Piercing Serenity
Pink Fluffy Bounty Hunterz
RISE of LEGION
181
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Posted - 2012.11.27 05:46:00 -
[1] - Quote
*EDIT* TL:DR - Percent armor recharge will give armor more love and still keep things balanced
I am arguing that armor is so unused because of its slow recharge rate and increased aggro when compared to shields. Additionally, the current system hurts heavies GÇô a class built to use tons of armor GÇô the most and benefits the assault and logistic class the most. The latter classes can restore their armor to full many times faster than a heavy suit can due to their many low slots to fit armor reppers, which will save their lives more often in the long run. I believe that changing the armor repair rates from GÇ£raw HP per secondGÇ¥ to GÇ£percent HP per secondGÇ¥ will largely fix this problem and encourage a greater mix between armor and shield users.
Currently, shields are preferable to armor because they shields recover larger amounts of HP per second than armor, leading to a shorter time between any given shield value and full shield health. I believe that this preference stems from the fact that the longer it takes for your health GÇô shield or armor GÇô to recover, the more aggro you draw to yourself. This results in more deaths on average. IGÇÖll use an example to illustrate this point better.
Consider my Assault and Heavy builds. I use Type II assault dropsuit with 650 EHP GÇô 450 shield and 200 armor and a a militia heavy with the same EHP but with a different split GÇô100 shield and 550 armor. LetGÇÖs assume that they both have a basic shield recharge rate of 25 Shield HP per second. They also both players run one standard armor repairer because I noticed that having a barely armor bar caused everyone to focus on them, trying to get the easy kill, regardless of how much actual health they have. 20% of my assualtGÇÖs armor is 40 HP, while 20% of my heavyGÇÖs armor is 110 HP. Because nobody can see the actual number for how much health their target has, both dropsuitGÇÖs Armor and Shield bars look equally weak, even though my heavy has almost three times as much health.
It will take my assault suit 56 seconds to be at full EHP - 16 seconds from when my shield start to recharge to reach full shield health, and 40 seconds for my armor to return to its full value.
My heavy will take 224 seconds, four times as long, to get to the same EHP GÇô 4 seconds from when my shield start to recharge to being full, and 220 seconds for my armor to recharge to full.
If there is a relationship between the time it takes to fully heal yourself and the attention you draw to yourself, all armor based suits are screwed. This should not be the case. I propose that by changing the base repair rate from GÇ£2HP/sGÇ¥ to GÇ£2% of total HP/sGÇ¥, the balance between armor and shield can be realized.
If my system were put into place, my assault suit would take 36 seconds to heal to full EHP GÇô 4 seconds for the shield and 20 for the armor. My heavy would recover to full health in 44 seconds. This seems like a much better balance to me. Both suits would recover the same effective health at far more similar rates.
Granted, my Assault suit has almost five million SP invested in it and my heavy suit has about one million. So letGÇÖs look at militia examples. A basic Type II assault suit has 225 shield and 105 armor, and a total recharge time of 49.2s. A militia heavy (without any SP investment in armor repair rate or mechanics) has 100 shield and 550 armor, and a total recharge rate of 224 seconds. My changes would not affect the repair rate of shield heavy players with little skill investment in armor, mechanics, or armor repairing. The assault suit would heal 2.1 HP/s and be completely restored in 47.2 seconds GÇô a 2 second difference. It would however, bring a balance to the recharge times between the shield heavy suit and the armor heavy suit. The militia heavy suit would be completely recharged in 44 seconds.
This would add a new dynamic to choosing whether to shield or armor tank. Shield tankers would have much shorter recharge times for their primary (read: shield) health to recover to full but draw more attention to themselves because of their slow armor repair rate. Armor tankers would sacrifice speed and shorter recharge times for a much faster regen rate.
Notice that these problems even out as SP is added to armor repairing. Our Type II suit takes 7.2 seconds to charge to full shield. This is a fast charge time, but this suit only has 225 total shield. Our militia heavy suit with a prototype repper takes 11.42 seconds to recover his primary health. The difference is still in favor of shields, but it is not nearly as drastic. IGÇÖd argue that the heavy would lose his health much faster because of his speed and hit box size, and the assault would be able to duck in and out of cover to restore health.
Now, maybe a heavy recovering its health in 12 seconds is too fast for some. ThatGÇÖs fine. We can double the time by cutting the repair rate in half. It would take 23 seconds for a militia heavy to restore health at a rate of 1% total armor/sec. The balance is much better between the two suits, in my opinion.
Tell me what you think, and please let me know if any math or numbers are wrong. I think armor needs more love too.
PSN: PiercingSerenity
Country: U.S
Class: Assault, Heavy
Corp: Shattered Ascension [SH4T] |