There is a fundamental problem with shields and balancing in general that requires screwing up previously balanced numbers. Ultimately they can try to balance shields around the current scenario or realize the issues. If they go with the former shields will never be balanced.

so you're saying we should go with 100 shield threshold instead? I like that idea make me a damge sponge

jokes aside you are completely correct, however I don't really care about discussing the balance such things can be dealt with easily by play/counter play rather then screwing up numbers

what do you think of the threshold idea tho, 6 points of damge helps in certain unlikely situations but it's noticeable enough however it really doesn't do anything even in most of those situations

do you think 20 is fair at least? I don't see anything wrong with improving an existing mechanism it benefits every suit not just shiled suits and makes things more interesting as well as giving shields some counter play to certain things that they should not be dying to and enforces their role as ranged fighters

You are only looking at middle sized picture items here. There is a bigger picture in play which if it were more obvious would lead to some amazing discussion.

There's not really any point in the threshold. The whole point of shield tanking in Dust is that you hide in cover until your shields regen.

To offset this disadvantage, the regen rate must be significantly higher than the regen rate for armour.

Now, if shield tanking is underpowered, I suggest it's the regen rate that isn't fast enough to compensate. In which case rechargers and energisers need a buff.

I think shields are permanently broken unless they do something drastic to how they fundamentally work in Dust. I am not saying they can't adjust them, just any real adjustment would probably just break shields the other way and be too powerful again. Just like they used to be with shot gun/flaylock scouts running the map and never really dying. It was crazy how they could blitz threw an entire squad of people, take minimal dmg and be fully healed again in half a second. Compared to armor in where you either need a logi or a ton of armor reppers (which takes away your armor) to get anything approaching a decent recovery time.

I am also weary of a higher shield thresh hold. Even 20 sounds fair until you consider that some weapons do less than 20 dmg per shot, especially if you consider the dmg penalty some weapons suffer vs shields. How long is the threshold good for? Is it dmg over a period of one second, per shot or what?

Shields have always had the huge advantage of a quick recovery time with little investment required in terms of rechargers and regulators at the cost of over all HP and no way for a logi to really help them recover. I don't think the real problem are shields per say just how many more anti shields weapons exist now than before.

What we really need is some new value for defense, some new kind of mod or skill to increase EHP values. Or something above proto/officer level in gear. We have had too many new weapons, war barge upgrades etc to increase player dmg and our defenses are suffering for it.

There's not really any point in the threshold. The whole point of shield tanking in Dust is that you hide in cover until your shields regen.

To offset this disadvantage, the regen rate must be significantly higher than the regen rate for armour.

Now, if shield tanking is underpowered, I suggest it's the regen rate that isn't fast enough to compensate. In which case rechargers and energisers need a buff.

I wouldn't say the rate is bad but the length of the depletion time.

it also makes it so that most any weapon beyond about 115 meters cant do significant damge to shields with a few exceptions including charged shots of an ScR a laser rifle, forge gun, plc, sniper rifles, ect/

Yep, a Forge Gun will most certainly stop your shield regen.

I still wish we could have shields that function like the ones in Eve, constant regeneration with threshholds where that regen rate is higher or lower. I do however understand that this would require a lot more coding and balancing we just don't have the resources for anymore. Besides the fact the servers would need to do even more calculations based on the constantly shifting numbers... Maybe a module that allows for such regen, higher rate of regen when shields are low, less when high, if the shields collapse, have a similar or longer delay than we have now? I'm sure this has been brought up before to be honest...

Reason why shields and armor are different in passive and active reps, is because armor can only reach up to the 40s in terms of reps, while shields can go up so much more.

Just throwing this out there.

I personally think that shields are fine (except for the Caldari Commando).

What would really be awesome, though, is having two Extender variants. Light and Heavy.

Light would be 33/44/55 and heavy would be 55/77/99. Light would receive a much smaller penalty (if any) than we have currently, and Heavy would have a bit more. I think this would make the Sentinel much more of a Sentinel instead of simply a gank type and be able to reach 1k shields like the Amarr.

Also, change shield depleted penalty to profile penalty pl0x.