Ships & Modules

I like how there was total silence on this 'problem' until the ATX commentators gushed about the things.

My Cyclone had one as soon as theyre prices came down. Even then peeps raised theyre brows at the supposed op of them...

some people are just catching up

A counter to this module is standard active tank or logi. But standard active tank is not powerful enough, it need a buff to be in line with ASB.

On an unbonused ship:
An XLASB gives 352 DPS tank on its own.
An XLSB gives 179

An XLASB with faction 400s can keep repping for 52 seconds before spending a minute reloading, meaning it can only stay active 46% of the time.

So, over time, an XLASB tanks ~163 DPS on an unbonused ship.

What you're really paying for is the lack of cap use, which frankly has been in dire need of a rework for ages now as it makes buffer setups far more versatile than active tanked ones.

Oh hi I'm back again (for a while, anyway).

The new ancilliary boosters seem quite sweet for shield-bonused ships, esp. using crystals/pills. 60 seconds of essentially not receiving damage from a single ship (or even two less ganky ships) is quite damn powerful, and probably enough to make many ships win pointblank even vs slaved buffer-fits. At least, i can see a ancilliary-boosted Cyclone killing a slaved Hurricane (pills might be required, or not).

That said, it again missed the point when it comes to tanking and solo/small gang use. Instead of making active tanking modules take less slots and have less fitting requirements and cap consumption to make them comparable to buffer tanks when it comes to DPS (and speed, regarding armour rigs), they made a improved shield tank fueled directly off cap boosters.

The main problem of active tanks for solo / small gang stuff was not that the amount of tanked vs ehp lost is so low. Even a dual-MAR BC tank which tanks 350 ehp/s or so is not that bad in actual tanking ability, it beats the 3-slot (+3 rig slot) plate fit in survivability when taking less than 800 DPS (comparing two Hurricanes). If all other parameters were equal, I would often opt for an active tank, especially for solo work.

The problem is however very simple, the 3-slot tank takes 3 lowslots, and the dual-MAR takes 5 lowslots and a midslot, and ends up eating more PG and CPU, so you lose two gyrostabs and have to use smaller guns, resulting in a massive DPS loss. It is also equally slow, since trimark rigs have the same penalties as repair rigs. The huge DPS loss just makes it pointless to use the active tank, not the loss in survivability.

Boosting tanking outright is hardly helpful to the solo PVP-er; soloers (and small gangs, where a small gang is 2-5 people at most, not 50 BS) always benefited from DPS and the ability to quickly kill their targets.

The reason is simple, the sooner you can kill the other ship(s), the smaller the chance of the greatest counter to any solo ship appearing - namely, the other guy's gang/blob (or falcon alt), and the easier it is to exploit the mistakes others make, like bad positioning, gang/blob arriving piecemeal, etcetera.

Now off to actually install EVE and shoot someone, enough moaning from an oldtimer :)

there is no way to adapt to something that is overpowered on already overpowered minmatar hulls. read this topic first.

only way to adapt is if everyone will fly the same ship.

Actually I'm asking for "balance", witch seems to bother. After all I use those too and therefore should say "hey ccp boost ASB they're so weak..." ?
No, this module is quite ok until you fit more than one and have support for charges, you don't need skill to kill stuff, you need to make it run as much as possible and keep target at guns range. WOOOOOOOW
Again, I like my XL ASB Talos, it's not OP at all, no no....

Mind sharing your xlasb talos setup? Because a pair of XLSBs on a talos uses 400 of its 450 base CPU, and 1k of its 1375 powergrid.

As for the balancing itself, tbh I'd like to see them brought to the same level of boosting as regular shield boosters, given a 10 second reload time instead of 60, and not usable without cap charges. It'd have them still be viable, but we'd have fewer people whining about them.

As a matter of fact, all active tanking mods should be brought to their level or even beyond that.

PVE would be too easy? *shrugs* - it's 100% foolproof already, so what?

The only annoying thing is that it should have been an armor mod in the first place - shield was better at pvp burst tanking anyway, so active armor tanks would have had more need of it.

How many people have actually used these outside of EFT?

40-50secs of a super-OMG tank isn't that amazing when you're left with a low EHP buffer and 60seconds of no-tank.

Regular buffer fits do well against them if you avoid damage whilst it's tanking then close range and brawl when it can't.

They're very well balanced over the length of a fight.

But the fact the cap charge size has no effect is silly.