The problem with missiles is they are limited. I will run out in a simulator-sized battle, even with Expanded Missile Racks. I generally avoid missile boats, and build for endurance, which missiles aside from Salamanders or Pilums are poor at. If you want a missile boat, that is good. If you want a blaster ship bigger than Medusa, your only viable options (before 0.7.2) were Eagle or Paragon.
What the Aurora is left now with is Heavy Blaster spam; flux-heavy and flux-inefficient which greatly reduces its survivability, and which uses relatively short-ranged weaponry, ensuring it'll be taking fire from anything it engages that's larger than a destroyer. Not a good combination. It can use an Antimatter-blaster burst build, which phase ships are inherently much better at. Or, it can mount a bunch of Harpoons and Atropos torpedoes and be a tankier Gryphon with crippled offensive capability.
I do not disagree that Aurora was weakened overall, despite getting better with blasters.
This is why I consider Dominator best-in-class for cruisers. Only Reaper Aurora could compete, but that is gone (not enough shots from Typhoon). With tons of dual flak, even Onslaught may be better than Paragon for capitals.
Yes, blasters are flux hogs. Aurora has the stats to do it well, or at least better than Eagle now. Eagle could do it if built for it, but is unforgiving with mistakes in any case.
P.S. What I mean by melee specialist is the ship is optimized for fighting with short-ranged (energy) weapons. Melee is
not a good thing to do in Starsector, but if that is the best the ship you want can do, and you need to use it (due to lack of better options available), you build for it (e.g., Safety Override, use weapons with range of 500 or less) despite that weakness.