By what they mean by ratio is how much regen you can have vs how much raw hp.

Looking just at armor, you have to compare plates vs repair modules. For armor you have a terrible conversion rate. (Compare plate of any level vs rep of same level. You have some absurd ratio of hp to regen rate)

Meanwhile shields have less ehp overall and thus benefit from FAR higher regen rate out of combat, and let us be honest, the armor rep through combat is not enough to be a factor in a majority of cases.

Armor is actually in a good state right now and doesn't need to be changed IMO. Why alterate something that doesn't need a fix ? This is pretty much what CCP used to do before and we know where it lead us.

If it's not broken, don't fix it.

A few notes:

1) Caldari Sentinel Shield Recharge Depleted Delay: As a reminder, this thread is -not- about Depleted Delay values. That will have to be addressed after a standardized form is illustrated on so that we have something to work off of. I appreciate the feedback and concerns but it's best addressed when the time comes :)

2) There are no plans, proposals, or current considerations to change armor. I think the majority, if not the whole of the CPM, is in agreement that to buff shields and nerf armor at the same time would be a bad move (pendulum balancing). We are also, to my knowledge, in agreement that shields need to be brought up and armor not brought down to reinforce the high TTK that Dust 514 is known for. To nerf armor at the moment would not fix anything and only further institute the broken shield design (of which I use that term loosely).

3) The next iteration of this proposal will switch Assault and Logistics on the design path. Logistics should reasonably have a higher regen than Assaults, lacking Assaults' EHP and further constituting a relationship with the EHP to Speed Ratio design format.

4) I cannot comment on Basic Frames at the moment, but I will look into creating a proposal with which they would follow a similar spectrum. They likely may not be as powerful, or more powerful, due to their lack of specialization. It is too early to tell without additional research.

Thanks for the feedback ^_^

does little when the Amar weapon deletes the Caldari suit in 0.4 seconds. While the Caldari weapon barely finishes spooling and getting a couple shots off.

I appreciate the fact that you acknowledge that there is an imbalance between shields and armour but I strongly suggest that these proposals are not the answer.

I really dont see how buffing Gallente Scout and Assault shield stats so much helps anyone.

EDIT - I see that the answer to my above statement is - it is more about having a baseline to work from rather than buffs to armour suits but I still cant help but feel this is iffy...

Why dont we for the love of all things just look at the stats from the current shield modules and adjust those? Regulator buffs, extender buffs (How about removing the shield delay penalty from extenders).

Also its all great trying to balance base stats but how on earth can we ever have balance when Armour has triage hives and repair tools and Shields have none of those? Please explain to me how balance can ever be achieved.

Go and speak to people in EVE and ask them if it would be fair to remove shield logistics modules and ships.....

Also its all great trying to balance base stats but how on earth can we ever have balance when Armour has triage hives and repair tools and Shields have none of those? Please explain to me how balance can ever be achieved.

A 'small buffer' that they'd get to use in effectively every engagement? with delays and recharge values that make you go "Hey, maybe I'll put one complex extender on here so I can have 200 hp, and get it all back in ~10 seconds all the time".

Meanwhile the actual shield tanked suits do not possess this buffer and when they take armor damage it stays there for ungodly amounts of time (values can be in the minutes range, eg cal sent has 487 armor and reps at 1/sec natively) if you don't have a rep or a reactive fit and even then that doesn't shorten it by much.

This exacerbates existent problems, because armor is already the clearly better tanking style for a wide variety of reasons... so in attempting to 'address' the woes of shield users, somehow a nice sneaky and rather large buff to shield tanking for armor suits gets wiggled in there too.

Do armor tanks need a buff to their ability to shield tank? No. Why are they getting one? Because purple prose and [reasons]. Meanwhile lets yammer on about pendulum balance.

Shield tanking should be buffed independently, armor tankers should not be recieving any buffs to their shields at the moment (with the sole exceptions being armor commandos, who do often rely on their shields and could use some love)

I'll make a constructive post.


We all know when we say 'shield tanking..' we mean caldari.

So gal and ama need zero change.
Minmatar already have the best of all worlds, so no soup for you.

I see the desire to keep this fair, and cannot respect it. Shields (caldari) have been SoL for a long time now. Caldari only needs a rework here. Sorry if it hurts your butt.

This thread suggests that all suits have a shield problem, hence the need for normalization..

