I've had a Rook in my various hangers for a long time now, I think I've been able to T2 fit one for over a year now - but I haven't flown them much. I think I only have about 20 kills in a Rook. But within the last week or so I've been flying it more often and gaining new respect for this ugly little ship. (Although the red stripes are badass.)
Like all ships in Eve the Rook is good for some things and not so good for others. The Rook is perfect for small gang warfare, which is what I enjoy doing, fleets of 4 to 8 pilots. You'd never take a Rook solo or with 2-3 people (Although depends on the other ships) but mostly it's the perfect small gang insurance policy. With a Rook in your gang your odds of winning a fight have increased dramatically. Unless you have the bad fortune to jump into a 40 man gang, more than likely the majority of your team will survive and the enemy will not. That sounds confident doesn't it?
I know what you know friends. Nothing is a sure thing in this crazy universe. Let's just take that as read ok? But let's examine a few obvious points here. A Rook isn't as much primary bait as the Falcon, it has better survivability skills (minus that damn cloak), and better range for both jamming and shootin'. Plus a decent drone bay (5x lights) which you can choose to fill ecm drones or warriors - I choose warriors in case I need to kill that little bastard in the Interceptor.
The other day a few of us jumped a Abaddon, the poor guy never even had a chance to shoot anyone. He landed, I jammed him and that was all she wrote. Because he was alone I just went ahead and poured all four ECMs into him, as well as nearly 6k dps. He landed jammed and he died jammed. So sad.
I'm a fit fiddler and I rarely arrive at what I consider to be "the fit" on anything. My criteria isn't based on other people's opinions or on BattleClinic (Although certainly I start there.) but on proven field experience. Did it work? Why didn't it work? Fiddle fiddle, try again. So I'll share with you the battle tested small gang fit I've been using for my Rook.
High
5x Heavy Missile Launcher II
Med
1x Large Shield Extender II
1x Invulnerability Field II
4x ECM - Multispectral Jammer II
1x 10MN WicroWarpdrive II
Low
1x Damage Control II
1x Signal Distortion Amp II
1x Power Diagnostic System II
RIG
1x Medium Particle Dispersion Projector
1x Medium Anti-EM Screen Reinforcer
Drones
5x Warrior II
I get about 17k ehp with high resists across the board. It can lock from 200k away but the jammers are 40k optimal with about 60k falloff for multis. You can mix and match the ECM all you want, but generally I just go with the multis. I know people that will scream at me about that and I know all about the racials (I use those on my Scorpion) and the metas. But this is a small gang ship and those 4 multis make more sense than one each of the racials. Small gang fights are short, nasty and to the point. They haven't let me down yet. And in my book, that's the most important thing.
The most important stat of all? I haven't lost a single Rook.