Warfare & Tactics

So what is the current state of mind with regards to Frigates and Faction Warefare?
Do you still agree that Drones + Blasters (means Gallente) for brawling are still king of the hill? While Missile kiters Caldari/Garmur are the choice for kiting? Minmatar are still underdogs?

I feel like right now there's an unchecked proliferation of AAR use, which feeds the need for shoehorning insane levels of DPS onto frigs to stand any chance of countering the >130 DPS tank any given AAR fit is capable of.

What really needs a rebalance right now is frig cap warfare. It's in a ****-poor state as a viable option right now, which is why virtually nobody has even bothered wasting a utility high on a neut since AARs became big, and that's really a shame because cap warfare is still awesome and still incredibly popular on cruiser/BC/BS fits.

Simple explanation for why it sucks right now: 1) 9GJ/s cap blap takes ~30s to cap out an opponent, which is simply too much time in frig warfare. 2) neut range is pitiful, and to add insult to injury nos out-ranges neuts. This one aspect alone has completely killed any possibility of hulls like the Slasher or the Rifter competing on any level with hulls like the Atron, which can easily just load Null and reach with 130 DPS out to the full neut range while comfortably tanking the same amount of DPS with an AAR. And good luck to you, if you think you can somehow fit a tank to survive ~30s of that after you've shot a good amount of your PG on a neut.

So basically, there's a lack of balance here because one critical offensive option is too gimpy to use effectively in most cases.

Possible solutions:

1) Increase the range of neuts.
2) Buff PG of weaker frigs so they can actually mount somewhat of a tank in tandem with a neut
3) "Blighted"-style neut module

I have heard about rumors about a sentinel ship that is called Sentinel that does what you are looking for unless the rumors or just that

These days you either fit AARs or MASBs. No other choice really when it comes to tanking.

I still think it's ok, once they're out of paste/charges, it's really easy to break the tank.

Personally, i'm more concerned about dual MASB fits. That just gives ridiculous amounts of tank for a frigate.

And neuts are fine. Give them more range and you will break frig pvp completely.

It seems the biggest problem is that the restrictions for plexes are completely out of balance. CCP should consider to kick pirate frigates out of novice plexes or allow T2 frigates to enter them too.

I don't agree. Shield buffer is perfectly viable, armor as well, to a lesser extent and on fewer hulls. Dual masb is tricky, it can be very strong, but is very susceptible to alpha or to very high dps brawlers (well, not the hawk, but, eh.)



don't agree here either. Small neuts don't suck much cap per cycle, but you forget that frigs fitting a SAAR have a really limited cap life, and that neut can put a whole lot of hurt on them. If your slasher can't keep an atron inside neut range, you've fit your slasher wrong mate.

it's not that the slasher can't keep any frig within range it's just risky to if you've got a neut eating into your PG and limiting the tank. even with a neut, if you've only got 4k EHP up against something that can reach you with 130+ DPS it's going to be a dicey brawl.

it's just a shame to see some attack frigs left in the sock drawer because they can't compete against the tank of combat frigs or DPS of pirate frigs.

it's nice to see that the popularity of the buffed pirate frigs as solo boats is starting to wane, though. it's kind of funny that they went through a radical buff but are almost back to being as unpopular as they were before. i guess the moral of the story is that blue-balling is an effective long-term strategy

Pretty much this, only 1 aar can be fitted and it uses cap and reps at the end of cycle. You can fit 2 or more ASB, it uses no cap and reps as you click it. Only one disadvantage being the number of boosters you can hold vs nanite paste. But that wouldnt be a consideration on a per fight basis.

Ive seen no end of rage from hawk pilots with dual or even triple asb setups crying when a small gang converges to kill them, because, it literally takes a small gang to do so in many cases.

I don't agree. I'm sorry, but to me this sounds like you have to rethink your 1v1 strategies. Gallente boats are extremely easy to control, sure you might get insane dps from blasters, but it's really easy to stay out of their range. Atron has a bonus to falloff and can hit pretty hard with null, but that's where you should consider many frigs from other races have a spare mid, and a TD with optimal range script ruins a null atron's day. Lazors will similarly ruin said day, and if he gets closer, insta swith to multifreq and outdps his null, which he can't realistically get out of mid fight.

If you brawl a blaster boat inside the 2kms, well no **** you're gonna get smashed.

Rails perform not so great in scram range compared to lasers and rockets, arties have their niche with the big alpha

Drones don't have above awesome damage application. Their application sucks. They happen to graze and miss quite a bit even on webbed targets, whilist if you're doing it right with turrets you should never miss. If you are, you're doing it wrong, simply.

Also a firetail against a comet does pretty damn well. Faster, no problem staying out of blaster range, one more mid for td or 2 webs, no problem orbiting and out tracking rails. Actually, a firetail is probably the scarier non pirate frig to a comet.

Not saying gallente ships are bad, they obviously aren't, on the contrary they have a very strong line up, unlike minnies and amarr having some pretty useless ships at the moment among them, but anyone calling them OP needs to understand their weaknesses better, and fight accordingly.

When I said gallante are OP I meant they have better ship selection compared to competition - I'm sorry I failed to mention that. They can field incu, tristan and comet (sometimes atron but it's more of a curiosity around my parts) while the other factions cannot say that. I see some hookbills. Condors and kestrels are rare. I see some RFFs (I dare say because of the price tag) and maybe some slicers. That's all. It's mostly comets now lol.

What you wrote made me redefine what I wanted to say - combination of rails/blasters and some drones allow comet to perform extremely well, and it shows in regard to it being used often and with great success.

Sure they are fits that will kill a comet. It's hard to outdps it's blasters up close, and kill it in scram-web range when it's set up for it. This is why I think it's so popular.