come to conclusion that my choice of lasers and amarr ships in general is quite bad. As far as I understand - most important is context. So I was planning to do occasional missions and mostly exploration, therefore I looked upon Legion as perfect candidate for swiss army like ship... and now it doesn't look appealing any more.

Nope. Not really. Every view is biased based on experience and play style. See Liang arguing about Minmatar being subpar.

Gallente sucks (because of blasters+armour tank) the other three races are all fine (with exceptions for a few ships in each)

The funny thing about that is that last night someone was accusing me of being a massive kiter. You'd think that I'd be all over Minmatar with a play style like that. I think it's more that I prefer to kite or brawl. The mid range high risk PVP that Minmatar style kiting requires falls into a no man's land that gives you no real advantages (IMO).

-Liang

Way how this topic has evolved is very misleading for new pilots like myself. Then I want to ask question - can one be objective at all about which is good or bad ship? To be honest, after reading comments I've come to conclusion that my choice of lasers and amarr ships in general is quite bad. As far as I understand - most important is context. So I was planning to do occasional missions and mostly exploration, therefore I looked upon Legion as perfect candidate for swiss army like ship... and now it doesn't look appealing any more.