is it me or is ships completely worthless?

What/who are you playing against?

Biggs ship is a good tank as well if you can't farm Bossk's HT.

I'm only seeing my ships not lasting long enough in the last hard battle nodes.

arena is the issue. dude ive tried them all lol nothing works... the biggs vader, tie combo dies almost instantly, the genosian combo sometimes works but not all the time i have 5* HT and he died probably within 4-5 hits, FO ships (both kylos and SF tie and FO Tie they fall within seconds)max boba dies within 2-3

Its u

It all depends on what youre fighting againt. If youre solely concentrating on getting a defensive fleet, your opponents have no reason to be afraid of your attacking capabilities, therefore they can bring in the heavy dmg glass cannons, which will indeed burst anything.
Maybe if you throw in some dmg yourself, you turn around the table and make them bring in tank after tank.

A 7* ht is a good start for defense, but pair it with dmgers, not 2 more tanks.

What gear level are your pilots? High gear makes a massive difference. If your ships die easy then it sounds lime that may be the issue.

My G12 Biggs with no g12+ pieces usually survives until super against top fleets.

It's you.

The ships you're talking about are all glass cannons. Sure, they hit for a whole bunch but they also drop in two hits. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that when you're talking about First Order ships you're talking about Silencer and Tie Fighter, but not about Command Shuttle, which is one of the better reinforcements in the game but sees no play because the perception is that it's useless and requires "bad pilots."

Fleet isn't useless. The dogmatic "It's not squad arena, therefore it's bad and no one should do it" mentality is what's useless.

If you don’t like zeta mats or crystals or finishing some missions in TB’s then yes, ships are worthless.

It's you.

You can't just level any random ships and expect to do well. Further, you can't just copy someone's top fleet and then throw it on auto. You need to think about all the mechanics in play, especially if Hound's Tooth is in the mix. Here's an example:

My starting fleet is TIE Silencer, First Order TIE, and Hound's Tooth under Executrix. All maxed (except a few ability levels on Executrix) with G12 pilots. That part's not an example, that's my actual fleet, for reference. So you know I'm not just making stuff up to give you a hard time.

Let's say I'm up against the fairly-common fleet you mentioned: Vader, Biggs, TIE. And let's say the enemy capital is Chimaera. Now, I know that TIE and Vader both drop a ton of target locks, and every time a target lock hits, Biggs is going to taunt.

I'll get one hit off max on Vader or TIE before Biggs gets a taunt, and the enemy's first reinforcement is likely to be Hound's Tooth or Slave 1, so by the time I chew through all those taunts, Chimaera will have used its heal and that one hit will be wasted. So instead, I'm just going to turn all my guns on Biggs right away. It seems counterintuitive, because he's going to be healing while I beat on him, but I can damage him faster than he regains protection, so I can usually have him dead by the time that second tank comes into play.

Also, I'll usually land a hit with Silencer when Biggs is under 50% TM, meaning it will have advantage and I can drop a big fat torpedo crit on Hound's Tooth when it swoops in, making it much easier to deal with.

Now let's say I'm up against a mirror-match: Silencer, FO Tie, Hound's Tooth. I'm going to play this one much different, because HT doesn't passively gain taunts like Biggs does. Now I can stun him and go straight for the TIE - I'm going to ignore the Silencer, because it actually can take a few hits and it gains offense and turn meter when it does. I also have to be careful because even if I stun HT, it gains turn meter when its allies take damage. So where I'd normally use my first capital move to fire Executrix's AOE for AB/Expose, instead I'm going to use its crappy basic on HT to ensure it doesn't get a second turn before I've killed that TIE. That also puts Tenacity Down on it, making it easier to land a second stun so I can keep picking off weaker targets.

All that is just for the opening move, nevermind reinforcements. You need to plan the match out, because without mods, everything is much more evenly matched than squad arena and therefore much more likely to be decided by an unlucky dodge or resist. If you're trying to make it to the top of your fleet shard, brute force just isn't going to work.

Empire ships hit quite fast and hard. Of course they will need a tank to take the hits. If they had both high speed, damage and survivability they would be OP.

FO ships die in two hits? The command shuttle as well? And a stunned opponent won't hit Silencer at all.

Fleet 2.0 was a complete money grab and no, it isn't just you, the design is terrible. It forces you to use only a handful(that's pretty liberal) of different team comps to remain relevant. The AI reinforcement order scheme they have going on is completely barbaric. Let us decide the reinforcement order already. This having to rely on who the AI calls in is COMPLETE nonsense but it's by design. The fact is, they don't want you to succeed on defense. They want you to lose (by intention I might add) to force you to use crystals to place in top spots. G10 pilots should not be beating fully maxed out pilots/ships. Like... ever.

And please don't bother talking about the reinforcement discord they have going. It's pointless due to AI choosing what's best. We are after all talking about the same AI who thinks it's ok to have thrawn trying to cleanse an already fractured ally here.