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

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.

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.

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.

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.