That's because stacking shields can give you similar eHP to someone that stacks armor, with a lot more speed.

Nope the Shield HAV is statistically better than the Armour HAV.

Better fitting capacity (evinced by the "EHP ***** Sica" which can fit a whole proto line up and field 9K EHP vs Explosive AV)
Better tracking and mobility optiions that reduce the penalties of slow tracking turrets
Comprable and better EHP values
Better stand and deliver capacity
Better passive regen capacity (168 per second without even fitting a module after 4 seconds)
Access to fitting modules without sacrificing racial tank

They're pretty balanced imo. Shields have better speed and regen with a delay while armor has better hp without a delay. The only thing that needs to be fixed is the higher cpu/pg of shield extenders and the poor delays on the min and cal assaults.

Can't really take you seriously when you just called the Scr the most OP rifle in the game while the Cr remains king.

I think we can all agree that the BrAR is far stronger than either of those weapons.

armor plates have speed penalties. Unless you're talking about ferroscales, which makes the hp difference much smaller.

The Minmatar Assault needs a lot better base regen because right now using shield charging mods is a waste because they just don't do enough given our amount of shields and base stats.

It's always better to opt for stacking shield mods on the Minmatar Assault rather than running a recharging mod and thar shouldn't be.

Shields suits still have much better regen though

We've had these conversations quite a long time ago dubbs.
I believe armor no longer gets the short end of the stick, but neither do shields.

They're fairly balanced, you've just got to realize that they come with different play styles.

Your BASE regen is exceptionally powerful, we have to sacrifice slots to get any decent regen.

You can't simply look at Ferroscales HP vs Shield Extender HP and say that ferroscales are better.
That 10 extra HP regenerates much slower without mods, and if you fit reppers you can fit less ferroscales, which means the HP difference becomes non existent. (In fact, when building ferro suits, my Cal Assault tends to out HP my Gal Assault)

Its 4 seconds from the beginning of the decloak.

A well fit Gal Assault will have 800 total HP, and ~23 reps per second (2 complex reppers)

Since when is it 4 seconds?

Also, if it's 4 seconds, then my Cal Assault would already have 50HP regenerated, and given an extra second it would go up to 100HP, already catching up to the Gal Assault, and then surpassing it at the 3rd second.

Also, I believe the Gal Assault you are describing doesn't have a kin cat, correct?
If so my Cal Assault would also move about 1m/s faster.

You have the mentality of a brick tanker, you can't see anything past DPS and HP.
There is a reason I fit kin cats on my Gal Assault.

Remember what I said about play style?
I put myself in advantageous situations, I don't straight up attack people I see.

I will make sure that you cannot win this fight, and speed helps me get to these advantageous situations.
HP helps me more when I'm attacked, speed helps me more when I'm attacking.

You dun dimed these sceptical fellows Catmerc.

They mistake "potential to stack" for "effectiveness while".

Sure an Amarr Assault can reach 1200 EHP.

Do I do that and is it Effective?

No I don't I run two ferros, two reppers, and a kin cat. Speed and Regen are tops.

30hp/s is exceptionally powerful, we need 3 module slots to get that.
You get an extra 20hp/s from one module, and have modules to cut that delay to 2-3 seconds.

That's not even mentioning Cal Scouts and their built in 50hp/s and low delays lol

I'm saying that you use those two tanks differently.
You can't use a shield suit and an armor suit and expect to play them the same way.

And while true that all suits play the way I describe, my extra speed allows me to get the upper hand on most suits, and do it quicker than anyone else.

As a sidenote, that's why Scouts are so exceptionally powerful at being Assaults.
They have scans that allow them to figure out the best position to be in, and then they have the high base speed that allows them to get to that position quicker than other suits.
It's a powerful combo and you can see it being used to great effect on the battlefield.

The straight up number of advantages means absolutely nothing.
What matters is the overall net power of all of those advantages combined.

I gave you two example fits that are my cookie cutter Assault fits, and both are equally viable, just played differently.

My take on this

Shields

Pro's:

First line of Defense. You can lose your main tank and survive.

Excellent Regen. Take damage? Just wait like 10 seconds. Most of your health should be back in 10-15s MAX unless you shitfit.

Explosive Resistance. Mass Drivers, Flaylocks, and Core Locus HURT unless you're in a shield suit.

Most weapons are anti-armor except for Plasma and Laser. Fear these.

High Slot Module. Kincats, Damps, Ferroscales OH MY. They don't even take away from your main tank... (That being said, you will be devoting low slots to regulators, don't go too low slot happy. We call those "Shitfits")

NO SPEED PENALTIES. Float like a butterfly, Sting like a bee. Get used to abusing your high mobility to hit a flank, and then run to the other side and hit the other flank with your fully regened health. These suits are a skirmishers wet dream.

Cons:

Shield delay/depleted. Get pinged 1s before regen starts? Too bad, start over. Lose all your shields? Guess what, you get to wait longer. You have to know how to maintain a shield tank to run them well. This means *GASP* USING COVER.

Fluxes will ruin your day. Seriously, these things are depressing. Total buzzkill.

CPU Intensive. Any decent shield fit will be running regulators/rechargers/energizers/extenders. Be prepared to pay for this with your CPU. A single proto Recharger/Energizer runs a good 100 CPU.

Lower HP when compared to Armor tanks. Yeah, best extender gives less health than a basic plate. Get over it. If it wasn't like this, shields would be OP AS HELL. Instead, be smart and learn how to shield tank scrub.

Armor

Pros:

CONSTANT REGEN. You never stop repping. This is fantastic if you know how to strafe in and out of cover. If you only take 1-2 shots each time you pop out, you can practically extend your eHP by about 50%. However, this takes DISCIPLINE.

