Ships & Modules

As you may have gathered from my corp's name, I am somewhat partial to the Rifter. It used to be a staple frigate! However, after the frigate rebalance, the spotlight is now on other ships. This is good, as variety is the spice of life, but all of the new role-dedicated rebalanced frigates have surpassed the Rifter in all of its "classic" roles:

• Brawling (needs EHP, damage, damage delivery, scram/web, and tank) - Punisher, Merlin, and Incursus are simply better as they do higher damage and have far better tanks. Neither shield nor armor Rifter can compete with these.
• Tackling (needs speed, agility, EHP, low signature, and survivability against big ships) - Slasher all the way.
• Scram-range kiting (needs speed, agility, damage projection) - Barrage Rifter simply can't compete with Executioner, Punisher, Condor, and Atron.
• Looking awesome - Have you seen how tiny its guns are in relation to it now?

All this whining aside... how do you use the Rifter nowadays? Have you discovered a fit/role that it is not easily beaten at by another frigate? What unique stuff can it do?

How does the Rifter work?

Edit: for clarity, since it seems my point isn't getting across. It's not that the Rifter outright sucks, but that it has no niche to fill, like the other frigates do -- which turns it into a mediocre jack of all trades. In another way of putting it, fill in the blank below:

• T1 kiting - Condor (possibly Tristan soon as well)
• Active tanking - Incursus (armor), ASB Merlin (shield)
• Buffered brawling brick - Punisher, somewhat Tormentor
• Fast/nimble tackler with ewar possibilities - Slasher
• Range flexible light brawler - Atron, Executioner
• __________ - Rifter

I'm not questioning that it's "still efficient", but that it's still good compared to other frigates. The Slasher gives up a bit of EHP for more speed and tackle mod cap bonus, plus a 4th mid slot (TD?). It has the same damage and tracking bonuses as the Rifter, and a much smaller sig radius. I don't see how Rifter competes...

This guy knows whats up. I kind of disappeared into a wormhole before the latest round of frigate balance, so I haven't tested the new frigates much, however it was still possible to kill every single one of the revised combat frigates after their buff with the "one-fit-kills-all" Rifter. In fact I had a nice little streak of wins with it in RvB after the rebalancing.

Blaster Merlin? You're faster than he is, kite! He's got ASBs on? That just makes the fight last longer, you'll still win.
Rail Merlin? orbit at 500m and auto-win.
Laser Punisher? Orbit at 500m, autowin. Lasers have bad tracking at short ranges.
Blaster Incursus? You're faster. Kite @7-8kms and win.
Rail incursus? Orbit at 500m and win.

The Rifter is no longer target->tackle->orbit->F1->win and actually takes some thought and/or pilot skill to win with. You can still kill all of the frigates that were 'balanced' at the same time with it in its default rep+plate fit, you just may have to manually pilot a bit, or pull range to run your repper under less damage.

Pilot skill will always beat minor ship advantages. Range control is still the largest advantage you can get in a frigate fight, and the Rifter still has that.

I used to say this immediately after the rebalance, and while it's true, the Slasher or another frigate outdoes the Rifter at all of these. It's not that the Rifter can't do stuff, it's that anything the Rifter can do, another ship can do better.

Also, note: Rifter cannot kite blaster Merlin or Incursus if they are T2 fit, as Null does very respectable damage to long ranges on those ships. The Rifter has similar or possibly lower DPS at range with its ACs compared to Null, while simultaneously having smaller tank than Merlin or Incursus.


You're talking to someone who has stuck with frigates for almost 3 years now, and leads a frigate corp that regularly beats fancy fittings with pilot skill. Please.

Oh noes.. who would have thunk it... rifter pilots now actually have to... uh PILOT their ships

"My F1-Win machine is broken" ... CCP please we need another winmatar supreme patch asap !

Rifters seem to be like the other frigs now .. some you win some you lose, say hello to balance.