Thank you sir.

I agree with the order no doubt as far as effectiveness and supposed to have. Just feeling like more regen is not going to be a boon. However, if its just the beginning I guess we have to start somewhere.

Threshold, if it can be tuned per race, could be a good next step. I have a phone pic of a 99m kill on me from a militia CR and he was the only one shooting at me as I ran to redline depot to refill.

But I still feel strongly on the caldari receiving a fitting bonus to make the modules shine when the pure shield race fits them.

Idk, either way, here nor there, thanks for being you and knowing how to shut me up xD

o/ Cross

Here's an alternative method:
Google Doc

Despite what the bubble chart on Page 1 suggests, there is in fact a clear progression in current shield stats. Present values were not assigned at random. The Google Doc above attempts to clean up the existing progression to make it more clear (labeled Step 1), and then it achieves the target inverse relationship between Recovery and HP potential (labeled Step 2).

This model diverges most evidently from Aeon's in that a more logical framework is established without substantial buffs to shield performance of Armor Tankers. This isn't a comprehensive solution, rather (like Aeon's model) this is a framework upon which to build.

So I put down some example numbers for my shield regen proposal:

Shield regen proposal

This is based on the following principles:

Racial shield regen stats:

Caldari - 30hp/s 5s delay.
Minmatar - 25hp/s 6s delay.
Gallente/Amarr - 20hp/s 7s delay.

Scouts get 50% superior shield regen and delay. This is to facilitate stealthy hit and run combat.
Sentinels get 20% superior shield regen and delay. This is to facilitate defensive combat.

You will notice from the highlighted buffs and nerfs, that this design results in little change to most suits, except for commandos (especially Caldari) which get buffed.
More specifically, sentinels and logis get their regen rate buffed slightly, but their delay nerfed slightly at the same time.
Minmatar scouts get their regen nerfed, but their delay buffed.
Caldari sentinels recieve a small buff to regen rate.

In my opinion this provides a sensible and neat design principle, resulting in very little change to actual balance. With the exception of commandos, particularly Caldari, which get their shield regen buffed.

Armour shield balance can be addressed separately. I suggest buffing shield regen mods, since this would specifically target medium and heavy shield tankers, who are the ones that need a buff.

I did notice that shield delays were abnormally high for the Commando class. If there isn't a good reason to keep them high, I'd absolutely support moving them closer in line with that of Assaults.

But anyway, the exact numbers required to bring balance isn't the point of the thread.

It sounds like you are in agreement with shield regen being Caldari > Minmatar > Gallente/Amarr, that's good.
What about Scout > Sentinel >(or =) Assault = Logi = Commando ? At least as far as base stats go.
With modules recovery time should be Scout = Assault = Logi = Commando = Sentinel, but with scouts fitting no regen mods, and sentinels fitting more than the others.

Its worth noting that the regen nerf is probably not the reason shield tanks arent used anymore, more likely the problem for shield tanks is that armor tanks are way, way better.

TL/DR
- All fitted racial suits should have similar recovery times.
- Heavier suits should fit more regen, lighter suits less regen.
- Therefore base regen rate progression should either be light > heavy > medium (like now), or light > heavy = medium (like my spreadsheet).

See below for current recovery times and associated fits.


If I'm interpreting you question correctly, I think you are asking why I am proposing Heavy = medium < light.

This is a difficult question to answer properly, and I'm sorry for taking a long time to respond.

My thinking is this:

"In general, after fitting modules, all racial suits should regen their shields in approximately the same time period."

This is the key principle. I do not agree that heavier suits should regen shields more slowly. And I am referring to the time it takes to return to full shields, rather than regen rate. This means heavies should have a faster regen rate, as they have more hp to regen.

However what does need to be taken into account is the modules fitted on these suits. Hp mods, being set values, are more suited for lighter suits, whereas regen mods are more suited to heavier suits, who have the native hp already. It then follows that heavy shield suits will fit mainly regen mods, medium suits will fit a mix of hp and regen, and light suits will fit only hp (I'm just talking about tanking mods here, obviously they will fit other types of mods as well), in order to all achieve approximately equal shield regen times.

