Arkena Wyrnspire
Turalyon 514
Turalyon Alliance
5405
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Posted - 2013.11.25 23:07:00 -
[1] - Quote
Aisha Ctarl wrote:I feel that resistance plates would finally be the module that brings armor tanking on par with shield tanking.
-snip rainbows-
If these are ever implemented, at long last we would see armor tanking as being a viable tanking method for players. Unfortunately brick tanking (simply stacking a ton of armor plates) is not truly viable. Brick tanking slows one down too much due to their speed penalties, and does not protect the user from any specific damage type. Rep tanking is also not viable in DUST unless you're a logi. With the built in complex repair module in a logi suit, only then can you get usable repair values on a dropsuit. A logi running complex repair modules can get in the 20's of HP/S armor regen. On an assault suit the most you can get is around 5 - 15 HP/S and that is by sacrificing plates.
If resistance plates are brought into fruition, I feel that armor tanking will finally enter a golden era.
A few things.
Firstly, on your resistances:
Lasers (Amarr) do EM and thermal damage.
Plasma (Gallente) does thermal and kinetic damage, weighted towards thermal - thus they are anti-shields.
Railguns (Caldari) do kinetic and thermal damage, weighted towards kinetic - thus they are anti-armour.
Projectiles (Minmatar) do kinetic and explosive damage.
Explosives, obviously, do explosive damage.
Most weapons don't do just one form of damage - fitting a specific EM hardener, for example, wouldn't protect at all against plasma, railguns, projectiles, and explosives, and would only partially protect against part of lasers.
Having element specific resistance plates tends to become rather complex in a system like this. This works in EVE (although general resistance modules are used far more often in PvP and specific resistances are only often used in PvE) as most ships have a large number of slots. In Dust, you don't have that number of slots. As an example, in EVE, you do not fit a Punisher with a specific resistance plate unless you're doing something really specific or you're mad. That ship has a similar number of slots to a proto dropsuit in Dust - we simply don't have the slot count to make specific resistance modules work, even if they were in high slots.
So I think general resistances, whilst perhaps being more boring, would be better. That way they're not too specific and are likely to see some use.
Now, as for armour vs shields...
I think that much of the balance at the moment depends on the suit. I'm relatively certain you use the Amarr - I feel that because of the need for some form of repair, whatever you fit with three low slots is going to be less than ideal. The only suits I've ever felt that armour shines on are logis, which have the innate 5 HP/s (plus the equipment, but that's another story).
One of the things I've always wanted to do is axe the 5 HP/s on logis and put innate repairs on suits - 5 HP/s Gallente, 3 HP/s Amarr, 1 HP/s Minmatar, 0 HP/s Caldari, for example. That way it's not an absolute necessity to fit a repairer, which typically gibs your tank, but it gives you the option of using one to augment/vastly increase your innate repair. That way they still remain useful, some logi power is reduced, and some fitting versatility is opened up to both armour and shield tankers as you're not absolutely forced to use a rep. This is just a random thing I've wanted though and I'm not sure it's balanced.
Let's consider the current state of armour and shields - assume 4 slots for tank in each case. There are scaling problems with the shield extenders and with armour repair, and of course I've mentioned suit imbalances, so this isn't a brilliant comparison, but let's go with it anyway - in terms of raw modules, it's okay.
2x complex plates, 2x complex armour repairers = 288 armour HP, 12.5 HP/s constant regen. Speed penalty.
4x complex shield extenders = 290 shield HP, varying from 20-31.25 HP/s regen with a delay. No speed penalty.
On paper, that looks about equal, perhaps with a slight advantage towards shields. However, armour gets more team support options, so I think it evens out a bit.
Of course, that's just looking at a few surface details. Complex plates -and- complex reppers end up being ridiculously hard to fit because unlike shields you can't use fitting mods and the only mods you can realistically use are all fittings heavy.
The speed penalty is significant when stacking plates, the SP investment for multiple tanking modules is greater, it doesn't scale as well using complex modules on lower tiered suits because you need a baseline rep. Shields have the option of using all of their main slots to augment their tank, armour does not. I've gone through all this before - if you're interested in reading about this stuff some more, there's a link in my signature that may be on interest to you.
This post might be a little confusing (I'm trying to convince myself as well as talk about this, sorry) but I think there's room for a module in the highslot which is relatively light on fitting and increases general armour resistance. Not by too much, but by a bit.
I would suggest tweaking reactive plates, seeing as they're completely overshadowed by plate/rep combos in every meaningful way apart from maybe on the lowest tier Amarr assault, and always will be with their stat allocation.
In conclusion, I support this idea, but shield/armour is very much affected by the dropsuit choice, and existing imbalances between dropsuits muddy the water a bit.
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Lenin of the glorious armoured revolution
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