Print it out and hand it to random people in the street, link it in your posts, tell people about it. vOv

Armor plates are for team play

You guys sure armor is at a disadvantage?
I saw a DJINN running a Gal Logi, that just won't die, earlier today.

Took a ridiculously concerted effort to kill him... with a full-auto Duvolle AR.
Seems to me that guy had armor down to an art form. Maybe some people are just building armor fits poorly?

I dont think that post was true, or there are some heavy details missing.

At fanfest they said they'd reduce overall shield HP in favour of increasing regen. Somewhat like flux coils in EvE - which nobody uses, incidentally.

Maybe you should post some stats, then.

Hey there!

Yeah, I completely understand where you're coming from, and I can tell you that we are looking into how to better balance the two without obviously homogenizing the different statuses. So while it might seem like we aren't doing anything, that is not the case! It is in the works and we are continually looking at this data and determining how tweak it.

I am going to be honest, I learnt a fair bit reading this post. I actually asked Arkena to make this post as he was explaining armor tanking to me in IRC.

I can't really comment on this very much though as it is not an area I work on. I can and will say however that those that do work on this stuff have read this thread. It actually made it into our weekly community report today that gets sent around to everyone working on DUST.

Thank you very much for this post. :D

We'll be addressing armor tanking with multiple updates going forward:
- New armor modules will be released with the Uprising 1.2 patch:
- Ferroscale plates (smaller HP buff but no speed penalty)
- Reactive plates (small HP buff and minor repair rate buff - plates that heal themselves! )
- We'll be reducing the movement speed penalty slightly on armor plates in a future hot-fix.
- Giving proper racial bonuses! The reason the Gallente don't get (the very obvious) bonus to movement speed when armor tanking at the moment is because we use a tag system to confer bonuses to items and currently there is no way to exclude an item from getting a bonus. The only way to do this would be to tag EVERYTHING in the game that isn't the Gallente suit with a tag, which is error-prone and likely to ensure we unintentionally screw up some unrelated skill at some point. This will be corrected as soon as is feasible.

Hey guys.

Yeah, obviously having this information released in a trailer isn't the best thing in the world. We are working on getting dev blogs out about all the new stuff we'll be releasing in our next patch, which is currently scheduled for early July (we'll have an exact release date ready for you in the near future).

But all numbers are still subject to change and we will of course monitor feedback on these numbers and make tweaks as appropriate.

I'm just kind of disappointed by the lack of developer response. Just a simple acknowledgement, a simple "Hey, we see this" would make me feel much better.

I am disappointed for all the time I invested trying to get as much information out to at least be noticed by CCP, and maybe just maybe they did notice me, but did they listen to me? No, Did they listen to anybody who posted on any of these threads? No, and chances are they won't listen now. Maybe if we keep bringing up the issue they will notice and they will make a change, in the future, and maybe just maybe armor won't be garbage and those of us who have persevered on will finally get something we enjoy and call our own. Unfortunately we know CCP, we might fool ourselves and we might fool others, but we all know how CCP works that is if they do notice and they decide to do the right thing how long will it take them, 3 months? 6 months? A year? To fix an issue that has been brought up countless times since before Uprising, since closed beta? They obviously have more "important" things to do, like adding new bundle packs to make their wallets fatter instead of fixing one of many broken gameplay elements.

EDIT: This is not even about the time I invested, it is about the time and thought we all invested. We didn't just sit here typing a bunch of random ****. We logically took a problem and came up with a infinite amount of solutions none of which CCP took and applied.

Taken from here:

https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1004241#post1004241

Yes.

As far as reacharging faster, that is the nature of the beast. Armor repair tanking can be very competitive against shield tanking. I should know my favorite fit is an armor repair tank Gal logi, repairing now at 25.75 HP/sec. Armor repair also as no delay, so you are continuously repairing even in the midle of a fire fight. Combo this with the new energizer (complex) and two complex shield extenders and you got yourself a pretty hot fit.

As far as benifits to combat effectiveness to shields over armor, again this is the nature of the beast. Armor has a higher potential eHP than shields especially with the way these new plates are working. All in all though it is not entirely true that shield is more effective, for instance:

Scrambler rifle
Laser rifle (if they ever get around to making it relevant again)
Flux
Gallente AR
Caldari gauss rifle (when it finally gets here)
Sniper rifle
Shot gun

The problem a lot of the time is that a lot of people do not stay mindful of these strengths in battle, and thus get very frustrated.

If I am not mistaken, explosive damage is 130 over 70. I could be wrong however. Once again play to your strengths. That is the nature of this game. Manny a Caldari sum have lost their lives to my pro scrambler rifle and pro flaylock on my Amarr alt. it gives me much pleasure to see them die so easily.

I'm sorry man,this was a really good post, and if I weren't so tired today I would give it the response it deserves, I am afraid you are going to have to settle for this instead.

