Ships & Modules

That very much depends on the type of pvp you're aiming at. If you want to get in close then obviously the Talos will be best due to tracking bonus and some drones. For kiting the Tornado will rock and in their role of fast moving, small sig fleet DPS all 4 perform just fine. Issue with the short range approach is that targets you can track well with your blasters typically are also targets which will have way more EHP than you so choosing a Talos over a Mega in this role isn't very logical.

Define the type of PVP you have in mind :)

Yes but that is the inherent problem. "PVP" is too broad a statement, some thing work great solo but not in fleets or vice versa. Some things work very well against specific targets but not against others. high sec PVP, low sec, 0.0, WH, solo, small gang and fleet PVP are ALL different and require different strategies, ships and fits. If you ask a 0.0 fleet PVPer what the best race is he'll say Amarr, if you ask a solo/small gang pvper he'll say Minmatar and if you ask an AAA member he'll say Drake.

But to make it easier on you let me make this broad statement: "the new tier 3 BCs are great for suicide ganks and can do well in properly run fleet combat against specific targets. Other than that they're balls and you shouldn't waste your isk".

i havent still used one but i'm looking at them quite deeply and what i have understood since now is:

Tornado: the best alpha and the also the fastest one. if you want on insta-pop small things undocking or at a gate , i think its the best. choise ( but also tach-oracle should be fine). Is also the best "kiting" tier 3 BC. Its fast, autocannons have good tracking, and realy good range. Can be very useful in small engagements where you have tacklers and you just orbit at 40km at 1800m/s and keep shooting.

Talos: its basically a brutix big brother. Large blasters make it have better range and DPS than the medium sized, but still you have to be a lot more closer as the other tier 3. I consider them ad a brutix with higher DPS, better range/falloff , but worse tracking. Use it as a brutix: go as close as possible and fit 2 webs to show down target as much as possible.

A talos ( wich have tracking bonus) plus 2 webs can be very dangerous also for med/small sized targets. Also the 5 small drones make the ship the "less vulnerable" to small ships from all the tier 3.
Obviously still suffer the fact that have to come close ( compared to the other tier3).

the Naga seems good versus bigger targets.. its like the talos but without tracking bonuses and drones.
Its just a personal opinion but if you want blasters at this point the tracking bonus of the talos make trivial the coise between the two. If you wan to use rails then naga is fine, but is you want to use long range guns the the oracle or the tornado should be better.

You need to be in in scram range if you are solo, but in small engagement, be able to hit with null +30km far its quite interesting. You need time to move from a target to the next one and the long range projection its nice. Sure you will not do full damage but the brutix do no damage at all

I know what you mean .. its still like a BS DPS with "glass cannon BC" EHP. Its something in the middle and in many situation its better just have a BC and on some other a BS. I think its normal for a ship that seems to be a mix of other two. Maybe its worth just for the "new toy factor" at least when the price of them become reasonable.

It's still a bit early to call it but I'm really leaning towards the naga. It can apply very heavy sustained dps at 100km+. It's pretty much in geddon/rokh territory for sniping but unlike those, it's quick and nimble too. Second goes to the tornado. Not as good at true sniping but makes for nice alpha fleets at 40-50km. The oracle isn't bad but isn't really all that special either. No comment on the talos, only seen one and it got alpha'd by some hurricanes.

Tornado, no really...

I agree with Rothgar in part, that it's too early to tell and trends have not stabilized. Though, to no surprise to me, the most popular concept seem to be based around or involve the Tornado. The alpha is a very powerful niche but they also have a number of other things going for them. To understand what those are, you need to look at the environment the ships are in.

The Tier 3 BC were designed for mobile sniping tactics. You may be able to do other things with them, and ingenuity favours the bold, but they were without a doubt designed with a clear focus in mind. The ability to go all-out gank and play very offensively can be both fun and useful in the right environment, but as much as it's fun using combat-haulers or bait with mining capitals no one would argue that they were designed for it.


