Posted - 2006.10.20 22:51:00 - [1]

 

Edited by: Reatu Krentor on 20/10/2006 22:58:31
Ever since LeMonde's post in the events forum, there has been much jubilation from the armor tankers and much despair from the shield tankers(the ones that tank actively anyway ). Although in the dev chat Tuxford debunked the rumour that Crystal set is definately changing he did mention there was flying chairs and stuff involved. I think some discussion of alternative options to change Crystal(and Slave) is in order(Tux is hereby invited to the discussion ).

Currently Slave improves total armor hp, a nice additional buffer that only delays destruction(if tank is insufficient). The Slave boost is also cap neutral, it doesn't require cap to benefit from it. And because of the way the bonus works it also indirectly improves additional armour plating. So apart from being a passive bonus there is no direct advantage or disadvantage that I have spotted. I must admit though I haven't personally used a Slave set, yet(doesn't mean I can't armor tank with the best of them though, being minnie specced afterall )

Crystal on the other hand improves the actual tank by boosting shield boost amount. This can make for very tough tanks. Though Crystal would be mostly used in PvE as losing a crystal set is quite costly. Also shield tanking in PvP is generally not considered usefull, mainly because of the mid slot value, a mid slot has lots of module options that are very helpfull, especially in pvp. Such things as ecm, tracking disruptors, disruptors, webbers, injectors, etc. Low slots however have mainly a choice between armor tank, grid mods, some cap mods and damage mods. Unlike Slave set, Crystal provides a bonus that is very cap dependant. A good amount of energy vampires or neutralizers on the field and all you have is a very expensive head that would make a nice paperweight for your enemy.

It got me thinking in a different direction. Instead of changing one to be similar to the other, why not change both to match up and not be weaker nor stronger then eachother. So instead of armor/shield hp buff, or a repair/boost amount buff, give a damage reduction on the armor/shield layer. A damage reduction achieved by increasing all armor/shield resists. This would result in a buff that combines the best of both worlds, you'd get a total effective armor/shield hp increase and at the same time your effective repair/boost amount would increase.

But what about the lasers against armor or projectiles against shields? Well because every resist would be increased by the same amount the relative difference between the resists(and as such between weapons) doesn't change. So there would only be an imaginary problem from this. The EANM tank issue is an entirely different issue and is not part of this discussion.

** Continued in next post **