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Rifter-Punisher-Tormentor rebalance
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Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#1 - 2013-05-05 12:07:33 UTC
While frigate tierside was overall a great thing, some frigates are left behind.
3 frigates in the title need to be brought in line with others, i want to point out what they lack and suggest fix.

Rifter and Punisher.

They have weaknesses of their own, but one thing in common.
You remember that "top tier" frigates before rebalance had 4 high and 6 low+med slots. After balancing merlin and incursus got 3 high and 7 low+med . Now they are both great as they are, high slot for neut or nos is fine, but low and med are much more useful.

So as a first step both Rifter and Punisher should lose high and get a med slot. both would need some CPU buff at the same time.

more details about each of them:


  • Rifter

It is iconic ship for eve, feels sad that it's underpowered now. Rifter lacks DPS and tank.
adding med slot would help with tank.
Rifter had nice DPS before change of other frigates, but now Incursus, merlin and arton can all do 200 DPS with single damage mod, overload and faction ammo. Rifter can't even get close to that.

As a solution it could drop tracking bonus and get +5% damage bonus per level.
As a result rifter would:
1) do comparable damage to other combat frigates, while still have less tank
2) Be in line with rupture/cane/tempest/naglfar


  • Punisher

Biggest disadvantage of punisher is lack of med slot. cookie cutter fit of pretty much any other frigate (AB + web + scram) can get under punisher's lasers and actually speed tank it. other guns also suffer from transversal at close range, but lasers track worse of all, so at close range punisher just can't apply damage.

Unlikely to rifter, punisher does not need bonus change. it already gets cap boost in odyssey, combined with great tank it has now + 3-rd med slot it will be great combat frigate:
1) Punisher would do less damage than other combat frigs, but apply it anywhere in web range
2) have really good tank (even after resist nerf)


  • Tormentor

Just check the market, tormentor is cheapest and most underused frigate. It just can't fit anywhere, lacks DPS and speed to be a gank ship, can fit 400mm plate but no tank bonus still hurts.
I don't think that CCP should fix it, instead they need to completely change it.
All other races get 2 flavors of PVP frigates, while Amarr get only laser boats. to break this inconsistency turn tormentor into drone boat.

remove one low slot, give it drone HP/tracking or speed bonus. keep 3 gun hardpoints but instead of DPS, give tracking/optimal/cap usage bonus.

After that tormentor will be in line with Dragoon/Arbitrator/Prophecy and soon Geddon.
It is strange actually that there is only one T1 drone frigate in game

Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#2 - 2013-05-05 12:10:15 UTC
Summary of above:

Rifter gets damage + rof bonus and +1 med slot.
slots:
H - 3
M - 4
L - 3

Punisher gets +1 med slot, no bonus change
slots:
H - 3
M - 3
L - 4

Tormentor becomes a drone boat, with non-DPS bonused guns (like Tristan)
slots:
H - 3
M - 3
L - 3

After that those ships will be in line with other frigates.
ExAstra
Echoes of Silence
#3 - 2013-05-05 12:57:37 UTC
While reading this I couldn't help but translating it to:

"Remember a few months back, when if the frigate you were flying wasn't a rifter, you were doing it wrong? Yeah, let's go back to that."

I've flown the Punisher several times and it's a really good frigate to be honest. It can often get away with not fitting a webifier due to the magic of Scorch. A third medium would really be good for it but I'm not so sure it's a "requirement" to consider the ship as good.

And since I'm Gallente I'm 100% biased in favor of NOT giving the bastard Amarrs another **** drone boat.

Save the drones!
Jonas Sukarala
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#4 - 2013-05-05 13:07:45 UTC  |  Edited by: Jonas Sukarala
theres no point in rifter being shield tank as the slasher is just plain better in that role ... so CCP are taking the rupture route of omni tank and frigates need tracking bonus.

punisher is tanky brawler but lasers don't track very well so its a odd combo.
which suggests its more of a poor mans slicer so perhaps a rethink of its bonus to a range or cap bonus and then focus on buffing its mobility making it more of an attack frig and make the tormentor the tanky one with the resists.

tormentor i think would suit being a droneboat so long as its weaker than the tristan at it but more tanky in exchange.

