In tanking there are two types of traditional tank - High HP and damage mitigation.

Instead of having both tanking styles revolve around High HP and Fast regen - armor should instead be about damage resistance and constant regen.

Both would end up being very similar in practice but would lend themselves to two completely different playstyles.


Also, drop the speed penalties and have armor damage resistance mods be a High Slot module.

Awesome thread, need to be seen by CCP.

A little idea for armor tanking love: since shields have a low slot module buffing them (shield regulators) why don't give armor a high slot module? Reactive Nano Membrane, high slot module that increase armor resistance to damage.

^^the idea is that the particular efficiency of one armor over their other should suppliment a players playstyle rather than dictate

Yes - it should supplement their playstyle, but they should pick what to spec into accordingly. It shouldn't dictate it - and ferroscale plates, again, would give better adaptability assuming they're not useless, but there does need to be a specific role for armour and a specific role for shields, and that means places where one clearly outperforms the other.

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

I like how everyone in this game plays solo and then complains about imbalance. I've played logi, I've played logi following behind protoheavy with all plates and damage mods. I've played Logi with a heavy who RDVd his own car to get around places so he wasn't so slow.

Armor plates are for team play, Also the OP mentioned that the repair tool sucks because the logi can't use his gun. There are a number of situations where you want your logi out of LOS healing and keeping up resupply, rez and Uplinks. Also when you rez somone with the proto needle when they are armor tanking, then you get fun results when the enemy has to bring down that fatty again.

Make some friends, I am an extremely unlikeable guy and I have friends to play with. It's not hard, just say "hi" to people. And when they invite you to play with them, then say things like "Good Job" and "Thanks" rather then. "OMG I SCORED MORE KILLS THEN YOU ROFLLOL HAHAHAHAHA FAIL LOSER"

Then maybe we won't get more threads saying, OMG armor fail..

I like how everyone in this game plays solo and then complains about imbalance. I've played logi, I've played logi following behind protoheavy with all plates and damage mods. I've played Logi with a heavy who RDVd his own car to get around places so he wasn't so slow.

Armor plates are for team play, Also the OP mentioned that the repair tool sucks because the logi can't use his gun. There are a number of situations where you want your logi out of LOS healing and keeping up resupply, rez and Uplinks. Also when you rez somone with the proto needle when they are armor tanking, then you get fun results when the enemy has to bring down that fatty again.

Make some friends, I am an extremely unlikeable guy and I have friends to play with. It's not hard, just say "hi" to people. And when they invite you to play with them, then say things like "Good Job" and "Thanks" rather then. "OMG I SCORED MORE KILLS THEN YOU ROFLLOL HAHAHAHAHA FAIL LOSER"

Then maybe we won't get more threads saying, OMG armor fail..

We absolutely need a Gallente racial passive that reduces armor speed penalty by ~15% per level. This is pretty much the only way you can truly balance armor tanking.

[P5] Penalties
Fitting armour plates doesnGÇÖt only slow your movement rates (both sprint and normal), it also slows down your turn rates, and by extension your aiming ability. Also your strafe speed, which makes you much easier to hit.

This is completely unreasonable for an FPS game. Movement speeds are harsh enough, but reducing the playerGÇÖs actual ability to aim in a game where aiming is everything is an unreasonably harsh penalty. This impacts accuracy directly, reducing your ability to hit people at distance or headshot people.

It hurts your CQC ability because people can actually strafe faster than you can turn, meaning it becomes a severe disadvantage in CQC. It prevents you from responding to the threat behind you as quickly as you need to.

The penalty, of course, affects mobility. This is important for two main reasons.
The first is how easy you are to hit, and the second is power projection.

The ability of other players to hit you is important. If youGÇÖre getting hit more, you are being damaged more and you are dying more. If youGÇÖre running across an open stretch and someone starts shooting at you, the longer you spend in the open running the more damage youGÇÖre taking and the more likely you are to die.

Your strafe speeds are also slowed, so when it comes down to a straight 1 on 1 gunfight you can easily be outgunned as it's so much easier to hit you.

Mobility should be a drawback of armour, but in its current form itGÇÖs penalising far too heavily for what it gives. For example, the scaling of the speed penalty between tiers is awful.

The shield vs. armor disparity effects all races and classes. This would do absolutely nothing to balance shield vs armor in anything but Gallente Medium Class

Great post.. except your numbers are wrong:

You should take into account the passive 10% from armor plates and shield extension, as you need both to run complex.
Also take into account Caldari Logistics 25% to shield extenders, and Caldari Assault 25% to passive regen.