Low Slot Module. Can someone say "Damage Mods?". Don't like damage mods? More HP is okay I guess...

External Rep. Yup, everyone loves to say how this isn't a pro. Tell that to them when they got a Core Focused on their ass. Shield tanking is great RIGHT? If you are a decent strafer, this can be borderline god mode. Thankfully, we have explosive weapons for people like you. There is no escape from the Boundless Assault Mass Driver (I actually say this as I spam AMD on my commando. Gleefullly, as I rack up the kills)

LOL Fluxes

TONS of health. You can get some INSANE armor values (Like a 700 armor shitfit gal scout). That being said, you also have to split your tank between regen and health, due to all armor modules being low slots. Pick wisely. A blend is preferred. Your overall eHP should still be a good 100-200 over most shield suits.


Cons:

Last line of defense. You can't lose your armor tank and walk away (99.99% of the time). Running armor tank takes some guts, as you HAVE to be able to kill the dude in front of you. Running away is never really an option.

Explosive weapons HURT. LIKE REALLY BAD. They kill your logi as well. Sad day all around.

PG Intensive. Yeah, hard to run lots of shields/damage mods when you have to devote PG to your Reps/Tank/ScR/AR.
Thankfully, the Gal and Amarr suits tend to have lots of PG, so that should help quite a bit. PG optimization is also a thing, and you should invest SP into it.

SPEED PENALTIES. You will not be an agile little butterfly unless you run Ferros and Kincats (WITH NO PLATES). Deal with it. If you strafed like crazy, you would be OP AS HELL. Jump height could use some love though. Watching Armor tankers try to jump over a curb can be hilarious, but they really should be able to clear it.

Tons of weapons are anti-armor. Rail and Projectile cover a LOT of weapons in this game. HMG's will eat you for breakfast, and Combat rifles will OM NOM NOM on your fat slow suit. Rail Rifles will happily chew you to bits with ease. This means that you really have to move cover to cover and take advantage of those constant reps. Best Armor tankers I see actually run a blend of speed/armor/regen and abuse cover.

While you may have tons of health YOU ARE NOT INVINCIBLE. Seriously, armor can make you feel tough at times due to the damage you can take, but aggro is merciless. You need to know how to push aggresively and safely. You are not impossible to take down. Respect your own HP pool and know if you can safely push up (Threatening the dude with Damage mods and pure HP) and when you need to fall back. Low health Armor tanks are easy kills. Remember, armor is your LAST LINE OF DEFENSE.

---

OVERALL

Shields are for fast regening skirmishers that favor a hit and run style of play

Armor is for "Stand and Deliver" players who like to hit hard and push agressively.

They may not be perfectly balanced at the moment, but they are the closest it has been in a VERY LONG TIME.

Only slight adjustments need to be made in my opinion.

To me: Shields are harder to use, but generally more rewarding. Armor is easy to use at times due to raw HP, but to make them truly shine, you need to play just as strategically as a shield tanker. It all comes down to preference in the end.

Hell the Creodron Flux Active Scanner is only 9 PG........ 28db scans for 8 sec and 90 degrees for 200m...... no way I can turn that down.

On the subject of HAV if I had another player with a maxed out Maddy I'd organise to do some testing of straight up Blaster brawls to determine who is kind brawler.

Regen isnt even an advantage for shield commando/assaults, the regen on them is so slow you have to fit 2+ regulators to get it down to a decent level, doable for the assaults but expensive for min comm and downright impossible for cal comm, and the regen on the scout is stupidly high/low respectively in both hp/s and delay. The Caldari sentinel has very low delays but I think is more balanced given the nature of the suit. On top of that, you generally have little to no armor regen on the shield tankers, so you end up with a big armor pool you can only really dip into once in a long while.

This wouldnt be a huge deal if you could play a skirmishing standoff style game in Dust consistently, but since objective play is almost always CQC work and the current mechanics and prevalence of scouts means you are basically in danger of being 2 shotted and/or surprise attacked at all times, skirmish play doesnt really work in any meaningful way.

Add to this the scrambler rifle being not just good against but downright overpowered against straight shield tanks, and after the armor repper buff and given that there still are no shield regen repair tools or nanohives, the armor suits take the edge these days simply because of how the game tends to play out.

I dont think its a huge imbalance though, and a few small tweaks could even the playing field entirely.

Tweaks I would suggest:
Tighten up scrambler rifle damage profile so it isnt overpowering against shield users, give it a max shots/sec. similar to the duvolle tactical. As long as this rifle can strip any quantity of shields in the game in half a second of furious clicking, shield tanking is going to be suicidal.

I would make assault and commando delays a couple seconds lower, and make the cal scout one second higher, with maybe 30 or 40 shield regen/s base.

Bigger tweaks:
Some equipment to enhance or work with shields.
More open area points that arent CQC hotspots.
Fix ******* scouts so there is a real counter to them, but thats just my own little axe I grind, ignore me. ;d

Besides it's natural resist profile vs short range high DPS weapons like the SMG, Combat Rifle, and(not fitting into the DPS category) Mass Driver is a very nice set of benefits in my mind (this coming from an armour tanker), coupled with natural speed, and utility lows all seem like perfectly good reasons to shield tank to me.

Not going to suggest Shield suits don't need transporters, or some kind of repping Hive but they have enough benefits in my mind to be worth considering.

Nor am I saying I would Shield Tank unless that was the Amarrian way. PIE frowns on the use of any dropsuit that is not Amarrian which I'm cool with.

But at the same time don't have a passive regen and must create their regen using module slots. Moreover suffer mobility penalties which in their own right are more than crippling enough.