What ships rely on flares to be competitive? The Ragnarok is a heavy bomber whose pvp role is to take out station turrets and cap ships. The taur is a trade ship that just happens to be good at combat so having its combat lowered back to it's in game description does not seem like much of a loss to me. Hogs generally only use one flare anyways so they aren't losing anything and a posi hog is arguebly just as effective.

(Late edit on my last post)

Shapes suggestion is pointing in the direction of the real solution here which is to add more tools to increase situational awareness. Even if it's not about revealing your enemies loadout, simply increasing the visual or even the audible warning of flares coming at you could go a long way towards balancing the situation. Instead of a tiny yellow dot, make flares more noticable on the radar, or make them much much louder so you can hear them coming from further away. Things like this could fix the real problem without eliminating the viability of other flare using ships/loadouts.

All prom variants for one would suffer even more from a flare nerf.

All revenant variants would become even less used.

All marauder variants, already a poor man's valk, would become jokes.

At the risk of getting off topic, I don't think concluding that the rag and centaur shouldn't be used in fighter v fighter pvp anyways, so nerfing their loadouts isn't a problem is a good way to go.

So theoretically, a flare nerf takes 5 ships out of competitive PvP, 3 if you don't count the rag and cent. Not good for the variety that people seem to want. Not to mention you're then left with vults, cents, craptors... and valks. Which leaves the real problem untouched. A predominance of valks as they're the best option of those four.

I think flares are pretty well balanced, but this is an interesting discussion. As others have mentioned, the prox fuse on the flares is a double-edged sword; it's easy to hit an unintended ship or to hit yourself with the splash if you're not careful, especially in a furball.

When I am hit by a flare I do one of three things:

A natural recovery, where I turn in the opposite direction of motion of the flare's force; turning directly into the target.

A backside (quick) recovery, using the flare's momentum to turn a full 360 degrees. I use the radar as guidance for this, and find it works best when my nose has been turned by more than 90 degrees by the flare; turning in a complete circle.

A turbo evasion: this works best when my nose has been turned exactly 90 degrees by the flare, or when either of the first two methods are not the best option. When surrounded by hostiles I tend to turbo out of the way immediately after being hit.

When sliding up to an opponent who is not directly engaging me I tend to approach from a 90 degree angle and as I get in close, strafe away from the target's nose while aiming slightly in front of the target.

I've also seen VO PvP go through phases where it seems like one or two tactics are preferred. However, simply because a tactic is preferred does not necessarily make it overpowered. I find a pretty good counter to a dual flare Valkyrie is a dual adv rail Corvult / Cent C.

Now I've told you all my secrets I guess I'll never be able to use them again. :)

/nerf Phaserlight

there is not only 1 type of energy weapon being used widely in pvp 1v1 or group

Apples and oranges, peypey. There's a much greater diversity in energy weapon types than flare types, which have no diversity at all. There's only one 'tree' of dumbfire S-port weapons, and it's unsurprising people pick the sunflares at the top of it.

Similarly, though there are three core 'trees' of energy weapons (Neuts, Posis, Gauss), nobody who has access to AAPs plays with regular posis; nobody who has LENBs uses N2s when it counts; nobody who likes gauss uses anything but gauss III if they can help it.

That is not true, many people think that NeutIII are trash compared to NeutII because of the higher energy drain and the existence of LENB.

If that is indeed the case, then we need other trees of dumbfire rockets to solve this problem and break from the grind of 2x sunflare being the only used combination. That's what I think needs to come of this.

Compare, if you will:

nobody who has LENBs uses N2s when it counts

and

That is not true, many people think that NeutIII are trash compared to NeutII because of ... the existence of LENB.

Reading - try it some time. Notice I omitted N3s because everyone acknowledges that they're more or less a total joke. Personally, I will equip LENBs 100% of the time I have them, and only use N2s if I don't. As you say, I would pick N2s over N3s because the N3s are crap. But N2s still aren't at the top of the Neut weapon tree.

Lecter:

Well, a well designed set of weapons relies on multiple dimensions of variation, so that each weapon can carve out a niche.

The relationship between LENB's and N2's is actually (I think) the best example of weapon design in the game so far.

My typical rig is Corvult, Heavy Battery, 1xLENB, 1xN2

I prefer this for energy usage, spread and total damage. The best DPS arrangement would be 2xN2 but they're not fast enough, or light enough to make that an effective dueling platform.

The best arrangement for my aim would be 2xLENB, if I line it up, they'll both hit. However, they bleed energy, and so my damage per battery load drops. Making it much harder to kill someone in a chase.

There is, of course, the side benefit that I can use both to target at the same time, giving them 2 poor options, one coming in front, one coming from behind.

I can't think of any other pair of weapons which are so similar and yet fulfill such vastly different roles.