Ships & Modules

Did you try webs as well?

did u by any chance mean HML? if so, CN missiles easily pop them frigs. But imo precision missiles are the best for frigs. It takes abt 6 volleys for a spider drone for me. and about the same for elite frigs..

I would highly recommend you try HMLs then. Paper damage lags, but applied damage is much better -- and that's before you figure in the range advantage.

It's part of that whole missiles are different than turrets thing; the long range version is better at killing frigs, by far. Also: have you trained up Target Navigation Prediction?

Train a lot of skills, must have t2 ammo. Use HMLS, they are just better all around cause it can hit from 100km out with 700 dps easy sauce.

You definitely need to switch to HML's. I fly a HML Tengu for L4's and I have no trouble with frigates at all. If you switch and you still find yourself having trouble with them, just use T2 precision missiles and wait for the frigates to get close enough. 1-2 rigor rigs should be plenty, assuming your missiles skills are all 3-4 or better. If you can't use T2 HML's... train them ASAP.

HAMs in PvE are only for people who know what they're doing. In certain situations, with max skills and a good pilot, HAMs can outperform HMLs by quite a bit, but for L4 missions in particular HMLs are almost always better.

Thanks for all the info and not trolling me like I expected i would.

I'm gonna train up HML's and change my rigs up a bit. I'll report back here when things are trained (in 20 days if i remember correctly)

"Skill intensive" is a relative term. Mach does not require a single lvl5 skill to fly. Yes, it will have 5% less dps with BS at lvl4, and yes, it's still far more dps than tengu. For T3, you don't only have lvl5 racial Cruiser as prerequisite, but also a dozen lvl5 skills for 5 subsystems skills, such as electronics, engineering, missile operation/gunnery, shield operation, navigation, mechanics, etc. Their attributes are all over the place, not just perception/willpower, further increasing training time.

Speaking from experience don't give up on the tengu. As others have suggested there is a number of factors that could be causing you problems. 

-skills : make sure you are maxed in missile skills if not then wait it out till you are.
-fittings : i personally changed from a raven to a tengu when I returned a month ago. I spared no expense and fire fury missiles at everything. I know I could improve by using precision and probably will but as it stands I kill frigates fast enough. Check your fit and make sure you don't have any big mistakes like to much tank. The tengu is smaller then a BS so doesn't need the same EHP and tank as a BS because it takes less damage by default because of smaller sig radius. (I will post mine when I get onto my laptop).

The number one improvement I have seen when changing to my tengu is speed of missions. People all get EFT out and min/max tank and DPS. But in practice that officer fit marauder that has 1000 DPS will take a year to finish a L4 full of frigates. A tengu has a great balance because I find. Yes there's ships that could kill BS's faster but that time would be lost by taking longer to kill smaller ships.

Finally try heavy missiles I don't have much experience with assault missiles but I think heavy are the way to go.