Ships & Modules

29% and 57.6%. Twisting, whatever, outcomes, strawmen.

Also, 15.8%.

What implants did you use on the armor Myrm? Did you forget to use the correct cycle time for the reppers on the AAR fit that reaches 3134 hp/s, or was it just more comfortable for your argument?

(SPOILER: it's not 6.5 seconds)

Dear Paikis, you tried that one already and while you are amusing, you are wrong. Lets go over this one more time.

First of all, buffer tanks are unrelated to the issue we are discussing. They don't affect the relative balance of the active tank variants in any way. You get easily confused by names, perhaps things we're easier for you if we called buffer tanks for example plate and forcefield tanks. Your argument is as relevant as saying that active tanks are balanced because railguns have longer range than beams.

Secondly, shield buffers are as good as armor buffers because they allow for more damage and mobility. This has been repeated several times in this thread already.

higher HP <> higher dps
higher mobility <> more midslots

Tell me, if armor buffer is so superior in your opinion, why don't people fit plates on their Drakes? Why people often opt to shield tank their armor ships, but the other way around only on ECM ships? Right.

Anyway it's cool that you acknowledge that active armor is inferior. The imbalance is not as dramatic as it was before 1.1, they removed the mobility penalty and introduced AARs, which brought the total rep amount to nearly comparable levels with shield tank- when comparing the tanks on armor rep bonused hulls. AAR itself is a two-sided thing, it's a sweet module to put on a solo 800mm-plated Gallente HAC, but at the same time it feels like a hack, instead of just touching the normal reppers themselves. Cap issue is still left, and it causes active armor to have a hard counter, and lose it's comparative midslot advantage.

By the way, easiest solution is still to fix the broken shield mod oversizing. Introduce a BC-sized armor repper. Then buff all active mod rep/boost amounts, shield and armor, and make them all use cap, but less than currently.

This way the main choice would be the same easy balance as buffers have- tank or gank. Shield has still more mobility due to available lows and the astronautic rig drawbacks, armor has the token extra mid (well, not all but those that don't are plenty fast enough or have other traits to even things for them). But best of all both actives would have the same hard counter, but would all be viable.

Active tanking is fun and challenging gameplay and deserves to be promoted, it adds lovely blinking buttons that we can press and meters to monitor, allowing us to feel real pro. I think that the current oversized ASB boost amount is closer to ideal than current armor rep amount, and therefore would rather bring all active mods near that level instead of just nerfing ASBs.

Well true, I've tried to make that point in several earlier posts in this thread, but It also depends on the hull. Or race mostly, at least the active armor bonused ships do gain one midslot (or in best case two) on fits that don't try to reach oversized ASB amounts of tank. Boosting the rep amount and reducing cap drain would decrease the pressure to fit more cap boosters. Not forgetting the cap requirement for ASBs as well in my suggestion, would be harder to fit a big shield boosting setup and have full tackle, resulting in comparative midslot advantage for armor.

In general it might be easier to rebalance existing things than inventing new things that cause need for more balancing.

You lot still whinging about the 'differences' in tanking types?!

All the suggestions to balance out armour and shield are just homogising them to being exactly the same.

NO!

Armour is different to shield. Guess what they are both usefull. They are both tanky (either active or passive or buffer).
They have different applications in different scenarios.

FFS give it a rest.

If you don't like armour then FFS don't fly it! But don't whinge when an armourt tanker comes and pawns your shield ship with ewar or some such crap!

If you don't like shield don't fly them then. But don't whinge when you can't catch your targets!

Seriously you lot need to get out more and just have fun.

Maybe the "noble" ones, considering we were talking about crystal implants?

-Liang

They are all "noble" ones. Why not simply list all the modifiers that you use?

And again, your argument was based on false numbers. The AAR runs out of nanite at about T=32, and therefore pops at T=55.

Seven seconds before the ASB version.

I didn't list Crystal Alpha, Crystal Beta ... etc either. It should be pretty obvious to anyone involved in this conversation which implants were used.



Nice catch - I've edited the post. However, I still contend that the armor Myrm handles the overall tanking job in a superior manner to the ASB Myrmidon. There's a couple of reasons for this, not the least of which is that jumping a Myrmidon into 3000 DPS is getting into armor tanking territory (95 seconds with dual 1600 plates). Another reason is that the sig radius on the armor Myrmidon is smaller than the ASB Myrm - even more-so when you consider that you aren't tied to using Crystals on armor Myrmidon. You could use Slaves or Halos instead - both of which substantially increase your tank. And finally, I think that the Armor Myrmidon just flat handles realistic tank levels better.

Consider the ASB Myrm. In order to "sustain" a tank, the ASB Myrm must spread 9 navy charges out over 60 seconds. That means the maximum "sustainable" tank with a dual ASB is ~1200 DPS. On the flip side, the MAAR setup is able to sustain almost 1800 DPS until it runs out of cap boosters. There was some complaining earlier about the triple cap boost, but I don't think anyone caught on to the fact that the dual 400s were meant to help offset neuting. It's pretty easy to upgrade to the more traditional 2 Med EC and throw some extra utility in the freed up mid.

Anyway, the situation to me seems pretty cut and dry. The ASB Myrmidon is a one trick pony that doesn't trick very well... while the armor Myrm is much more versatile and powerful.

-Liang

Yes, and until the top 20 is itself topped with the ships you just listed, instead of the shield tanked or shield resist ships that are currently there, then you can whine without being laughed at. http://eve-kill.net/?a=top20 Oh look, no Prophecy, no Proteus, no Maller, not even an Abaddon any longer.

This is EVE people. Your character can train into whatever they want. There is no need for things to be "balanced."

If one thing is better than another then the rational and sensible thing to do it USE THE BETTER THING.

Actually I'm laughing at you implying that people flew Drakes so much because they were simply popular and had no effectiveness/advantages. And yes it had to do with an almost BS sized buffer on a ship that could hit at 70km with mediocre but better than the alternatives at that range. It could also be configured to perma mwd. All while being quite cheap. No other BC could do what it did. The closest was the Cane. And it really neither had the range or tank.

Blob null fleet battles. Lowsec small gang roams. Pretty much any type of pvp in eve the Drake was well represented in. So much so that it outnumbered whatever was the number two ship by 2 or 3 to 1. Eve-kill is looking better now. Still reflecting certain in-game advantages for certain ships. But no ship is getting the ridiculous usage numbers the pre-HM nerf drake was getting. And of course it was the easy route to pve isk earning.

But of course people in a game use what is not really the best to use. They love flying substandard stuff and not worrying about it exploding and hitting their wallets. You are right. It must be the look of the thing.