You realize that Gallente are given armor tanking as part of lore right? They didn't put it like this just for Dust 514. And last I checked armor has a higher eHP and armor plates give more bonus to armor than extenders give to shields.

I know, I'm an EVE player.
Also, the difference between an extender and a plate is one bullet, while a plate slows you down and shields do nothing but increase your shields.
And this doesn't really matter considering shields have inherent 25hp/s regeneration, while armor has to give up a plate to even have 5.

Personally I don't see the huge fault in armor tanking. My Minmatar logi is 50% shields and 50% armor, not particularly vulnerable to any one weapon. It might help that I have a high base speed.
Plus, as a bonus to armor tanking, you have the ability to actively tank, as compared to shields which may regenerate faster, but never regenerate when taking damage.

I know, I'm an EVE player.
Also, the difference between an extender and a plate is one bullet, while a plate slows you down and shields do nothing but increase your shields.
And this doesn't really matter considering shields have inherent 25hp/s regeneration, while armor has to give up a plate to even have 5.
So the max HP difference between a tanked Caldari and Gallente suit is 4 bullets.
AR does 12.5 bullets a second.

Regeneration for Gallente suits is slow as ****, and has to give up a slot, while Caldari suits regenerate 25hp/s without any slots.

If you put on plates, you get slowed down to crawling speed.
If you put on extenders, you don't get any disadvantage.

Plate are effectively going to be more flexible in the future, since they mentioned they were planning plates with no speed penalty (ferroscale) and plate with built-in reppers (active plates?). Shields don't actually have inherent 25/s regeneration (different suits have lower and higher rates, and the rate is misleading since it doesn't start till a delay is over).

I do kinda like the idea I heard about shields causing a larger profile signature, perhaps a percentage increase to your profile on a shield not unlike the movement penalty. Then a separate stealth shield without the signature modification, but with lower hp could be introduced.

If you put on plates, you get slowed down to crawling speed.
If you put on extenders, you don't get any disadvantage.

Can you flux 500+hp of armor instantaneously?
Shields do have a distinct disadvantage.

Shield only regen if you aren't being shot at .... You know this right?

Armor regens 24/7 and has more hp

It's simple don you want buffer hp or the halo shield, it's up to you.

Op is a whiny halo player

CCP Guy1: "Hey, we have this useless thing we really hate, its called 'Armor tanking'! (shudders)"
CCP Guy2: "Heh, lets give it to the Gallente, just to troll people. You need to be close range to use the Gallente AR? Nope, you're too slow to close the distance because of Armor."
CCP Guy1: "GENIUS!!!"
CCP Guy2: "Oh, and lets make it so that no matter how many reps you put on your suit, the base shield regeneration is still higher!"
CCP Guy1: "AWESOME! I will update the stats spreadsheet right now"
CCP Guy2: "And lets make it so that if you put on 4 complex plates, you will move like a heavy, won't regenerate, and you will only gain 3 bullets worth of HP compared to 4 complex shield extenders!"
CCP Guy1: "Really, you are the best!"
CCP Guy1: "But what about balanced armor and regeneration?"
CCP Guy2: "Don't worry about it, regeneration is slow and the HP difference is 1 bullet at best. Oh and they move like crap"

CCP Guy2: "So umm, we have this thing we REALLY love, its called shield tanking."
CCP Guy1: "Oh, we should totally give that to the characters we love the most, the Caldari!"
CCP Guy2: "Oh yeah, and lets make the Logi more tanky than a Gallente assault with 4 complex armor plates!"
CCP Guy1: "But don't shields regenerate?"
CCP Guy2: "Excatly >: D"
CCP Guy 1: ">: D"

I swear, while trying to fit a Caldari character and Gallente character, this is what I imagine CCP were thinking.

Did the math, shields still regenerate faster.
And while you need 4x complex armor reps to match the speed, one module on the shields puts them WAAAAAAAAAAAY ahead of armor.
And one or two shield regulators and whatever "advantage" armor has is nothing.
You really have no say in this if you didn't try to fit both a Caldari and Gallente suit.
I did, Caldari win every time in all cases.

Armor has constant rep while shields have a delay.

New armor plates coming soon
1. Self repping plates less armor and still has movement speed penalty.
2. Light plates lesser armor no movement speed penalty.

Combine self repping plates with armor reps and it should stack up to shield regen.

You only need two comp plates to equal to the level of four comp shields which leaves you more slots.