Armor and repair tank is not the only two tanks that the Gal do exceedingly well with. There is also the speed tank. Form what I have read from you I think that this tank would suit you well, if you'll forgiv the pun. Give this a try:

Gal pro logi:

Pro AR

Comp energizer
2x Comp extender

2x ehd ken cat
Ehd cardiac regulator
Comp repair mod
PG expansion mod

2x compact nano
2x adv uplink or better (make sure you have two different kinds, this will alow you 4 active at once).

{edit>>>There are also some others VERY good speed fits with the adv logi and the pro and adv assault. You just need to play aruond with it.

1. I find issue with your reasoning in this. You go on to say that the armors should be diferent, but then you come down into the next section and say "Well Armor tanks have less HP"

You cannot say, These things must be different, and then try to compare them like they are the same. Using your own example.

2. Feel free to flame me all you want for this next part. I don't have time for PC and do pubs and I never run proto in Pubs. so I haven't looked at my proto fit in awhile. But if I remember correctly the Gal suit gets 3 High/4 Low and vice versa for the Caldari. Your example only shows 2 low slots for the Gallente suit, but all 4 high slots for the Caldari suit.

You are rigging the results to suit your hypothesis. How about showing 210 +115 + 115 + 115 + 115 = 670 if you are going to compare HP levels straight up.


3. And by your own example, those Shield extenders are all in the highs, which means the Caldari cannot fit Damage mods. However the Gallente soldier can fit 3x damage mods. So therefore in a straight up Brawler vs Skirmisher fight, the Armor tanker does more DPS and has alot more health.

4. Of course you can say, But the speed penalty is SOOOO bad. You are correct. However CCP has to balance the ability of the Armor tanker to be the absolute FOTM because having perfect armor and Damage capabilities is BROKEN... So thats why there is both a speed and a PG/CPU issue, to keep that broke situation from occuring. Thats the price for armor tanking.

Good post, and I appreciate it, I edited my post before you finished posting this and I will repost it here in case you missed


So yes, I am with you in saying there needs to be fixes, but not just on the armor side either. But its getting better I like your idea of the Death Clock, if a person put on 2 armor plates and all damage and the clock started ticking. It relys on team play and between battle reps. Along with a fix to shield regen delay, I think that would be a good start.

True, but the example was of a Gallente Armor tank using 2 plates to get the same health as a Caldari tanker while having boosted damage. If In a perfect world the armor tanker could fit everything he wanted, he could also fit his remaining low slots with reps to reset the clock if he waited long enough. Therefore making reppers there for more Solo play.

However we have plates which don't reduce movement now right?

My 2 isk

As per [P2] I can accept that concept of armor or shield tanking. More to the point I think people should be put into a role/style based on HP type. You decide the type based on the role you want.

As many have stated - armor does not provide enough bonuses to compensate for the penalties. Add to that the majority of weapons are more effective against armor - armor tankers are effectively even with shield tankers (maybe a tad lower on ehp scale) then shield tankers.

Recent armor items are actually more effective for shield tankers. I would know as I am one. Amarr assault with scrambler, 1 regulator, 2 complex reppers. One of those complex reppers has been switched out for Feroscale. I have more armor at no hit to my shield.

Recommendation - small reduction in plate speed penalty. As they get better they should be more hp/speed efficient. I think reactive plates should have their rep speed reduced slightly and their movement penalty reduced. Their effective HP seems fine if this is done. Ferroscale should match shields. A complex ferro being 66 HP. They would be the 'armor varient' for tanking.

Now - one of the advantages to armor tanking is being able to equip damage mods - so is that fair? I believe so as armor takes more damage from weapons in general than shield.


This way armor tankers can go either heavy armor (plates but reduced speed) or ferro for the same HP and speed as shield tankers - but taking more overall damage to compensate for their use of damage mods.

Of the above proposals I think I that the only critical one is that armor plates have movement penalty reduced.

Finally - CPU PG costs of plates should be reviewed.

My 2 isk.

You guys can't forget weapon damage profiles and their effects on tanks' resistances.

I don't think we can say that 500 shield HP = 500 armor HP.

When it comes to the AR, 600 Shield HP = 500 armor HP.
When it comes to the scrambler rifle, 700 shield HP = 500 armor HP.
Mass driver: 500 shield = 800 armor.

A flux grenade kills did they get a buff ? I know a av grenade can kill a passenger of a llav always thought flux was only useful in breaking up a group of cal logis for at least 10sec till they get all their shield back .

