Some legit analysis of the problems in Dust... +1

Conclusion and TL/DR: dual tanking the caldari and minmatar assaults are not the best way to fit these suits, and end up gimping the suits for future sustainable combat. The Gallente and Amarr suits, albeit slower, do not need the speed for survivability, and can trade the out and out ability to brawl and then regen afterwards for, what the Cal and Min need as a requirement, strafing. As Rattati said in his own post, he used fitting armor plates regardless if the suit could fit them or not... this is not a viable way to analyze these suits, and require a more in-depth look at each individual suit, and what they are possible of doing.

I am interested in Rattati's proposal, and this is just my attempt to put it out there that there is more to consider than strictly saying that the suits speed is bad... maybe it is both the armor plates and their alternates, as well as the non-viable shield tank, that is bad, and the speed has only been used to make up for it.

Inb4 screaming and ranting.

Nice analysis, sir. I applaud.

I want to just point to the damage mods (IE utility mods) for a second.

Caldari being shield based, and if fit for shield D, tend to fill up all of their slots with shield based defense mods, with a potential need for a CPU upgrade in one of the lows. And they must do this just to obtain any reasonable shield defense.

High slots tend to be utility slots AND shield slots, where low slots tend to be exclusively armor aside from your kincats and regulators, which are a MUST for many shield builds. (that delay is PAINFUL without it). This same thing translates to tanks as well.

What this means is that a shield based suit, must choose to sacrifice utility (damage mods, jump mods, ect) or their main form of defense, shields. What about an armor suit though, or armor tank for that matter. They generally have full access to both defense AND utility with no thought of sacrificing anything for the sake of one or the other.

I'll just point to tanks as the disparity is very obvious when comparing a maddie to a gunnie. Let's take for example a long range rail fit. A few things that are general requirements to maximizing a rail gun are:

Heatsink

Damage mods

Speed mods

So consider my maddie build, which is fit with double plates, hardener, and rep for defense. Additionally I'm easily able to fit a heatsink, damage mod, and speed mod with no sacrifice.

When I go to fit my gunnie though, fitting just a damage mod and heatsink puts me down 2 slots for defenses. Add on to this that many modules for shields provide lesser benefits in comparison to armor. So to minimize my loss to defenses I fit just a single heatsink, and fill the rest up shield mods, and a CPU upgrade in one of the lows to make this happen.

I use this comparison because unlike infantry, tanks can't easily fit outside of their main form of defense, shield or armor. So it really points to some trouble area's among the two. It's not so much that shields is weaker than armor defense wise, but that there are more fitting options available to armor that improve their suits and tanks beyond that of defense.

In short, armor fits for increased attack power AND defense while shields choose attack OR defense.


Though, when it comes to suits (I run a cal assault) it's very possible to duel tank and maintain reasonable defenses while utilizing attack modules. But you still aren't making use of your primary defense stat by doing it, thus gimping yourself in comparison to an armor suit as you don't gain armor based bonuses as you have described.

So I think one major area that needs to be addressed is the utility over defense. It may not seem nearly as bad with infantry, but looking at tanks you can really see how large the disparity really is. Why must a shield based suit sacrifice defenses for utility or attack power, while an armor suit can utilize both of these things with no sacrifice. This is the reason we have so much duel tanking (in favor of armor) in the first place!

And nice read fella, you painted a very good picture of the disparity between shields and armor. +1

Just wanna point out, currently I have a caldari assault ck.0 using 2 complex armor plate and 1 enhanced ferroscale, 4 krins and 1 complex damage mod, a compact hive, a kalaakiota rail rifle, and ion pistol, with a core locus grenade, i've survived longer, killed amarr and had them on the run, and my shields were utterly worthless, but the only good thing about this is that with 5 damage mods I can take on a variety of enemies, a much larger variety, even taking on heavies in CQC sometimes and sometimes I win out as well. Armor mods are simply far too effective, my shields:344 and my armor 557 (if im using reactive 535). Simply put, if you want to balance things out caldari themselves require alot more bonuses to be viable, this is a sandbox CQC game and relies too heavily on armor, to the extent that armor will always win out against shield suits UNLESS your standing absolutely still and not strafing (and the shield suit IS).

Armors viable, shield is not.

Keep in mind that a lot of weapons are armor based. Therefor giving a extra 10-25% more damage. So that extra ehp doesnt matter. The shields are more resistant to most weapons. However the scram rifle is very dangerous to shields. So stop complaining and mass driver the living **** out of them.

You're offering a one weapon solution... "Well, if you can't kill them because your suit is built for a non-viable play style, just run this one weapon and you'll be ok!" Sadly, your solution isn't a solution, but a band aid, and one that no one wants.