Try investing into biotics which is useful when trying to armor tank and again you have the slots to do so at the cost of an armor rep or two.

Stack you highs with all damage mods so you can munch away at enemies hp faster than he does yours.

I wasn't saying that armor regenerated faster with complex rep mods, I was saying if you do equip complex rep mods, they never stop repping, when you are taking damage or not taking damage, whereas shields have a timer on regeneration and that timer resets every time you take damage.

So the max HP difference between a tanked Caldari and Gallente suit is 4 bullets.

Given equal skill the Gallente Suit walks away alive, while you wake up in a new clone...(i use Amarr btw)

Yes you can, its called explosives.
My 120 shields ate a grenade to the face.
My 500 armor died in one explosion.

Also, once shields are down you have armor.
Once armor is down, you're dead.

About the constant rep, refer to the above.

We don't know how much active plates give in regeneration, but we know the armor bonus is TIIIIIIIIIIINY.
A dev on IRC told me its less than standard shields.
Also, I doubt it would be as fast as a rep, so unless they are buffing reps, its going to be max 2hp/s regeneration.

Two complex plates slow you down to hell, and putting two reps, shields still beat you even with the depleted delay.
Not to mention shields can use low slots for shield regs.

Biotics only increase sprint speed, walking speed is more important for 1v1's.
Also, it negates like half the penalty of a complex plate.

You can't fit damage mods on high, since armor takes up the same slots as CPU/PG upgrades, and you NEVER have enough.
I would know, I have CPU/PG skills maxed, along with armor skills.

Can't fit damage mods is a lie, you mean to say you can't fit three complex damage mods. What type of suit are you using? If its not a proto well then yea you don't have enough cpu and pg. Trust me I've Armor tanked before in the last build with my neo vk.0 and it worked fine the cpu and pg decrease in this build is not that drastic.

Do shields increase your sig radius in Dust, making you easier to spot?

If not they should.

I've heard time & time again that CCP favors shields but I went Gallente none the less and I'm liking it for the most part. The only thing I don't like is the look of the specialized protos. Dafuq is up with the torso waders CPP? Do you hate the Gallente that much as to give us the dumbest looking specialized protos in New Eden?

Personally I don't see the huge fault in armor tanking. My Minmatar logi is 50% shields and 50% armor, not particularly vulnerable to any one weapon. It might help that I have a high base speed.
Plus, as a bonus to armor tanking, you have the ability to actively tank, as compared to shields which may regenerate faster, but never regenerate when taking damage.

Neither does armor reps, ive seen it. IT does however have a shorter time to rep activation compared to shields but with the proper mods you can close that gap to next to nothing.

In the end what it really comes down to is the movement penalties. Mobility is the key in any FPS, in the end the net DPS differences isnt large enough b/w any two ppl in the game. It comes down to survivability. Since shields are a primary defense once fully tanked up they can used to take dmg, duck into cover and regen just a touch get back into action and kill while still having a reserve health supply in armor.

Armor tankers have low shields so their regenerative health supply is already limited. If they were to use duck and cover tactics they would constantly be in cover since they would get shredded. As far as armor tanking to get any level of tank you have to sacrifice considerable amounts of movement making it even more difficult to duck into cover or strafe, it make you a near sitting duck.


Hopefully the plate variants that dont affect movement speed will help. I would however like to see a 10-20HP armor rep module personally the ones we have are very limited. On the flipside a hive can rep armor 40-70HP/s and rep tools can range from 35-100HP/s something shield tankers cant benefit from.

To everyone who thinks Armor Tanking is useless.

1. You probably think the plates make you ridiculously slow. Why don't you do the math and see exactly where a 10% reduction actually takes you. You don't become as slow as a heavy, I can guarantee you. You still get around just fine. I've ran down several people with my armor tanking suit. When you are traveling distances within a single base, you are going to get there at pretty much the same time as a guy without armor plates, so it's ideal for defending the entirety of a base. The only point where you'll notice the speed difference is if you're trying to run long distances between bases.

2. You probably think armor sucks because it doesn't recharge automatically and even when it does it is slower than shield recharging. However, Gallente gets a ton of low-slots so you have room for a couple complex armor repairers. With these two plus the skill bonus, you are repairing 12.5 per second. And this is continuous, no delay. A shield tanker may have to wait 6 seconds for the recharge to kick in, in that time I have already repaired 75 of my armor. And if a shield guy gets hit just a little during that delay it starts over. Armor repairers are much better in my opinion for long shootouts whereas shield tanking is better for when you plan for quick engagements.

