Backdrop - I am a Caldari pilot moving into Speed-tanking and Armor-tanking some of my ships, as well as cross-training into Gallente. I want your opinions on a couple of the Level 5 skills I am thinking of training, whether they are worth it etc.
High Speed Manoeuvering - I want to speed-tank my ships in Low-sec missions and sites, using MWDs, and wanted to know if the -5% cap usage Level 5 gives me is worth it, given it will take me 17 days to train.
Armor Compensation - Is it worth training these 4 passive tanking skills to 5? In total they will take me over 24 days.
Do you have any other suggestions for skills that will be useful?
The first thing that comes to mind is cap stability. MWDs chew up a lot of capacitor each cycle (by design). I would guess that a majority of useful MWD setups are not cap stable. Perhaps close, but not often. If you can use an in-game or third-party fitting tool, you should check to see if going from IV -> V makes you cap stable.
If so, I would say it is absolutely worth it. If you can make changes to your module setup without sacrificing much else of what you want, and gain cap stability in tandem with going IV -> V, I’d say it is still worth it.
If neither of these are the case, I think your next step is to ensure that you have the basic support skills maxed out to V - Navigation, Hull Upgrades, and don’t forget Acceleration Control -> IV. (Faster speed on MWDs and ABs, so more bang-for-the-capactor-buck.)
For the passive armor tanking, you could see if you can predict what damage types you’ll be taking, and if it’s focused primarily in two categories, you can hold off on the other two.
You need to test IV and see if you need it at V.
Test how long your cap lasts. Use a better mwd.
If you want to spend time skilling for speed tanking,
take a look at booster skills and the x-instinct booster.
It lowers your sig.
Be sure to understand that you can compensate a lack of speed by lowering your signature radius. Avoid shield modules and rigs that affect your sig. Understand that more armor might not be better than more speed, when you know that getting caught means certain death anyway.
A pro tip you don’t get to hear from anyone else out there …
If you feel like your ship needs a combat probe launcher,
consider using a small cap booster for on/offlining modules at will.
This helped me fitting a …
… tracking disrupting, pointing, combat probing, high speed …
… stiletto for lowsec, before there were any cpu rigs.
Source: I’m a speedtanker. I’ve tanked lvl4 missions for my corpmate nine years ago, in a 10mn AB rifter. Even that one lvl5 in dodixie, which was a bug. We couldn’t finish it, but some trustworthy locals ran it for us. 100 Million ISK where quite a sum back then.
The armour skills yes, as that effects all ship no matter faction or type. As it increases resistance of armour. Best getting to lvl5.
Armour laying is a good one to add to these armour skills, the reduction of the mass per lvl of the plates has added bonus of speed return while keeping hp gain from plates.
High speed manu. is good, but limited use.
Another additional set if looking for speed and armour tanking is the armour and astro rig skills. With the right combo of rigs and reduced penalties you can make fast armour tanks.
The high speed M. skill is worth the training time. If you are on an INT/MEM remap right now, get that trained to V before you remap again. It makes a big difference in your capacitor’s usefulness. Also, it makes sense to train that if you find a MWD on most of your fits, you will notice the benefit more.
I probably would not prioritize the passive armor skills. Get them trained to IV for sure. If you want to go an extra mile, train explosive compensation to V because you want to fly gallente. As for the other three skills, you will not see much benefit from them if you are flying sub cap ships. If you want to see the difference, throw a fit into PYFA using a single EANM. Have the character set to “all level 5” and then modify one of the compensation skills to IV. You’ll see a very small difference in EHP and EHP/s.