Engineers Shield Engineering Choice for PvE

[blueyedsoul]

Greetings Commanders,

With the changes in 2.2.03, I'm wondering what most of you see as the best choice for shield blueprints are going forward. Is Thermal Resistance still the best bet, or now that PAs ignore resistance, are you going for pure megajoules?

Cheers! o7

 

[Chris Simon]

Pure megajoules was always the right way for PvE, imho.

Resistances are nice in those "Every percent matters" PvP fights, but I don't think you will have a close match of that kind with an NPC.

 

[GammaZ]

While i always prefered max capacity before 2.2.03 resistances seemed like sensible choice for pve. Resistances and possibly bi-weave shields for increased regeneration and more effective use of SCB-s.
But now with absolute damage PA-s, considering how many high-ranked NPC-s use PA-s and how many PA-s are used in CZ-s... i see no reason to use high-resistance setup. At least for large ships which cannot reliably avoid PA fire.
And it will be most likely true for PVP too, becase PA-s will be used there too...

 

[Julio Montega]

If you create a hybrid ship use a bi-weave shield with "enhanced low powered shields".
You loose some max hp, but they generate less heat, draw less power and the recharge is faster,
due to less hp needed to be restored.

 

[CMDR R SWIPE]

While i always prefered max capacity before 2.2.03 resistances seemed like sensible choice for pve. Resistances and possibly bi-weave shields for increased regeneration and more effective use of SCB-s.
But now with absolute damage PA-s, considering how many high-ranked NPC-s use PA-s and how many PA-s are used in CZ-s... i see no reason to use high-resistance setup. At least for large ships which cannot reliably avoid PA fire.
And it will be most likely true for PVP too, becase PA-s will be used there too...

I think I'm of the same line of thought. Up until now, I've been running bi-weave with thermal and a couple heavy duty boosters, but CZs are plasma sh**shows, I may go back with a heavier one and go HD on it and take the "full power" approach.

 

[BlueLumen]

Greetings Commanders,

With the changes in 2.2.03, I'm wondering what most of you see as the best choice for shield blueprints are going forward. Is Thermal Resistance still the best bet, or now that PAs ignore resistance, are you going for pure megajoules?

Cheers! o7

Keep in mind now, shield boosters have diminishing returns, the more you use, the bigger the diminishing returns, there's a very good video about it on YouTube. Pretty much having more than 3 HD boosters it starts to become such a small increase it's not really worth it. So on big ships with lots of U slots, like the Anaconda, it will likely be wise to use something along the lines of 3 HD boosters with another 2 or 3 resistant boosters. Full resist into thermal, throw a couple point defense on to take care of most explosive damage, and you got yourself a very defensively tough ship. I actually like the diminishing returns, it finally frees up some utility slots to take advantage of other things in the game like chaff or point defense instead of always throwing max boosters on to max shield cap.

 

[GammaZ]

Keep in mind now, shield boosters have diminishing returns, the more you use, the bigger the diminishing returns, there's a very good video about it on YouTube. Pretty much having more than 3 HD boosters it starts to become such a small increase it's not really worth it. So on big ships with lots of U slots, like the Anaconda, it will likely be wise to use something along the lines of 3 HD boosters with another 2 or 3 resistant boosters. Full resist into thermal, throw a couple point defense on to take care of most explosive damage, and you got yourself a very defensively tough ship. I actually like the diminishing returns, it finally frees up some utility slots to take advantage of other things in the game like chaff or point defense instead of always throwing max boosters on to max shield cap.

This never went live. It was experimental change in beta only.

 

[BlueLumen]

This never went live. It was experimental change in beta only.

Really? I guess there's some other reason why my shield strength dropped by about 1200 MJ.

 

[goemon]

for me it is pretty much down to shipsize:

At least for large ships which cannot reliably avoid PA fire.

eagle, courier, dbs, fdl: bi-weave with maxed out resistances

python and above: either low power oversized shields, if only that set up allows me to run the largest scbs - or heavy duty raw MJ plus scb all the way.

 

[GammaZ]

...
python and above: either low power oversized shields, if only that set up allows me to run the largest scbs - or heavy duty raw MJ plus scb all the way.

With new G5 thermal resistant boosters using one of them is worth considering too. On corvette with with renforced shield and 5 HD boosters, just one added thermal resistant booster results in ~25-30% thermal resist, which seems usefull regardless of PA-s.

 

[MrFuddyDuddy]

PA's only bypass a small % of resistances now and I actually enjoy high resistances over full MJ tanking. I use to run C5 Bi-Weave with all Heavy Duty boosters on my FDL for a total of 2050MJ's of shields with decent Kinetic/explosive resistances but a measly -1.8% thermal.

I now run G5 Thermal Resistance 4 resistance augmented and 2 heavy duty boosters, FDL is sitting at 1100MJ's now but my resistances are all either close to or over 60%.

Going almost all resistances I ended up with an over all stronger ship (maybe not against kinetic/explosives which are very weak against shields to begin with), shields recharge much faster(almost 3x faster actually), and my ship is more maneuverable/faster and has a better jump range (G5 Heavy Duty Boosters weigh an absolute a**load)

Both set-ups use upgraded Bi-Weaves and all upgrades are G5, again resistances focused seems to be the better deal to me at least.

 

[blueyedsoul]

PA's only bypass a small % of resistances now

This is interesting. Do we know how much they bypass? Do you have any testing to support? If we know the mechanic and percentage bypassed, we can calculate which method of shield modification yields better overall protection.

 

[PhanttoM]

This is interesting. Do we know how much they bypass? Do you have any testing to support? If we know the mechanic and percentage bypassed, we can calculate which method of shield modification yields better overall protection.

This is in the patch notes.

https://forums.frontier.co.uk/showthread.php/320627-Elite-Dangerous-2-2-03-Update-incoming
- Damage split for Plasma accelerators changed from a kinetic thermal split to 60% absolute/20% kinetic/20% thermal (reduced from 100% absolute in beta), this means they partially ignore any damage resistance

 

[Morbad]

Pure megajoules was always the right way for PvE, imho.

Completely disagree.

Pure MJ is only advantageous against absolute damage, collisions, and when fighting foes with cascade rails. Resistance is always better everywhere else because it amplifies the effect of every MJ of shielding, every SCB charge, and all shield regeneration.

PA's only bypass a small % of resistances now

They are 60% absolute damage, that's not a small percent.

 

[fruitbat]

Completely disagree.

Pure MJ is only advantageous against absolute damage, collisions, and when fighting foes with cascade rails. Resistance is always better everywhere else because it amplifies the effect of every MJ of shielding, every SCB charge, and all shield regeneration.



They are 60% absolute damage, that's not a small percent.

Completely agree!

I always try to get 50% resistances across the board, which for the big 3, fdl and python is easy, going thermal resistance on shields and a couple of RA boosters, then the rest HD.

Although the MJ value will be lower, the actual effectiveness of the shield is way higher than if you went down the pure MJ route, especially vs thermal.