Ships & Modules

It's new, it's shiny, it's been out a while. ASB is very good as we all know, fills a niche nicely between standard shield boosts and buffer - but what about the bone they threw armor tanks with the RAH? Seems weak and underwhelming; more a pve mod than pvp. Or is this just me missing something? PvP is almost always at least dual damage type, typically triple types. Anyone got suggestions? Or are we waiting for the t2 version to appear before it's useful?

I don't know.

It can be useful.

But then you need to skill up for it, and once you do it will hog your Cap like no tomorrow...

I'll have to jump clone out of my Crystal set. I'm pretty sure that there's some really good frigate uses for the module.

-Liang

I think it's pretty clearly a pve module right now. The cycle time is too slow and it makes you more vulnerable to cap warfare for pvp.

So here is some complete theorycrafting - There is a really good discussion of its mechanics and algorithm for shifting resists on another forum. The work isn't mine, but if it's right, this is what I gather:

• It isn't stacking penalized against other armor mods, but it is stacking penalized against a DCU. I think they concluded this makes it about equal to a 3rd EANM on a tank, BEFORE resists start shifting.


• The algorithm seems to make sense depending on how many damage types you are getting shot with - from boosting a single resist when you are getting shot by one type, to filling your largest resist hole when you are getting shot by 4 types.


• The cap usage is pretty high, especially considering it will most likely be fit on cap sucking hybrid or laser ships. Thus it makes you more vulnerable to cap warfare.

The cycle time is too long (or amount of resist shifted per cycle is too little)

.

So, if the above is true, I would view the current pvp uses for it might be long fights because this will play to its strengths:

• Massive brick tank. Like on a Maller or something similar. Especially supported by logi because will make the logi better as fight goes on.


• Very small gang/solo active armor rep where your tank won't get overwhelmed early. Better tank as time goes on.

I still think the analysis is that the cycle time and cap usage need to be tweaked, because in its current form, it's not very useful.

/theorycrafting off

Tried this in PVE and found it to be underwhelming. I'm better off using a type-specific than putting my bets on this.

PVP it's too slow to change, so...guess it doesn't quite have a niche yet.

This module is garbage. If it adjusted 2-3x faster, it would be worth it.

You may want to look at the cap consumption with lvl 4-5 skill and reassess your statement

So you say you tried this? You realize you can't activate two of them at once, so why on earth would you fit two? Might as just leave the slot empty.

To those theory crafting, here are my impressions. It's good, but it's a niche module atm. With armor resistance phasing at lvl 0, it uses about 3 times the amount of cap of a hardner. Boost this to level 5 and it jumps to about 5.6 times the amount of cap. Since most armor tanks use weapons that use cap (or in the minmatar case are on ships with the smallest capacitors), it's use is situational.

It needs a skill to offset it's cap use, this would at least make 'armor resistance phasing' worth training.

If you know you're going up against a missile boat (drake/tengru), it's very good, as 60% unstacking nerfed resistance is something very noticible, but without the skill trained, it takes a long time to get there. Remember it starts off as good as a DC II and only gets better.

On my plated mega it effectively doubles the EHP over an ANP II against drakes/tengru's, but it requires a few fitting compromises. On my geddon it's not as effective since I normally remove the second EANM II to fit it (and it drops my fit from 606.25 CPU out of 606.25, something I love )

For PvE, I've played around with it on a kronos and a paladin, it works on the former (cap boosted), but I don't like it on the later (not cap boosted), but I really haven't tested it extensively. Obviously it's not too useful against omni damage NPC's like sleepers and sansha's.

To Liang, you might find it's cap use a bit of a challenge on a frigate, it's like putting 3 active hardners on, but I'd like to hear your experiences. I haven't tried it on anything below cruiser size.

It won't let you even FIT two to a ship, never mind activate them, making the above advice about fitting two a load of crap.

I don't have the numbers in front of me, but I read with the skill trained up to 4 or 5 it uses a similar amount of cap as a SAR. That's going to be rough on a frigate.