1.) TORMENTOR!
2.) KESTREL (yeah Ytterbium did it...... no other words needed)
3.) Punisher

The Tormentor is one of the best scram-range kiters out there. You're doing it wrong.

My vote for worst: Rifter. I won't think twice of taking two on at the same time.

1.) TORMENTOR!
2.) KESTREL (yeah Ytterbium did it...... no other words needed)
3.) Punisher

sometimes you have to realize that it is not the ship that sucks so much as the guy flying it...

Venture

ibis

The Rifter is now the worst frigate, by proxy of everything else being made better than it with the re-balancing.

It's funny how CCP always does this. They manage to take ships that actually work well and nerf bat them into the ground while improving all it's contenders. This will be the same story with the Drake & the Hurricane in the near future.

The funny part is they didn't nerf the rifter...they left it alone because pre-tiericide it was already good...then they made other frigates awesome so by comparison good isn't good anymore.
Now the next question when picking best/worst frigates is : what are you doing with it? 1v1 you need to be more careful about what your fighting and what your flying. If you take a brawler punisher against a fast kitey ship like a slasher...you are probably going to die even if it takes awhile unless the kiter just sucks. Like I said before alot of it just comes down to understanding your ship and how to fly it. If you think hitting auto-orbit and over heating is the i-win either you don't fly frigs much or you just get lucky. In gangs hull type decreases in importance compared to target selection and dps application in my experience. The last couple times I was out with 3-4 corp mates and we got in a tussel with a similar sized or larger gang the opposition all shot something diffrent or all got greedy and shot at the faction frigate which they had no hope of hitting. IMO you can still fly sub-par-post-tiericide frigs with good fits in gangs and still be successful. And its not the end of the road for balancing...CCP already said in another post that they are going to re-look at ships after they complete tiericide to fix thing they broke unintentionally.

I don't see how CCP manages to not see half the disasters assosiated with their nerfs and balances coming...
That being said Im not going to argue that the rifter has gone from the best to the worst frig in the game in one patch. It has the same 5% to damage and 7.5% to tracking as the slasher but w/o the slasher speed (which is fine IMO because its supposed to be a brawling combat frig). Maybe if they gave it the ability to add a 4th turret or buffing the turret damage % to that equivilant. There are options for it but yeah...for now it is not the same awesome sauce ship I flew years ago...

The Punisher is worse than the Rifter in every way.

Actually its better in most ways. But it has 2 mids so its worse.

ok ... punisher ... have any of you fools tried AB or mwd 400mm trimarked punisher? 12k ehp 100 dps on scorch. not bad for gang work. it is slow as any amar boat.

gank punisher is also not that bad ... 5k ehp 130 dps.

You just have to accept the fact that amarr ships do low armor hull tanking.

ok ... punisher ... have any of you fools tried AB or mwd 400mm trimarked punisher? 12k ehp 100 dps on scorch. not bad for gang work. it is slow as any amar boat.

gank punisher is also not that bad ... 5k ehp 130 dps.

You just have to accept the fact that amarr ships do low armor hull tanking.

Our two ventures killed an ac thrasher the other day...just sayin

I like both the punisher and the rifter tbh. You just have to know what is feasible to attack/kill. If you think that prop/scram/web is the only way to PVP then you need to get out more. Punisher is an awesome small gang frig and the rifter can be fit to counter most frigs (up against a frig that is fit to do a similar role it will lose - jack of all trades syndrome) Dual rep incursus dies easily to a 'super rifter' fit.

For me the worst frig is the breacher! It looks like someone ripped off a crane and stapped an engine to it!

Style of substance anyday!

I'm pretty sure i could take a rifter 9/10 in a Heron...


As to the comment that things would be able to disengage/kite the punisher even with a web.

Yes a TD scramkiter could (sort of)

But it would still make the ship about 10 times as viable for solo pvp.

But it relies on great player knowledge and skill rather than pure stats.

The only area in which a rifter meaningfully outperforms a slasher is active armor tanking. Which is pretty niche, considering what the rifter is.

It is however very interesting that the slasher is now widely considered a much better frig than a rifter (I'm not disagreeing with this either) but the thing most people don't realise is that the rifter does exactly the same as it always did, it hasn't changed at all.

active armour tanking is a niche in frig combat now?!

Yes, it's called power creep.


Well, it's pretty niche for a fragile autocannon brawler with mediocre cap, poor resists, and no tanking bonuses that relies on speed and range control to win fights.

Believe me, I want the Rifter to good again (I doubt the AAR will fix it). It's not that it is unusably bad, like most pre-Inferno T1 frigates were. It's that for any purpose, including the role of fast, flexible hull, you're better off with another ship.

I got to admit that the new slasher is a nice ship.

I have always liked the hull design (minnies take on an x-wing) now it has the ability to go with it.

I still like the rifter as it can generate more fights than most other frigates.


For me though the worst frigate is the breacher as the boost bonus just doesn't give me the stats that I want. After all if a medium ASB gives less EHP (even with bonus and OH) than the medium shield ext on the same hull why bother? in your cap charge reload you are dead anyways.

Wait, i'm new after a 2 year hiatus - Weren't Rifters considered the best PvP Frigate for ages? Whats happened to them thats made them so bad?