In the past month, OP, you’ve died to two Tristans. One that had Stealth Bomber back-up while you were flying an AC Punisher, one while you were flying a flimsy brawling MWD/TD Breacher. So what is the context for this thread?
While I do agree the tristan is the best T1 frigate (And even the naysayers know it.), it’s not night and day better than any other frigate, it just happens to have a slight edge over everything else. I will agree though that the nerf did need to be a bit larger than the laughable mass increase they gave it. But it doesn’t need a massive nerf bat like some ships do.
The problem with the Tristan is that it can do anything. Literally anything. Shield kiter, armor brawler, cap warfare, all these fits will work on a Tristan. That makes Tristans rather difficult to predict at a glance because, well, Tristans can do anything.
Last time I played the game, about half a year ago, I usually have to check killboards on pilots to figure out what’s the most likely fit they are flying at any given moment. Tristans are just that versatile that you can’t just tell what fit it’s likely going to be just by looking at slot layouts and bonuses.
Regardless of if you got killed by Tristans that had support or not, nerfs and buffs should be taken slowly, hammer something too hard and it will be obsolete, buff something too much and there is no point in using any other thing. Touching something bit by bit is preferable to see how it fairs, not to mention that with a game where you got a load of skills, playstyles and different modules to use and experiment with in every other ship it will be hard to find a solid fix to the problem.