I linked it to CCP Mintchip on Twitter when this thread had like 2 pages.
I asked her to move this on to CCP and she said yes.
After 1.2 I got angry and asked her why didn't you do anything when this thread clearly shows the problems and how to fix them.
She said we saw the thread and nothing else...

drop suit imbalance ive(have) been here since may of 2012 and a lot of the imbalances are with armor tanked suits.

there(they're) are just simply favoring all armor suit(s) leaving the shield tanks suit completely defencless(defenseless).

im mean look at caldari suits for instance they have nothing but shields very little armor and when you put amor plates on them the are slow (down). now look at gallente when you put amor plates on them they move the same speed I think the stacking penalty dosent apply or idk.

also repair tools only repair armor and nanite injectors only repair armour and flux gernades are over kill, two basic gernades will blow up a tank even though the only do 1200 shield damage. some how you can destroy armor.

I think armor tankers are fine its the shield tanker that need to either have a small buff or come out with gear to rep shields. look at eve we have shield reps there why cant we have them on(in) dust

CCP does not understand that what makes a good tactical game is giving everything small advantages against other things, not huge obvious advantages. Look at explosives they do 135% damage vs armor, this is huge specially since there is not that hurts shield like this, and there never will be according to their roadmap for future weapons.

They still shouldn't blast through my 202 shield and kill my 436 armor.

No, they just do extreme damage so it feels like that.
Core locus grenade kills 923.07 armor.

CCP says its 120% but they don't know their own game I guess, its more like 70%/135. Take a grenade on a very heavily shielded suit, blow it up in your hands then subtract HP damaged - HP, take that number and divide it by the normal damage of the grenade, and there you have the % multiplier on shields. The same could be done with an armor suit but that requires you carefully dropping your shields and not repairing armor.

About to risk my 150K suit to test it for you :(

EDIT:
326 shields, took my HP down to 46. That is 280 Damage, 280/400 = 0.7, or 70% damage against shields.

46 shields 526 armor to 88 HP. If I sum that up, which equals 572, divide it by 400, I get 1.43, or 143% damage, but because the 46 HP is affected by a 70% penalty the 143% is slightly lower, but not low enough to be 120%, its not even low enough to be 130%.

Exploding a grenade in my hand is like taking a direct hit from a grenade, so it provides the most accurate damage since at a distance the damage might be lower depending on how CCP calculates explosive damage with radius.

Seems reasonable.

Generally, the idea seems to be that weapons with -x% to shields to +x% to armor so in that context it does seem reasonable.

It would be reasonable if we had at least 40-50% more HP than a shield suit, but we have a less HP than them. With the current mechanics explosive damage is extremely unfair. Flux grenade affect everybody equally, but explosives only affect armor suits effectively. There is also no weapon that does high damage against shields, I thought the forge gun did but its actually another 70/130 weapon.

You may be interested in this.

I recently made an idea for nanofibre plates that would increase speed, lower armour and give hp regen. The idea fleshes out a little in the latest post.

These modules would fit in the high slots.

Shields MUST have a penalty, right now they run around unhampered.

Armor tanking is best done as a group, your power multiplies greatly if you have more than 1 person. .. shields have no such benefit. You do not bring up repair tools. Imagine getting over 625 raw hp plus base if you did not have to worry about repairing because your buddy always stays close. And throw in a triage hive stacked with other triage hives and you are amazingly powerful.

So for fun I thought I'd write down some of the arguments I've heard over this campaign. Please join in if you have a good one.
4. Armor is fine because of rep guns and nanohives.
While 3 is my favorite this one is my most infuriating. Look, it is a nice bonus to armor to have outside repair sources when shields don't but to there's a reason for this. Armor has no natural repair rate. Most shields are back up before a they could be substantially repaired, the exception being the new commando suit and its 10 hp a sec.
My real reason this pisses me off is that it creates a barrier between solo play and group play. Shields are fine for both while armor would only be good for one. It's an insidious statement that allows for continued imbalance under the guise of unique game play.
The reason why people make this statement is false attribution, people working together will be more effective, doesn't matter if you're a shield tanker or an armor tanker. So when people see or are more effective in a group of armor tankers they assume it's because of the armor but I would say it's for the team work. Team play is a force multiplier which is hard to account for when measure effectiveness.

Thats bs didnt even do anything for the Gallente except nerf the logistics suit.

Just shows how much CCP worships the Caldari.

Yes, it's a nerf, and the number is 26.4 with 4 complex, which means no damage mod, which is bad. With 2 its 13.2. Faster reload is much, much better and much more interesting.

I've been thinking. I think armor isn't hard enough to skill into a good fit with.

Consider shield extenders. 22hp, 33hp, 66hp at complex. It really encourages you to use complex extenders.

Consider armor plates: 65hp, 87hp, 115hp at complex, with increasing penalties. It actively discourages using complex plates.

If the armor plates were 65hp, 97hp and 195hp with a flat 3% speed penalty, it would encourage armor suits to actually expend CPU and PG on.

