Hide.
And lots of it.

read it enough to get frustrated... What is TTK?

Nobody knows how it'll work out until it hits so for now its just talk. Don't judge the release on the first week or two as it'll be chaos and pain. Lots of pain and experimentation.

10 mil SP is plenty to fight other infantry. Just go where the tanks can't go.

I don't know whether you're a shield or armor based assault, but it looks on the surface like the longer TTK might make shield tanking viable (you might actually make it to cover to recharge). I figure I'll try actually being a hit and run flanker again. With almost all my SP in Dropships, I only have a fairly basic Cal Assault though.

let's see....i'd suggest remote explosives but those won't work on heavies in 1.8, guns won't work, soloing won't work, sniping will be ****, av will be ****.

so long story short I suggest you start rail tanking from the red line....or die.

I would strongly suggest remote explosives on a scout suit or something quite fast. Granted this is only really fun in close quarters maps but Remotes do not discriminate. They will blow up 95%+ of proto suits just the same as blowing up new starters.

25% blast resistance? Use another RE. Scouts will have 2 equipment slots so pack a nanohive to make it easier to reload or fit RE to your Logistics.

Man get good scrubs just because we have way more skill points doesn't mean were unstoppable my buddy zinggy has close to 30mill and he is flat out awful

Fear not my child, the Dragon-Empire will keep you safe

But seriously tanks are gonna be harder to kill for any AVer that hasn't invested in REs. As for the proto...well yea, there's gonna be more than usual but give it time and it should cool down as the PC changes should keep them preoccupied with actually defending there district (hopefully). Protos that aren't apart of PC will run out of ISK and be forced back down to MLT gear (cuz they too damn stupid to use ADV).

0.02ISK

Don't worry about skilling it up to max. The basics will do.

I've been playing since June, and I am in your situation as well.

Average FPS player, around 10 M SP put into skills, etc.

I've been getting better, albeit slowly, and here are my general tips:

1) Equipment: Drop Uplink, if you can find a good place to put this, you can get a large number of easy points.
(25 a pop) from squads spawning in. Try to put them at places where you want to spawn in, and don't be afraid of putting them away from everyone else.

2) Flank. Always Flank. Assume every enemy is going to beat you in a straight up fight. So to combat this, make sure you are never in a straight up fight. Move around the map, hit them from behind. Take cover and mow them down as they try to cross some open space, take an unusual angle, unexpected high grounds, etc.

If your enemy isn't expecting you to be somewhere, that's the best place to kill them from.

3) Sound. I would argue that DUST has an amazing sound design. You can use it to tell what's being fired, from what direction, and often times how many. Learn what each weapon sounds like, and combine that with knowing those weapons. Run from weapons in their best performance area, and hit them when you are in your weapons best range.

4) use ADV / STD gear. ADV gear is better than many players give it credit for, especially after the upcoming nerf to damage mods. You aren't losing much, but you cost alot less. As average players the few % advantage is not going to matter nearly as much for us. Instead, use the lower costing gear to allow yourself to be more bold. Sometimes rushing in with guns blazing is exactly the best way to catch an enemy off guard. If you can trade a clone with somebody in prototype then you've won the ISK war. Also it requires less SP, which brings me to point 5.

5) Expand the Toolkit. You don't have to be lvl 5 in everything before you go into a new role. Have a few low-sp investment side roles that you can easily switch into. A sneaky shotgun scout, a HMG heavy, A repping std logi suit.

These roles allow you to try out new things, often saving ISK per death over your main suits. It also helps keep the game fresh, as well as one other critical advantage: Flexibility. You have to understand that every weapon and suit has a role, and sometimes you'll be caught in situations where your chosen specialty is just going to fail. So if you have a tool kit full of other (STD) options you can change it to something that can take advantage of things.