Whither the Rifter - Part 2 - The Tormentor

We already looked more in depth at the problems facing the Rifter, now let's look at the first of the two Amarrian candidates for tweaking, the Tormentor.

Bonuses:
10% bonus to Small Energy Turret capacitor use
5% bonus to Small Energy Turret damage

Slots: 4/3/3 with 3 turret hardpoints

Defensively, its more inclined to Armour Tanking:

The basic brawler weapon profile of the Tormentor is impressive. Three Small Focused Pulse Laser IIs with Imperial Multifrequency crystals has a 3.75 km optimal range and 2.5 km falloff and sports a theoretical damage per second of 144. This is lower damage than our Merlin and Incursus exemplars from yesterday but with longer range, plus the Tormentor can fit two small Hobgoblin II drones which add add almost another 40 DPS to push the overall to 183, which is actually higher than my two yardstick combat ships. Very nice! I can see why it has some fans.

We didn't discuss yesterday with the Rifter what the Tech II long range ammo does for our ships, but we will definitely look at it for the Tomrentor as Scorch is infamous for being awesome. The Tormentor with those big small lasers drops to 115 DPS (plus ~40 more for Drones) with 11.3 km optimal and 2.5 km falloff. The Merlin with its Light Ion Blaster IIs and Null ammo drops to 132 DPS but only 2.6 km optional and 3.5 km falloff. The Incursus suffers a similar DPS drop (to 126, 145 with drone) and same range except an extra km on the falloff due to using Light Neutrons. So the Tormentor has no issues with amount of damage or applying it, outside some slower tracking.

The downside to the Tormentor is that it lacks a tanking bonus compared to the Merlin and Incursus and it has a slower top speed meaning it has to work more  to avoid having the enemy ships slip under the tracking of its guns.

For longer range kiting using three Small Focused Beam Laser IIs with Imperial Navy Multifrequency gives a DPS of 102 at 7.5 km optimal range and 5 km falloff, plus another 39 Damage per second from the drones. That's not too shabby for fighting out of scram range, and switching to long range tech II ammo Aurora crystals gives about 60 DPS plus 39 from the drones, and 27 km optimal range. Again, the issue becomes the slower base speed of the Tormentor; what sacrifices it will have to make to ensure it can maintain the range it wants to fight at?

My Suggestions:

The Tormentor is not bad overall, but its slow base speed hinders it in the two main roles of frigate combat: 

its slow and not enough tank for brawling out of the box, and slow for keeping range in a kiting role. But I think the slowness can be overcome with fitting choices and not every ship needs a tanking bonus. SO what would I suggest? Perhaps a ship without a tanking bonus could ask for a bit more in the base speed to compensate so pilots don't have to sacrifice as much to be competitive. 

Tomorrow, the Punisher.