Ships & Modules

The shield tank has the luxury to fit some mobility mods or rigs. It doesn't need to fill its mids with tackle mods beyond a warp disruptor. Kitey kitey. Again we can go round and round on this. I'm not as straw man Liang wants to say arguing for an exact parity or to have homogenize the game. The tank modalities do and should have differences.

I am however someone who believes that shield has been getting too much preference for too long at least at the sub cap level. ASBs will still kick ass over AARs. The RAH was/is relatively worthless unless on capitals. Maybe the rig penalty changes on active armor repping will make them viable is some limited situations.

But I fly minmatar and gallente ships. I have no plans to fly an active repping Brutix or Myrm, and I fully expect to be turned away/disuaded by FCs from bringing sub par plated or shield versions of those ships. I will probably find more acceptance with shield buffer or plated Canes. Thankfully though in FW mostly we fly sub BC so less to worry about.

The simple fact of the matter is that low slots are more prevalent than mid slots and active armor tanking generally requires 2 reps against shield tanking's one booster. Shield tanking gets to spend slots on mobility and damage while having inferior tackle. Armor tanking gets to spend slots on tackle and ewar.

I will more than happily grant that armor tanking has historically been substandard. Hell, I was one of the absolute earliest voices telling everyone that shield tanking was almost universally better than armor tanking. But right now we just haven't had enough time to even evaluate the meta changes and you're whining that you need absolute module parity or armor tanking is useless.

You're wrong.

-Liang

Ed: BTW, if you aren't armor tanking that Brutix you are probably doing it wrong these days. Especially in FW where small gang PVP rules. Amusingly, as a good rule of thumb: if it's feasible to use blasters in the fight, it's also feasible to active tank.

Yes, the ASB came in overpowered (you may remember me leading the charge on that one?). Yes, the RAH came in underpowered and pre-nerfed (though it's a lot better than it used to be now). However, I don't think we know whether the AAR came in prenerfed or not. I've already pulled the deadspace reps off of most of my ships and put AARs in place. The results are staggering: 50-80% improvements in tank with less fitting requirements. On top of that, they're almost all significantly faster than they were. And these ships were already good.

Honestly, I think you're just trying to metagame a period of ASB level overpoweredness. We just don't ******* KNOW whether the module is fine yet.

-Liang

Ed: Honestly what I think is going to happen is people like you are going to QQ it up like little bitches and then we'll wake up one day and you'll be a ****** for not fitting a large AAR to your carrier. Whoops, what happened? Oh, we weren't satisfied until it was blatantly ******* undeniable that armor was so overpowered as to make all other everythings completely and utterly irrelevant.

Stop the whining, evaluate the changes. In game.

I love how you say you have multiple accounts and then say you've been in the game longer than me.... completely neglecting the fact that I too am likely to have multiple accounts. /facepalm At any rate, since you've been in the game so long: do you remember how everyone knew the Drake was bad? And everyone knew shield tanking was bad? And everyone knew X or Y or Z? And none of that was actually true?

Consider the release of the ASB. Everyone knew that active tanking was completely useless. Knew it with dead certainty. And everyone knew the ASB was underpowered and useless because of the 60 second reload timer. Oh, how everyone thought it game into the game prenerfed. But, it was actually SO POWERFUL that it ushered in a new age of active tanking. And now, even nerfed, it forms the cornerstone of your argument for why shields are better than armor.

So, what do we get from this? The fact that the Eve player base must be SMACKED IN THE FACE with a brick in order to wake up and notice that the old status quo isn't there anymore. This armor change *feels* underwhelming to people who long for capless dual XL AARs on a cruiser. And maybe - maybe - it really is underwhelming. But we'll never know until we freaking try it out.

-Liang

The drake was only considered bad for pvp because for a while retards were showing up for fleets with sprs and purger rigs expecting to tank a pvp fleet as they did a pve room. Shield tanking was only considered bad because sniper Ravens and large rail Rokhs were either delayed damage or weak, and Maelstroms had not yet received their arty alpha buff. At one point all of that was true but direct or indirect changes such as the TC nerfs, probing changes, etc made midrange HMs rather attractive on extender rigged Drakes for instance.

But yes, as a general proposition, one must be careful with preceived weaknesses and assuming they will not be affected by things not immediately apparent or present.


I don't agree. I remember opinion being very mixed about ASBs.

Also, you mischaracterize my position. ASBs do not form the cornerstone. They are one aspect of the imbalance (even with the new AAR). It would actually be more accurate to characterize my argument as mobility and range which shield allows being the cornerstone. Fitting costs on plates and armor reppers tend to rule out ranged guns. Plates work against mobility. Shield tanks allow nanofibers and mobility rigs (which nerf armor hp).


Lol, go ahead and fabricate the straw man some more. Where have I asked for dual XL AARs or anyone itt for tha matter. You are too good a poster to engage in this stupid argumentation stategy. Please stop.

Anyway, I'm done with this for now. Done with dinner in rl, and looking for a calamari dessert in-game.

Mobility and damage vs utility and tackle. That's.... that's a pretty balanced strategy TBH. :S

-Liang

Ask a capital pilot about that, he will agree.

Because shield have raw damage and speed option don't mean it's OP ; neither is armor having raw hp and utility/tackle. That is actually balance, when two things have their own role.

Active armor tanking ship are freakin fast now BTW, and combined with AAR, that will be murderous.

oh noes, i might have to not use a module i never needed before, but its okay i can still cry about shields while not training for them.

Are you saying that armor buffer tanks are overpowered?

Mind you I don't factor in caps/SCs here, tbh it was yet another reason I was shocked at the appallingly bad decision CCP made when they gave shields the ASB and armor the hardener to armor, when it very obviously should have been the other way around.

The main problem I have with armor tanking as it is now, as well as with the changes to it, is that you can active shield tank just about any ship in the game and make it at least reasonably viable (I could count on one hand the number that can't, caps not included) whereas the same is not true with armor. If you want to active armor tank you are limited to a very small number of ships, most of which have bonuses specifically to make active armor tanking viable.

Don't even bother, I already showed that shields, even at t2 levels, get are more efficient then their armor counterparts. Unless of course you compare a 3 slot armor tank base to a 2 slot shield tank base, but then you need more slots to make armor work, making it less efficient anyway.

If you think you can show T2 shield boosters to be more cap efficient than T2 armour reps, then you are absolutely crap at maths. Shown below are the reps per cap numbers for T2 modules. Shields are shown both with and without skills. Armour reps are not affected by skills.

T2 Armour Reps (cap / boost : ratio) (all Vs)
SAR (40 / 80 : 2)
MAR (160 / 320 : 2)
LAR (400 / 800 : 2)

T2 Shield Boosts (cap / boost : ratio) (all Vs)
SSB (18 / 30 : 1.667)
MSB ( 54 / 90 : 1.667)
LSB (144 / 240 : 1.667)
XLSB (360 / 600 : 1.667)

T2 Shield Boosts (cap / boost : ratio) (no skills)
SSB (20 / 30 : 1.5)
MSB (60 / 90 : 1.5)
LSB (160 / 240 : 1.5)
XLSB (400 / 600 : 1.5)

Last time I checked, 2 was bigger than both 1.667 and 1.5