No.

Armour and Shield tanking are different and more or less balanced. What you are asking for would make armor tanks ridiculously over the top. No.

no, they are far from balanced.

problem is the fleet compositions, which have bubblers and tacklers, and this more or less eliminates armor tanking ships with some spare mids (gallente) from current doctrines. gallente ships just don't fit to fly in a blob. don't say that's balanced, because 3 other races have their doctrines.

2 questions for you:
1) There are some other very potent uses for mid slots beyond straight-up tackling, can you tell me what some of those might be?
2) "because 3 other races have their doctrines" - What fleet doctrines do the squids have besides "fly a Drake"?

When BCU's are changed to be middle slots then AT and Shield tanking will be balanced.

When BCU's are changed to be middle slots then AT and Shield tanking will be balanced.

For now we have situation in the game when Shield tank (ST) is better in general than Armor tank (AT)

Right now, we have a situation which is pretty much exactly the same one as when armour tanks were GÇ£betterGÇ¥ than shield tanks (and they were GÇ£betterGÇ¥ back then in the same way that shields are GÇ£betterGÇ¥ now). All that has changed is the doctrines, and it will swing back towards armour again before long.

Wait, are shield-caps back?

caps are different :because of slaves:

Have no idea what doctrines you talking about guys :)
But according to the statistics ST tanked ships are more often croses the gates then AT ships.
I have experience mission "Evolution" on Palladin and i saw like my friend deals with it using Machariel. Shields restores much faster, and Macahariel had no risk at all, mean time i've rewarped using the Paladin, because his armor can not withstand for a long time against fire of over 20 rogue drones different ships. We both fitted in high meta levels.
I am talking about small tuning, not revolution.
Hardly all my points will bring huge advance to the AT, especially that list is not solid, i am clearly understands that everything there can not be implemented. It would great if CCP will do something (even non included in my list) AT is much worse then ST for PvE at least.
More bonus points to armor compensation skills. Is this so strange? Armor is more "hard" thing.
More meta levels to the allready existing modules? What's wrong with this?
Improovement of compleetly useless group of modules, again, what's wrong with it?
and so on.

And i want to ask those, who oposes AT baff, what ships you operate? Harly it will be AT ships

You're having trouble with L4s in a Marauder? That's bad and you should feel bad.

Well, that mission is one of the deadliest if you will shoot down trigger in second pocket.
Also 6th pocket of Angel Extravaganza in case if i want standart (for all other missions at least) number of heat sinks - 4. Angels are not best NPCs to Amarr players and amount of damage done by my ship is more important in comparison with anti Sansha missions for example. So, i removeone heat sink to replace it with additional energised plating

Both tanks must have clear roles, positive and negative aspects. There must not be universal options (we have this situation for now). CCP must chek one more this matter and rework entire system of penalties and bonuses and modules.

Have no idea what doctrines you talking about guys :)

But according to the statistics ST tanked ships are more often croses the gates then AT ships.

Hardly all my points will bring huge advance to the AT, especially that list is not solid, i am clearly understands that everything there can not be implemented. It would great if CCP will do something (even non included in my list) AT is much worse then ST for PvE at least.

More bonus points to armor compensation skills. Is this so strange? Armor is more "hard" thing.

And i want to ask those, who oposes AT baff, what ships you operate? Harly it will be AT ships

Armor is just fine.

If really armor tanking would be that awesome why does not fleet doctrines use 1K dps Brutix instead of 400'ish dps Drakes?
Armagedons, Apocs (Pulse apoc is deadly) Hyperions and Megathrons (/toss)

When it comes to use ships with bonus to armor resists? yes, significantly increases reps efficiency but that you already know it.

Armor is just not that fine, riggs and plates penalty are far more penalising than signature bloom in ships mostly using MWD's for pvp (sign radius is not a problem apparently ^^).
Permanent MWD Drake 1200m/s and capital sign radius is the first example but cookie cutter shield cane is another and on the other side of the rope you've got stand still Abbadon and Rokh ducks with a hell of a buffer resist/profile and shortest range weapon spewing stuff "over there"
Take away that +resist on Abbadons and lets see how many we will see around.

PVP is about get the best tool for "x" job, ST ships are generally better on subcap fleets (cap we can debate about slaves or Chimaera no tank cap stable or with tank and no cap after a few reps), caps and supers should just be removed from the game anyway or get bigger ship hangars to just move ships around

If really armor tanking would be that awesome why does not fleet doctrines use 1K dps Brutix instead of 400'ish dps Drakes?
Armagedons, Apocs (Pulse apoc is deadly) Hyperions and Megathrons (/toss)

My male part are already giggling about 2KVindicators raping everything in the system including planets with lost bullets.

