... My point here is, just because the rifter was the one that was the most commonly used tech 1 frigates didn't mean it was OP and since it wasn't really OP there was no reason for it to be left behind so badly in the frigate rebalance. ...

there was a reason that the rifter was so popular (it was the only useable frigate for a long time)
there was a reason they buffed all frigates accept the rifter (however there wasn't a reason that the others were overbufffed in comparison)
there is a reason no one uses the rifter anymore

Fixed

rifters are no longer used i have a hard time believing that

While I did exaggerate slightly, anything a rifter can do, a slasher can do better, of course besides armor tanking.

TLDR
For a solution I propose the following:

1, Change the skill bonuses from damage and tracking to damage and rate of fire to follow a common minmatar trend or damage and fallof to establish it's role as an attack ship and make it differ from the slasher.
2. Change its slot layout - remove the useless utility high(if you like the utility high I advice you fly a slasher instead, it makes better use of it - dat capstable neut) and replace it with a low or medium slot.
3. Increase its base speed to 375 m/s (this is important)

Except, of course, that the armor Slasher gets the magic ab-scram-web-TD combo, so for most purposes it's better at that as well. And pretty much anywhere the Rifter does outdo the Slasher, they're both outdone by another frigate.

1.) Tracking is a major boon to the rifter. You may not realize it, but it is majorly important of applying damage to drones and frigates when you are orbiting, and will generally help you much more than a double damage bonus. The Rifter is still pretty much equivalent to the Punisher in terms of firepower, but the merlin seems to light years ahead in terms of dps and tank (50% more on both). Believe it or not, if you scram/web a merlin, orbit at 500 with your ab overheated, you'll mitigate a ton of the merlin's dps (cause it doesn't have a tracking bonus), and allow you to win the fight.

2.) Useless high? One of the HUGE strengths of the rifter comes from fitting a NOS in that "useless high". This allowed it to defy neut pressure, keep it's SAR running, and hit above its weight class. Alternatively, a neut was brutal against active tanked ships when shield gank fit. In general, a rocket launcher is a TERRIBLE use of that high, only slightly better than leaving it empty. It is that utility high with the 3 guns, 3 mids, 3 lows that made it so incredibly useful and versatile!

3.) Increasing the rifter's speed may help flush out it's old place. It still is pretty fast for a combat frig though, and I'm not sure this is necessary.

Overall, I would leave it mostly as is, but simply replace the 5% damage bonus to a 5% R.O.F. bonus (+8.33% dps).

1.) Tracking is a major boon to the rifter. You may not realize it, but it is majorly important of applying damage to drones and frigates when you are orbiting, and will generally help you much more than a double damage bonus. The Rifter is still pretty much equivalent to the Punisher in terms of firepower, but the merlin seems to light years ahead in terms of dps and tank (50% more on both). Believe it or not, if you scram/web a merlin, orbit at 500 with your ab overheated, you'll mitigate a ton of the merlin's dps (cause it doesn't have a tracking bonus), and allow you to win the fight.

oh that is such an adorable armor tank, so cute! If you keep eating your vegetables, one day you'll grow big and strong like us.

Rifter isn't iWin button vs other frigates anymore so it needs a buff.

I don't see why it should be better than any other frigate.

Rifter isn't iWin button vs other frigates anymore so it needs a buff.

I don't see why it should be better than any other frigate.

The incursus can perma tank 150dps so I don't know what you're on about.

Rifter isn't a bad ship it just is predictable so people don't feel fancy fitting it.

The incursus can perma tank 150dps so I don't know what you're on about.

Rifter isn't a bad ship it just is predictable so people don't feel fancy fitting it.

bla bla bla ... For reasons.

there was a reason that the rifter was so popular
there was a reason they buffed all frigates accept the rifter

accept the rifter

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there was a reason that the rifter was so popular
there was a reason they buffed all frigates accept the rifter

+1 for logic.