Caldari Assault is 31.25 hp/s regen (at level 5, but use max out for balance discussions), you use 25 hp/s in some instances.

Complex Shield Extenders give 72hp not 66hp (there is actually no way to get less than 72hp from a complex extender right? Cause shield extension has to be level 5)

Complex Armor Plates give 126.5hp not 115hp.

Caldari Logistics Complex Shield Extender gives 90hp.

Also, posted from another thread.

While I do agree that armor plates probably need a buff to their hp you also can't just straight buff them, or shield tankers get a pretty beastly advantage too.

We absolutely need a Gallente racial passive that reduces armor speed penalty by ~15% per level. This is pretty much the only way you can truly balance armor tanking.

Also agree with the other sentiments here:
PG in high slots (with no CPU penalty)
Flat % armor plate reduction ~4-6%
Explosives are too effective against armor. I would like to see 85/115 probably, maybe even 90/110, as the damage is so high, any bonus effects the alpha on a locus grenade by a lot.

My thoughts:
Armor plates and shield extenders should follow a 1x,2x,3x pattern, so extenders 22-44-66 and armor plates something like 44-88-132.
Ferroscale plates should match extenders in hp.

The balance between reactive plates need a rework... as it stands reactive plates and armor reps will always compete against each other, and one set (1 Armor Plate + 1 Armor Rep vs 2 Reactive Plates) will always be better than the other. I do seriously believe at this point that armor reps or reactive plates need to move to the high slot, so that they don't compete.

That said, I would also like to see implementation of the racial flavorings where Amarr suits favor plates and buffer but Gallente favor armor regeneration. I really don't understand why CCP have made Minmatar/Caldari Shield, Gallente Armor, and Amarr "both"?

[P8] The new modules
Here we get to the new stuff, the modules which are meant to GÇÿfixGÇÖ armour. They fail in their mission.
These new modules are the Ferroscale Plates, which give less HP than normal plates but without any speed penalty, and the Reactive Plates, which give an even smaller amount of HP but with a small amount of regeneration and a small speed hit.
Now this all sounds good in theory, but thatGÇÖs until you get to the numbers that CCP decided to put on the plates.


Complex Ferroscale plates:
60 HP
Complex Reactive plates:
45 hp, 2hp/s, 4% movement penalty


For comparison, normal plates:
115 HP, 10% movement penalty.


And for more comparison, Complex Shield extenders:
66 HP

-lots of really good information that I am cutting to make the post itself smaller-

I have done all of the numbers without applying skills simply for mathematical simplicity. Using the higher values changes nothing really. It makes the gap slightly wider between shields and armour, but it doesn't matter. I haven't used the skills applied numbers for armour plates either - I have, however, used the skills applied numbers for shield regeneration and armour repairers.

The argument that a straight buff to armour HP is bad because shield tankers will use it is invalid because armour tankers can equally use shield extenders.

If you're going to go down the route of making armour plates only good on armour tanking suits it should be a role bonus rather than a racial bonus, because otherwise newbies get screwed over.
PG modules in high slots would make more sense.
Flat armour plate reduction - Agreed.
I think tweaking the explosive to be in line with the EM is the best solution - it should still be more effective than solid ammunition weapons against armour but it shouldn't be so effective that it wrecks armour with even glancing hits.

Armor plate numbers I somewhat agree but you've effectively nerfed the lower tier so that the progression can look better with those numbers.
I think ferroscale plates should actually beat extenders in HP, but only slightly. This is because you still need to sacrifice for repairers on armour suits.

Definitely agreed with plate/rep comboes competing with reactive plates. If they both had different numbers so they were useful in different situations - reactive plates giving more HP but less rep or vice versa, as suggested in the OP - they would be more useful and balanced.
It doesn't help that currently the plate/rep combo simply blows reactives out of the water.

I agree here wholeheartedly. For starters, Ferroscale Plating.

They offer LESS HP than equivalent shield extenders, have high fitting requirements, and remove the armor speed penalty entirely (which shields don't have to deal with for one). Considering shields come with a very high natural regeneration rate, and the Ferroscale plates DEMAND an armor repairer (for abysmal recharge), this is an important thing to note. We are getting rid of our armor tank's greatest drawback, at the cost of being just a statistically worse version of a shield extender. A Ferroscale plate should offer ~75 armor at the complex level, giving it a slight edge over shields in RAW EHP. However the armor tanker will still have to spend one or two slots dedicated to armor repair modules, which will not only cut down on overall tank but also eliminate a significant amount of buffer.

