Mordecai Jakotar wrote:I just saw the posting of the the planned assault dropsuit stats for 1.8, and found myself feeling a little nervous about the changes being made to the assault ak.0. It seems that CCP is pushing amarr assault away from the dual tanked setup that we've gotten used to and moving us to be more reliant on armor. Which seems to be a good move, however, our current slot layout doesn't lend itself to full on armor tanking. In light of the new information, mainly the shift of more of our health to armor and having roughly the same shielding power as a gallente w/o the benefit of built in armor reps, less speed, and one less low slot is going to make the armor tank on the ak.0 UP at best. Unless CCP plans on releasing a high slot armor resistance module. I think that in order to fully utilize the proposed changes assault ak.0 need some slot shifting.
For example: STD - 1 H , 2 L ; ADV - 1 H , 3 L ; PRO - 2 H , 4 L
That would make armor tanking possible at lower tiers and much more viable at the higher tiers than the current proposed dual slot layout.
The shift is basically this. (Cored up)
old 225/225
new 150/300
Lots of standard armor on the suit. The most in it's class. Obviously the Gallente could possibly use more armor plates and have more but at what cost to the rest of their suit?
Let's not forget that the amarr assault is also recieving a stamina buff to 250 so the moving is balanced. Heck, with that much armor the Amarr Assault can afford a reactive plate or two. That should allow some better movement speed and regeneration.
I have tried testing some experimental suits prior to these changes and I have had some fun with them.
Since complex damage mods are out of the question, the 4% enhanced damage mods will do fine. They will also save about 4 pg.
That kind of room enabled me to tryout the all reactive plate combination. The armor number for this post 1.8 would be about 498 armor with a repair rate of 6. I would most likely try to fit around 200-300 shields to buffer for the moderate armor amount.
Cover to cover, this style of fitting can work wonders with a scrambler rifle. Where the scrambler out ranges most weapons, is where oncoming fire usually has a damage drop off, and thats a great thing to notice when you can isolate you and an opponent.
This is something more for a scanner suit. Something that has to rely on auto repair to maintain hp. Alot of Amarr will run their armor rep Nanohives with all of this new fangled armor to work with.
What was once a max of 670 armor with an Ak.0 will now be maxed out at 745. So if you like the big and slow approach, that's alot of cushion to maintain. I find a balance between 500-650 a great range for Armor HP. I can't wait to mess around with some of the new logistics numbers.