Yes, i am talking about PvE mainly and can't agree about this game created for PvP players, meantime others must stay aside. Sorry, dut there are no such postulates in the rules :) I am glad that you are agree with me about this part of the game. It was my mistake that i have not indecated more clearly that i am speaking about PvE mainly and have no big PvP experience.

Still i hope that CCP will make few (i repeat, noone needs revolutions, CCP allready done one really big mistake in the past) improovements and changes to the tank system.

in my opinion the two new modules are completely backwards. They both make so much more sense and seem like they'd be more logical if flipped. Armor rep is the one that needed the cap booster using repair and shields being the passive long drawn out defense should have the slowly adjusting Resistance mod.

I won't pretend to be an eve genius since I'm almost a noob being a returning player but shield tanking is definitely better than armor tanking currently. That's why the advice even on supposed armor focused ships is to fit shields on. It's suggested that it's better to squeeze a single LSE and one resist mod to an amarr or gallente ship rather than bother with armor tanking it with all those lows. Doesn't that show that something is wrong with armor tanking?

There are many more options and more skills for shield tanking. A passive shield tank can regen faster than an active armor tank in some cases without requiring any cap use.

I'm not too familiar with drake fleets but aren't these used over ships like the brutix due to superior dmg projection ?

I won't pretend to be an eve genius since I'm almost a noob being a returning player but shield tanking is definitely better than armor tanking currently.

all good pvp ships are armor archon, bhaal, loki, proteus

Archon racial ship bonus: 5% all armor resist per level, the best capacitor of 4 carriers

Bhaalgorn: "hey' you seem me there? (50km)"
Victim: "pwahaha FU flying banana!"
Bhaalgorn: activates 1 energy neut 1 Web
Victim: "erm, wtf? -wait, I have 0 cap and can't move??-wtf is this??)
Bhaalgorn: "bzzzz -bzzzzz-bzzzz"
Victim: "what tha...I didn't even..."

1.5Bill ship = 15 drakes

Proteus: slap 2 faction EANP 1New resist mod TE's plate and med rep(faction is cool) 1explo rig 1trimark 1 ambit extension.
Shoot ammo with +25% tracking at 30km+, point at 40km (solo) push battleship HP and HAC dps
1Bil ship = 10 drakes

But we see more often Tengu fleets than ishtar fleets (bombs love for sentry everyone?), or Proteus fleets. Lokis are very common in fleets too however you'll not see full loki fleets tomorrow.

I know I have English grammar issues, however in my book it's completely different saying AT is "completely useless" from "not worthy" or "less good" or "not as effective as"
It works in some specific cases that always turn around 2 major points:

-dmg projection: pulse abby ok, blaster mega:no
-tank: +5 resist abby ok, blaster armor mega: no

Mega has a good drone bay: 1 set of lights 1 st of sentry
Mega has a much better dps: 130k EHP for over 1400dps with

Problem here? -tank, Mega vs Abby has 100% less tank and even if you manage to land on top of those abby they'll pop like popcorn because cost effective = abby, mega is a nice snowflake at gates/station undocks for short time fights

Your problem isn't armor tanking, it's trying to use Gallente ships the same way you use Amarr ships.

Well, I actually use Minmatar ships like blasters because they're better blaster ships than Gallente ones.

Sorry, but if I met someone on a gate or undock, I'd be much more threatened by a megathron than by a tempest. Likewise with a Hyperion vs a Maelstrom.

Your problem isn't armor tanking, it's trying to use Gallente ships the same way you use Amarr ships.

Armour and Shield tanking are different and more or less balanced.

I would like to see armor BC with 100k EHP and still be able to deal 500 dps @ 100km.

I would like to see armor BC with 100k EHP and still be able to deal 500 dps @ 100km.

I would like to see armor BC with 100k EHP and still be able to deal 500 dps @ 100km.

Please show me the shield bc that does this. Tip, Drake can't shoot farther than 80km with faction, 70 with rage and has 60 drone control range, which translates to 300dps@80, 400dps@70, 500dps@60.
Increasing range decreases tank.

Yes, and next you will tell me that this is a perfectly normal fit, as every rat in null drops faction.
Another tip, posting full faction fits in threads about the general state of armor/shield tanking isn't helping your case.

