Does Candle in a Hurricane still royally suck?

[Duke Flapjack]

It's been probably about 18 months or so since I played a Romulan far enough to get to this mission. I remember it was hands-down the worst mission I had played in the game in any of the campaigns. It was tedious. The Elachi have super shields that would take me hours to grind down. I think each wave took somewhere around 30 minutes each to kill. I think I finally ended up spamming mines all over the map and it still took me around three hours to finish.

I ask because I am going to be doing this awful mission tomorrow. The ONLY reason I am not skipping it is because the rewards are very nice. Should I stock up on transphastic stuff? Or has that miserable mission finally been nerfed a bit?

And please don't bother telling me how awful I apparently am because I don't have the patience to fly in circles for three hours. This is a terribly designed mission and I hate it.