Three?
Other than armour and shield, the only tank type I can think of is structure, which isn't present in dust and is certainly not superior to armour in EVE.

Other than that, good post, +1.

Ah yes, speed, but as you said, it really is a 'nebulous' tank type.
It does deserve some recognition though, you're right. It's a significant factor in things, but it's not really a separate 'tank type' as such.

Anyhow, I do find it refreshing that you're looking at the roles of the tank types rather than pointlessly whinging about something getting a buff, 'so it must be OP'.

Incidentally, I'd be curious to hear what you think of something similar I wrote on the topic - P2, specifically.

Judging speed tanks is awkward, yeah. It's obvious that scouts have more of it and heavies have less, but you can hardly quantify speed tank.

Thanks for your thoughts - I agree with those, and I think I'll go fiddle with that now. In particular you make an interesting point on the modular gear, I hadn't thought of that.

There are a couple other methods of tanking, though OP is correct that shield, armor, and speed/size are the main three.

For example, an Arazu's main means of defense, when used as a solo ship, is to use sensor damps to reduce its victim's targeting distance to shorter than its own point range.

The Curse fights by draining an opponent's capacitor and damaging their tracking speed/range

Stealth bombers use cloaking for their defense, uncloaking 30km to drop bombs and then recloaking to get a new position.

These are all extremely situational, of course, but they represent some of my favorite ways to fight. ^_^

How about Stealth Tank? That's how I fit my Scouts.

While this is true, as far as I know, a bug still exists for shields, making the timer till regen start after the first hit instead of the last hit. It means that incidental damage or continual damage, but with a 1 sec break after 5 or so seconds, shields start to regen. So shields are being able to do more than just skirmish, they can actively tank mid-combat.

That, in addition to various penalties to armor tanking (many of which are being somewhat resolved) such as poor progression vs. shield extenders, bad alternative modules, and increasing penalties to speed relative to gear (costing more speed per point of armor the higher the meta you go) makes armor tanking not as viable as shield tanking.

Side note: In addition, if you lose your shields you aren't dead, you will be soon, but not yet, so flux, the only true anti-shield nade, doesn't kill you like the normal nades. However, for armor tanks, out of armor means dead. I suppose a counter to this could be to create a nade that does similar damage to normal nades, but with a shield bias (so 120% or 130% to shields and 80% or 70% to armor). But that's probably never going to happen.

According to CCP, that is intended and therefore not a bug.



That is a lie. You see... meaning after the delay from being damaged or depleted it starts to regenerate; however , as soon as they are hit again, the delay comes back into effect. So, shield tankers cannot actively tank mid-combat.

Hmm... I guess I'll check again to see if they changed the status from "Working as intended" to "Bug"...

[P4] Regeneration
Another core issue is the problem of regeneration. A lot of people get confused here about the mechanics and the value of some of them.


A lot of people believe that the shield recharge delay is very significant and that the under-fire recharge quality of armour repair modules is also very important.
The short answer GÇô ItGÇÖs not.
The long answer GÇô In the 4 seconds or so it takes for shields to start recharging, a complex armour repairer will regenerate 25 HP. ThatGÇÖs a bit less than 1 assault rifle bullet.
On the fifth second, the shields start to regenerate as well, at a rate of about 25 HP/s. At this point armour has repaired 31.5 HP and shield has repaired 25 HP. Those two numbers are so close that itGÇÖs not even worth a bullet, most of the time what would kill the shield tanker in this instance (assuming equal HP) would also kill the armour tanker.


Of course, this assumes that the shield recharge starts under fire, and this is another misconception.


The shield recharge DOES start under fire if your shields arenGÇÖt depleted. The timer starts from the first bullet that hits you and doesnGÇÖt reset with subsequent bullets. I have tested this repeatedly, and general gameplay shows this to be true as well. Once it starts another bullet hitting will stop it again, but youGÇÖve still regenerated some HP, enough to prevent the under-fire ability of armour tanking from being useful and gaining a meaningful amount of HP over the shield tanker.
Remote armour repairs do not fix the regeneration gap. The normal repair tools repair armour at a very similar rate to shield regeneration, and this requires the assistance of another player who has to fit equipment and stop using his gun while heGÇÖs repairing you. This gets better at the prototype level, but that requires a large SP investment, lots of fitting resources, and itGÇÖs expensive to run prototype equipment.

There are multiple tank theories.
Active Armor
Passive Armor
Active Shields
Passive Shields
DPS
Speed
Stealth

As you can already know half this list doesnt work that well in a shooter.

Well armour based suits can use logi for reps but shield based, logi is useless to them cuz by the time they can rep your armour you will die since they cant rep shields

TBQH this buff will almost completely elminate the AR and will completely destroy the ASCR. In competitive matches the AR will require 2-3 clips to kill a strafing opponent (the ASCR might require all the ammo it carries lol). Their will only be 3 viable weapons in the game after this buff, the mass driver, forge gun, and flaylock pistol.

The issue with armor was never the HP provided by them but rather high PG costs for high end plates and for the reppers. Coupled with the loss of a slot due to all suites pretty much requiring CPU/PG mods. The other major issue is the Core Locust Grenade, if an armor class (non heavy) does not run all shield extenders (a huge drain on PG) in their high slot these grenades are a OHK.

In my personal opinion the best way to balance armor is not to buff HP but rather to lower the CPU/PG requirements on the plates and repairers coupled with the buff of lowering the movement penalty of the plates.

The regen in all acuality is far superior on armor when considering Dust is a team based game, and most teams would be wise to have their logi's carry either repair tools or repair nanohives (or both for gallante). CCP has done what they have always done in their balancing patch... they have gone from one extreme to the other, now shields will become inferior to armor and because of that Dust is going to become and explosive nightmare.

I wish my gunloggi was faster than a heavily armored madruger.

You have it backwards; the Gallentean Plasma Rifle is a knock off of the [Assault] Scrambler Rifles. I'll find the link when I have the time to do so.

Lore wise the scrambler weapons are just neutron beamers.

No BC with more armor tankers means more explosives means resurgence of shield tanking. Thus harmony is restored with the cqldari/MD vs Amarr/SR. Gallente still sucks. Minmitar is still not brilliant.

Something like this, yea. Just because armor tanking will become viable doesn't mean it will be the only onw to use. There will still be shield tankers, there will still be speed tankers, and there will still be people who don't tank, so don't drop your AR in a huff just yet. (Petty moment incoming) Actually, go ahead and do that, get a real gun :3

This is what is hurting the game. When everyone is standing on one end of a balance scale together, nearly all of them with the same set up. Then they are jumping up and down on the scale saying "CCP WEIGH US AND BALANCE THIS STUPID THING". When you all are refusing to balance yourselves and find counters to the caldari shield suiters its your own damm fault.