Player Features and Ideas Discussion

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)

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

Fixed

However, I disagree with changing it's base speed, at least to that extent. I think it should definitely gain another low slot to make it a bit like a mini cane/rupture. While this may be unnecessary, I think it's a bit tight on cpu, but then again I believe so for a lot of frigates.

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.

Agreed. (The opinions of both the punisher and incursus: 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.

This is mildly disingenuous. The tracking bonus is hardly nothing, but orbiting at 500 will still impact your own dps quite substantially as well. Secondly, the Rifter is faster than its counterparts, but it isn't that fast. Against a non-stationary enemy, maintaining an orbit anywhere close to tight to enough to break the tracking on small blasters requires a ship that is both substantially faster than your opponent and quite agile (hey, look at that - the slasher is faster and more agile than a rifter). Plus, a decent pilot could pulse overheat on their afterburner while flying in a straight line to drag you out behind them, at which point your angular velocity will not be enough to usefully mitigate damage.

It shouldn't be an I win button but at the moment it's an I lose button.

It was too strong. It is now too weak.

Switch Damage Bonus to Rate of Fire and Tracking Bonus to Falloff, maybe paired with a slightly better base speed, and it should be viable again and not on the ever-receiving end but somewhere mixed in.

Also, Slasher is *not* the new Minmatar Working Horse on Frigscale, it's the breacher. I think the only frigate that's stronger than the breacher is the Tristan (unless you include faction frigs)