Yeah you would have loved 1.6

We even had overdrives that let you passively buff speed.

Tanks took skill, and av was properly balanced where it could solo tanks as av is the counter and therefore the natural predator of tanks.

1.7 was a huge step backward.

AV was a bit too powerful and shield tanks didn't match up to armor tanks in nearly every aspect.

True. No on should be able to solo a tank with a swarm unless the driver is a glutton for punishment and it's a proto swarm that was reloaded at least three times. Shield tanks were totally garbage.
The only things I miss about pre 1.7 is large missile turrets , the ability to have one tank with at least three different fits meaning variety and the different mods , the shield boosters now are garbage and pre 1.7 they were WAY better. One pulse is useless , whoever made that up should be placed in a different department.

Perhaps my stance on AV is influenced by the fact that I ran shield tanks only. Once I was even two-shotted by a proto breach forge gun when I was up in the mountains near my redline and in my fit with greatest EHP.

I like 1.7 large missile turrets and boosters. Large missiles can actually destroy armor tanks now without requiring specific conditions to be met and the shield boosters do what they are supposed to do: reinforce burst tanking.

I like them as one pulse. Pre 1.7, boosters were near useless because you'd die before you get through all of its pulses. I only had boosters on my fits because passive recharge was garbage, and even with a booster I needed to go through two full cycles of active and cooldown to get from zero to full shield. Now my fits don't even use boosters (a shield extender provides constant HP for less fitting cost and it won't fail you while boosters are bugged)

There were too many variables that needed to be just right for a shield missile tank to destroy an armor tank pre 1.7. I really only noticed an increase in effectiveness when I had my enforcer skill to level 4 to get noticeable extra damage out of my proto missiles. Blaster Madrugars didn't need to upgrade to the enforcer for killing power against shield tanks. And with my Falchion, it really was only able to take out Madrugars when I shot in their rear and they didn't have their reps active for nearly the whole engagement period.

There was one Madrugar I engaged in CQC and I got him to low armor and he only brought me down to maybe 3/4, 2/3 shield at the most at that exact moment. But that's when his reps kicked in and each missile volley would get him to near death, only for him to recover almost most of it between volleys. I finally popped him but he brought me down to 1/4 shield. So effectively I was trying to damage no more than 1000 armor during the same amount of time that he managed to get rid of at least 2500, maybe even 3000 shield.