So a maxed tanker can essentially negate any amount of downtime needed. While still a bit of downtime, this isn't until after at least a minute and a half. While with 2 hardeners there will be about 15 seconds of downtime, this is after a full minute of uptime.

In the gunnlogis case, downtime should be a huge issue as a trade off for such high resistances. What I think is needed though, is lower the resistance slightly, reduce duration to account for skills. And add in a speed bump, to compensate for the lower resistances. Place more emphasis on actually using hit and run tactics, while placing less emphasis on the absolute need for hardeners. It seems forgotten, that damage mitigation means so much more than simply taking damage.

What I would suggest for hardeners though, is to add a stacking penalty in. Where any mod after the first, increases cooldown time. So stacking 3 will not mean you can cycle them non stop.

Maddies on the other hand, are more focused on receiving damage, but rather than having high resistances, they have lower resist that last longer, but a constant rep to their armor. The reps helps to mitigate the loss of a higher overall resistance. Man are these things tough too. In all honesty, I don't have too experience to go too far into details on armor tanks.

What I can say though, is with 2 hardeners up and active, these things are beastly. Still, I would still rather go up against a maddie than a gunnlogi. At least these things are killable with hardeners active. I feel that armor hardeners are in a pretty solid place coupled with armor repairers.

They do the job they were designed to do, Stand and Deliver. But I think to complete that idea, speed is going to need to take a hit. You can't be a strong heavy hitter without trading something off for it.

If damage mitigation is focused on taking damage, reduce speed to compensate. I always imagined the maddie being the slow lumbering giant, and gunnlogi the small and nimble fox. While the Giant can easily crush the Fox, he's got to actually hit the thing first. And the Fox has to work down his opponent, little pieces at a time.



Namely rail turrets. When you think about killing another tank, Rails are always the first thought. It is the BEST weapon for the job. Using just one damage mod and a proto rail, you can drop anything in just a few shots. Often times before they can drop hardeners on. But some would argue, "well that's what they are intended for".

I say for the sake of balance, that train of thought is wrong.


I mentioned earlier that in order to gain an advantage, you must lose an advantage somewhere for the sake of balance. You can't have it all. A railgun currently has it all.

Highest Alpha damage in the game

Longest range

So of all the turrets, not only can it pump out more Alpha dps, it can do so from 600M away.

You could say that because of the slower turning turret it doesn't do well in CQC, because it can't track as quickly. While this is true, it only holds true if the other tank maintains a tight position on the rail turret, but at this point it is fighting it's own tracking as well. Outside of this extremely close range though, a rail turret struggles far less with tracking.

I use rails in all engagements, whether it be in your face or at a distance, the reason I always use them is because they work at range and up close. Much unlike blasters and missiles that require you to always maintain a close distance. With a rail, I can easily outdistance my opponents or simply stay out of effective range and pummel my enemy to death.

Rails need a trade off, and tracking isn't it.
If you want High Alpha, you have less effective range.
Or you can have lower Alpha damage, and more effective range.

All and all, a rail tank should not be the one turret that murders all other types. That is not balance. Each turret should be nearly effective as the next turret, the differences being in how they are used in comparison to the others.

Let's take for example a rail, with High Alpha but say a range of 300 meters max. It forces a rail tank to engage the other turret types very close to their max effective ranges. No more bombarding from a high area half way across the map. It would push them into an area, in which they can easily be engaged, but they still have a high alpha to.

Rail turrets can kill in 3-4, and sometimes even two shots, so it should overheat in 3-4 Shots, and it needs a nerf to magazine capacity.

I think, hardeners are not the BIGGEST problem. Right now you are absolutely right, selection is limited, and there is no variance in the fits.

That is because, CCP isn't finished with tanks. They stripped that variety with intent to add things back in later. It's not that a gunnlogi shouldn't use triple hardeners, it's the fact you can run them non stop.

I'm wondering, how could you go about allowing a ultra high resistance, for an extended time. What negatives are associated with that.

Maybe they could add in a penalty for stacking hardeners, that every mod after the first increases your cooldown time on all modules. So stacking 3 hardeners means you won't be cycling them nonstop.

Whata ya think of that?

Impossible for you because you are a bad pilot

lolface to face, what is this pistols at dawn 50m away from each other? lolno

Dramatically changing them i doubt it, they already did a massive overhaul

OP for bad players, i dont have problems with tanks as infantry

Well, if you think about it, with 2 hardeners on at the same time, they only have 30 seconds before they go into CD(gunnlogi). With a stacking penalty that increases CD time, they trade the extra defense for extra downtime.

The 4 steps to tank balance:

Step 1. Stop hardner stacking. Simple enough, and a popular choice around here.

Step 2. Make hardners have drawback effects. Armor hardners, when activated, should slow your movement speed by 80%. Shield hardners should cancel all shield regeneration until the hardner goes off.

Step 3. Increase the strength AND duration of STD hardners by 3%, ADV hardners by 5% & PRO hardners by 10%

Step 4. Slight damage buff to light AV and 'nades (around 10% for light AV, around 5% for AV grenades) to compensate for repair stacking fits (to ensure AV weapons are capable of keeping up with the rep cycle)

Results: Tanks actually have waves of opportunity, militia hardners are trash compared to good hardners, hardners used intelligently are great but used poorly are worthless, and there are finally huge differences between shield and armor tanking besides just the fittings. Armor becomes "stand and deliver", shields become "hit and run" just like they were always meant to be.

