Ships & Modules

I use eve-kill because it is as close to a scientific sample of usage and player choices that we have as oppsed to anecdotal or personal preceptions. http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20 Oracles sitting at #10. Of those oracles how many were armor fit? We don't know, but I think we would both guess at least half were slapping an LSE II on. And pretty much all of the ships in this group were fitting shield tanks.

I'm like you I suppose. I can go either shield or armor ships (commands, logis, recons, whatever) because I'm over 100mil sp etc. But still I do find myself fitting more shield ships. Do you? Be honest. Newer characters lack the luxury.

As for trends, I see them as short term phenomena. When they persist for years, and indeed become more pronounced I think they become something more than trends. Maybe when the balancing team eventually gets to BCs I will be pleasantly surprised that armor long range will be as viable as shield short range currently is. I certainly hope so.

Meanwhile, go back to the op. Help this fella with his question. Fit him up a sniping armor-tanked Brutix. Or tell him the truth is that it is not worth doing atm. And his choices for armor sniping require quite a bit more sp investment and a rare group to roll with.

edit - and with that I think I'll take a break from this exchange and go in-game o/

You might want to refine your question a little more, but generally you want to play to the strengths of the hull and use your tank and weapons to fight in a way that fits the ship. For example, in 90% of cases, you will want to use whatever weapon system that a certain hull gives a bonus to. That narrows it down to two options, long or close range?

Before you decide that, you should also try to pick a tank method. Generally speaking, close range guns work with armor, and long range weapons work with shields. The reason for this is armor can fit bigger tanks for the same resource use, but becomes slower, so getting in close and just whaling on your target is a good idea. Your midslots are free to hold ewar, to help defend against more agile enemies. Shield lets you keep your speed, but also uses valuable mids, so you generally see kiting, or more long range fits. Although your mids are used for tanking, your lowslots are free to hold more speed mods, or just go for tons of damage.

So looking at the example of an armor sniper brutix, you run into the problem that armor slows you down, and lets enemies get close to you, which negates the advantage of your long ranged weapons, and probably means the bad guys are so close that you can no longer track them. Shields would let you be faster to keep range, as well as fit more damage mods, but you only have 4 mids to facilitate this, so your tank would need to be light if you wanted to keep your enemy from warping away.

Please note that this is all very general. Notable examples would be the HAM Drake (Shield brawler) and Zealot (Armor sniper/kiter), as well as many others. Active tanking is another lecture, but you seem to have a good start.