As far as I remember you claimed that Drake can't do it. I proved you wrong.

With a ****-fit and implants. Good job. Please bring this ship to Liekuri and I'll kill it for you.

This is more a problem of the drake than a problem of armor tank ; problem which will be corrected by removing drake resist bonus soon(TM)

Show me 100k EHP armor BC with 100km range then.

[Hurricane, SH!TF!T]

And what makes you think that is cheaper than Drake fit I posted?

Queue the semantics in 3....2.....1....

As far as I remember you claimed that Drake can't do it. I proved you wrong.

Show me 100k EHP armor BC with 100km range then.

As far as I remember you claimed that Drake can't do it. I proved you wrong.

[Myrmidon, lolWhat?]
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
1600mm Reinforced Rolled Tungsten Plates I
Corpum A-Type Energized Adaptive Nano Membrane
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II
Drone Damage Amplifier II

Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer, Optimal Range Script
Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer, Optimal Range Script
Shadow Serpentis Tracking Computer, Optimal Range Script
'Marketeer' Tracking Computer I, Optimal Range Script
F-90 Positional Sensor Subroutines, Targeting Range Script

Drone Link Augmentor I
Drone Link Augmentor II
250mm Railgun II, Spike M
250mm Railgun II, Spike M
[empty high slot]
[empty high slot]

Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II
Medium Trimark Armor Pump II


Ogre II x2
Hammerhead II x2
Hobgoblin II x1

[Myrmidon, lolWhat?]
483 drone dps @104km
40 gun dps @97+32km
117k ehp

Slave 1-6
Inherent Implants 'Noble' Hull Upgrades HG-1006

Ogre II x2
Hammerhead II x2
Hobgoblin II x1
483 drone dps @104km
40 gun dps @97+32km
117k ehp

Slave 1-6
Inherent Implants 'Noble' Hull Upgrades HG-1006

How does it feel, eating your own words? Do they taste good? GTFO.

Ok, you win. Shield tanking is superior.

And your Cane fit only has 46,8k EHP and targeting range is 56,3 km. 535 dps isn't even close what you stated.

I would like to see armor BC with 100k EHP and still be able to deal 500 dps @ 100km.



All carriers in w-space are equpped with shield transporters (yes, even Arch and Than).

Also: Pulsar.

in fact the Drake actually has LESS EHP buffer than both the Harbinger and the Hurricane when they're armor tanked.

58,3k EHP Harbinger and for some reason I can't think anything useful out of Drake with LESS than 58,3k EHP.

[Harbinger, pew]

I think that large problem here is not the EHP.

It's that shield tanking high EHP automatically means high passive shield bonus.

For example:

Can fit a drake with 80k EHP very easily and have a passive regen of 60 shield per sec (on average, but it's much higher at 30% shields) and a nice amount of dps and range.

But with any armor tanking ship, it's difficult to get a nice balance of EHP, regen, dps and range as it is for a shield tanking drake.

Also to note, Prophecy's are utter garbage and should be reworked.

Get ready to revamp your armour fits: on Sisi the T2 plates now are getting a buffer bonus that'll make them more valuable then the meta 4 Rolled Tungstens. Time to make room on the Power grid armour fleets

Shame that amarr ships will never be able to fit them because of the extra CPU load!

Interesting stuff.

This.

The only point where signature and speed are equivalent is when you orbit your target to outtrack its guns ; in this case, 30% less speed is equivalent to 30% more signature, with an advantage for less speed, because it's easier to orbit with less speed ; though the advantage is gone when your target is faster than you...

Another problem of armor is that the freed mid slot allowing for EWAR are useless because you have no choice but to use them for web and scram ; that and the other EWAR being of little use most of the time.

The only place where armour buffer really rules is Battleships, because the fitting of 1600mm plates is not a problem fitting-wise, their range is greater anyway due to gun size, and they have enough lows that a 5 slot buffer tank won't leave them impotent.

AHACs are really great too (and pretty much a hardcounter to drakes)

There is also quite a bit useful stuff you can use midslots for - Scrams, Webs, Tracking Disruptor, Sensor Dampener, Cap Booster, Dual Prop, ECCM, Projected ECCM, Target Painter. My AHAC Vigi has 4 midslots (obviously) and I wish I had more, because I could fill all of them with awesome stuff.

The only issue I see is that active armor tanking sucks.

You need ships with bonus or high resists to make it even considered viable, then pimped out mods, boosters, ganglinks, etc.