'Tech3 ships need to be put down, like a rabid dog drooling everywhere in the house, they are out of line' CCP Ytterbium Nerf missile range into place where is the TD missile change?  ..projectiles should use capacitor. ABC's should be T2 HABC and nerf web strength its still too high

Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#5 - 2013-05-05 13:36:13 UTC  |  Edited by: Tub Chil
ExAstra wrote:
While reading this I couldn't help but translating it to:

"Remember a few months back, when if the frigate you were flying wasn't a rifter, you were doing it wrong? Yeah, let's go back to that."

I've flown the Punisher several times and it's a really good frigate to be honest. It can often get away with not fitting a webifier due to the magic of Scorch. A third medium would really be good for it but I'm not so sure it's a "requirement" to consider the ship as good.

And since I'm Gallente I'm 100% biased in favor of NOT giving the bastard Amarrs another **** drone boat.

Why would it be like that? rifter would spend both bonuses to catch up with DPS, while having no tank bonus like other combat frigs.
ExAstra wrote:
It can often get away with not fitting a webifier due to the magic of Scorch.

I'm not sure why you brought up scorch, I was talking about punisher's inability to track targets at close range. how does scorch help here? and as punisher can't control range, what is benefit of good optimal that scorch gives?

Jonas Sukarala wrote:
theres no point in rifter being shield tank as the slasher is just plain better in that role ... so CCP are taking the rupture route of omni tank and frigates need tracking bonus.
.

Sorry, i don't get your logic here. slasher is better in tanking NOW, it is attack frigate and not supposed to overtank combat rifter. after change rifter would tank better as it has more raw EHP.
What is your argument, why should an attack frigate tank better and have same damage as combat frigate?
Jonas Sukarala wrote:

punisher is tanky brawler but lasers don't track very well so its a odd combo.
which suggests its more of a poor mans slicer so perhaps a rethink of its bonus to a range or cap bonus and then focus on buffing its mobility making it more of an attack frig and make the tormentor the tanky one with the resists.

Punisher is nothing like slicer as it is, making it a "poor man's slicer" is another approach, but it's too extreme. why change role of the ship entirely?
sten mattson
Red Sky Morning
The Amarr Militia.
#6 - 2013-05-05 13:36:57 UTC
tbh the tormentor is great as it is!

its the only amarrian frigate that reaches 170 dps , granted that you have both good gunnery and drone skills and know how to position yourself.

i agree on the punisher , any frigate can speed tank it provided they have a web and AB , but that weakness is more tied to lazors more than the ship itself (more tracking to lazors!)

if you cant win in a rifter , you're doing it wrong imho, except maybe against an incursus.

IMMA FIRING MA LAZAR!!!
Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#7 - 2013-05-05 13:54:13 UTC
sten mattson wrote:

if you cant win in a rifter , you're doing it wrong imho, except maybe against an incursus.


Please share combat environment, fit and and tactics for this rifter
Jonas Sukarala
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#8 - 2013-05-05 14:29:36 UTC
Tub Chil wrote:
ExAstra wrote:
While reading this I couldn't help but translating it to:

Jonas Sukarala wrote:
theres no point in rifter being shield tank as the slasher is just plain better in that role ... so CCP are taking the rupture route of omni tank and frigates need tracking bonus.
.

Sorry, i don't get your logic here. slasher is better in tanking NOW, it is attack frigate and not supposed to overtank combat rifter. after change rifter would tank better as it has more raw EHP.
What is your argument, why should an attack frigate tank better and have same damage as combat frigate?
[quote=Jonas Sukarala]
punisher is tanky brawler but lasers don't track very well so its a odd combo.
which suggests its more of a poor mans slicer so perhaps a rethink of its bonus to a range or cap bonus and then focus on buffing its mobility making it more of an attack frig and make the tormentor the tanky one with the resists.

Punisher is nothing like slicer as it is, making it a "poor man's slicer" is another approach, but it's too extreme. why change role of the ship entirely?


well you're also missing the speed of the slasher too so even with more shield HP rifter still wouldn't necessarily tank better
Well a brawler with no web is a bit odd really so with scorch being so good at projection it makes sense to give it a range bonus instead or give it a 3rd mid one or the other.

