What's more effective on the frontlines

Armour tanking is better for Gallente assaults.

Armour tanking is better for gallente assaults, which is why they're the worst assault.

I use the Gallente assault and I do quite well with them.

I only have 4.8 million SP, and I'm only using the standard suit and yet I can get 598 total HP.

armour is better for stand alone tanks, but shield tanks are good for support and vehicle squading if you do it right.

The Advantage of Armor is the fact that they get so much more HP than Shields. An Advanced Shield Extender gives 33 Shield while a basic Armor Plate gives like 65. The difference is that Armor does not passively heal like Shields and Armor slows you down.

But EVE and DUST work like this:
Lots of High Slots = Shield
Lots of Low Slots = Armor
Caldari and Minmatar (sometimes) = Shield
Gallente, Amarr, and Minmatar (sometimes) = Armor

The shame is that the Assault bonus is Shield Recharge which is only REALLY great for the Caldari. They should have made the basic bonus that applies to everyone something like Weapon Damage or Reload Speed (even though it sucks) and make the Caldari Specific Bonus about Recharge.

Be well.

shield better for bursts of random damage due to there ability to stack shields

armor is better for sustained damage since they can repair while taking damage



take one person who is shield tanking with 400 hp and another person who is armor tanking with 300 hp with 10 second repair per second over an 11 second fight the armored soldier will have effectively more hp than the shielded solder

While its true that armor is quicker to get high amounts of HP, once you hve complex shield extenders (and with 4.8 mil SP you should have) thier is no point in armor. Running anything larger than a basic plate slows you down way to much and makes you an easy target.

The difference between a basic plate and a complex plate HP wise is about 1 and 1/2 bullets from a standard AR, and with the 10% penalty to movement speed that comes with it I gauruntee your going to be hit by a lot more bullets. This makes wearing anything more than 1 or 2 basic plates counter productive.

Everyone sees the "-10% movement speed" and says, "Oh hell no!" But they haven't actually tried using it. The movement speed isn't that big of a drop off as it sounds. The only time you'll really ever notice it is the initial sprint from the MCC to a null cannon or if you are trying to do a dead sprint between two null cannons. The moment to moment combat though you're fine.

Your thinking is slightly off. The slower movement speed of armor ensures you will take more damage, while gimping your ability to get behind cover. If a shield player is able to take cover for 3-4 seconds they are able to go from virtually no shields left to full health. Whereas it takes an armor close to a minute to accomplish the same feat.

However paired with a Logi repping with their 106 HP/s repair tool while standing in triage nanohives an armor assault can tank sustained damage from 1 - 2 players as long as the assault player doesn't get 1 shot from a militia locust grenade and they continue to circle strafe while in the triage nanohive.

You would do better in Shield, I promise you that.