Are the strategic cruisers worth their price?

Question

Among all the EvE players, everyone knows the Tech3 Strategic Cruisers... but most of them doesn't want to even think of flying those, so it's pretty hard to find some relevant information.

For starters, on the PVE side, I don't see what a strategic cruiser would bring on the table that a much cheaper battleship (or drake) wouldn't.

On the PVP side, instead, I don't see the advantages of the tier 3 cruiser on the tier 2 dedicated ship.

I guess I must be missing something! Maybe there's a specific version of this cruiser that shines in its own particular way?

I'm thinking in particular about the Proteus cruiser. Since the evil gallente nerfbat (hybrid weapons), does the Proteus still have any value as a gunboat? Is it possible to have a decent non-theorical dps whilr using the interdiction nullifier and covert reconfiguration subsystems? (Viable ship for missions lvl5?)

Answer 1

Just my opinion but the only time I've ever found SC's worth the price was when doing higher end COSMOS missions (there's some that enemies continuously regenerate, forget the names), and sometimes doing wormhole rats. They're overkill for any PVE missions (lvl4's shoudl only take a decent BS fit, lvl5's youd' be a heatscore for any pirate in the area), and you'd have to be crazy or stupid to use them in PVP, unless you enjoy being primaried often.

Answer 2

For PvP they rock! look at this:

EHP: 136k
DPS: 663
SIG: 168

They have the hitpoints and firepower of a battleship with the signature of a cruiser.

Answer 3

For missioning at least, yes.

I can't speak for other SCs but the Tengu tanks better than a Drake and has more DPS (potentially over 800). All this plus them being a lot faster than a BC means they can run missions faster than anything else.