Pretty much what whitehound said. They change ships based on their usage within the player base not actual power. This is the reason the cane was nerfed even though it was a much worse brawler than many BCs and a way worse kiter than the tier 3s. It is also the reason that although the sacrilege is probably one of the best HAC's right now it's receiving the largest buff (or at least change) because it is one of the least used whereas the zealot isn't the greatest ship and is over shadowed by the omen navy, but is the most used so they aren't changing it aside from a few minor tweaks to stats.

Before the t1 frigate buff I'd say the merlin was more powerful than the rifter, but the rifter was way way way more common. Now you see all the frigates used and the rifter is still favored by many so there is variety and therefore CCP has done their job.

dude, the most common ship is 99% of the time the most powerful ship.

Obviously others excel in specialized area's, however in general, the rifter was the best....by far.

dude, the most common ship is 99% of the time the most powerful ship.

Obviously others excel in specialized area's, however in general, the rifter was the best....by far.

Do you care to explain how it was the best?

It was faster than other t1 frigates. It did more damage than other t1 frigates save for a few specialized cases in which case it only did slightly less. It had a very strong tank compared to other t1 frigates. It had very high range projection for a t1 frigate. It did all of these things at the same time

There were a couple of other t1 frigates that could potentially beat the Rifter in one of these things, but it would be far worse at everything else.

-A blaster Merlin or incursus would be kited with barrage.
-A rail merlin or incursus would just get facehugged and murdered because they were significantly slower than the riftger
-Punisher had 2 mids, fitting problems, and exceptionally mediocre damage. The Rifter could just fly up, orbit at 500, and kill it easily. Or, the Rifter could just leave at will, because..you know...no webs. and slow.

I like the Rifter (my corp is named for it). The Rifter is in fact underpowered and needs some buffs, but I can't imagine what kind of warped thought process led you to thinking that the Rifter was even remotely balanced before tiericide.

It was faster than other t1 frigates. It did more damage than other t1 frigates save for a few specialized cases in which case it only did slightly less. It had a very strong tank compared to other t1 frigates. It had very high range projection for a t1 frigate. It did all of these things at the same time

There were a couple of other t1 frigates that could potentially beat the Rifter in one of these things, but it would be far worse at everything else.

-A blaster Merlin or incursus would be kited with barrage.
-A rail merlin or incursus would just get facehugged and murdered because they were significantly slower than the riftger
-Punisher had 2 mids, fitting problems, and exceptionally mediocre damage. The Rifter could just fly up, orbit at 500, and kill it easily. Or, the Rifter could just leave at will, because..you know...no webs. and slow.

I like the Rifter (my corp is named for it). The Rifter is in fact underpowered and needs some buffs, but I can't imagine what kind of warped thought process led you to thinking that the Rifter was even remotely balanced before tiericide.

In the hurricane thread the subject was brought up about buffing T2 autocannon ammunition, how do you feel about that as a solution?

Would that risk making any other ship "op" The thrasher/vaga are arguably still class leading, and this could cause issues there?

battleclinic-ers recently had a contest to figure out the best possible rifter fits in the current setup. Almost every setup could be done better by a slasher, with the winner being a laser boat with scorch (lol). Based on this contest and the results I think it's safe to say a change is in order:

http://forum.battleclinic.com/index.php/topic,178086.0/topicseen.html

but aside from that, I too would like the rifter to be back in my hangar. Looks awesome (as does the slasher), but nothing much to use it for currently.

Asking people on battleclinic to make good fits is like asking a quadriplegic to represent your country in the Olympic long jump. Making conclusions from data gathered there is just as foolish.

Asking people on battleclinic to make good fits is like asking a quadriplegic to represent your country in the Olympic long jump. Making conclusions from data gathered there is just as foolish.

Asking people on battleclinic to make good fits is like asking a quadriplegic to represent your country in the Olympic long jump. Making conclusions from data gathered there is just as foolish.

