Missions & Complexes

If you're minmatar, the Thrasher is quite deadly. Treat it like a bigger rifter and you'll whoop 'em with small guns.

If you're fighting Angel cartel and using EM, that's not good. Use Fusion for short range.

Also, it´s Motion Prediction which improves your tracking by 5% per level.
Trajectory Analysis improves falloff by 5% per level (which is quite important as well, especially for Minmatar, though).

So "Falloff" is what you should gun for. Then why the heck is it called "Optimal Range?".

This game never ceases to confuse me.

Inflammable means flammable?

What a country!

In a stabber I found it easy when permarunning my AB and orbiting targets to actually ruin my own tracking even when fighting in falloff. As others have mentioned, fighting with a bit more range and having the frigs follow you works wonders.

Cruisers are outclassed in level 2 missions by destroyers, lack of skill just makes it worse as you can't track anything for crap. Except the Caracal, but that's only because it can shoot bonused small ammo (RSML).

Destroyers are where its at for L2s, their bonuses correlate almost perfectly to what you need in L2s, and they have 7-8 small guns, seeing as you're Minmatar, the Thrasher is downright awesome, use 250mm artillery, shield booster, afterburner, and the rest is up to you, you can alpha everything at range, and wtf tracking from destroyers bonus. If you use ACs you can get more dps but less range, and that will put you in the middle of the rat group which can be hard to tank.

This is what I use for L2/L1 blitzing and Angel epic arc (with a cloak/mwd). It's nothing short of amazing at what it does.
[Thrasher, PvE]

250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
250mm Light Artillery Cannon II, EMP S
[Empty High slot]

1MN Afterburner II
Small Shield Booster II
Cap Recharger II

Gyrostabilizer II
Gyrostabilizer II

Small Projectile Collision Accelerator I
Small Projectile Ambit Extension I
Small Projectile Metastasis Adjuster I

Obviously T1/Meta the items that you can't T2, fitting is easy and you can lose the gun rigs for tank/cap rigs if you're having trouble tanking stuff but you shouldn't as long as you take out frigs at range and speed tank cruisers with your AB.

TL:DR
Gun cruisers suck at L2s, Destroyers are where its at.

Once you're in a cruiser or bigger, you want to train up your drone skills as they take over much of the work with killing frigates. Nobody ever said they regretted training for T2 lights

The stabber can work in missions, essentially flown as a bigger rifter, but the rupture is more sturdy and forgiving, along with the reasonable drone bay


~ Edit for typos

This will work, however a destroyer can fit more small guns than most cruisers, would be sweet if the dual 180s actually acted like 2 180mm small guns rather than 1 medium gun. Fitting small guns on a cruiser will give you loads of CPU and Grid for tank but you don't really need it in a lvl 2. I upgraded to a rupture went I was running level 2 missions and most of the time ended up using my destroyer because it was faster. only used the rupture for the occasional hard one.

I used my rupture for a lot of level 3 missions as well before getting into a Cane. No matter what level missions you are running a smaller faster ship is a better option than over sizing. For example it is a major pain to do lvl 3 missions with a battleship. you rarely have a tank issue but can not hit anything. Do not under estimate the value of gun support skills. The right support skills will not only increase your DPS but will make it a lot easy to hit smaller ships.

The only level 3 mission I ever got in trouble with in my arbitrator was "my sweet privateer" and that is only because of the webs, kill them and you can tank it just fine. That is also probably the hardest l3 in the game.

All you need to tank is speed and range... Even 425s have no problem hitting mission frigs in a shield ruppy because you get some tracking enhqncers and range and fire at a distance. That and the drones really negate the need to track small things.

The stabber is also not the best choice for a mission ship, both the bellicose and rupture to better usually. Also, the vexor, thorax, arbitrator, and carcal are good choices. All or them imo need a passive shield tank, though it is possible to armor tank them, iirc I posted a vid a year or two back doing an l4 in a vexor with an armor tank.

Ummm... Guys, if he says he has problems with the frigates, what is a BC with even larger turrets going to help really? o.o For taking out small ships, drones are your friend. It can take a few days to get some skills for their DPS (Drones skill allows 1 more drone active at a single given point in time, scout drone operation lets you use the T1 drones, Drone Interfacing gives a 20% boost to DPS per level, and Drone Sharpshooting increases their optimal range)
Throw a few of these in your ship, order them to shoot the frigates, and they should go down rather easily. Just be sure to get the damage type right.