Tactic-oriented design:

Mobile sniping base off a relative between reach, damage (+niche), mobility and tank. The tactics they employ use that, and that's how they intergrate into the environment. A good example is that of reach, i've used it many times before but let me reiterate: many weapon-systems (HML, L-Scorch, L-Barrage) have a cut-off point around 80km, your longest warp-to distance is 100km, your shortest warp-from distance is 150km. In your 100-150km range you want to operate with some sort of buffer. You don't want to be too close to 150km because any shift in the environment will put you into a risky range, while at the same time you can't really disengage the second something is out of your perfect ideal either - this means in reality that the range you want to operate when sniping is somewhere around 80-130km while it's still useful to be somewhat competent in a larger span both up and down so you can adapt to situations unfolding.

All these things line up and relate to each other in a relative manner. Having a powerful niche is good only as long as you don't fall way behind when it comes to keeping pace with your friends in the other aspects.


With roots in the old Sniping HAC:

The old Sniping HACs serve a good example here: Zealots and Muninns were mainly used because their reach-damage-niche-mobility-tank relative was much better than that of Eagles, Deimos or Cerberus. The Zealot did the most outright damage, with quite a decent marginal (290 while the other turret-based ships did around 220). It had a decent niche in it's ability to instantly switch ammo-type and not being forced to reload, giving it quick adaption to reach and reliable uptime. It was very fast thanks to it's slot allocation and fitting options, which also gave it a shield buffer that was still on par with everyone else. The Muninn did not have as much outright damage, but it had a very powerful niche in it's alpha and it had utility slots it could use to fill even more niche (drone bay, drone control with assignment up to effective range, or tracking ammo, drones and missiles for very good anti-frigate work at lower ranges). On top of that it had the same general mobility as the Zealot and the fitting options to use those utility slots and tank on par with the Zealot.

The Eagle had the niche of using high-damage and tracking ammo to reach about the same damage as the Muninn at ideal ranges, and could extend reach far beyond that. If that's all there was to it, it would have been a competetive ship. It may not have had as powerful a niche (tracking vs. raw damage or alpha) but it would have been a ship that could have intergrated into the environment and played to it's strength. The problem was that the ship never had the advantages or fitting options to allow it to lock as far as it could shoot without giving up damage, be fast enough to move with it's friends without giving up tank and so forth. The problem was never really Railguns or lack of a powerful niche, the problem was that it couldn't use it's niche without falling further behind and came up short in areas it had no advantages to customize around (25% less mobility, yet no tank advantage etc.). The Deimos (reach and tracking issues, raw damage closer to the Zealot but not effective, a larger drone bay, smaller rank) and Cerberus (more damage, less mobility, a delay on applying damage, equal or better tank).


On the Tier 3 BC:

The same things manifest themselves in the Tier 3 BC. The upside for the less popular ships is that this is a much more focused class than HACs ever were, which means that they enjoy similar balance benefits that things like Recons and Bombers do. The weaker options are so good at being Tier 3 BC that they are still useful. Some of the old HACs were not good enough at even being HACs so they never saw any larger use (slow HACs being caught by fast BC etc). In essence, this means that the Naga is not as helplessly slow as the Eagle and it has (now after the rail changes) a better reach-damage spread than the Eagle had when you compare it to the other Tier 3 BC. The same goes for the Talos, which is the most positive surprise among the new ships, in my oppinion. They do however still have the lingering problems attached to the fact that the Tornado not only have powerful alpha or secondary niche in falloff-bonused AC, but also a very good relative.

The ship losing the most ground compared to the old HACs is the Oracle, but the Zealot is an outstanding HAC so there's definately room for some limitations without becomming bad by comparison. It still has a nice balance and quite useful niche (the projection of scorch, or instant ammo switches along with no reloads on beam), but it also suffer some drawbacks the Zealot never did. Overall, Tier 3 BC are better balanced than SHAC, but it's no larger surprise that the Tornado and Oracle are the more popular among quality-minded groups initially. At least this time around the Naga and Talos have their own niche which some groups may come to exploit.

They're gimped because they're slow. After you've "committed fully," you will be kited and die.

Oracle has range and dps, but is still slow, which means letting kms slip away. Tornado's where it's at. Winmatar wins!