I have a feeling CCP was attempting to balance these under the assumption people would be using these plates bare with a dedicated logistics running around and repping you in combat. Which is nice in theory but is just not in practice.

-stuff on reactive plates-

Shields still get higher buffer, and double the regeneration, all without the movement penalty. There is no clear area where armor tanks can say "We've got you, there!" so my suggestion alone may not be quite enough. Perhaps reducing the movement penalty from 4% to 3% as well (making 3 plates give a 9% penalty instead of 12%) would help? Although that's only making it better than it currently is, and not giving it a clear role on the battlefield, let alone being comparable to shields.

At the same time, this brings me to my previous point that Gallente should favor active armor and Amarr passive buffer. The Gallente Assault suit should be getting a LOCAL armor repair bonus. The problem is that while this may make Gallente Armor tanks a very viable thing, it would NOT fix the core problems with armor. There certainly are a lot of things and situations to consider, eh?

The shield vs. armor disparity effects all races and classes. This would do absolutely nothing to balance shield vs armor in anything but Gallente Medium Class

Yeah. See, the problem with reactive plates is that in their current situation they're inevitably going to be compared to normal plate/rep fits, and right now they're simply superceded by them. For them to really work, they need to have their own role compared to plate/rep fits - for example, giving a higher repair rate but lower HP.

And again, you're right, heh. The new modules wouldn't fix the balance even if they were better than they are now.

God these flaylocks are like a win button against Gallente I have yet to play a game today where the majority of the team isn't using these... It is literally impossible to kill somebody with a flaylock as a Gallente logistics unless I am super far away, not only can I not strafe fast enough I only have about 2 seconds to dish out enough damage to kill them. If armor isn't fixed by uprising 1.2 I am just leaving this game I cannot handle how bad my character is because I picked the wrong suit... Yep New Eden HTFU or GTFO guess I know which one I fit in, didn't know New Eden was brutal since the time you decide to pick a suit

well, if it isn't flaylocks its SMGs that in close range dessimate armor.. both are better on armor. but its not the flaylocks fault most close range encounters happen after both players get too close after charging each other (normally with ARs), so the secondary that does massive damage to armor is noticeable when shields are down.

the flaylock is a close range weapon that is an explosive with the least blast radius and damage of all explosives in the game. if it didnt work it'd be pointless, it actually needs a slight buff. it takes arm to use it, and the hit dectetion even makes that a 50/50.

well, if it isn't flaylocks its SMGs that in close range dessimate armor.. both are better on armor. but its not the flaylocks fault most close range encounters happen after both players get too close after charging each other (normally with ARs), so the secondary that does massive damage to armor is noticeable when shields are down.

the flaylock is a close range weapon that is an explosive with the least blast radius and damage of all explosives in the game. if it didnt work it'd be pointless, it actually needs a slight buff. it takes arm to use it, and the hit dectetion even makes that a 50/50.


the REAL problem is that speed penalty that makes getting out the way impossible. nonetheless, if there was a secondary that did massive damage to shields like the flaylock does to armor (not the scrambler pistol it operates differently altogether) it could solve this issue.

minmintar weapons are good against galente dropsuits, we need some caldari weapons and amar weapons to punish shield tankers. the baance is there it just hasnt been implimented.

until then, spec all you can into scrabler rifles, scambler pistols, flux nades. (or use a scrabler rifle flaylock/SMG combo. thats great against caldari)

If the enemy is moving at you in straight line aim and pop him with rapid direct for the kill. If they are gunfighting with you than jump and just rain hell down at their feet. Core Godlock is fun! Requires no skill to use it's easy :)

I need to do a real read of this whole thread, but while I'm getting to that I do want to make one statement out of the gate.

Reactive plates should be moved to a High Power Slot this instantly breaks the deadlock between then and the standard plate + rep fittings question providing more diversity in options and also serves to ameliorate some degree of the shield/armor division.

Also as others in this thread have said we need some armor specific racial skills. Gallente and Amarr are armor tanking races (yes this is EVE lore, but it's also maintained in dust stats, just weakly) and should be getting racial bonuses to support that. Giving such bonuses would make armor taking balance more attainable (provide active buffs for one race and passive buffs for the other, then you have build diversity as well).

Cheers,
Cross