The Rifter was my first pvp ship. I read wensley's rifter drifter guide and went out to lose some rifters and had a blast. It saddens me to see this beloved ship to be in such poor shape in todays meta. CCP buffed all the other frigates to the skies and left the Rifter behind. I think CCP should take another look at it and make it more diverse from the slasher.

There's some confusion around how strong the rifter was before the frigate rebalancing. I flew the rifter for 2 years prior to the rebalancing and I was beat by plenty of the other tier 3 frigates.
The Merlin was very strong back then already, I lost plenty of rifters to merlins and yet CCP chose to buff it even further. Kestrels were extremely strong in the pre-rebalancing frigate meta since most of the pvp able frigates were turret based and the kestrel could kite these with a dualweb rocket setup very efficiently. The Punisher was very much the same back then as it is now and the inqusitor was a missile frigate extremely underused minding how powerfull it could be in the hands of a good pilot. I met a brawling inquisitor once during my 2 years of flying rifters and it was one of the closest fights I've ever had.

My point here is, just because the rifter was the one that was the most commonly used tech 1 frigates didn't mean it was OP and since it wasn't really OP there was no reason for it to be left behind so badly in the frigate rebalance.

If you look at the rifter today in the t1 frigate meta it's pretty much crap at everything, it's like the old ferox - it can do alot of things but does none of them good. It doesn't have the speed of an attack frigate, it doesnt have the tank of a combat frigate and it doesn't have much gank to speak of either. What used to make the rifter strong was it's ability to project damage further than blaster boats while being able to make a decent tank at the same time as having a decent range control. Right now it has worse projection than blaster frigs loading null even if you load barrage(you have to get outside scram range for autocannons to win the projection game). For new minmatar players skilling into projectiles the slasher is the superior choice in every matter. It has higher speed, similar tank,the same dps if the rifter doesnt fit a rocket launcher which makes little difference anyway, a role bonus that makes it easier on cap, a better slot layout and a smaller signature radius.

The only competetive fit I've come up with for the rifter lately is 280mm artillery. This fit however needs very high SP to work as it plays on the fact that the rifter has higher base powergrid than the slasher and is able to run a microwarpdrive and warp disruptor without cap problems(assuming you have max capacitor skills). I've got a buddey that fits light neutron blasters on a rifter and sadly it works better than autocannons.


TLDR
For a solution I propose the following:

1, Change the skill bonuses from damage and tracking to damage and rate of fire to follow a common minmatar trend or damage and fallof to establish it's role as an attack ship and make it differ from the slasher.
2. Change its slot layout - remove the useless utility high(if you like the utility high I advice you fly a slasher instead, it makes better use of it - dat capstable neut) and replace it with a low or medium slot.
3. Increase its base speed to 375 m/s (this is important)

Rifter is fine.
You lot who whine that it's underpowered just need to actually learn how to fit and fly the thing rather than just stick up the old cookie cutter fit and expect to own everyone.
When you can fit it to do 175 dps, tank 85 dps and fly at 1.3km/s a LOT of people get really surpised when they die to it!
And those dual repped incursus get really annoyed when you pop them with your pathetic 125mm auto's.
Get over it you lot and grow a pair

have you ever considered trying to fly a rifter like a miniature version of the old typhoon? fit x2 125mm auto, x2 rockets, x1 mwd, x1 scram, x1 web, x1 dc, x1 adaptive nano plate, x1 400mm rolleed tungsten, x2 acr rig, x1 explosive armour rig, has good tank good damage and good range control, try taking ships out their fitting comfort zones, eg laser harpy, and yes they work really well

EErrrr no, you do not have good damage and you do not have good range control with a 400 plate and an explosive armor rig, but it's a goot bait ship. I can still see that fit working against a small number of ships whose pilots do not what they are doing, but it is very limited against all the rest.

