Discussion of tanking imbalances:
So some people have been asking if we care about some of the design problems inherent in our current tanking situation, and if we're going to redesign these ships to compensate for these problems.
Firstly, we are very aware of the many problems we're facing in tanking design at the moment. The balance between active and passive tanks, and between armor and shield (and honour) tanking are both in need of work. ASBs have made parts of this problem better (adding new interesting gameplay and making "active" tanking more popular) while making other parts worse (too good in many circumstances, and skewing the meta further towards shield). Armor and shield tanking balance suffers because mass (and velocity) penalties are far more severe than signature radius penalties in most circumstances, and to a lesser extent because of the difference between shield hitting at the start of a cycle and armor hitting at the end. This is especially harmful for active tanking Gallente blaster ships that need that speed to get within range.
These problems are real and we are working on them, but the solution isn't to skew the ships themselves too far in the opposite direction. Our goals are to hit the problems at their source.
That being said there may be things we end up doing to these ships to help smooth things out, such as reducing cycle times and/or tweaking the mass of the armor tankers down a bit. We're going to keep working on these ships up to and beyond release in the Winter.

Here is a quote on tanking from CCP Fozzie in case you haven't seen it.

I think what they should have done was introduce ASBs as armor modules. Yes, we'd still have an Exile + Legion problem but we wouldn't have crystals on top of it. Besides, I ******* hate crystals and I'd love an excuse to let my speed implants get some use. :)

-Liang

Ed: Also, oversized mods wouldn't be as much of a pain in the ass.

I think what they should have done was introduce ASBs as armor modules. Yes, we'd still have an Exile + Legion problem but we wouldn't have crystals on top of it. Besides, I ******* hate crystals and I'd love an excuse to let my speed implants get some use. :)

-Liang

Ed: Also, oversized mods wouldn't be as much of a pain in the ass.

edit- also unfortunately they appear to experimenting with upping the armor rep bonus to 10% on some gallente hulls. It will help and already does help the incusus for pve. But, this will not help active armor for pvp. It does not address the underlying problems with active armor mod stats and fittings and mechanics.

1. CCP will halve the cycle time of remote reps and doubling the cycle time of remote shield transfers while maintaing their healing per second.

I'm not sure if this will be enough. If not they'll have to be homogenized.

2. CCP will introduce low impact penalties for plates and armor rigs or remove penalties from all rigs at skill level V. Reason being, the community is unwilling to accept meaningful penalties for shield rigs and extenders.

An example of meaningful penalty for shield tanking mods could be a max cap reduction. Large enough to make a cap injector mandatory for fits that employ high cap usage mods such as the MWD, energy neutralizers, etc. Large enough to guarantee that shield fits will lose in capacitor warfare against armor ships when equivalent fits are used.


3. CCP will make fitting oversized shield boosters a thing of the past or significantly reduce fitting requirements for armor repairers while increasing their healing per second.


4. CCP will limit ASBs to one per ship.

If they have guts they'll instead add a low slot cap injector and remove ASBs (one can dream, right?)


These would make a lot of sense, but I don't expect CCP to make sensible changes in this area after the RAH and ASB.

Somebody can't fly shield ships.

Your "suggestions" basically amount to the following:
1. Buff remote armor reps, nerf shield transfers.
2. Remove penalties from armor tanking rigs or cripple shield tanking ships with rig penalties.
3. Remove the oversized shield reps, but no mention of removing the 1600mm armor plates
4. Limit or outright remove ASBs.

Typical knee-jerk response from someone only looking at one facet of tanking and yelling "not fair!"

Somebody can't fly shield ships.

Your "suggestions" basically amount to the following:
1. Buff remote armor reps, nerf shield transfers.
2. Remove penalties from armor tanking rigs or cripple shield tanking ships with rig penalties.
3. Remove the oversized shield reps, but no mention of removing the 1600mm armor plates
4. Limit or outright remove ASBs.

Typical knee-jerk response from someone only looking at one facet of tanking and yelling "not fair!"

2. He didn't say 'remove penalties from armor tanking rigs'. Only decrease penalties, which would bring it inline with shield penalties.. which is something noone really cares about.

3. You can't really compare oversized shield booster (with cap booster) with 1600 plate. Oversized SB with cap injectors = asb

3. You can't really compare oversized shield booster (with cap booster) with 1600 plate. Oversized SB with cap injectors = asb
)

Whether you like it or not, that is the comparison because that is the balance factor. Shields get an oversized active module, armor gets an oversized buffer module.

1. CCP will halve the cycle time of remote reps and doubling the cycle time of remote shield transfers while maintaing their healing per second.

I'm not sure if this will be enough. If not they'll have to be homogenized.

2. CCP will introduce low impact penalties for plates and armor rigs or remove penalties from all rigs at skill level V. Reason being, the community is unwilling to accept meaningful penalties for shield rigs and extenders.

An example of meaningful penalty for shield tanking mods could be a max cap reduction. Large enough to make a cap injector mandatory for fits that employ high cap usage mods such as the MWD, energy neutralizers, etc. Large enough to guarantee that shield fits will lose in capacitor warfare against armor ships when equivalent fits are used.


