Ships & Modules

I fly alot of active shield tank fit so I'll provide a comprehensive write up of my opinion.

Navy Shield Boosters
Navy shield boosters are very niche, they cycle faster than T2 but have the same cap and boost stats IIRC. This means they provide more burst tank for more cap. Shield boosters are generally very cap hungry and it's not often that you'd have the spare cap to go for a navy booster. They do however, take up less fittings so it's sometimes used for fitting reasons. For example I run a Cyclone with a Dread Guristas XL booster purely for CPU reasons. The saving grace is that they are reasonably priced so they definitely have their niche.

Deadspace Shield Boosters
Another reason that Navy boosters are niche is how cheap Pith boosters are. Pith boosters are especially useful for PvP where they give you a big boost while consuming the same cap as a T2 booster. Guristas sites are farmed to hell and back which makes these booster dirt cheap. A Pith X-Type X-Large Shield Booster will only set you back 60+mil which is a steal for the power it gives.

Gist boosters on the other hand are very cap efficient but also very expensive, partly due to supply but in a larger part due to demand (carebears LOVE their cap stable fits no matter how much you tell them otherwise). Despite their price Gist boosters are still really solid but you need to think carefully if you're willing to blow the big isk on that cap efficiency.

T2/Meta/T1 Shield Boosters
As for T1/Meta/T2 shield boosters, they are used the least I'd say. Mostly because the boost they provide is quite weak to give you any sort of worthwhile tank. You're usually better off going for buffer, pimping up to deadspace, or using an ASB. The only T2 shield boosters I see getting used (in decent fits) is the Medium Shield Booster II on frigates like the Hawk/Breacher and to a lesser extent some T3Ds. The Large T2 is far too weak for Cruisers, while the XL T2 is VERY CPU hungry and difficult to fit on hulls smaller than a Battleship, and if you're going for a Battleship, you're better off with a low end Pith since it's well worth the cost relative to the cost of the hull.

Ancillary Shield Boosters
While definitely not as broken as they were when first introduced. ASBs are a very powerful module. I like to think of ASBs in 2 ways, first as more of a buffer module where you fit a single XLASB on a Cruiser/Battlecruiser or a single MASB on a Frigate. This is a very slot efficient buffer as if you have the spare fitting, an oversized ancillary booster will give you more EHP per clip than their buffer counterparts (assuming you don't get alphaed straight through and that you don't overboost). In this setup there is a small chance (assuming you kill off enough dps or kite away) that you get a reload on your ASB which gives you massive EHP potential.

The second way to see ASBs is as a sustained active tank. In this sort of setup you run 2-3 ASBs of the same size, you cycle one and while the first is reloading, you cycle the second. This allows you to keep up a constant 'active' tank for as long as you have cap boosters and is incredibly powerful because of the capless effect of ASBs. Prime examples are the dual MASB Hawk and dual XLASB Sleipnir which are both capable of fielding massive active tanks while being immune to cap warfare. However I feel this setup is balanced by the fact that fitting 2 oversized ancillary boosters is very heavy on fittings and requires a fair bit of sacrifice. Additionally, if you're running 2 boosters and you're being forced to run one booster flat out, you won't get your reload on your first before you die so while the EFT tank numbers seem huge, they are much lower in reality. This can be remedied by running 3 ASBs but that is usually a fitting nightmare on any ship.


Overall I think most shield boosters have their place and T2/Meta/T1 is falling behind not so much because they are bad, but because ASBs and cheap Pith boosters kind of obsoleted them. A small buff for these wouldn't be bad but at the same time I don't feel it's necessary either.

Fair points. To be honest I haven't gone deep into the exact stats of individual boosters in a long time. Firstly, since DG and CN have identical stats (one again, off memory, correct me if I'm wrong). I consider the CN to just to not exist, it's a product of supply/demand and since there's an identical booster for much cheaper there's no point using it. As for the C5-L vs the DG, did you check the cycle times? (not at home so can't check right now). If I recall the DG boosters cycle faster.

As for Pith v Gist, I disagree, there's already a solid distinction between them (Gist for cap efficient but less boost, Pith for bigger burst tank with less cap efficiency). The main issue driving the choice right now is cost since the cost gap between Pith and Gist is massive, which isn't really a balance issue but rather an economics issue.

CN/DG boosters got gutted whenever they redid shield boosters. their hp/cap got zonked hard. it used to be standard practice to use a faction booster on most ships for the reduced fitting costs and nice stats, these days a meta4 boosts what 9hp less than a faction X-L? sure faction has the faster cycle time, but I don't think that counts for much, especially with how cheap deadspace pith boosters are given many people go with the XLASB. Oh yea and then pith saves a bunch of CPU over t2. I think RF/Domi shield boosters always kinda got shafted, don't remember anyone ever using them regularly.

as far as the gist boosters go, mostly pve cap efficiency/lazy mode boosters. can always go and use an undersize booster too to help out on cap. I've used Pithum boosters on pve BS, when the other main alternative fitting is on a frig/dessy. bunch of pithum c-type svipuls running around. And many use smalls on frigs/dessys/cruisers for pve.

ah well, should be interesting to see what they do to shield boosters with tiericide. hell I have my eye on a bunch of mods.

Same reason my flagship sports DG Invulns instead of CN.