This is approximately the situation we have now. Consider these three fits:

Caldari Sentinel
Caldari Assault
Caldari Scout

The time to regen full shields on these fits, assuming starting a 1 shield hp, so using the non-depleted shield delay:

Sentinel = 10 seconds
Assault = 11 seconds (could easily be fit with another energiser for faster regen)
Scout = 10.6 seconds

All three suits regen in a very similar timeframe.

You may ask, why should scouts not have to fit regen mods? The answer to this is two-fold. Firstly, this is the way they are balanced. If you reduced the native scout regen, to maintain their ability to regen quickly they would have to swap hp for regen mods, thus reducing their overall effectiveness. You could swap the native regen for some more hp, assuming scout players would fit regen. This leads us to the second problem though. Players probably wouldn't do this. The static value nature of hp mods makes them more worthwhile on low hp suits. Scouts would probably sacrifice their quick regen, hit and run ability in order to stack more hp. This is a problem because you then lose some of the identity of the suit. The imposed sacrifice of hp for regen forces scouts more into their correct role of stealthy hit and run. Thus I don't recommend changing this.

On the other end of the scale, why should sentinels fit more regen mods than hp? Bear in mind I'm just talking about shield sentinels here, as the remote reps for armour make armour sentinels a different case. Anyway, much like how hp mods are very effective on light suits, they are less effective on heavies. For example, a complex shield extender provides a 20% shield boost to a Caldari assault, but only an 11% shield boost for a Caldari sentinel. Whereas regen mods are more worthwhile as you have more base hp to regen.

I guess this leads me to advocating the current shield regen progression of scout > sentinel > assault. Though I thought that heavy = medium < light was simpler and more in line with what others had suggested, hence my earlier proposal.

I don't think that sentinels should take longer to regen shields than other suits, assuming they are properly fitted out for shield regen. Reducing their regen slightly to that of an assault may hurt this. However, as I would argue the shield/armour balance should be addressed by looking at shield regen modules, any buff would help sentinels more (assuming they follow the paradigm of fitting more regen than lighter suits), and therefore would offset this potential slight nerf relative to lighter suits.

It's worth noting though, that currently assault and sentinel shield regen is quite similar, and my proposal for a neater heavy = medium regen model, only really results in a minor nerf to the Caldari sentinel.

Imagine what it's like when we're not on the forums

So much this. I've been doing an examination of shield vs armor modules for a while, and came up with something I call "Fitting Power," to examine the total combined cost of fitting modules, and the benefit given for those modules. The data is in this spreadsheet. This should demonstrate some of the problems that shield is having module side compared to armor, and should demonstrate where stick style dual tanking fixes should fall.



Which is a big problem I've had with the shield delay mechanics in dust since...well...I tried to go as a Caldari suit back in beta. In addition to being able to stack high repair rates that cannot be stopped, armor has a number of choices of support equipment, some of which does not require another player to assist them with provided their suit has equipment slots (looking at you nanohives).

Another problem we're facing in this discussion is that for shields to work properly, they need both excellent stats on suits and modules, whereas armor only really needs their modules to be effective.

Some Regen Numbers I spitballed back in the first thread

Oh no, our secret step-by-step balancing approach! Now who will take us seriously D:

Just to check, did I successfully explain why I'm in favour of scout > sentinel > commando = assault = logi?

I hope I've explained why I feel this is preferable to the OP's suggestion of scout > logi > assault > commando > sentinel.

I've also explained a method of working out the relative levels of base shield regen that should be applied to each role, i.e. fitted suits should experience similar recovery times.

TL/DR
- All fitted racial suits should have similar recovery times.
- Heavier suits should fit more regen, lighter suits less regen.
- Therefore base regen rate progression should either be light > heavy > medium (like now), or light > heavy = medium (like my spreadsheet).

Are there any plans to look into the disparity of equipment? Availability of triage hives and rep tool support is a real spoiler that takes away the one advantage shield suits (at least currently) have, primary tank repair speed.

Which seems to be what people aren't getting. As I understand it, this thread is about finding a foundational method that makes more sense than the other ones, so we have a predictable framework to work within

"not even close to an armor stacked player with a rep tool"

Then shields still fail in the overall meta. Thats why I was asking about support equipment.

If shield suits cant compete as a team against armor based suits, its still not balanced.

dual tanking will always be a thing unless doing so is directly penalized.

I've suggested doing so, but I'm outvoted.

im also wondering about the overall design here. regarding caldari suits mostly, their slower suits need more regen than the more mobile suits