My general thought hearing rifter was getting a buff was like sweet, now after looseing a bunch on my perfect minmatar toon, i came to the conclusion it sucks even more then it did before,
even with perfect skills you can barely fit, arty ab web scram x2 gyro small ancil damage control and bulkhead rigs without running out of cpu or pg forceing you to use faction or something other, in a mods place. or just fitting cpu/pg rigs instead
from my experiance in eve, i think ccp is changeing ships and nerfing them without actually going thro various tests with the ships to find out where its key weakness is, before adding a buff, what the rifter needed more was a stat increase rather then, the slot layout change.
Arty has always been tough to fit. Requiring faction to fit isn’t necessarily bad.
Note, there are far more things to consider than just the way you like fit ships. CCP in general has done pretty good these days on balance, granted though that the Devs and players don’t always see eye to eye on what should be the focus of any given ship.
If you ask me, Rifter should’ve gotten the Punisher treatment. No, not the “11 slots while every other T1 frigate has 10 because ■■■■our own rules derp balancing is hard” part, the “four unbonused turrets” part. Give Rifter four turret slots, with two application bonuses(tracking/falloff) and keep the 4/3/3 layout.
I don’t even know what the OP is talking, tbh. I read the post, suspected nonsense, and opened Neocom on my phone. In no more than 15 min I can fit a rifter with 280mm IIs, 1 MN afterburner II, web and scram, gyrostabilizer II, and an ancillary rep.