Player Features and Ideas Discussion

I'm not sure if this belongs in a different thread... maybe the one about buffing the gallente as a whole, but I'm not going to presume the entire race is nerfed just yet, however..

I just undocked in my hyperion in a low sec system, scanned down an anomaly with the onboard scanner and proceeded to do some ratting.

The anomaly I warped to was nothing crazy, just 3 battleships, about 10 cruisers, 5 or so battlecruisers... and my hyperion is set up with dual large tech 2 reppers, thermic hardener, energized EM and energized adaptive, and a damage control II, and the mid slots filled with cap rechargers... the standard gallente PVE tanking fit...

yet this puss little anomaly was tearing it apart.

yes with both reppers active they would have never broken my tank, but with 1 active they were quite quickly dropping my unbuffered armor, and with both active, even with 4x cap recharger IIs, the cap didn't last long enough for this fully fitted and rigged battleship to clear a low sec anomaly.

this is pathetic. if this doesn't prove that armor tanking is so severely nerfed I don't know what does. A passive fit drake wouldn't even FLINCH at this anomaly, yet the top gallente battleship needs to warp out because it can't hold its armor against a few serpentis rats. I am very disappointed.

So I believe one or several things need changed:

-either armor reppers need to use WAY less capacitor (possibly only for Gallente/ships with specific active armor tank roles)
-or cap rechargers need to have a much better bonus rate
-or gallente armor HP needs buffed quite a bit, while changing armor repper stats to allow them to still effectively repair themselves

Am I just doing something wrong? Is the Hyperion simply not meant to PVE at all anymore? If that's the case then I think that's just wrong. If the hyperion can't hold a decent armor tank, the Domi and Mega certainly can't. Which leaves the gallente without any PVE battleships, simply put, active armor tanking is not even a viable option anymore

Active armor tanking is just plain broken if you ask me, and honestly always has been. It's simply not an efficient or fair way to balance the game by having shields be the blantantly superior tank in every way.

people always argue that shield ships have to use up all their mid slots so it balances out, but this is just blasphemy. Armor tanking also needs to waste several or at least one mid slot for capacitor boosting/recharging. A cap booster is limited by its need for charges, and cap rechargers are pure crap if you put 4 on a ship and it still runs out of cap. plus... low slots are where all weapon upgrades go, so any armor tanked ship has no room for weapon upgrades without SEVERELY crippling its defenses.

Am I missing something here? active armor tanking feels completely useless, even more difficult then when I started out in an Incursus ratting in belts...

Interesting, my rigs are in fact 2 auxiliary, but 1 trimark (not good I know, its all I had)

I will try the quad hardener technique, but that still doesn't change the fact that active armor tanking is (at least seems like it) crap compared to active and passive shield tanking.

I don't see how its fair to give shield tanking ships a "passive" tank that gives them a huge buffer AND a wonderful recharge rate (essentially making it active, just not needing cap). This is just unbalanced every way I look at it.

If someone can please explain how the shield/armor tank balance works in EVE now, I would really appreciate it, but I simply can't see it.

No sarcasm or condescension from me here, I really would like some help/explanation on the fairness of current EVE stats.

I have two ships which I have used for level 4 missions/plexing.

A Proteus.
A Federation Navy Megathron.

I -almost- lost the Megathron with complete T2 gear, drones, etc.
Proteus remained stable with a -medium- repper going no-matter what. Fact is, I'd rather take the time to dish out potentially less damage, flying about with an MWD to get within range of my NPC money-makers than potentially lose a 600,000,000 battleship because it simply cannot hold it's own against anything weighing more than a paperweight; which is all it really was before I wound up selling it for a Plex.

To top it off I was getting far more damage dealing capabilities from the Proteus than I was with the Navy Megathron. Gallente Battleships just suck in general; in fact, a lot of their ships suck save for the T3. Sure, the Interceptors put out plenty of DPS but that doesn't really mean much when they're paper thin. Brutix is a'ight but they're almost always fit for DPS tanking (pvp at least). Finally you have the supercapitals but let's face it no-one rats with super-capitals and the only time they're ever really used is POS/station bashing. Yanno; unless you want to lose your multi-billion isk investment.