'Tech3 ships need to be put down, like a rabid dog drooling everywhere in the house, they are out of line' CCP Ytterbium Nerf missile range into place where is the TD missile change?  ..projectiles should use capacitor. ABC's should be T2 HABC and nerf web strength its still too high

Drake Doe
88Th Tax Haven
#9 - 2013-05-05 14:58:45 UTC
I'd rather the tormentor be changed into the repairing platform and the inquisitor be changed back to normal with a 20/50 drone bay.

"The homogenization of EVE began when Gallente and Caldari started sharing a weapon system."---Vermaak Doe-- "Ohh squabbles ohh I love my dust trolls like watching an episode of Maury with less " Is he my Dad " but more of " My Neighbor took a dump on my lawn " good episode! pops more corn" ---Evernub--
ExAstra
Echoes of Silence
#10 - 2013-05-05 15:20:08 UTC  |  Edited by: ExAstra
Tub Chil wrote:
ExAstra wrote:
While reading this I couldn't help but translating it to:

"Remember a few months back, when if the frigate you were flying wasn't a rifter, you were doing it wrong? Yeah, let's go back to that."

Why would it be like that? rifter would spend both bonuses to catch up with DPS, while having no tank bonus like other combat frigs.

In case you weren't aware, there is NEVER a situation where an autocannon ship can compare DPS with a blaster ship. Even the OLD Rifter didn't get anywhere near the OLD Incursus' Damage capabilities. The difference was that the Rifter's superior tracking, range flexibility, damage type flexibility, and relatively decent tank made it an obvious choice over /any/ other frigate. Now, the Incursus' can utilize its increased damage capabilities better due to the Hybrid tracking buff and tiercide. Picking between one or the other is no longer the "No questions asked" choice it used to be. Which is a good thing.
Tub Chil wrote:
ExAstra wrote:
It can often get away with not fitting a webifier due to the magic of Scorch.

I'm not sure why you brought up scorch, I was talking about punisher's inability to track targets at close range. how does scorch help here? and as punisher can't control range, what is benefit of good optimal that scorch gives?

I think the better question here is, why are you using Pulse lasers without Scorch? First off you get to change damage types instantly so the obvious route with the Punisher is using Scorch (hopefully) well outside your foe's engagement range. The (few, admittedly) seconds you have of kiting tend to punch a nice hole in whatever you're fighting (sorry, I'm assuming an enemy frig here everyone) and you get to instantly swap out to your Imp Navy Multis and continue ravaging them. Its sheer tankiness is unmatched by other frigates and honestly when they're fit and flown well, they do well. Not being able to win every fight all the time doesn't make a ship underpowered. Being able to win every fight all the time makes it overpowered. I honestly liked the Punisher before tiercide and I don't see much wrong with it afterwards either.

Save the drones!
Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#11 - 2013-05-05 15:34:36 UTC
Quote:
Tub Chil wrote:
ExAstra wrote:
It can often get away with not fitting a webifier due to the magic of Scorch.

I'm not sure why you brought up scorch, I was talking about punisher's inability to track targets at close range. how does scorch help here? and as punisher can't control range, what is benefit of good optimal that scorch gives?

I think the better question here is, why are you using Pulse lasers without Scorch? First off you get to change damage types instantly so the obvious route with the Punisher is using Scorch (hopefully) well outside your foe's engagement range. The (few, admittedly) seconds you have of kiting tend to punch a nice hole in whatever you're fighting (sorry, I'm assuming an enemy frig here everyone) and you get to instantly swap out to your Imp Navy Multis and continue ravaging them. Its sheer tankiness is unmatched by other frigates and honestly when they're fit and flown well, they do well. Not being able to win every fight all the time doesn't make a ship underpowered. Being able to win every fight all the time makes it overpowered. I honestly liked the Punisher before tiercide and I don't see much wrong with it afterwards either.

Buddy i don't even get why you had to go there
My point was:
Punisher uses a weapon system that tracks quite bad, so it can't apply damage at close range
to compensate that it needs to slow target down, to do that it needs web.

Do you disagree with that? i am on sisi now, fight me in punisher, and let's see damage log after fight.
ShahFluffers
Ice Fire Warriors
#12 - 2013-05-05 16:35:30 UTC  |  Edited by: ShahFluffers
Tub Chil wrote:
My point was:
Punisher uses a weapon system that tracks quite bad, so it can't apply damage at close range
to compensate that it needs to slow target down, to do that it needs web.