Deadspace shield boosters are significantly better than their tech 2 counterparts, while deadspace armor is not as much.

*snip*
I can't talk to much about Amarr since I don't fly those that much but Gallente yes, and no one around will make me change my mind about the fact imho armor tanking in general is bad and active armor tanking is total crap, eats too much slots/riggs, too heavy penalties, extremely cap hungry and overall there's absolutely no armor mods that bring the efficiency of shield tanking as a hole be it buffer or active (forget caps I don't even want to get in to that because they should all pop in a single boum to make this game a better place)

What are you even talking about?

First of all, you got the slots wrong. Domi has 7 lows (and 5 mids), Megathron has 4 mids.
Then you don't have to run dual injectors for single LAR + MWD (unless you forget to turn your MWD when you are in range. Which you shouldn't forget btw).
Hyperion has tracking issues, but as a 8 Gun Blaster Ship with dmg bonus it lays down the hurt on everything big enough (btw, Mael/Tempest/Abaddon/Apocalypse/Geddon can still track stuff without a tracking bonus and thats without superior blaster tracking)
I also don't understand the connection between pirate cruisers and deadspace mods - well, I don't understand most of your post, but still, that stood out.
Pirate cruisers are not really more expensive than HACs, are actually the weakpoint of any AHAC gang (missing t2 resists, big cap issues on the Ashimmu) and wouldn't even be in them if it weren't for the web/neut bonus. Pirate ships are good because of quite a few things, tank is not one of them (besides the Guristas line maybe)

Armor tanking is still very much viable, less so in the active department (there are still people killing stuff in dual rep Domis for example) - Talking about t2 fit domis without links before someone screams pirate/deadspace again.

problem is the fleet compositions, which have bubblers and tacklers, and this more or less eliminates armor tanking ships with some spare mids (gallente) from current doctrines. gallente ships just don't fit to fly in a blob. don't say that's balanced, because 3 other races have their doctrines.

What I wanted to say is that when armor tanking, you almost always need three of your midslot for tackle (prop, scram, web) or you're not gonig to catch any target due to your speed. That mean that any armor tanking ship cannot use the midslot advantage armor is supposed to give to him unless it have four or five mids.

If you don't want to take the web, then you need a lot of speed, hence no armor rigs, and hence your tank is rather weak. Moreover considering that EWAR is CPU intensive, you then need to use armor plating instead of energized membrane, reducing your tank even more.

On the oposite, a shield tanked ship have almost all its lows free for anything he want, lowslot being critical more than sometimes useful as EWAR is.

Armor tanking viable? sure , but lets count the matches in tournament where active armor tanking was used?

I personally saw 0 active armor tanks
OTOH almost every shield fleet out there had ASB as a supplemental tanks.

Active Tanking was semi balanced before ASB. Shield uses the more important mid slots so it has the better modules - invuln (which gives a blanket protection you can't buy for armor) boost amp, which armor can only mimic with rigs and crystal set implants which armor has not.

Enter ASB - reps for twice the amount for less cap(it says it uses 940 cap but will run off of 400 boosters)and activation time is 4 secs.

Look at a t2 armor rep with maxed skills :400 cap , 800 repair , 11.25 secs duration
Now look at an ASB with maxed out skills :400 cap, 980 repair, 4 secs duration
running from boosters of course but that's also an advantage since you cannot neut a booster charge.

hmmmm.....

Now think what an ancillary armor repper would look like :

200 charges, 1600 repaired , 9 secs duration(uses 800 cap without the charge) - yes I can see everyone and their grandma using 1 :)

Yeah, well Large Shield Extender II's take up a whole mid slot and only give 2625 shield HP, and you can get 1600mm plates II that give 4800 HP and only take up one slot! You get almost double the health for half the slots! THAT'S OP!

It would be like saying "who needs tutorials when we have EVE Uni?"

Since you claim to be ontop of this now Lin, what would you prefer?

Different ships doing different things that appeal to different players, yet unify that in one interactive world.

or

Different ships doing the same things that appeal to the same players, that splinter into divided worlds.


In ship terms it would be like comparing the Stealth bomber class to the Recon or HAC classes.

Your statement regarding shield or armor tanks and why people "just can't have fun" could easily be spun back to say "Why don't just people who want to fly Drakes, fly Drakes?" or "Why don't people complaining about armor within certain classes not just find the correct venue for their particular taste?". Balance in terms of ships and modules become equally pointless then, and then everybody lose. What imbalance is it you speak of? Is it solo-imbalance? I doubt it.

