I see on the zKillboard lots of people apparently running abyssals (given their cargo they usually seem to have just finished one and then got blapped) in Gilas with only damage increasing modules in the low slots or sometimes 2 damage modules and a capacitor or sensor module as the 3rd low. Damage control is relatively rare. Is this because with a time limit for these filaments, trying to squeeze a tiny bit more damage is worth more than the large increase in EHP a DC can give? I guess even if it gave 70% resist on hull, it wouldn’t be worth it if the fit ran out of time. At the same time, while I never ran these filaments because I’m afraid of the time limit, I just can’t imagine the time limit being so hard you needed 3 damage modules.
You don’t need three damage mods for most setups, two is mostly sufficient. However, three damage mods let you clear the sites faster → you make more money. And you don’t need “more ehp” to survive the sites.
EHP isn’t the main factor, shield tank is. Once enemies break through your shield in a Gila you’ve got very little time left and while a damage control can extend that time, you’re likely about to die anyway.
Damage control has only a small effect on a shield tank, the shield resistances of a DC aren’t that big.
So for shield ships it’s regularly preferred to just skip the damage control for extra damage, especially if the ship can handle incoming damage, like Gilas apparently can do in some abyssals, and even more so if your income and survivability is direcly related to how fast you can kill.
I don’t do abyssals but if people regularly skip damage controls on their Gilas I guess the small increase in shield resistances isn’t worth the loss in dps.
running out of time because of multiple battleship rooms in the abyss will kill you but having a damage control won’t save you from a proper gank
More EHP in my opinion is “lag insurance” or at least I see that on missioning ships and J space PVE that don’t strictly need them. But L4s don’t have a time limit that abyssals have so the fitting philosophy might be different.
Most of the time in an abyss is spent collecting loot, the faster you clear the rats the more time you can spend collecting that loot. Personally, I think it’s a bit of a waste to only grab the biocache in each room, which is what you end up doing if you overtank.
You don’t need that in the Abyss. What you need is a permanent active tank that makes sure you don’t die, enough capacitor that they can’t neut you dry and enough damage to kill the rats before the time runs out. Which can be in T6 more challenging than to actually tank them due to the sheer amount of eHP to shoot and some very nasty EWAR compositions that can ruin your application.
In the lower tiers maybe. Any serious runner has a longrange damage option that he loads at the begin of each pocket to just pop the cans and then let an MTU collect all the loot while he clears the room. Ideally once the gate opens he has already scooped the MTU and just needs to jump. So, actually “collecting loot” is an absolutely minor part of your time spent in the higher tier abyssals. Rare exceptions, if you can clean rooms incredibly fast using towers or having pocket of lance-drones and you are running the site with a Stormbringer.