The point behind lasers as a weapon system is that they have poor tracking at close range compared to other weapon systems but superior range.

As ExAstra pointed out... if you are not playing into the advantage that Scorch ammo brings then you are doing something wrong.

And besides... some ships are not supposed to be particularly ganky. The Punisher is a good example as it's basically a brick that happens to deal damage. I'm looking at a fit that has 10k ehp, deal about 100 DPS at 10+ kms (120+ at close range), and can burn at about 2100 m/sec. Can you say, "heavy tackle?"

The Tormenter, while it has a little more DPS but half as much tank, can use that third mid-slot to fit a capacitor booster. With it you can kite things at about 10+ kms for a LONG time.


The Rifter... I can agree that it need a bit of a buff. Just a little more CPU and/or Powergrid... but it's still a good, flexible ship. I have a dual prop fit here with 200mm ACs and a meta 4 rocket launcher that looks positively MEAN. Twisted

How did you Veterans start?
Ines Tegator
Serious Business Inc. Ltd. LLC. etc.
#13 - 2013-05-05 18:49:28 UTC
Do not, for the love of all that is Holy, Golden and Phallic, take away my Punisher's cap warfare. It's one of the defining aspects of the ship.

A better solution is to make nos/neut more useful on frigate size ships, giving the ships that already have a utility high something useful to put there. Extending small NOS out to scram range would take care of that one; neut I'm not sure about. The ships were rebalanced assuming that utility high slots are valuable; for various meta reasons, currently they are not. Fix that, you fix the ships.

Overhaul Dscan!
Tub Chil
Deep Core Mining Inc.
Caldari State
#14 - 2013-05-05 18:51:30 UTC  |  Edited by: Tub Chil
ShahFluffers wrote:
Tub Chil wrote:
My point was:
Punisher uses a weapon system that tracks quite bad, so it can't apply damage at close range
to compensate that it needs to slow target down, to do that it needs web.

The point behind lasers as a weapon system is that they have poor tracking at close range compared to other weapon systems but superior range.

As ExAstra pointed out... if you are not playing into the advantage that Scorch ammo brings then you are doing something wrong.

And besides... some ships are not supposed to be particularly ganky. The Punisher is a good example as it's basically a brick that happens to deal damage. I'm looking at a fit that has 10k ehp, deal about 100 DPS at 10+ kms (120+ at close range), and can burn at about 2100 m/sec. Can you say, "heavy tackle?"

The Tormenter, while it has a little more DPS but half as much tank, can use that third mid-slot to fit a capacitor booster. With it you can kite things at about 10+ kms for a LONG time.


The Rifter... I can agree that it need a bit of a buff. Just a little more CPU and/or Powergrid... but it's still a good, flexible ship. I have a dual prop fit here with 200mm ACs and a meta 4 rocket launcher that looks positively MEAN. Twisted


ExAstra was actually interested enough in this topic to fight me in punisher on sisi.

He also used your logic that "if you are not playing into the advantage that Scorch ammo brings then you are doing something wrong"
needless to say that this logic fails because you can't control range in punisher, so he died twice. he brought MWD punisher, and energy neut. I had Ab fitted incursus. he could not kite propely, so i scrammed him. as soon as i saw neut icon, i pulled range, switched to null and slowly wore him down.

Punisher can't use scorch effectively because:
1) no web
2) no speed + optimal to sit comfortably outside of scram range.

I don't really like your argument about "heavy tackler". this is exactly the same thing as people were saying about old Maller and prophecy. ships with limited role of bait are terrible. I'm not even saying anything about other ships that can also do that, dual rep cap injecting incursus tanks amazing amount of incoming damage. and is faster than 2100 m/s

Now about rifter, it is "flexible" but not enough to kill new kings of the hill, incursus and merlin. it has speed, so it overlaps with attack frigates a little bit, but i don't see scenario where if would be really useful. For example where will your dual prop rifter be more effective than say merlin? where does it excell? is it better tackler than attack frigates? would it do enough damage to quickly gank something? I mean quickly because most other frigates will pull range when you have no web.

