Doogan said:
The Drake probably remains my favorite vessel in Eve Online. Excellent for various PVE tasks and in PVP it is a surprisingly versatile ship. Properly outfitted it can deliver a dozen volleys of heavy missiles against another BC before even being threatened or it can be built as a close range brawler that has surprising firepower and durability. Shame that no matter what you do it's a bit slow though.
As an alternative there was always the cerberus - the only Caldari response to the nano fleets save the always unpopular for caldari ships spider tank options. And to this day you'll not find a better answer to drones of all sorts and frigates of any stripe.
Another favorite of mine was the Harpy. I flew a number of them outfitted with select deadspace officer gear (at the time, the investment of 10 million isk was a worthy cause) as part of an anti-pirate effort in a section of lowsec. Surprisingly heavily gunned for a caldari frigate and the bonuses meant I could load my set of 125mm railguns with anti-matter ammo. Some scoffed at the use of a Deadspace Afterburner rather than the bog standard Micro-Warp Drive but the ship could still pull in excess of 1k/s - fast enough to keep up with most things cruiser or larger. The deadspace shield booster was another part that people often wondered about but given the purpose of the vessel, viability in 1v1 was more important than those "oh crap!" moments.
All told, the vessel not only provided tackling and sometimes outright destruction of ships far heavier, it also shredded most interceptors and frigates with ease. Hell, once it even claimed an assault missile armed Caracal in solo in a nail biting 5 minute battle that stretched the ship to the absolute limit.
Not the best ship I flew but it remains the one I had the most fun in. What's more, even though the price tag was staggering for the size (fully fitted it was a 40 million isk vessel with no insurance worth a damn), by the time I started flying them it was relatively trivial to replace.