Less cpu on energizers and rechargers, especially complex
Regulator buff by at least 70%
Less depleted delays on caldari and minmatar suits, and less regukar delay, those 2 up for discussion.

proto regulators should be around 75% or 80% (so they can stack shields with the shield recharge penalty holding no bearing)


1 thing that has always annoyed me iabout shields, is how little the shield rechargers add to your gross recharge rate in the end. Sums up to a wasted slot. The Energizers are much more what I expected the rechargers to be.

That would mean PURE shields would have use in pc, and people would stop using armor on shield suits.

CPU upgrades already give insane amounts of CPU, there really is no need to buff them.

Here are the numbers I would propose:

Extenders:
HP | Penalty
Proto: 66 / 14%
ADV: 44 / 10%
STD: 33 / 6%

I increased the penalties to make regulators much more attractive.
If the delays are low in the first place, nothing you will do can make people use them.

Make sure that both shield extenders and armor plates are PG hungry, so that fitting both would be difficult at best.


Regulators:
Proto: 40%
ADV: 30%
STD: 20%

Current numbers are just too low to be worth it.
Combined with the increased penalty, I believe regulator use will increase dramatically.


Rechargers and Energizers:
I would keep the numbers the same, MAYBE reduce CPU and increase PG slightly.
Also, you should look at the penalty on energizers, as it only applies to the base HP of shields, so for everything except heavies it's a much better deal than rechargers.

TL:DR

buff basic and enhanced shield regulators to 20% and 25% respectively , and maybe complex to 30%.

OR

keep them as is and lower their cpu costs

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here's a current shield tank build for a caldari assault ck.0 dropsuit.

2 complex shields extenders

1 complex shield energizer

1 complex shield recharger

2 complex shield regulators

1 complex cpu upgrade

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heres the shield stats from that:

392 shield hp (~400 shield hp)

71.98 hp/s shield recharge (this is way over 60 hp/s yay! \o/)

2.76 seconds shield delay (under 3 seconds. good)

5.3 seconds depleted shield delay (dont care about this number at all)

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you can swap the shield energizer for a shield recharger and 408 shield hp and 63.17 shield hp/s recharge if you REALLY think the extra 16 hp will save you lol.

you want your delay under 3 seconds as the current target, but honestly you want it as close to zero as you can without gimping shield hp and recharge. 2.76 seconds is the best you can do without dropping the cpu upgrade for a third regulator (which would give you 2.33 seconds shield delay) the problem is that without that cpu upgrade you cant run the shield rechargers, so you have to downgrade to whatever will fit

here's an example full fit:


2 complex shields extenders

1 complex shield recharger

1 enhanced shield recharger

3 complex shield regulators

1 standard level rifle

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you end up using 383/394 cpu and 33/79 pg. downgrading to an enhanced shield recharger brings you to 55.61 shield hp/s and gives a 2.33 seconds shield delay. not really worth it IMO because you can only use a standard weapon with no equipment or grenades.

so... is shield tanking really as broken as everyone thinks, or do people just need to be educated on shield tanking? if you buff complex shield regulators to 40% youll get a shield delay of 1.3 seconds and a depleted shield delay of 4.26 seconds when using 3 complex shield regulators. thats beyond broken lmao

buffing complex shield regulators to 30% would get you 1.94 seconds shield delay and a depleted shield delay of 4.84 seconds. thats the most extreme case scenario you could get using 3 complex shield regulators (its crazier on caldari logis which have 4 lows lol)

idealy, most fits would only use two complex shield regulators (2.39 shield delay and 5.01 depleted shield delay). buffing complex shield regulators to 30% would be like running 3 complex shield regulators today. its a big buff but only if you know how to use it.

I genuinely don't see a problem with these sort of fits for a few reasons. Shields are all about having fast recovery, less down-time at the expense of having less HP. I genuinely don't have a problem with someone having a two second shield recharge delay if it takes less than a second of continuous fire to put them down in the first place.

That being said, we already have fits in-game that are more than capable of doing stuff along these lines. Take, for instance, the Caldari Sentinel:

-x2 Complex Shield Extenders
-x2 Complex Shield Energizers
-Complex Shield Regulator
-M1 Locus Grenade
-Boundless HMG
- Kaalakiota MAGsec SMG.

