And armour tankers have to stuff all of their tank mods into low slots so they have to sacrifice buffer for regen or vice versa.

Right now I'm worried about my energy weapons. Hopefully CCP will be keeping a close watch to see if the increase in 150 hp plates on the field start making them ineffective.

Once the shield penalty rolls shield tanks will have to use low slots for regulators.

Hi guys,

A quick heads up for some upcoming changes in 1.4 to armour and movement.

Currently a bug has caused some of the movement speed modifiers on strafe to be ignored. This is good and bad. ItGÇÖs good because faster strafe speeds are cool. ItGÇÖs bad because right now strafe speed is at least 1:1 with run speed and this was not our intention. In keeping with normal physical limitations strafe was intended to be slower than run. We had planned to raise the strafe speed from the 1.1 build to around 80% of run speed (it was lurking around 60-70% or so depending on frame). After seeing how popular (and fun) the higher strafe speeds have been we changed our minds. We still wanted to maintain a difference between forward and sideways movement but we didnGÇÖt want to make a significant reduction to the speeds. So weGÇÖve settled on strafe speed as 90% of run speed across all suits.

Before anyone freaks out, this does not mean it is set in stone forevermore. It just means that we want to play the game with the settings we actually intended so we can properly judge them. There are a lot of updates to the game in 1.4 so weGÇÖll be watching very closely to see what we need to respond to :-)

A nice thing that also came out of this is that I found some errant numbers and a bug that were causing the heavy frames to move too slowly backwards as well as reducing their strafe speed. Both of those problems are now fixed as well.

Also as promised on IRC yesterday IGÇÖm also sharing the buffs weGÇÖve made to armour plates.

Couple of caveats:
- We'd like to introduce a penalty to shield tanking (most likely increasing the delay on shield recharge when you use shield extenders) but we wanted to buff armor first. We will be watching 1.4 closely and if necessary, add the shield delay in 1.5.
- Role skills still need to be updated to better take advantage of armor tanking.

* Adjusted Armor Plate attributes - HP bonus of 85/110/135 (Basic/Enhanced/Complex) and speed penalties of 2%/3%/5% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 93.5/121/148.5)
* Adjusted Ferroscale Plate attributes - HP bonus of 35/50/75 (with full skill bonuses this equates to 38.5/55/82.5)
* Adjusted Reactive Plate attributes - HP bonus of 25/40/60 and speed penalties of 0%/1%/1% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 27.5/44/66)

Cheers

CCP Wolfman

Hi guys,

* Adjusted Armor Plate attributes - HP bonus of 85/110/135 (Basic/Enhanced/Complex) and speed penalties of 2%/3%/5% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 93.5/121/148.5)
* Adjusted Ferroscale Plate attributes - HP bonus of 35/50/75 (with full skill bonuses this equates to 38.5/55/82.5)
* Adjusted Reactive Plate attributes - HP bonus of 25/40/60 and speed penalties of 0%/1%/1% (with full skill bonuses this equates to 27.5/44/66)

- Role skills still need to be updated to better take advantage of armor tanking.

700 armor gallente mid frames are now the heavies of old.

Whoa, bombshell......gimme a second to write something up. You get a +1 sir.

Let me start with the strafing, I like this change, and I am glad to see that I might actually be able to shoot and hit speed tanked enemies now that they are getting a 10% speed reduction when strafing, definitely a good change.

About the possible shield recharge delay penalty for equipping extenders.....I like it. Quad stacking complex extenders will now essentially require the use of regulators, which will hurt dual tanking, which is good since it is kind of god-mode at the moment. I believe this penalty to be MUCH better than a scan profile increase, and will fully support it in the event you give us the details. My only question would be: Would regulators reduce the base shield delay, or the shield delay AFTER the extender penalty is introduced?

About armor plates, good. Good, but not great. The percentage of penalty increase is still greater than the percentage of armor given. By that I mean from the 2%/85 armor plate to the 3%/110 armor plate is a 1.5 speed penalty multiplier, but only a 1.29 armor increase multiplier. It isn't as bad as before, but it is still worth noticing. The difference is much bigger going from the 3%/110 armor plate to the 5%/135 armor plate. The speed penalty multiplier there is 1.6666.... and the armor multiplier is only 1.22. That's a greater speed penalty and a smaller armor increase compared to the jump from the basic to the enhanced, and is totally not worth it, I can see the enhanced plates being the go-to with these given stats.

The ferroscale stats are all I could ever hope for, so I think you did a great job there, but reactive plates will remain comparatively useless. It would be great if you made them a high-slot module, since armor tankers are still lacking such a mythical item, even though I understand damage mods are the "recommended" armor tank high mod.




Have you read my "New Class Bonus Ideas" thread yet? It's a good read, not entirely polished, but I compiled ideas from people in the comments section, so it's a moderately good idea of what the community would like to see.

Complex: 5% penalty, 200 armor