heavy suits should not rely overly much on shields, there is one suit with 300 shields and only 500 armor, but that is the exception.

Try fitting armor plates or an armor repairer, or both if you can, into the low power slot/s.

Heavies arent so great at run and gun, they have to be able to stand and take it for long enough to see the other guy dead. If you find yourself dying alone alot, try speccing into Heavy Machine Gun and trying to run with others.... spew out massive amounts of short to medium range damage to get everyones attention while the assault suits clean everyone up-the HMG can't be ignored if its in your face, but at range it gets very weak....

just remember everything has its pay off:
if something is good in one area is sucks in another, play to your strengths and pay heed to your weaknesses.

I have worked out the number of direct hits required to kill even the basic militia heavy suit - it ranges from 1 hit by the basic forge gun to 24 Assault rifle hits to 44 HMG hits

If you're going to be a heavy find your own personal logi. if you have a mic, i'm your man. Anyways, a logi with a heavy is almost unstoppable, as long as the logi is smart. I was supporting one of my friends in a heavy suit and forge gun (basic heavy and standard forge mind you) and we stayed alive for at least 5 minutes in the middle of an ambush firefight. And this is blobs collide ambush He shot, i repaired. If an assault turned a corner, I hid behind him and repaired. He died, I rezzed him with a nanite injector. We totally rofl stomped an lav that came after us. i lured him in and BOOOM, forge gun lullaby. But seriously, heavies are good, but with a personal logi, they are the definition of godmode. Oh, and the end of the story, he got pincered by 4 assaults while we were retreating and died before i could rez him. He took one down with him. Needless to say i went beastmode after his death and killed the 3 remaining assaults in under 1 clip of my assault rifle (60 shots). FEAR THE WRATH OF THE LOGI! So, closing remarks, everyone is squishy, find a personal/squad logi, use cover, be suspicious of easy kills (but not too suspicious mind you), and don't get the logi angry. Oh, and if you can kill the logi, the heavy will die quickly.

Shields like halo? Wrong game and skill up to type ll dropsuit

When you start off you are supposed to die. Those of us who have been testing the game have about 2 weeks of skills points extra, the knowledge of what works well and what doesn't, and we know what tactics to expect from new and old players alike.

All militia suits are squishy, expect to die often when wearing them.

do you know how long that will take!

And prices are so high while game rewards are so low that you should get used to wearing the militia suits. Unless of course you want to fork out some real world money for Aurum and then you can save isk while using aurum on the best weapons and armor. Only other option is to join a huge Eve corp and access their 10 year built up stack of shiny gold (and pray some **** doesn't come in and steal it all, as seems to happen in Eve).