725 shields, 487 armor. 81 HP/sec recharge rate with a depleted delay of only 0.83 seconds.

If you min-max the absolute hell out of it with nothing but energizers you can even get some pretty insane recovery rates as high as 135 HP/sec with an even lower depleted delay of 0.73 seconds.

The thing you have to consider though is that Shield Extenders don't really provide that much HP to begin with, so they're not exactly amazing on anything other than Scouts. A Sentinel/Commando won't need the HP as much so it's probably better off using Rechargers/Energizers since they're far cheaper on the fitting costs. Doing so nets some pretty interesting results if you know when to break off the engagement and take cover for a few seconds. We're talking <5 seconds to completely recover your shields with a Caldari Sentinel.

This is, of course, assuming you don't die in the firefight to begin with, which a lot of players have a problem with because they don't know when to just break off and come back later when they've recovered.

It's been considered but let's just take things one step at a time, yeah..? To reason to jump straight to over-powered if we can help it..

I think you should follow what KAGEHOSHI describes here

I have done some calculations on the numbers he provided for regulators and they seem to make sense. If you don't feel like reading it's not necessary, but trust me his numbers make sense from math side of things, assuming rechargers are in a good place (which I think they are).

Math.

So for my experiment here I work with Caldari Assault numbers assuming that they use 3 complex shield extenders (480 shield).

So a basic shield enigizer gives 25% bonus. Normally with the shield HP of 480 it would take 16 seconds to recharge. With a basic enigizer, it's down to 12.8. This represents a percent change of 20%. I believe that a basic regulator should balance with recharger. Therefore, a basic regulator should give 20%.

If you do the same math for complex modules you'll find a percent change of 37.5. So let's round up to 40% for complex regulators.

Enhanced falls right in the middle with 30%.

These numbers also fall in line with theorycrafting for potential viable shield tanked Caldari and minmatar suits.

Also I think everyone agrees with him about shield extender tier progression.

I see a ton of noise about what to do with shields; but a lot of people have done real work on this, opposed to randomly throwing numbers out there, and have arrived at what KAGEHOSHI describes.

Additional concern:
The Caldari scout has unnecessarily and obscenely high shield recharge rate, combined with extremely short shield recharge delays. These have to be reduced, or else my proposed changes will lead to further imbalanced with the Caldari scout.

And the Caldari Scout lacks HP O.o; what's your premise lol

Mobility isn't the only way to balance things out.

It doesn't to me considering shield tankers have an armor buffer to save their asses, where as armor tankers don't have a clear time to GTFO since we are fighting with our last line of defense.
One of the many reasons people don't hull tank in EVE.

We're talking about a Gallente suit here bud, we are supposed to repair the **** out of our armor

In addition, damage mods are bad, shield extenders give much better results...
So...
We are practically forced to dual tank because there are no worthwhile utility modules.

And lastly, that CPU extender doesn't just help you shield tank.
All my Caldari fits have proto light weapons, sidearms, grenades, equipment, all because I have a **** ton of CPU left over.
My Gallente fits are lucky to have a proto light weapon.

Eh, good enough.

TBH I don't see your problem here, shields are now performing very close to armor at prototype, the majority of tweaks need to happen at STD/ADV.
Moving kin cats to high slots won't really change anything, other than me being one step closer to a true Gallente (Gallente use afterburners and Micro Warp Drives to close the distance quickly and destroy the enemy with short range weaponry in EVE).

But hey, I can accept PG upgrades, cardiac regs and code breakers, good enough I guess.

Hi, we are back with numbers here, we are aiming for tweaks as the bonuses are mostly % based, so stacking can lead to invincible suits.

Numbers

it is possible

Caldari assault should have the same shields delays of an heavy. 1 sec of depleted shield delay is more usefull to Assault IMO.

Quick feedback of the new regulator numbers:

While the buff to 25% and 30% is great, it still isn't enough of a gap to use proto over advanced, especially when you consider the fact that they also have a stacking penalty. This also makes advanced a lot better than standard too.

To summarize, we want to create a decent gap between advanced and proto without making standard too powerful compared to advanced, and prototype not able to reduce your recharge rate to game breaking levels.