about tormentor now, are you really going to kite something with tormentor? one of the slowest frigates with no range bonus? even AB frigs have a chace to catch you when they change dicetion and start burning to you with overheated AB and scram. It could work under very specific scenarios. where your target is AB fitted, incompetent or both. but ANY mwd frigate would kill you and i generally don't see reason to kite in tormentor.
ShahFluffers
Ice Fire Warriors
#15 - 2013-05-05 19:07:32 UTC
I'm intimately familiar with the Incursus and how it performs. Regardless of how a Punisher is fitted (even with an extra mid slot) the Incursus will win in sub-7 km brawls against any frigate and even most destroyers... all due to it's active tank bonus. Try taking a Tristan against a Punisher. Or a non ASB-fit Merlin. You'll get very different results.

As for the Maller and Prophecy comment... that was not was I was referring to. What I meant was "a decently fast ship that can grab other ships at range and has enough EHP to live until backup arrives." Being "bait" is something completely different.

How did you Veterans start?
Vayn Baxtor
Brutor Tribe
Minmatar Republic
#16 - 2013-05-05 19:23:20 UTC
I just find that in today's world of EVE, you need ships to be excellent in a particular field, with something distinctive and they should not be lacking. I'm not certain what to suggest for the Punisher because there are clearly subjects that get in the way as soon as one suggests something. Put something here and then there is a new hole.



As usual, I'd be suggesting something more defining for the mentioned ships so we could get rid of these specific issues that just keep coming; those issues like "that ship does that task better than the other ship" we keep seeing.

I was just going to post something about a counter-suggestion to the Tormentor, but then forgot that there are people who do fancy the ships bonuses after all. Had an idea of it going back to light missiles - whilst giving it and similar missile frigates fitting access to Rapid Missile Launchers; there could at least be more hurt on targets like drones and frigates. Then again, this is silly for Amarr - especially now that the missile bonus had been removed in favor of lasers.

It is just so that a change like that would not have it have to be trying to chase things down like other frigates. But I know people won't really like that one, so might as well scratch it.


The other idea I had in mind would have been to make it more of a sniper, meaning a decent range bonus to laser, replacing either the current bonuses (pick your poison). Add a small penalty to tracking speed to balance out for the extra range. Perhaps that is more appealing to ones' eyes.


I can only say that Rifter really needs a change. So far, I've been for "RoF/Damage bonus; there for a bit more paper/less hp" - it would have fangs but would be vulnerable. Heck, I'd say move a medslot down for a Lowslot. While I enjoy the playstyle and idea of an armor tanky Rifter, Minmatar is simply about speed at first hand. Being fast and papertank should suffice enough.

Using tablet, typoes are common and I'm not going to fix them all.

ExAstra
Echoes of Silence
#17 - 2013-05-05 19:31:25 UTC  |  Edited by: ExAstra
Yes, I was interested and decided to fight. But you're making the ship look and sound worse off than I really think it is.

For one, both times my kiting failed were due to manual piloting fail on my end. Once while webbed I was running MWD at half speed (I was at 9.5km at the time) and even while webbed the ship moved faster overheated than the Incursus. In the first fight I was too busy goofing off with your drone to notice that you had creeped up under 10km.

So, fail on my part there.

In the first fight the ship performed quite well even after being scrammed and webbed. After swapping to Navy Multifrequency the ship had little trouble landing shots. The real issue was that it didn't have enough outright DPS to break through your active tanked Incursus.

In the second fight (active tank) the main issue was with the Punisher's capacitor draw from both guns and SAR II.

For what it's worth, I felt mostly that:
1) I botched up the kiting (I was in complete control of range until the mistakes I listed above)
2) The inability to control range made the utility high less useful at the brawl stage (as opposed to the guns, which you were originally discussing)
3) Small Pulse Laser range left a bit to be desired in the optimal range department. No margin for error or safety with Scorch and Conflag is broken [it should operate more like Void imo (increased optimal range over Antimatter/multi at reduced tracking)]

And to be honest, me botching up the kiting process was the most crucial point to your victory in both situations. If kited properly the Punisher would have easily outlasted your cap while staying completely outside your ranges. Just needs a better pilot.

Edit: I will also be outright honest and say I didn't pay much attention to the frigate tiercide and paid way more attention to the cruiser tiercide. I didn't even know the Incursus got an active rep bonus.

Save the drones!