Minmitar have the better dual tanking capability then the gallente and Caldari who are pretty much exclusively one or the other. You will feel differently when running a gallente and you get wiped out by armor profile weapons or Caldari when a charged ScR wipes out your only line of defense. If you are dual tanking Caldari instead of putting on regulators then you are using an inferior e/hp buffer suit with slow movement. Amarr and Minmitar just do dual tanking better, which is working as intended if you ask me. The trade off between Amarr and Minmitar is that Amarr have dat high e/hp but abysmal recharge and slow movement.

I used to run minmitar before 1.8, and since hotfix charlie's assault fix Minmitar assault got much better. Try not reducing your minmitar movement speed too much while abusing the higher low slot count then Caldari or slapping on a regulator and rechargers. Your goal as minmitar should be to move fast from cover to cover and flank enemies. If I could switch back to minmitar since the heavy and assault rebalance in charlie I would be running minmitar again. They are far better than they were pre-charlie. Speed is king on Winmitar.

not sure what the fuss is all about, got the caldari assault on my alt and mini on my main.

although the caldari suit itself does not have great bonuses the regen both time and amount is enough to make me get hard.

how can you not love 433 sheilds with a 3.1 second recharge delay and 52 sheild rep per second on a basic suit? and it just gets better and better per teir. the suit itself is considerably better than the mini assault but the bonus is not as good.

havent used the gallente assault for a long time but having that passive rep imo is a big deal - and from reading the forums quite a few people like the bonus as is is.

I suggested efficiencies for modules based on each suits version of assault. That's why I'm trying to steer it away from weapons as there won't really be a useful rail rifle bonus that matches say the overheating bonus of Amarr without making the RR OP. The shield extender bonus I don't agree with but I think a shield energizer/recharger bonus would work well on Caldari. Like I said my suggestions were already made in the thread.

As to the Caldari being better at dual tanking I simply don't agree. If you stack armor on the Caldari and ignore shield regulators your shields are going to recharge once in a blue moon defeating the purpose of having such a set up. On the other hand Minmitar can more easily balance both their shields and armor better than the Caldari as far as regen goes, because a Caldari with poor regen and lots of e/hp is just an inferior Amarr suit.

I can tell pretty easily that the Minmitar is a better dual tanker because my Caldari adv suit runs like this:

503 shields
197 armor
Total 700

Pro: Very quick regen
Con: Shield profiled weapons wreck this suit.

My Minmitar Neo Assault I have a few suits on that's only STD not even adv:

371 shields
356 Armor
Total 727 with a pretty even split

Pros: Even split on damage profiles, it moves slightly faster (5.04 speed as opposed to 5.00 on my Caldari), has more e/hp and it isn't even adv minmitar.
Cons: Slightly less shield regen (It has the base 25 regen as opposed to my Cal assaults 40 regen with its shield recharger)

The minmitar assaults used to be a lot worse by comparison but post charlie they have become much better. Remember although a Caldari can get a high e/hp it has to sacrifice all its regen potential to get that slightly higher e/hp while the Minmitar will have a much smaller penalty in comparison.

You have to consider all the pros and cons when building a suit, that regen on an Extender stacked Cal is useless without a good regulator taking up what little low slots you have, and no armor rep in my opinion is always a bad idea unless you're carrying a triage/compact nanohive, which keeps you from carrying an ammo nanohive with far more ammo resupply.

Edit: Also keep in mind the adv minmitar if fitted with a regulator it will have fast regen like my cal assault while if they drop an extender for an enhanced shield energizer they can end up with 37.5 shield regen compared to my 40 while taking a less hefty shield penalty for the energizer since they have a lower shield total then my Caldari. If built right and in my opinion, the Minmitar makes a far better balanced dual tank assault then the Caldari.