Why do you think that these are interesting categories? Have you ever in your life said to yourself, "you know, what I'd like to do right now is undock a frig with a strong buffer armor tank. Which one of these (winter:) 12 frigs would do that the best...?" Have you ever said in the middle of a fight, oh ****, this guy has a buffer shield tank, I'm flying completely wrong for this fight! Have you ever used the 'look at' function in the middle of a frig fight to try and figure out, by the visual effects, if the other guy's running a hardener?

Now compare the answers to those questions to the number of times you've thought about the kind of weapon system the other guy has. If I'm trying to kill a Thrasher in an Executioner, and I think he has arty, and I'm wrong about that, then I die in roughly 0.2 seconds. But I don't give a **** about whether he's shield or armor. And although it can be interesting if he's active tanked, if I stay around and keep fighting, I'm still not going to do anything differently.

And it doesn't matter what kind of tank an Executioner has. Take off a low, give it a mid. The reason you'll have trouble killing it with a Rifter is because you're forced to use autocannons, at range, against lasers.

And why did your corpmate say that Rifters have trouble against Merlins? Was it because Merlins can fit a strong active shield tank? Nah, it's because Null > Barrage at range (at least, I assume, on a cookie-cutter Rifter that has no range-enhancing mods), because 5sec blaster reload time means you don't get much even from diving when you see he has null.

Yeah, I'm beating a dead horse, but I just finished writing a whole post about weapon systems, but you condensed it into a sneer and went on categorize shoot-things-until-they-explode frigates by what kind of tank they tend to have. That the Punisher has an armor resist bonus really has nothing at all to do with why you don't know why you'd fly a Rifter anymore. Uh, although having said that...

---

If small autocannons are worth fielding, then the Rifter and the Slasher are your T1 frigate vehicles for them. Looks like, the Rifter has a better tank and a third low rather than a fourth mid; meanwhile, the Slasher's better in every other way and then has an extra bonus.

Amarr have three laser frigs, so you'd think they have the same problem. Minmatar can't make two autocannon frigs distinct and interesting; how can Amarr succeed with three? And indeed, they all have three lasers, they all have the same range, they all have the same tracking, they all have the same damage (from lasers). But there's more than you can say about them: only the Punisher and Executioner have a utility highslot; only the Executioner and Tormentor can fit a web; only the Punisher and Tormentor have four lowslots. Oh, and a Punisher has an enormously better tank than the Executioner, rather than the Rifter's 400 EHP lead over the Slasher.

The Rifter, Incursus, Punisher, Merlin are the 'tank and gank' frigs, right? As compared to the Slasher, Atron, Executioner, and Condor, right? Well, none of them have a gank advantage. Except for the Rifter, all of them have a really substantial tank advantage.

So that might be the problem right there.

I see more Rail merlins than blaster Merlins.

To answer the OP: I'm pretty confident that the Rifter's day has passed. There's pretty much no reason I'd fly the ship. Not that I particularly liked it before all its peers got boosted. IMO the best T1 frigs today are the Condor and Executioner. The Condor's unquestionably the best frigate for taking on AB frigs and bigger ships, while the Executioner is pretty boss for MWD frigs.

-Liang

Looking at the new Slasher I think they made them too similar.

There isn't much EHP difference between them but the Slasher is faster and smaller with similar bonuses. When Shield Tanking the Rifter it has less CPU so you can not even really use that extra low for more Dmg.

I would personally like to see it get 25 extra CPU, move the utility high to mid now that Tackle Frigates have them and replace the Tracking with a Falloff Bonus. Also move the Utility High on the Punisher to a low as well. I would've said Shield Boost Bonus so it goes A Active, A Buffer, S Buffer, S Active but apparently the Breacher is getting the active bonus. I would prefer it didn't and they put it on the Rifter.

They could give it a third mid instead of a low. A web instead of a Neutralizer or a small Cab Booster instead of a Nos. It would be a bit easier to fit anyway.