I know that rifter is not so underpowered as most people make it but I'm also aware of his limitations. One thing is to like to be the underdog (which in fact I do), another is to be blind.
And why those numbers? Did at least you compared those numbers with what other combat frigs can achieve? merlin, incursus, tormentor? Only thing rifter wins is in speed, and the speed advantage is very small when compared to the rest (dps/ehp/tank).

Things are way easier in a breacher, but I still prefer to fly the rifter, some kills you can get with the breacher only feel like *meh*, while the same kill with the rifter feels like it was worth *double points*.
I really don't want the superior rifter of old, but a minor buff in his speed would make it less "difficult" to fly against certain targets.

And get over yourself, it is not only you who have experience in flying and killing stuff with rifters.

.

Much better post, agree with everything. Apologies if I came off harsh.
Still... +5-10m/sec would not hurt.

Do not remove the tracking. If the ideia is to boost dps just switch damage with rof.
The thing I would like the most was a speed boost, but a combat frig should not touch the speed of an attack frig, so the speed boost would have to be a very small one (5-15m/sec).

I agree with this. At this point in time you can still achieve a lot by using the speed advantage + the good tracking that a Rifter can offer in comparison to other frigs, but a speed buff wouldn't hurt and it would keep the Rifters current roll intact.

Making it a bit faster might help, but wouldn't go very far to answer the question of why you should fly a rifter instead of a slasher.

answer the question of why you should fly a rifter instead of a slasher.

Well any basic rifter fit will put out about 20% more damage than a slasher and have equal to more tank. The main advantage the slasher has is speed and cap the the prop jamming cap usage bonus.

So if a shield rifter comes across a shield neut slasher the worst outcome would be the slasher disengaging and running away. More than likely though would be the slasher dieing and wondering WTF just happened!

Despite my lack of experience in flying other races ships, I have my dose of experience in the breacher/slasher also.
I understand the *3 fits* concept Crake (I think I know which 3 fits are), there are lot's of ships that thanks to their weapon system only need with "one fit, one tactic".

Not that anything is wrong with the *3 fits* concept, I think it's an autocannon flaw (it have virtues too):

• Railguns, keep your oponent far away independent of what he is flying, kite, that's your tactic, at all times.
• Blasters, get up close independent of what he is flying.
• Rockets, keep yourself in rocket range, your rockets will always hit for the same amount (depends of the target velocity, signature, etc), you're range free to work on your target. Some targets you'll want to be up close, others you'll want to kite.
• Autocannons, try to check very fast what he is using, try to get close without messing up transversal in case are rails/lasers (it can be very difficult since rifter is not that fast), pull range if they are blasters (usually easier), hope you have the right ammo loaded (if not, lol, 10 seconds)
• Not going to add mwd laser/missile kiting ships here, since it's more an on/off thing, or you catch them or you don't, ends up being equal to everybody.

Slasher works because of his speed and the extra mid (TD one trick pony,2xWebs, MSAB, whatever). You can have the tactic/ammo decided before going in, and if you see things going wrong, you usually can disengage. You can't do that in a rifter unless you already know what you need to know, yes there are killboards for that, but in a system with >10 locals when you think that you know who that ship belongs to and how he usually fly it someone already went in for the kill, or he simply gave up on the system and went to another one.

3 fits... I know I know, bring the right tool for the job. And when roaming try to make a good target selection according to the fit you're carrying.

The speed I would like to have in the rifter (or lower mass) was to be able to pull range a little faster from blasters, and to make it easier to go in against rails/lasers (it would not change much against rails since rail ships usually do not fit plates or even have a prop/hull upgrade in a low).

I don't need 3 fits to have confidence in sending my breacher against any t1 frig while roaming (unless is a mwd condor)
I, for sure, I'm wrong in lot's of stuff, feel free to fix it.

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=20378537[quote=Urkhan Law]

I'm curious about this. I really like the Rifter and cut my teeth on it (another character).