(Solo) (Squad) (Wing) (Fleet)
Myrm ---------> <--------- Drake
Myrm ----<----- ---->----- Drake

Do you see why interactivity is important now?

Do you see the second dimension?

Small scale - Myrm
Large scale - Drake
= 4 (more)

Large scale - Myrm
Large scale - Drake
= 3 (less)

You can easily do the same "made up math" with active- and passive tanks or whatever other system you'd like. It's the same thing there, passive tanks are not better per cathegory. People who want to improve active tanks to overcome their logical limitation (if outside repairs are infinite, local mitigation is all that matters; look at trends in Carrier setups and you can see that quite clearly there as well), those people always have the most overblown and unreasonable concepts of balance. They want active tanks to tank 100-man fleets. In their eyes that's what it need to adapt meta. Insert lol-ASB.

The biggest problem adapting the game to meta has that it doesn't stop with armor-shield or active-passive. There are so many other things (LR-SR weapons, tracking-explosion accuracy etc.) you need to adapt that when you're done you're going to realize that you burnt more resources to end up with that "less".

The biggest imbalance, most differentiated attention from CCP and easiest fix is:
(Solo) (Squad) (Wing) (Fleet)

I'll exemplify that with one of my pet illustrations: When POCO were introduced to lowsec, what would you need to interact with them and what kind of response would you assume they'd provoke?

Even if POCO are "hitpoint-grind light" they are still hitpoint-grind and the entry level is at least (Squad), while the common outcome is (Fleet). That's their span. Saying they endorse small-gang content by having less hitpoints or shorter timers is just ridiculous regardless if you look at theory or practise. Most people provoke POCO by the same standard they provoke (moon-) POS. Compare that to old mineral hauls that spanned the whole spectrum.

Yeah, well Large Shield Extender II's take up a whole mid slot and only give 2625 shield HP, and you can get 1600mm plates II that give 4800 HP and only take up one slot! You get almost double the health for half the slots! THAT'S OP!

But no, really. Compare in the module size. LAR =/= XLSB.

Armor gets oversized buffer modules, shield gets oversized active modules.

Also, you won't hear me defending ASB's as fair. I'm not here to do that. Just asking you to compare in the module size group.

Yeah no, look at the powergrid requirements of that 1600mm plate. Over FOUR TIMES the powergrid cost than Large Shield Extenders. So with two extenders you add roughly the same hitpoints as one 1600mm for less than half the powergrid cost. This gives you at least 3 major advantages:

1) Room to fit larger guns / cap warfare
2) A free low slot for either further increase to gun damage output or nano speed
3) No mass increase allows agility and base ship speed to be maintained


and an incremental advantage:

4) Increase passive shield recharge rate (++capacity / charge time)

And takes up 2 mid slots that could instead be used for tackle, Ewar, cap boosters, prop mods, and more. Also, it increases your signature radius substantially making you more susceptible to missiles, makes larger guns track you better, an easier target to hit, etc.
Oh, and each one takes up 46 CPU, 15 more per module. With 2, that's 2.8x the CPU. Oh, and co-processors only give up to 10% more CPU, RCU's can give up to 15% more (T2), and Processor overclock rigs take up too much calibration to put 3 on and each one gives less CPU than each ACR gives to PG. So it's harder to expand your CPU to accommodate things than it is to expand your PG.

Each has their upsides and downsides. Fitting issues aren't just for plates because they take a lot of PG.

In regards to active tanking there are 3 main attributes to consider when fitting your ship. Tank, damage, and speed. It is taken for granted that shield tanked ships will be faster than armor tanked ones. With the slot configuration shield tanks will be able to do more dps as well but will not be able to fit as many tackling mods as an armor tank ship because they need those slots for tank. Now because of this it's only sensible for armor tanks to have a slight advantage in tank if a shield tank ship has a slight advantage in dps and manuerverability. I think this has generally been the case up until the asb has been introduced. This mod has given shield tanking a huge buff now that there is no need to try and force a cap booster into cruiser/bc sized ships. For a short amount of time a shield tanking ship can now do more dps/tank/speed than an armor tanking ship. However this obviously comes at great cost cuz once ur cap charges are out then u die. But does this really mean that armor tanking ships need a buff? Maybe slightly but active armor tanks have always been good and still are. I think there needs to be a little more time for the dust to settle with the asb before ccp tries to interfere with it yet again.