Here's a few solutions:

15, 20, 30
-This I feel works best as you still get a good step up using multiple modules, and is the same ratio as the new shield values

10, 20, 30
-Probably the most balanced, and my personal favorite (10% at basic makes it easy for new players to imagine the effects, 10% of 5 seconds is obviously 0.5 seconds, 20% and 30% is double and triple respectively, so double 0.5 seconds...easy mental math), but I'm guessing most players want more of a buff than just 5% at proto)

15, 25, 35
-Makes prototype the semi-obvious choice, keeps standard and advanced from being useless and encourages multiple module use. Biggest problem is the 35...

See, even with stacking penalties 30 is technically possible to remove your shield delay altogether by using 4 modules...but anyone using 4 is sacrificing a lot of fitting options to do so. Unfortunately 35% makes it possible to remove the shield delay at only 3 modules (for easy calculations see this).

idk, this is pretty difficult.

Would it be possible to add regulator variants? Like one that reduces depleted delay more but gives no bonus to regular delay, and one that reduces regular delay more but doesn't effect depleted delay?

Edit: The problem is that adding a 5% bonus to an already far too weak module isn't going to be enough to make it worth running over an additional plate

For example: a Minmatar assault with 4 shield extenders has about a 10.2 second recharge delay (which is in itself ridiculous since it's the lowest eHP assault suit in the game). Throwing on a current prototype regulator will reduce that to 7.6 seconds to wait while bullets are raining all around you and missiles are falling from the sky. Waiting that long before your shields START to recover, not before they ARE recovered. With this new bonus, instead we'll be waiting 7.1 seconds for our shields to START coming back.

You just saved me 0.5 seconds on a 7+ second wait...... thanks. That might be enough to save me.... 3% of the time.

I don't know how well you know your Minmatar suits, but that means we have 168 (at max armor passive skill) to keep us alive until our shields begin to regen, and that's if you don't take any fall damage, get clipped by a vehicle, or get grazed by a stray bullet in the meantime. 1-6 bullets from just about any weapon is enough to kill that, and I don't know if you've noticed but our guns shoot a lot of bullets really fast.

So tell me why, with this minuscule wait time increase, would I not be more inclined to simply throw on a plate? At least then I'd have the health to run away once my shields went down. With this low eHP, I'd be better off having at least one plate to give me the health to run when necessary as opposed to dying while hiding and hoping my shields come back before the guy that shot my shields off decides to come play peek-a-boo around whatever cover I'm using.

Sorry if this have been said before, but a rework to shield tanking should start with the suits stats. The really important stats when considering shield tanking are shield recharge rate, shield recharge delay and shield depleted delay. Those stats vary wildly between shield tanking suits, even in the same race.


The shield tanking stats of a Caldari scout or heavy are much, much better than the ones from a Caldari logi or assault, and a dream to a Minmatar assault. Due to that it is very difficult to propose changes to shield modules, because if we make them reasonable to say, for example, the Caldari scout, they will probably be worthless for a Caldari Logi or a Min assault. And if we make them good enough for the Min Assault, then they will be OP in a Caldari Heavy or Scout.


So my 2 cents is that the shield tanking rework should start at equalizing a little more the related base stats of the shield tanking suits, and with that I mean buffing the base stats of the Cal assault/logi and to a lesser extent, the Min suits. Only after that it would be reasonable to start talking about modules.


So if you have in mind any future changes to the base stats of any suit, and you could share them with us, it would make for a more fruitful discussion.


If you don't want to do that, I don't dare to throw numbers here, apart from suggesting to lower strongly the shield regulator fitting requirements.

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TL;DR

We should be talking about buffing the base stats (recharge rate, delay, depleted delay) of the weaker shield tanking suits, before starting to talk about modules.

I know I'm taking liberty with your lack of specificity here, but since this is a thread on shield tanking here is a link to my thoughts on Caldari vs Minmatar shield tanking as it pertains to Assault Suits. Ya know, for when you guys get to that point.

