Warfare & Tactics

Slasher is a good ship. Rifter is largely obsolete now but its still not to bad IMHO. Look for rifter Drifter or an old blog for decent fittings. But tbh the joy of the rifter is you can build it however the heck you want. Shield, armor, nos, neut, rockets. Skirmisher or brawler. Lotta options with the utility mid and high if armor tank it. can go active tank, passive, or oversized passive for both armor and shield. Or you can run no tank at all other than a dcu like the old go on fleet zergling doctrines. So uh, sorry, but part of the flying a rifter lesson is learning to fit them. But I digress. The slasher shares a lot of the rifter utility but trades some beefiness for mobility, so fly em both. You're gonna lose a lot of ships anyways so get used to it.

Well the rifter is kind of obsolete now but that's cause everything else got buffed. But the ship itself hasn't changed a bit so you can still fit it however you want.

Thanks, I will have a look at the incursus, as I mentioned, I have very few skills trained now, so its fairly easy for me to swap across, and the Incursus is a sexy looking ship, and if you are going to get blown up, then you should at least look good while exploding!

Slasher by far. 4 midslots for oodles of EWAR or shield tank. Here is my favourite slasher fit atm:

Slasher: I like EWAR

Highs:
150mm Autocannon II x3 (RF Phased Plasma)
Small Unstable Power Fluctuator I

Mids:
Experimental 1mn Afterburner I
J5b Phased Prototype Warp Scrambler I
X5 Prototype Engine Enervator I
Balmer Series Tracking Disruptor I (Tracking Speed Disruption Script)

Lows:
Damage Control II
200mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plate I

Rigs:
Small Projectile Burst Aerator I
Small Trimark Armour Pump I x2

Downgrade anything you cannot use/afford to the appropriate level. This fit is great for getting in close on laser boats and shutting them down with your neut and TD. You can also kite blaster boats at around 6km (edge of neut range) and keep their damage off you by loading the optimal range disruption script into the TD.

Actually, yes it was an "I win" button. For example, there was no version of the Tristan that had a chance against a properly fit rifter. (We tested it out many times.)

Yes it was. We tested it out quite a bit against the Tristan. The engagement envelope of the rifter was enormous. Everybody knows this. And yes, it's fallen on hard times. I hope it stays that way for the same amount of time that it was "king of the hill" tbh.

There really weren't as many competive ships at the t1 level. But the rail merlin and the rail plated tristan could both be as effective as any rifter fit. I actually prefered them but it might be because the rifters overblown rep meant I would get more fights.

Slasher. The rifter is a jack of all trades, master of none.

Bah I never had problems kicking rifter arse in the old merlin.

Punisher was a bit trickier but doable once you learned how to fly it properly. (worst case was the rifter ran away)

The rifter was OP compared to many of the T1 line up. It was the easiest to fly however which is what lead to the perception that it was the best.


Now the rest of the T1 fleet has been brought up to the standard but it can still do what it used to do. But it requires more pilot skill nowadays. The rifter still does LOTS of things well. It's just that most of those specific things can be done by other ships better now. But given the flexibility you can come out on top.

TBH I feel the slasher was a lazy pickup by CCP. They basically said lets make a shield rifter and swap a low for a mid to give it more control and the speed of an attack frig. Saw this a mile off. However end result is a nice frig but it has a lot less flexibility in fitting than the rifter does. Some of that inflexibility is made up with great base speed though.

All in all I will continue to fly both and still kill **** (hopefully)

slasher....


rifter was good like 2 years ago or maybe even earlier:? hard to remind but from rly rly long is useless