Guards are supposed to be useless against a single interceptor, the Recon being one of it’s best counters. Where they come in handy is multiple interceptors. Guards rely on a team, if you operate a Guard against a single ceptor, you are using the Guard wrong.
The only time a Guard should be alone is if he flanks, or guards (both including the risk of being intercepted)
Interceptors are mostly close range, which is why guard modules can deal with a coordinated ceptor strike, by catching them near the team, applying unilateral damage, and demanding attention. He is not supposed to kill all of them, but for the ceptors, he becomes the main obstacle, while the rest of the team are supposed to clean it up.
Tacklers, especially with Gravibeamers, are great tools against Interceptors, but they lack damage output. They are, besides other ECM, and a lucky Guard slow or a superior dogfight pilot (CO, Recon) to the one sitting in the ECM, the only role that can counter an ECM, but has troubles in a 1v1, if it’s not on it’s own terms. They need, as the guard, to be part of a team.
Late usage of Tacklers with Cruise modules and drone deployment trolling however make them useless for this task, so they operate as 20% tackler, and 80% troll.
Since CO are actually also pretty strong in countering ECMs, but they have a lot more to fear on a Sec Con battlefield, and since Tacklers are still a better choice against ceptors, as long as your team has cohesion, I think the ECM spam has not to do with “countering interceptors”, rather with countering “some interceptor pilots”, and general OPness when it comes to upsides and downsides - the ECM has almost no downsides in T5 anymore, it’s fast, agile, small, tanky, has damage, has good modules, has a temporary invul, and profits from low player numbers in matches, has a custom buildable model, and so on.
so what you are saying is, you need at least 2 ships to bring down 1 ECM. In my book, that’s what is usually referred to as ‘unbalanced’ or ‘OP’. Mainly because it’s the only ship class you can’t bring down with one ship of another class in a direct confrontation.
Also about the ‘torpedo’ solution: If you catch an ECM, who is attacking you, with a torpedo the pilot just sucks. Even I never managed to catch a torpedo in an ECM, and I’m a terribad pilot. If a frigate is able to shoot a torpedo at you and hit you, you’ve done at least one of the following things:
* stood still for the past 10 seconds
* didn’t deactivate the frigate
* flown in a straight line right at the frigate (usually recons coming out of warp do this…always fun, either they hit a 'roid, a beacon or a torp)
Those are things you learn to avoid in T1.
