Ships & Modules

So what about an arbitrator? That ship seems just underwhelming, could use some kind of buff. What about losing one top (while keeping 2 launcher, 2 turrets options) in favor of one more mid? It currently kinda sucks as ewar or combat platform. Giving it one more mid at the cost of one top while not changing PG or CPU would open some interesting options while not being OP.

Any thoughts?

The Arbitrator is not a combat recon but a support cruiser. It's purpose is to give noobs an idea in what direction recon ships will head and see if they like it or not.
It's not a design flaw that the general tech one class is not as specialized as the recon ships themselves and they are not designed to do (much) damage.

Anyhow they WILL however disrupt any subcapital turret at low costs.

I like the mining bonus :D don't take that away. changing in into anything else useful would be a direct buff, IMHO too OP

Dude the arbitrator is awesome. Go full neuts armor rep and td. You can have so many flights of drones and do alright dps. Plus lots of people go lol arbitrator. Its like a vexor but tad worse. Still amazing

im saying the reason why it doesn't have an extra mid is exactly your reason of amarr being armour ships

To be honest there is nothing to do with legacy, the ewar drone bonus looks more obvious.

Accidental duplicate

I don't know if I agree with what has been said. The Arbitrator makes a real nasty Nano cruiser droneboat. It might not share the ability to use heavy drones as well as a Vexor, however, let's talk APPLIED dps versus paper dps.

I see a lot of 2heavy, 2medium, 1 light drone comps on vexors; they apply absolutely 0 dps to nano-fit ships moving over 2300 m/s cold, including the nano arbitrator - and generally wind up losing drones, or spend way too much time pulling them and losing dps anyway. The vexor would have to use a 5 medium drone comp and would wind up doing, well, the same dps as an arbitrator with the same SP and similar nano-fit, or the Vexor pilot with this comp would have to slingshot its target to scram/web range to apply heavy drone dps.

I will agree that if you took an buffer armor Arb and pit it against a buffer armor Vexor, yeah it will probably lose (Active vex might stil lose to a neut fit armor arbitrator) - But why are you attempting to fly the arbitrator with limited highsot options, similarly to a Gallente-class brawler when the T1 Gallente hulls were designed to excel at that?

So it's not about rebalancing, it comes down to how you fit and apply the Arbitrator. It doesn't necissarily NEED the EWAR either and it can be used primarly as a solo/small gang pvp droneboat.

Highs:
Small Neuts & 2 Rapid lights (OR)
Small Neuts & medium unstable neuts mixed (Preffered)
Mediums:
LSE II
meta 4 MWD
Warp Disruptor II
Medium Cap Booster II (keeps mwd running indefinitely)
Lows:
DCU II
x3 DDA II
Nanofiber II
Rigs:
Medium core defense field extender Is.
Drone:
1 medium group
3 Light groups

I use that fit at disrupt range and only use the neuts for small tacklers who are dumb enough to get close. It works extremely well solo and in small gangs as long as you know what fights to pick. We've taken out dozens within a single fight with only 3-5 arbitrator pilots without using any links or logi, so it's defintely not a suboptimal hull.

I dont think any balance is required, it all comes down to SP, the piloting, and the fit.

The Mining Drone bonus is entirely lagacy - if it is removed it will not (and should not) be replaced - I do not think the Arbitrator would look like a good prospect if it were to have: 7.5% bonus to Tracking Disruptor effectiveness; 10% bonus to strength of Electronic Warfare Drones...

It's like the navy BSes everyone cried about losing, so CCP retained them and they never get used. Hopefully they'll be rebalanced into something worthwhile.