Dear players

we have been discussing this topic on and off for quite a while, especially concerning shield tanking, and the inherent need to always use a low slot to have "any" armor reps, which is bad for shield tanking, and quite hampering for racial fitting styles.

We are not proposing this, but would like to get your opinions on the general idea that we have been formulating (particularly with CPM Logi and Commando threads), and it ties well into empowering Logis and Commandos on top.

Without further ado:

Gallente (Current Gal Value) - Armor Rep kings
Commando 4 (1.00)
Logi 3.5 (2.00)
Sentinel 3.0 (1.00)
Assault 3.5 (2.00)
Scout 2.0 (3.00) - (GA Scout is very strong right now)

Minmatar - Hit and run, hybrid armor and regen
Commando 3.5
Logi 3.0
Sentinel 2.5
Assault 2.0
Scout 1.5

Amarr - slowly returning to high base ehp
Commando 3.0
Logi 2.5
Sentinel 2.0
Assault 1.5
Scout 1.0

Caldari - shield tankers ("gain" a low slot)
Commando 2.5
Logi 2
Sentinel 1.5
Assault 1
Scout 0.5

In some cases - I'm looking at you Caldari (as one example) - a player saying "Nah, I don't need armor reps" is actually not a bad thing.
And I say this as a support player who's potential match earnings will be cut by having more suits with self sustaining levels of armor reps on board.

Cheers,
Cross

I'm all for it but, shouldn't we be making shields more viable ? I am full armor tanker on all my suits and I think that shield tanking in dust is still not quite right and I haven't even bothered to train into them in the years I have played dust.

Overall I think its a great change but will only further the dichotomy between armor and shields; leaving shield behind by a hood margin. Tread lightly around this change since it will open up the ability to buffer tank without reppers on and, on some suits, an extra plate would make them a little unbalanced.

TL;DR

Love it, potentially destabalizes balance, shied need to be heavily prioritized after this change

thats kind of my issue here is that armor tankers benefit from both their shield hp buffers as well as their primary armor buffer.

i purely shield tank. i dont get my armor back when i lose unless i can find a logi or rep hive. we should reduce shield recharge on armor suits so that they cannot always rely on their shield buffers. it should be the same as with shield tankers, the initial shield buffer is for "first encounters" and at no time after should it be fully recharged before the next encounter unless they remove themselves from battle for extended periods of time (5hp/s sounds good to me for armor tankers)

Rather than needing passive armour reps we should be looking at reducing the shield rep efficiency of our suits.

I'm all for the Gallente to be top tier rep brawlers but just handing you passive reps equivalent to one extra advanced or prototype module is not the way to do it. If the assault needs a bonus you are starting at the answer.

Revised proposal - MM and Amarr same, sentinel less then Assault, Commando and Logi the same, and overall lower hp/s

Gallente
Commando3
Logi3
Assault2.5
Sentinel2
Scout1.5

Minmatar
Commando2.5
Logi2.5
Assault2
Sentinel1.5
Scout1

Amarr
Commando2.5
Logi2.5
Assault2
Sentinel1.5
Scout1

Caldari
Commando2
Logi2
Assault1.5
Sentinel1
Scout0.5

I feel the Gallente advantage in native reps should be more pronounced.

Here's why:

Each race has a notable advantage across all of their suits.
Amarr - Have higher base armour (not counting the large stamina pool because that's paid for with the speed trade-off)
Caldari - Have much higher shield regeneration rates and lower shield regeneration delays
Minmatar - Have higher base speed and exceptional stamina recovery rates (admittedly less significant given their HP tradeoff. I'm going to quite confidently guess that the Minmatar suits are statistically less used, though)

Gallente - Have... 0.5 HP/s advantage over the Amarr/Minmatar? 1 HP/s over the Caldari?


For comparison, the Caldari regeneration advantage is much more significant. The gap is as wide as 20 HP/s in places and is never less than 10 HP/s, and typically they also have a few seconds shaved off the regen time.

The Amarr armour HP advantage ranges from 40 to 75 HP. For the Gallente native repair to overcome this advantage would take 80-150 seconds - that is to say, a long time.

0.5-1 HP/s advantage does not compare to these.

I had
You are increasing the armor repair.
Let's do the same thing, but with shield, don't we ?

Because at the moment (without this change)
Galassault Gk.0 with 3 armor repair is getting ~30.5HP/s armor
Calassault Ck.0 with 1 energizers, 2 regu (same number of slots) is getting ~50HP/s shield regen + 2,3sec shield regulator

BUT
- Armor tankers can have more and more armor (for example : ~700HP armor against 530 shield to have the same slots)
- Armor is the second part of life (there are first the shield)
- A flux and the shield is gone

For me, an armor repair increasing is good, but do the same with shield

My proposal for assaults
- Amarr : 20HP/s
- Gallente : 20HP/s
- Minma : 30HP/s
- Caldari : 35 or 40HP/s

Personally, I think we need to switch damage mods to lows and move some other things like biotics and codebreakers to the highs... but that's a discussion all its own.