Foundation Seldon
Heaven's Lost Property
898
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Posted - 2015.03.13 13:47:00 -
[1] - Quote
Shield v. Armor
What Armor Gained :
40% Armor Hardeners - Huge.
Fitting Room - Giving them the ability to viably fit multiple hardeners of which there was very little incentive with their pre-echo slot layout and hardening percentages. It was better to fit plates.
Retaining of constant, uninterruptable rep rates of anywhere between 110-220 (without skill) on viable fits. This, combined with their uninterruptable high reps and multi-40% hardener fits, further stack the deck in Armor's favor.
Their natural counters in the form of Large Missiles and Large Railguns being nerfed.
What Shield Gained :
Shield Regulators. Of dubious usefulness due to the low natural shield regen rate (often times lower than what Armor gets uninterrupted) and the fact that they're useless in battle. If you're looking to use cover and find a moment to get some shields back you won't have regenerated enough at any given moment to be able to compete with Armor's constant regen.
Turret Balance
Blasters - Absolutely terrifying, so overwhelmingly powerful compared to the other turret choices in their current states that there's next to no reason to use anything else.
Railguns - Here's the main problem as I see it. Given the speed of tanks in any situation where you haven't caught your opponent (Blaster Maddy) in a bad position you will not have dealt enough damage even with a heat sink for them to choose retreating over laughing in your face and killing you instead. They'll double up on their hardeners, turn on their nitrous, and close the gap in no time. Then they'll destroy you. Essentially these tanks have been relegated to mountain top sniping and lurking in the redline.
Missiles - Hahahaha. Yeah, these need to be looked at.
So, unless I'm missing something, there's like no reason to use a Shield tank. Railguns and Missiles are more potent at killing Gunnlogi's than they are at killing Maddies and the Maddie as an attack platform is just way more effective as a whole. Couple this with Dispersion modules moving up to high slots and the Madrugar is going to be in a situation where it can act as AV and Anti Infantry without sacrificing anything in terms of tank in the process
Fixes?
The obvious one is to nerf Armor Hardeners back down to 25%. Shields are inherently more fragile so it makes sense that they'd harden at a higher percentage because (weirdly enough) the Shield Tanks are more based around raw hit points and the Armor Tanks are more based in making use of their regen. This'll have a side effect of encouraging armor tankers to pick plates which, in turn, makes it so that their ability to close the gap between a person who has Rails less potent.
Another option is to take the much more challenging route of reconsidering the mechanics of Armor and Shield regen as a whole. This would include doing something to address the huge always on rep rates and fixing shield boosters. I hate to beat a dead horse here but looking back at the Chromosome/Pre-Uprising 1.7 paradigm (active armor and shield repair modules that weren't interruptable, very small always on shield regen, no base armor regen. Shields were regen. Armor was eHP) just for this particular issue may give some insights as to how to move forward.
SHAV v HAV
I get that you don't want there to be an advantage to not picking turrets but in their current state SHAVs aren't "on par with HAV but lacking turrets" but instead just outright inferior because they're unable to replicate, on a purely module basis and disregarding turrets, my best Maddy/Gunnlogi fittings.
Overall it was a fun (seriously I haven't tanked this much since before Uprising 1.7) but rocky first step. I appreciate the adding of additional modules to the game as they've seriously encouraged fitting diversity but note that there's still a loooong way to go. Have fun trying to balance the current paradigm while still trying to come out with UHAVs in a timely manner, I certainly don't envy that burden, Rattati. 
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Foundation Seldon
Heaven's Lost Property
898
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Posted - 2015.03.13 14:07:00 -
[2] - Quote
Takahiro Kashuken wrote:
Everything before the fixes part and after is spot on generally hence why i deleted it.
The problem is your fixes, you nerf armor hardeners back down to 25% and we end with what we had before the patch, a useless shield and armor tank with armor AV putting holes in it.
The way has always been buff the weaker side to be level with the other side that way you have 2 useful things instead of 2 useless things.
Also armor is now a passive rep which belongs to shield really and armor does it alot better where as chrome had it the otherway around and it still worked.
The way the mechanics are i do not see it changing, it seems the they are trying to repliate the infantry side of the game onto vehicles and currently armor is king it seems so why is it a suprise that armor is king again.
Yeah the AV side of the equation definitely complicates things and it's even more tricky because I actually think Anti Armor AV is able to take on even the newly buffed Maddies without much issue. I know Rattati mentioned that he wanted to make AV omni damage (does same amount of damage to both armor and shields) as a way of uncomplicating AV. As a side effect Swarms and Forges (the main AV) would do inherently less damage to armor. So if Swarms lost 15% extra damage to armor at the same time as Tanks losing 15% from their hardeners then that'd be one solution to the AV equation.
But then Swarms doing more damage to Shield Vehicles puts the Python in a weird position ...
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