I can tell you for a fact, a proto railgun with a single damage mod, will very much hurt a double hardener setup. Without the hardener, I can 2 shot a gunnlogi, with 2 activated, it takes roughly 4 -7 shots to drop. It is NOT TOO much resistance.

I myself run this setup

Gunnlogi
2x Hardeners
1x Damage mod or Speed boost
1x Armor hardener or armor repair

Proto rails


Do you want to just 2 shot tanks with a rail? I want long, engaging combat. Not a system where everything dies in just a few seconds. I've had forge gunners, severely **** me up with a single hardener active. I know for a fact, from my experience, that a double hardener setup is NOT immune to a proto rail.

And did you read my post in its entirety? There are many things that can be done to hardeners, that suggestion was just my favorite.

My theme is balance, in order to gain in one area, you must lose in another

So to have 60% resistance we need to lose something in the process. Sure you can have that resistance, but let's say you lose overall damage in the process. So the mod would look something like this.

60% resistance at the cost of 15% overall damage. Want defense, then you trade offensive capabilities.

Ah, well yes, without a damage mod, you don't do too much damage to a double hardened gunnlogi. But I know I still apply a healthy amount of damage. But I do think that is a healthy thing. I think a bigger part of the problem is the fact that a double hardened gunnlogi does not have enough downtime.

And I did mention tweaking the numbers on hardeners a bit. 60 + 60 = 120%. But CCP has stacking penalties I would think apply to the hardeners, you are right, now I know what you were saying with penalties lol.

And now that I sit here trying to figure out the strength of the second hardeners, I'm a little dumbfounded. I know the second mod, is above 50% strength when you calculate. But in this case, anything above 55% strength equal 100%.

So, how do they calculate stacking penalties I wonder with hardeners. Even if the second is at 50% strength, that's still 90% resistance on the second.

I'm not against having this high a number for resistance(It does seem a little extreme), the duration and cd's need to be looked at more than anything. Right now, 30 seconds is plenty time to drop multiple tanks, and mitigate most all damage.

Like I said, I think hardeners are a problem, but I think some of these issues can be fixed with a longer CD period, and changes to turrets.

Tanks - Balancing turrets Check my other thread out. I hate focusing on just a single thing like hardeners and saying those are the problem. They are part of the problem, but there are a lot of issues with tanks. And I think when you consider one (ie hardeners) you need to consider the other factors involved.

Is it that hardeners are too strong, or are turrets not strong enough, or are damage mods too strong.

No offense meant earlier fella, I just think we need to work with the idea that hardeners provide some serious resistance, and balance things more or less around them.

Btw, What's your fit. Double hardeners and a booster, you can nearly outlast a whole railgun clip, or at least for an overheat.

Ahh, a maddie, well those don't need to be double hardened either I think.

My suggestion with damage mods, is that they reduce your resistances in addition to giving you extra damage. In this way, even if they chose the double hardener route, using a damage mod helps negate the benefit of using 2.

Read that post I linked and check out my ideas for the turrets. Then scroll down and check out harpyj's suggestion about doing the same thing, just with ammo.

Basically, if a rail guns wants range, they lose out on damage.

If a rail gun wants damage, they lose out on range.

Ahh, a maddie, well those don't need to be double hardened either I think.

My suggestion with damage mods, is that they reduce your resistances in addition to giving you extra damage. In this way, even if they chose the double hardener route, using a damage mod helps negate the benefit of using 2.

Read that post I linked and check out my ideas for the turrets. Then scroll down and check out harpyj's suggestion about doing the same thing, just with ammo.

Basically, if a rail guns wants range, they lose out on damage.

If a rail gun wants damage, they lose out on range.

Remember that at one time, tanks had variety in turrets and their fit. We are stipped bare atm, and no doubt we won't always just have the ONE turret type.

Turret types, or some form of it will be incoming. The current railgun is more or less filling in for the moment so CCP can get some good data to balance around.

Ahh, a maddie, well those don't need to be double hardened either I think.

My suggestion with damage mods, is that they reduce your resistances in addition to giving you extra damage. In this way, even if they chose the double hardener route, using a damage mod helps negate the benefit of using 2.

Read that post I linked and check out my ideas for the turrets. Then scroll down and check out harpyj's suggestion about doing the same thing, just with ammo.

Basically, if a rail guns wants range, they lose out on damage.

If a rail gun wants damage, they lose out on range.

UGh, lore. No, I'm not a fan of EVE lore when it comes to balancing. What works in space WILL NOT work on the ground. These are 2 completely different games with opposite goals and gameplay.

And beside, Dust 514 need's it's own lore. What works in the vacuum of space doesn't work on the ground. Planets are a whole different ballgame.

Ever get hit with a rail, without your hardeners up? For a shield tank, it means death. I almost HAVE to run 2 hardeners to ensure I don't get 2 shot everywhere I go. With armor tanks, you get a nice rep. On a shield tank, often times it seems like FOREVER waiting on shield recharge.

Add me in game and I'll let you drive my proto gunnlogis sometime to get a feel for them. Those armor reps make the use of a second hardener less attractive, not to mention the CPU limitations, I know. But if you think about this too, a gunnlogi has NOTHING useful to put in their low slots (free slots) where as a maddie can fit 2 types of equipment.

I'm pretty sure that in eve, that while rail turrets do have the LONGEST range, they have varietys of said turrets, with one being the shortest range, a mid range, and then the longest range turret. And in EVE tracking plays a HUGE part, where on dust, it is very minimal.

Don't get caught with your pants down, very true with shield tanks. Hard to get the jump on a good armor tank. That shield buffer makes a big difference as well.