Here's some feedback from someone who is also on the lower end of the curve skill-wise when it comes to PVP.
The new balance is really frustrating to me. There are very few ways to deal significant chunk damage now that don't rely on great aiming skills.
Sure, I can now deshield people. That's an improvement for certain. The problem is after I spend three quarters of my core deshielding I am left with very little possibility of dealing significant hull damage.
Missiles are incredibly wonky, and quite easily counterable. The convenient and reliable mines are gone. The fast velocity & fast refire guns can hit but only deal a tiny fraction of chip damage before one gets stuck there with an empty core.
As Godslayer noticed, against a foe of any higher skill level it evolves into an exercise in frustration where in each pass I see my shield and core emptied and hull slowly chipped away with little way to counter it other than sheer luck or meme facetank.
In case of a duel on similar skill level it just feels like an unnecessary long stalemate. Something like 15 minutes of both of us getting deshielded, missing our heavier hitting guns and staring at each other with empty cores at least half of the time.
For caps it's a similar story. Cap vs cap you spend most of your time watching that core powerbar recharge and feeling extremely underpowered. Mortars that used to be a satisfying long range artillery option are now little stings towards the huge chunk of hull points compared to their damage output.
On caps like cruisers or BCs your most efficient guns only fire backwards so you have to completely swap your playstyle compared to other caps and snubs.
Caps vs snubs it's even worse. It's similar to the bomber deathsquads we used to have a few patches back but now all the snubs are equally annoying and you have very little chance of dealing significant damage back to them. A competent snub player can now be basically untouchable if he keeps out of the effective flak / secondary / prim range, which is now significantly reduced compared to a few patches before.
As soon as a single cap leaves the safety of the fleet pack he gets eaten by a swarm of angry Piranhas (pun intended) with very little options to deal any damage in return.