If you noticed, I choose the assault style weapons, which included 2 shield preferred and 2 armor preferred weapon groups. This was specifically designed so that I could avoid the discussion of whether or not the defense specific damage should be applied. As well, all DPS values were looked at via the suits with their racial bonuses in that weapon... now, you might say (correctly) that the Viziam is not as good outside of the Amarr Assault's hands... but other suits can successfully use that weapon without concern. Furthermore, the Carthum is an EXTREMELY strong gun with or without the Amarr racial bonus.

can you calculate what the TTK would be if damage mods were moved to low slots?

In my opinion, all CCP need to do is buff shield rechargers / energisers. Shield suits could then fit for significantly improved regen over armour.

You say this with the assumption that shield regens during combat... which it doesn't. A person taking a pot-shot at you, regardless of the damage, will still keep your shield from regenerating.

For example, I had a person last night, shoot at me from a distance of 130m with a combat rifle... it was doing negligible damage, but it was keeping my shield from regenerating and making it very very hard to engage in targets on the field. This strategy is useful right now, but only because shields do not regenerate at all during combat... unlike armor.

No I don't. The whole point is, shield tankers need to hide in cover to regen. To balance this they should regen very quickly. Fitting an energiser doesn't seem to give enough of a boost, in my opinion. Therefore I think they should be buffed.

The only other thing I would change, would maybe be to buff the base regen of commando and sentinel shield tankers.

can you calculate what the TTK would be if damage mods were moved to low slots?

Please be more specific.

If the damage mods made it to low slots, as in my proposal for balancing shields, then they would only do so for the Caldari and Minmatar and would stay the same other than they would be a low slot item, so the TTK would be similar to the following from the above post:

Minmatar (non-dual tanked): 1.10 seconds
Caldari (non-dual tanked): 1.15 seconds'
Gallente (armor tanked): 1.33 seconds
Amarr (armor tanked): 1.38 seconds

This would still give the Gal/Amarr armor meta a huge advantage, but it would not sacrifice the Min/Cal shield health in order to gain extra damage (albeit, never at the same levels Amarr and Gal are capable of)

I think another thing to note, laser weaponry, which is effective against shields, has a very extreme damage profile with +20, -20.
Most shield suits fit for shields are very weak on the armor side, so a laser weapon can essentially instantly strip shielding down. Making the -20 to armor less an issue when you only have 197 of it.

I very much dislike such extreme damage profiles like this and think they should all be brought more inline with one another. +10 / -10 is about as extreme as I would go with them. In my opinion of course.

Combat rifles, HMGs, flaylocks, smgs, locus grenades and mass drivers obliterate armour.

The point of the Caldari and Minmitar is that they meant to be more evasive than tanky. This is concept seen in EVE. Caldari and especially Minmitar are the fastest suits in every category and shield upgrades although they give less HP they don't decrease your speed when armor upgrades do. This being a shooter and not EVE means that you have to understand that concept and rely more on evasion or "dancing" when fighting. This means you have to be good at dancing though which some people aren't, but if you are good it makes these suits a thousand times better than HP tank buff suits that are slow as crap. Even kin-cats can't help you because they only increase sprint speed not walking speed which is what you use when firing your gun. Purhapse the real solution is to just increase Minmitar and Caldari speeds further? That might have it's own problems though. Like I said before people that do know how to use the increased speed of the Caldari and Minmitar already are very deadly and increasing that might make them a lot worst.

The point of the Caldari and Minmitar is that they meant to be more evasive than tanky. This is concept seen in EVE. Caldari and especially Minmitar are the fastest suits in every category and shield upgrades although they give less HP they don't decrease your speed when armor upgrades do. This being a shooter and not EVE means that you have to understand that concept and rely more on evasion or "dancing" when fighting. This means you have to be good at dancing though which some people aren't, but if you are good it makes these suits a thousand times better than HP tank buff suits that are slow as crap. Even kin-cats can't help you because they only increase sprint speed not walking speed which is what you use when firing your gun. Purhapse the real solution is to just increase Minmitar and Caldari speeds further? That might have it's own problems though. Like I said before people that do know how to use the increased speed of the Caldari and Minmitar already are very deadly and increasing that might make them a lot worst.

Caldari and Gallente have the same movement speeds. And the Gallente have a higher HP pool due to Ferroscales being a thing.

I believe shields should rep like HAVs. Minimal damage shouldn't hamper the shield regen process. INSTEAD, it should regen right through the abysmal damage; if it isn't enough to damage shields through a damage threshold, then we should be able to have our shield regen.
Getting pecked by an AR or SMG at 70+ meters is bull. Even just falling 5 meters hampers shield regen.
A shield regen threshold is what I would want to happen to begin with shield suits. That and the removal of shield delays on Shield Extenders.

And further increasing speeds for these suits would only lead to more hit detection issues.

Anything so I can stop tanking armor on my CK.0 ASLT.

Rattati wants to lower their speeds... the point of this post was to show that that is the wrong direction, and that there are other problems with the suit that leads people to dual tank those suits.