The problems with the new plates are relatively small compared with the fact that rather than give us something that balances shield vs armor they just gave us another couple types of plating. Movement penalties are a natural attribute for armor but I still feel that the benefits from using the feroscale and reactive armors are small and the resistance plating/shielding that is used in EVE should be ported into Dust. This would allow us to just tweak our tanks however we want to be better at what we do.

Make shield extenders enlarge hit box size but once shields go down they return back to original size.

Or at all. It helped sheild tankers and commandos

After reading the CPM AMA transcript, I'm confident that we're going to see a change in the balance work coming out of CCP.

I will agree though, that having been given the numbers accidentally via the Market scroll in that trailer, and suggesting that they were non-optimal, we still ended up with them released the way we had feared.

Actually, there was even a Dev post in one of the threads on the topic "reminding people that all values are subject to change before deployment".

Welp.

Bonuses?

CCP Remnant has expressed he wanted to get the bonus system up to part in current design. While this would see like a short sight in design this is probably largely attributed to 'deadline design.' But with the new bonus system things can get far more interesting on the current suits in buffing or niching every class into its own corner much better giving even the base suits a reason for their use that would make those familiar with eve instantly recognizable in the Tech 1 to Tech 2 progression strengths and weaknesses of every role. So interesting bonuses such as Amarr and Gallente relationship with armor tanking with one focusing on hp the later on speed.

still no dev response...

Explosive dampening isn't enough. A resistance to damage added to the plates or put in a high slot would be happily accepted.

Stuff

I'm starting to lean towards this as well, I still have concerns about role overlap/contention between the reactive plates and the standard plate + rep combo but that may need a fix of its own.

Cheers,
Cross

It's actually slowing down quite a bit now.
I'm fairly certain that they've taken note - my work is done, at least until the next round of balancing comes out and I have to complain about role definition/armour OP/armour UP.

We'll see in 1.4, I guess.
Thanks for your support.

Until everything is fixed.

[REQUEST] Infantry Shield Transporter - https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1107071#post1107071
Status: Good idea, we can add this, but after we balance armor vs. shield tank first.
https://forums.dust514.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=1154291#post1154291

Oh hey, they might be doing that.

Personally, I'll give it 10k more words before I walk away.

100 likes for Goebel!

I was most specifically comparing the tanking mods to the weapon dps, so while I do think a moderately higher average TTK would be a good thing it is most specifically a statement of "to balance armor tank vs shield tank it is better to buff armor tank than nerf shield tank even if this means that some players hybrid tank and created a somewhat increased TTK".

The ability to endure more fire shouldn't be too heavily throttled when it comes to mods used because, as you know, each mod fit is taking up a slot which could be providing another advantage so we need to be very careful about not creating artificial bottlenecks or ceilings to value of any given mod type or it can negatively effect overall balance.

Playing my "I've invested not even 1 SP into anything and run only starter fits" character for testing purposes it is speed most of all which I feel the lack of. My dps is lower but I can compensate by being more careful with where and how I fire. My eHP is lower but I can compensate by being mindful of where and how I engage, albeit this is harder to accomplish than the dps compensation and leans on map knowledge which a truly new player will not have as much of. Range is just a matter of knowing what weapons you're up against, and is a bit of a coin toss how quickly someone will pick it up.
But speed, speed is almost a hard cap on performance and it effects almost everything.
Getting into and out of fights/cover, getting to and from objectives and hot zones, moving to resupply yourself or support allies, essentially every aspect is effected by speed and the less of it you have the more other attributes you need to approximate the same level of function. While I understand why CCP removed the free LAVs doing so was one of the biggest blows to new players in quite a long time. Leaving the issue of "murder taxi" aside for the moment those new players now cannot adapt and react as well as the higher SP players can because they do not have access to the same mobility.

While I agree that in the hands of a skilled player a properly fit prototype kit can handily take on militia gear it is positioning and adaptability which wins those fights more often than raw HP or dps. Give a vet militia gear and good ground against a new player with proto gear and poor placement and the vet wins most days of the week. This statement is not simply hypothetical either as the "game show" even displayed.

I agree that low meta gear vs high meta gear is not ideal and hopefully matchmaking will address that, but I also think that balancing low meta gear against high meta gear isn't the best practice either, taken to its fullest extent there can't be balance between the types until meta ceases to have meaning.

0.02 ISK
Cross

They are going to be okay but not as a module to depend on, CCP Wolfman confirmed the fitting restrictions were not changed.

It'll be better than it was in 1.4. You saw the suggested changes, yes?
Once 1.4 is out I suspect I'll post one last one of these though.

The ferroscale bug or whatever it is, is a good thing so I hope they never fix it.

hate

Power unlimited power!

anikin walking into chamber with younglings = shield tanker

younglings = armor tankers

Because they cry about losing their shields instantly, my counter argument is well you should of used a core locus grenade. The logibro argument well anybody with a brain can realize that since almost everybody shield tanks triage logibros aren't high demand and thus rare.