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)

have you ever considered trying to fly a rifter like a miniature version of the old typhoon? fit x2 125mm auto, x2 rockets, x1 mwd, x1 scram, x1 web, x1 dc, x1 adaptive nano plate, x1 400mm rolleed tungsten, x2 acr rig, x1 explosive armour rig, has good tank good damage and good range control, try taking ships out their fitting comfort zones, eg laser harpy, and yes they work really well

I know that rifter is not so underpowered as most people make it but I'm also aware of his limitations. One thing is to like to be the underdog (which in fact I do), another is to be blind.
And why those numbers? Did at least you compared those numbers with what other combat frigs can achieve? merlin, incursus, tormentor? Only thing rifter wins is in speed, and the speed advantage is very small when compared to the rest (dps/ehp/tank).

Things are way easier in a breacher, but I still prefer to fly the rifter, some kills you can get with the breacher only feel like *meh*, while the same kill with the rifter feels like it was worth *double points*.
I really don't want the superior rifter of old, but a minor buff in his speed would make it less "difficult" to fly against certain targets.

And get over yourself, it is not only you who have experience in flying and killing stuff with rifters.

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Do not remove the tracking. If the ideia is to boost dps just switch damage with rof.
The thing I would like the most was a speed boost, but a combat frig should not touch the speed of an attack frig, so the speed boost would have to be a very small one (5-15m/sec).

Making it a bit faster might help, but wouldn't go very far to answer the question of why you should fly a rifter instead of a slasher.