Battleships as a whole need a going over tbh. With capitals the way they are, and assault frigates being an almost direct counter to them, they are pressured on both sides and left with only really 1 ship class to effectively counter, which is battlecruisers. Battleship/capital relationship does not match the rest of EVE’s ship ecosystem. Such as, you can take a ship class smaller against something larger, and if fit correctly, can come out on top fairly consistently. There are very few, possibly no battleship that go against capitals consistently and come out on top. Anyway, that’s beside the point of your post. It does highlight some issues with BS though when people talking about a “fleet” of battleships. They can get bombed off the map, they are tracked easily by LR Titans or HAW Dreads, they can get countered by frigates and even things like Ferox can win the isk war and get comparable range w/ better tracking.
Regardless of that tangent, I do agree that i would be nice to see the “Tier 3” battleships get some more massaging.
The Abaddon did just get a buff, and technically, you can drop 1 gun for a neut now and have almost the same dps as you did before the damage buff (its like 20-30 dps less IIRC). You don’t gain a low or anything, but you do gain the utility you’re asking for. The Abaddon could really go for some more cap as a starting point.
The Rokh is so-so. Its got godawful scan resolution (93mm), which is the same as a non NSA’d nidhoggur and is less than a naglfar/rev and only 6mm higher than a phoenix. Buffing that will help it some, at least it will feel a bit livelier. Removing a gun actually makes its dps even more lethargic for a battleship, you’d probably want to move a low to a mid if anything. 5 low caldari ships are stupid for the race that is supposed to be shield focused. Since both the rokh and mael have the same layout, which makes no sense.
Also for the Rokh, to help make it more flexible and open up some new roles for it, give it 4 more missile launcher hardpoints (8 total). This means it can be fit with 8 guns or 8 missiles depending on what you want to do. They would be unbonused missiles, but it would effectively be the same thing as a Navy Raven (which also doesn’t have a missile damage bonus), but has good alpha. So it would turn into a hybrid of a Scorpion Navy Issue (shield resist) and Raven Navy Issue (Missile alpha). Which might create some new niche roles for the ship without drastically changing it as a Hybrid/Rail platform.
The Maelstrom is a bit trickier, its not necessarily a bad ship for solo or fleets, its just outclassed by other options or countered easier. It suffers from some cap issues as well and could maybe go for slightly more speed and possibly a sig reduction just to keep with minmatar flavor. Could also possibly go with a 7.5% RoF bonus to give it a sizable damage boost, but i think some smaller stat tweaks would be a better starting point for it.