Nothing is wrong with armor-tanking; otherwise the Amarr wouldn't be doing as well as they are. Then again there's nothing in the way of them pumping out DPS at mid-range with Scorch ammunition; where as Gallente are pretty much screwed with having to get up close and personal or stay as far away as possible while -praying- that their Spike ammunition does enough damage to get through the tank. In which case if you're ever going to do enough damage you're going to have to sacrifice some of your already belittled tank.

Drones don't do hardly jack unless you're in a ship with bonuses for such, but they can also be shot down and effectively removed from play. If you don't have any light drones to kill that -one- frigate rat who's webbing/scramming you; say good-bye to your ship as your transversal is now so low you're taking the full brunt of the damage.

EDIT: In response to the guy above me; signature radius doesn't mean much when unless your enemy is using Missile Launchers (increasing the damage). To top it off, you don't need much cap recharge because missile launchers/projectile turrets don't use cap at all; hence the reason why Minmatar/Caldari have shield tanking. Mid slots used up means more room to put damage mods in your low-slots; giving you both a tank and some respectable damage capabilities.

Passive shield tanking is balanced because it increases signature radius by a lot, which actually causes incoming damage to increase. A passive fit that can recharge faster than expected incoming damage does completely or almost completely take up the ship's mid slots, which limit its own ability to do damage (target painters/stasis webifiers), use EWAR, sensor boost, or MWD/afterburner. Not to mention that passive shield tank ships with a MWD increase signature radius to godawful proportions, making them more susceptible to incoming damage if transversal velocity isn't kept high enough for turrets and total velocity isn't as well for missiles.

By contrast, armor tanks are ENTIRELY low slots, and of course they compensate for this by having more low slots than shield tanked ships. Active armor and active shield tank are roughly the same in the tradeoffs they make - capacitor for repair amount. The passive tanks are obviously very different. Armor passive tanks of course don't restore any HP.

Going into a direct comparison of these two would be a lot more work than I'm willing to do right now. But I believe as it is now armor and shield tanking are basically balanced. However can't speak to the question of Gallente ships.

Theres certain shield tanked ships which have ridiculous passive tanks, namely the Drake. CCP is already working on nerfing that and changing it to more of a DPS boat when they balance ships into roles. I think this is more an issue with certain ships than it is with shield tanking as a whole being better than armor tanking

I agree that shield tanked ships have certain advantages but so do armor. Shield boosters for instance; their boost amount can only be modified with a shield boost amplifier (which messes up overheating) while armor tanks have more versatility as they can use rig slots to modify repair amount. Armor tanks also have higher base resists (shield resists for t1 add up to 110 while armor add up to 130) Shield tankers also have to use invulnerability fields or other active hardeners for their tank which can hurt them because of their lower cap recharge rate. Armor tanks can use active hardeners which suck a little more cap but can also use passive ones which use no cap and are a lot better than the passive shield resist mods. Then there is horrendous sig radius of shield tanked ships making them take more damage and have a harder time avoiding damage. Armor ships are slower but can still avoid some damage if you maneuver them well. Also a lot armor tanked ships have more low slots than similar tier shield tanked ships have medium slots with few exceptions; namely the ships that can make ridiculous passive tanks, scorpion,rattlesnake,drake etc

Thats just some of the things i could think of. With the Hyperions boost to armor repair amount I would recommend fitting nano pump rigs along with two hardeners a nano membrane and a dmg control plus one repper and a 1600 plate. Tanks about 700 dps against serpentis. Put some cap boosters in the mids and tracking comps with neutron blasters and a AB and you should be cap stable running everything and do about 650 dps (without drones). You could also run a similar fit with a vindicator and get more dps and more tank. Guns have naturally better dps than missiles (especially hybrids now) so dont necessarily need damage mods and have plenty of mids for TC's.