I have 5 high slots. Should I be leaving them empty? Damage mods are useless, my passives pick up any non-damped suits and anyone who IS damped is going to be beyond anything less than 2 precision enhancers. Putting on less shields means my shields get depleted fully SOONER, and I even though shield HP is the high end of the HP pool on my suit even before mods, I only have 37.4 more base shields than Amarr or Gallente and 75 less than a Caldari while having less armor than anyone (base 135). To top that off, I already have to run a recharger or energizer in one of my highs in order to keep my recharge speed up with the Caldari's base recharge stats; and even with just 2 shield extenders fitted, a Complex regulator wont keep my depleted delay up with a Caldari assault's base depleted delay stats. (You know the Caldari right? The ones who are supposed to TANK shields and not BUFFER TANK them?)

So tell me, when running my 2 shield extenders (keeping my shield health equal to a Caldari assault with one extender on), just to keep my depleted delay ALMOST as low as a Caldari assault's depleted delay when I have a COMPLEX regulator on, how should I run my suit to keep my HP above that of a scout so I can survive? You know, the guys that can run faster than me, strafe faster than me, don't show on my radar, and can passively see me on theirs? What do you suggest? Armor plate? Oh wait, we're trying to FIX that problem, aren't we....

No, I just described why Minmatar SHOULD be hit-and-run specialists.

The Minmatar scout is a great hit-and-run suit because of it's native scans and damps combined with it's spectacular speed and balanced slot loadout.

The Minmatar assault is not fast enough to be able to get the run part of "hit-and-run" down since every scout that's not completely loaded down with plates and any assault with a single basic kincat can keep up with. There is not enough good cover in this game to bounce from cover to cover avoiding gunfire. It has no bonus to scans or damps so even if you do run you are 75% of the time just picked off by a scout who saw what you were doing and got ahead of you. With 3 complex precision enhancers this suit cannot scan a scout with a single damp on (3 complex puts my scan at 26.35db, scout with 1 proto damp = 23.63), so that increases the % of people I can scan over no precision enhancers by about 3% since my maxed passives already pick up anyone not a scout or damped, so that's useless. I can't Damp tank to avoid scanners or scout passives since I only have 2 lows, one always held by a regulator. And since my ability to recover from damage is worse than anyone's, my suit fails at recovering in a pinch.

So, basically all the things that could be used to put together a great hit-and-run class the Minmatar either fails at miserably or attempts but falls short of.

No, sir, YOU are the one who has no clue what he is speaking of.

WHY IS IT THAT CALDARI SUITS HAVE STATS BETTER SUITED FOR HIT AND RUN AND THE MOST POTENTIAL SHIELD HP WHEN MINMATAR HAS THE LEAST SHIELD HP AND WEAK REGEN.

Seriously, Ive been at this for months now, please fix minmatar suits. CAL should be relying on HP, MIN on regen. Please fix by swaping the layouts on some of the suits (especially assault) as well as swaping their shield recharge delays.

*Perhaps* on the scout but if that is intended to be a true defense for the Minmatar then it is largely lost on the medium and heavy suits. Which would be more useful to a heavy suit, being .5 seconds faster to cover or spending 4 less seconds stuck behind it to recharge shields (which it has less of and recharges less quickly than the Caldari.

Minmatar Sentinal Mk.0
Shield 390
Armor 435
Shield Recharge rate 20
Shield Recharge Delay 4.0s
Depleted Delay 6s
Speed 4.05
Sprint 5.67

Caldari Sentinal Ck.0
Shield 525
Armor 390
Shield Recharge Rate 30
Recharge Delay 4s
Depleted Delay 1s
Speed 3.85
Sprint 5.39

Conclusion:
For .2 speed and .28 sprint speed less than the Minmatar heavy the Caldari heavy gets 6x better depleted recharge delay and 50% better recharge rate with 90 more eHP. If sprinting from cover to cover (say 20m) this means the minmatar will get there .2 seconds faster and, if they lost all their shields, spend 7 more seconds in cover before their shields recharge and have less shields to boot.
So explain again to me how "mobility" is supposed to be their asset?
Well what about modules you say? Well lets say you play to your races "strengths" so speed for Minmatar and shields for Caldari. Should they go for it the Caldari heavy can get a recharge rate around 100, over 3x their base stat, while the Minmatar can get around 5.8 sprint speed, a paltry .13 better than their base.

Say what you want but math says mobility, for medium and heavy frame suits at least, is as useful as a melee damage mods.