3. Armor plating gives you a lot more health than shield extenders. They also don't get wiped out when standing somewhat near a flux grenade. They can be repaired by an equipment that can go over 100 hp per second. There is no shield repairer tool. When you get revived by a nano injector, it revives a percentage of your armor but none of your shields, so armor tankers come back stronger.

Not even to mention we are getting a new weapon in a couple days that will tear through shields. I'm not saying shields are useless, but armor tanking does have plenty of upsides.

Two things:

1) Thinking in terms of "oh, the HP is just one more bullet" is naive. What matters in Time to Kill. Which is DPS vs Effective HP. Your line of thinking is why so many people have cried that Damage Mods are OP without realized that full shield extender fits wipe the floor with full damage mod fits.

2) Assault Rifles, the most popular weapon the game, do 110% damage to shields and 90% to armor. Once you start figuring that into Time to Kill, Caldari and Gallente suits stack up pretty evenly.

So what's the problem still? Shield extenders need a drawback as detrimental as armor plates' drawback. Something that increases hitbox would be interesting, but could totally screw with the game.

Honestly, I think using shield extenders should make you much more likely to show up on passive radar. Sure you're beefier, but everyone knows where you're at.

I agree with DB. SE should have a penalty to scan profile.

Don't forget with armour tanks you can fit more damage mods since it doesn't clash with slot space for your tank.

1. Walking speed is important for 1v1, and gallente are always easier targets because of that.

2. A Caldari can fit extenders without having to fit any "reps".
And no, that's 100% false and I tested time and time again, after the first hit, another hit won't reset the timer.
Putting a shield reg on your suit will negate a lot of that time spent waiting.

3. Armor plating gives you a bullet more health.
A bullet.
And if you use it you don't get to have proper recharge.
Any explosives destroy armor instantly, and its not like you have a layer of suit behind that armor like shields do.
Also, that 100hp rep is a lie, its only for vehicles, I checked.
Shield transfers will come, EVE has it, its not like CCP cares about Shield/Armor balance like they showed time and time again.

The scrambler rifle does 120% damage to shields and 80% to armor.
AR does 110% to shields, 90% to armor.
So none of your upsides are actually true.

1. My buddy is a shield tanker. We tried getting the normal distance between most 1v1s and moving around, it was pretty similar. Not enough to make any noticeable difference in 1v1s. You are still taking the fallocy of assuming armor makes you ridiculously slow, which it does not. Have you actually skilled into armor and tried putting it on before?

2. Ok, so even if I'm wrong on the shield recharge thing, it still takes 6 seconds to recharge which is 75 armor repaired in that time. Even if you reduce that time a little, keep in mind 10% of 6 seconds is only .6 seconds. So instead of the armor tanker repairing 75 armor during your delay, he repaired 67.5. There is still an upside here.

3. Armor tankers may have to use some of the slots that could go towards more armor for armor repairers, but even then because armor gives you more hitpoints than shields we come out with similar total hitpoints. So what's the difference here? Armor tankers can still fit damage modifiers. If a shield tanker tries that then he loses those hitpoints.
Explosives do not instantly destroy armor, that is false. It hurts us a lot more than it would shields, but it doesn't instantly wipe it out like flux grenades to shields. And I'll have to check with you on that 100hp repair tool because I've heard several people say they are loving on infantry. Either way there is still no shield repairer tool.
Shield transfers would still be transfers, meaning someone would have to give some up.
And you proved my point exactly that the scrambler rifle and assault rifle both do more damage to shields than they do armor. 20% difference with the assault rifle, 40% difference with the scrambler. These are very substantial values.

So actually, all my upsides are true buddy.

1. Yes, I have, and its slow as hell.
Have you ever tried to use shields?

I stopped right here because you are insisting on something that is simply not true. And yes, I have tried complex shield extenders.

Then I guess we have different standards.
I could do the same and stop when you say its not much of a difference.
I notice it, believe me.
When I face Gallente suits they are far easier targets than Caldari ones.

Edited my post above a little bit if that helps.

I didn't counter the revival part because its pointless.
If you get revived and someone can see you, you are dead.
Dead, dead, dead.
Also, shields start recharging almost instantly after you get revived.

You stole my skit model. .... please reference me or I will be forced to take legal action.

Actually, after the first shot, the timer is on.
However getting shot again doesn't reset the timer, only once the timer ends does shooting a person reset the timer.