3. CCP will make fitting oversized shield boosters a thing of the past or significantly reduce fitting requirements for armor repairers while increasing their healing per second.

4. CCP will limit ASBs to one per ship.

If they have guts they'll instead add a low slot cap injector and remove ASBs (one can dream, right?)

These would make a lot of sense, but I don't expect CCP to make sensible changes in this area after the RAH and ASB.

What do you propose to balance active shield tanking with active armor tanking? Currently the situation is as follows:

2x Medium Armor Repairer: 71 raw HPS

LSB II + Boost Amp II: 81 raw HPS

XLSB II + Boost Amp II: 163 raw HPS

According to your logic, it is fine if active shield tanking is slightly better because buffer armor fits have slightly more HP than buffer shield fits.

The discrepancy in active tanking capabilities is anything but slight though as you can see from the numbers above.

How do you propose to solve this without either
a) massive buffs to armor repairers
b) disallowing oversized shield boosters? (as you can see, shield boosting already has the advantage even without oversizing)

The thing about it is that sig is a significant penalty already. People just don't realize it because they think tracking and sig don't matter.

Oh I think they realize this, but you don't seem to realize that a speed penalty makes it easier for your opponent to track you just like a sig radius increase does...

I think it would be interesting to change the armor rig penalty to an agility penalty, so youre still quite a bit heavier, and move slower as a fleet, but you would have a much closer top speed to the shield tankers.

Also please remember that any buffs you make to active tanking also affect PvE.

active shield burst tanking was viable before the introduction of ASBs, whereas active armor tanking only was on some few select bonused fits in certain situation and with gimmick fits, so armor tanking would have been in dire need of a module like that whereas shield tanking wasn't.

I dont mind that there are differences between the two tank types. In fact, I think its cool. I think CCP is on the right track with ASB (but small nerf mentioned below). They need to tweak the armor ones though.

So keeping with the theme of shield = light/skirmish and armor = heavy/endurance, make changes something like:

1. Decrease cap usage of RAH and increase the amount/speed at which it shifts. I like the idea behind this module, but it's too slow and cap hungry to be of much use now. There is no reason to use it over a second EANM right now, and little to use it over a third. These changes will make armor tanks stronger the longer the fight goes. Endurance.

2. Change the armor rig penalties to something else. Sig radius would be ok. This is just a giant penalty to Gallente ships.

3. Keep it so armor still needs to rely on a separate cap booster module. But significantly reduce the amount of cap they use (like half). This makes armor more cap friendly to allow for longer endurance, easier use of neuts, more resistance to neuts, and helps with the fact that traditional armor races use blasters and lasers. Endurance.

4. Increase the length of time armor mods can over heat or have higher module hit points, or reduce the amount of heat damage they cause. Endurance.

5. Reduce the fitting requirements slightly (allows for fitting of additional reps/cap boosters/larger weapons/plates). Heavy.

6. Increase the rep amounts or speed slightly - not on par with ASBs - but more than now. OR, increase the amount of benefit you get from overheating, and allow them to overheat for longer. I can see the need for double rep setups - having to fit triple reps is kinda silly though. Heavy/Endurance.

So, the above changes would make armor ships be a bit hardier, more resistant to neuting/better able to use neuts, fit heavier weapons and have longer 'staying power' with increased overheating ability. It also makes sense because the traditional armor races use the two most cap hungry weapons.

7. For shield - I like ASB, but the dual oversized setups are kinda crazy. So to reduce (but not eliminate) those options - increase the fitting requirements of ASB slightly so you REALLY have to gimp your fit (smaller weapons, less nos/neut or more fitting mods) to fit 2 of them. I think that would go a long way to balance the dual oversize fits we are seeing. If you want to make something crazy with an obscene tank - you still can - but good luck fitting weapons to keep you in your normal 'DPS class'. Would reduce their abilities to fit full-size nos/nets too - again keeping with the reduced endurance but skirmish mentality.

I dunno - just some ideas. I like the differences between tank styles - but they need to be balanced now.

Shield would continue to be the quick strike race but still have a good active tank option. Armor would be the heavies with longer staying power.

I am just glad CCP has commented on the issue finally. Sounds like they are working on it. Go go CCP.

Edit: autocorrect sucks.

instead of the reps giving hp at the end of each cycle it should give you that amount over time. having a constant flow of HP would give armor fleets more viability.

1. you can barely call it a buff. armor reps still wouldn't rep at the beginning of cycle and rep amout would be the same.
2. He didn't say 'remove penalties from armor tanking rigs'. Only decrease penalties, which would bring it inline with shield penalties.. which is something noone really cares about.
3. You can't really compare oversized shield booster (with cap booster) with 1600 plate. Oversized SB with cap injectors = asb
4. Looks like you're the only one thinking asb are balanced. (looks at CCP Fozzie 's quote)

What would be the fun of flying an active tanked armour ship regenerating its HP like a fugly Drake