EVE New Citizens Q&A

dual tanking means to shield and armor tank your ship.

the empires each lean towards tanking a different way in general

amarr and gallente tend to do better with armor tanks (some ships have bonuses to armor resists, more low slots for the tank+damage, etc)

caldari and minmatar tend to do better with shield tanks (more mid slots, less lows, bonuses to shield resists, etc)

it's a bad idea because you don't want to play to a ships weaknesses, you want to play to it's strengths.

like a Punisher, it only has 2 mid slots, no way are you going to be able to put a decent shield tank on that, and it has bonuses to armor tank.

As to not repeat everything, there was a thread recently: https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&t=318129

BTW, don't be confused by the title of that other thread ('double tanking'). 'Dual tanking' is the right name.

As above generally Amarr and Gallente use Armour, Caldari use Shields and Minmatar use both, but not together on the same ship. All of them benefit from having a Damage Control fitted if you have the room.

Play the game for at least 6 months or more, get to know how things work and what you can and can't do with your ships with normal fits before you even think about looking outside the box for fits. As always there is the odd exception to the rules that works well.

On the subject of how to tell what to tank:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4114882#post4114882

And more than you ever wanted to know about resists:
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=4123325#post4123325

Eve Uni Tanking 101 is good reading if you want to know more about it, it covers both PvE and PvP tanking, and how they differ.

To OP, for new players dual tanking is generally bad. However as you gain better understanding of the game mechanics, you will find there are exceptions. You may want to search killmails of better known solo pvp-ers. You will find some of them do dual-tank for certain type of ships. As a hint, Minmatar ships which generally have similar HP in shield and armor are generally good candidate for dual tanking.

Again, this is an exception to the rule.

There is also more than shield and armor tanking.

Speed tanking and agility tanking are two of the more common ones.

Then there's the sub sets of armor and shield tank. That's active, passive and buffer (or gank tank as I like to call it).

It really depends on what you are flying, what it's purpose is and how much you care about the ship. For instance, if you are flying a Blockade Runner and the purpose you are using it for is moving high value cargo through low sec you will tank it completely different than if your purpose is high sec, low value runs based out of Jita. The former will have a pure agility tank with a slight buffer on the shields for smart bombs and the latter will have a solid buffer to fend of the gank attempts common in Jita.

A level 4 running Rattlesnake will be pure passive whereas the same ship doing incursions where it's being remote repped will be pure buffer and if 0.0 ratting will be pure active. There are plenty of good fits as well for dual tanking as defined in the OP, but they are for specialized purposes, not everyday running around.

Now after saying all that, if I were new I'd just tank to the hull's bonuses if they have any, and the slot arrangement if they don't have any tank bonus. Just keep in mind that there are a lot more options than you might think.

Mr Epeen

Only application on dual tank I know about...bait ships.

Basic rule, if you do nkt know why you should dual tank a ship...dont dual tank it.