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Brawling Assault Frigates

Brawling T2 Assault Frigates are largely a direct upgrade on the T1 Magic Merlins and Golden Horde T1 Shield/Armor brawling frigate doctrines. Indeed, they fly so similarly that rather than a separate doctrine, they should be seen rather as “upgrade” options for those doctrines, and mixed fleets of T1 and T2 frigates designed in this way can be a great way to get the firepower and effectiveness of a T2 fleet, while still including newer players

Implementation

Like their T1 variants, the Assault Frigate Brawlers aim to close range fast, get under the guns of larger ships, and devastate them with close range weapons. In general, all Assault Frigates offer a substantial, and direct upgrade on T1 ships for this purpose, offering:

• A reduced signature radius bonus which makes them even harder for big ships to hit
• Notable increases in tank and DPS
• Excellent resist profile, which lets them scale very well with Logi, particularly T2 Frigate Logi

This is obviously at the cost of a substantial increase in price and SP requirements. Below, we run through some common fits for both Armor, and Shield variants, which are often used to upgrade Golden Horde and Magic Merlin fleets respectively, as well as being run as distinct doctrines

Armor Assault Brawlers

The armor variants of the Assault Frigate Brawlers are almost ideally designed for brawling fleets such as this, and gangs of Enyos with Deacon support can be seen engaging effectively across the game, even in Sov Null Sec

The Enyo and the Retribution are arguably the preferred options here. The Enyo for its double damage bonus to Hybrid turrets, and the Retribution for its huge tank and decent pulse laser damage. The Wolf is also a solid option in an Armor tanking AC form, however tends to carry slightly less tank and DPS than the other two ships

The Ishkur and Vengeance can still be used, but are less effective in this format. The Ishkur’s bonus to drone bay space is of minimal practical use, and the Vengeance uses rockets as its primary weapons system, where the advantage of selectable damage type isn’t enough to overcome the largely poor damage output

Armor Support

If you are fielding the cost of T2 DD ships, it makes sense to match them with T2 Logistics, which are a costly but substantial upgrade on the T1 variants. The Deacon is the preferred choice – its armor resist bonus both increases its tank, while also increasing the effectiveness of friendly repairs, making it twice as effective in practice as the Thalia’s signature radius bonus which merely reduces incoming damage.

While a Command Destroyer is a nice optional extra for a T1 fleet due to its cost, once you start fielding 50mn ISK+ T2 ships, a 100mn ISK Command Destroyer becomes much more palatable, especially given its ability to drastically boost your fleet’s performance

Shield Assault Brawlers

Shield Assault frigates are more rarely used for brawling, as no ship in the lineup is fully optimized for it, while the signature radius reduction bonus for Assault Frigates is less effective when tied to shield tanks which unavoidably carry large signature radius anyway

However even ignoring certain hull bonuses, these ships remain an upgrade on T1 Magic Merlins, and can be a fun upgrade option for higher skilled players

The Harpy and Jaguar are the preferred options. The Hawk suffers from the same rocket based damage as the Vengeance, while the Wolf is more of a natural armor tanking ship with only 2 mid slots

Shield Support

Both T2 logistics ships are viable, however the Kirin tends to be preferred for its shield resist bonus rather than the Scalpel’s sig radius bonus. It does require good skills to maintain cap stability however

Of the Command Destroyers, if you aim to use purely shield tanking boosts, then either Stork or Bifrost is fine. The Bifrost offers an additional skirmish boost bonus, which gives you the flexibility to include sig tanking or speed boosts to your fleet. However the Stork is generally preferred due to its ability to combine both MJFG and MWD with a beefy shield tank, due to its 6 midslots