Colman Dietmar
Red Federation
RvB - RED Federation
47
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Posted - 2014.05.15 15:25:00 -
[2] - Quote
After having tested the new cruisers and frigates for some time in PVP, I've come across several issues.
First, the Rifter.
The swap of tracking bonus for a falloff bonus did two things for the rifter:
1. It improved what rifter was already capable of: winning duels against blaster and pulse laser frigates by controlling range with ab, web, scram and a neut for breaking active tanks. Now the DPS is better, but Rifter was already doing ok here.
2. It allowed Rifter to become borderline viable as a kiting ship with artillery and long point. While now capable of killing whatever our Rifter has caught in a reasonable amount of time, it is still greatly outclassed by other races' alternatives: rail Atron and beam Executioner. Both of those have higher speed, better agility, almost the same EHP, higher base DPS and on top of that - longer optimal, which the Rifter lacks, resulting in even lower DPS than it at first appears to have. I realize that these two are from a different class compared to the Rifter, but as it stands, this is the Rifter's kiting competition.
When brawling in fleet, rifter still suffers from low DPS compared to its peers (merlin, punisher and incursus), weak tank, reguardless of whether it's armor or shield, active or buffer. The DPS issue is made worse by the fact that rifter virtually always fights in falloff, which results in further DPS reduction. This by no means can be compensated by hitting enemy resistance hole unless said enemy is flying a T2 or T3 ship. I believe balancing shouldn't be done around fighting higher class ships.
These problems leave rifter as a narrow niche ship, capable of soloing, but outclassed in fleets both as fast tackle and as an antifrigate brawler. Close ranged rifters lack DPS and tank compared to other such tacklers, and long ranged rifters lack DPS and mobility.
Rupture suffers from same or similiar problems: the base DPS of autocannons is lower than that of other close ranged turrets, and then further reduced by having to use them in falloff. Buffer tank on the Rupture is also weaker than on its peers (Moa, Vexor and Maller), although not by too much. However, these two problems combined make Rupture incapable of fulfilling the important role of a turret brawling cruiser with selectable damage type. As it stands now, the actual DPS is so low that picking the right damage type can't compensate for it.
Also, the fact that Rupture only has 4 turrets effectively means that it only has one hull bonus, as the other one is spent compensating for the lack of a turret. The utility high is most commonly used to fit a medium neut, but doing so requires one to sacrifice either more DPS, or some tank, both of which are already weak.
Slasher enjoys a variety of close-ranged fits, however I know of no viable artillery fits for it. The issue, again, is the low DPS, this time combined with high powegrid requirements and lack of sufficient range to kite using a long point.
There is a general problem with DPS on projectile turrets which stems from combination of low base DPS and the need to fight in falloff. This could perhaps be adressed by increasing base projectile DPS, so that at least at point blank ranges minmatar ships could compete with other brawlers.
Also there's the fact that while missile ships enjoy damage type selection with T2 ammo, there is no such thing for projectile turret ships, which a forced to deal mainly explosive damage if they want to use T2 ammo. Furthermore, even with T1 ammo, projectile turrets lack the option of dealing primarily kinetic damage, which appears quite odd for a system that shoots bullets.
Another problematic ship is the Caracal, but in a different way. Rapid light missile Caracals dominate as fast medium range ships: where turret ships have to sacrifice tank to fit long range guns, caracal easily reaches to 60km while enjoying over 300DPS, perfect projection, immunity to TD, good speed and good tank.
Where turret fast crusiers can be, more or less effectively, taken on by a frigate gang, a caracal kills fast tackle easily as it is impossible to get under its guns or outrun the missiles while maintaining tackle. It goes as far as RLML Caracals being capable of catching and killing other medium range cruisers which typicly have around 10k EHP, compared to Caracal's 15-20k.
This could be fixed by removal of light missile speed bonus from the Caracal: that would allow specificly fit frigates to outrun some of its volleys and would put RLML caracals out of competition with other cruisers that can deal damage at around 60km.
Then there's the issue with heavy and heavy assault missiles. I don't fly missile ships, so cannot comment on this in detail, but people who do fly them repeatedly said that those missiles still aren't worth using. I myself can only say that I have hardly come across five non-RLML caracals in the past few months, and I'm having multiple T1 cruiser fights pretty much every day.
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