What should this guy have done differently with fitting? Nano shield Rifter vs rails Incursus:

http://eve.battleclinic.com/killboard/killmail.php?id=20378537

What I'm wondering is if the Rifter's narrow engagement window (if that's what it really is) is something that is just a problem with the Rifter, or only becomes one when you compare it to a few ships like the Breacher that has a very wide engagement envelope?

Concidering where the Rifter is today, I would say it's possible to beat pretty much any other T1 frig using 3 different fits.

ItGÇÖs long, read at your own peril (TLDR version at the end).

Yesterday had an interesting fight against a tristan.
I rarely win against tristans, and since in the systems I usually roam there are lots of neut tristans I usually donGÇÖt engage them unless I can dictate the rules of the engagement (waiting for them at a plex instead of going for them).

I donGÇÖt know what buffs the other pilot had, if he had them, or his fit. I just can try to explain how the fight went on. I started the fight at 7.5k, out of neut range, this was not a plated rifter, there was no speed enhancement mods or plates/trimarks, and I believe the tristan had neither also. So press keep at range, ab, guns and rep pre-overheated as usual, tristan goes into approach mode, and everything is fine at the start. I do damage, his drones do their work, etc, rifter was faster at this point, then when the rifter reached his GÇÿkeep at rangeGÇÖ distance, he just turned back a little and then turned back away trying to get out again. Tristan was at 6k now, neuting, and gaining the range I will not get back again since he was in full acceleration mode and I wasnGÇÖt there yet.

I lose really a lot of fights, I engage things I shouldnGÇÖt, IGÇÖm outplayed most of the time, I make the wrong decisions all the time, I consider myself a GÇÿpvp noob in progressGÇÖ.
I could have started the fight at 20k and waited for the tristan to send his drones at me, use the web, kill them, and then go to 9 to try to kill the tristan when the number of drones was acceptable (the tristan could always pull off his drones or get out since he was out of scram range).
I could have started the fight at 9k instead of 7.5k, but the damage barrage produces at that range is inferior to the damage 5 warriors/hobgoblins can do.
instead of keeping range at 7.5k I could put keep at range at 10000k and adjust the speed dial manually to stay in the 7.5 range, that way the ship would not turn around by itself unless I told it to do it but if the other pilot sling shot me I would get back to square 1.
Or I could have just bailed when I saw the tristan coming.
I could had made lotGÇÖs of things different, this fight was a very good fight, and it got me thinking (yes it happens), there is a thing that fights against the rifter itself all the time, mass.

Speed ships (minmatar), they have a speed advantage, and then they have mass to slow them down. Example: Breacher vs Tristan speed wise, breacher is faster without mods, put a mwd on each ship, max level skills, and Tristan now have the same speed as breacher. Put the speed enhancement mods you want on both ships with the mwd, Tristan will continue to have the same speed as breacher. The speed advantage on the ship initial stats doesnGÇÖt exist anymore.

TLDR
Minmatar ships have more base speed, this speed advantage is negated by mass.

There are a few hulls in all races with speed in mind despite base speed, is not only the stabber and the vagabond, and despite the usual homogenization concerns thatGÇÖs good since speed is valuable and provides a gaming experience all races should have access to in one ship or another, but the speed race is something that really doesnGÇÖt exist anymore.

I remember a heavy nerf to the mass of minmatar ships a few years ago (nano age? 2009? 2010?). Please balancing team, recheck mass in Minmatar (and other races) ships, I donGÇÖt think the current values/direction make sense anymore. I understand that Minmatar ships canGÇÖt really be 1st in speed and 1st in mass, but 1st in speed and last or close to last in mass?
The base speed advantage is being negated completely, only with the usual propulsion mod in some cases.

Mass doesn't modify speed. (...)
A hull's speed is the base value which all subsequent multipliers affect (ie prop mods, nanos or overdrives, snakes etc). (...)
And you should have heated your prop mod for one cycle.