As a new Option for my Eve life PvE comes more and more in the Front and I get a question in my head about the damage Control. Is it a good idear to fit it in an PvE Ship like battleships for lv4 Missions?
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Hello, It depends. Mainly the damage controll increases the damage resistance. On shield armor and structure. I myself put the module where an increased damage is to be expected. For example: I am using a shield ship and it is expected that the damage will break my shield.
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A friend gave me this advice once:
“Always fit a Damage Control until you are experienced enough to know when and why not too.”
She was not wrong 
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That’s a very good piece of advice 
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I always fit a damage control personally. If for no other reason than the extra bit of resistances.
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So, here’s a slightly more detailed answer to extend what I said earlier.
DCs are really great mods and can do a lot to spread around a lot of additional resistances and EHP for the cost of a single low slot. But, and this depends on what you are doing specifically, they have two problems.
- The spread this resistance across all damage types.
- They spread the resistance across shield, armor, and hull.
Now, the reason that may be a problem is that general tanking theory says to focus on tanking one area (shield, hull, or armor). Add to that that you might not need resistances against a specific damage type, then you are (again, in theory) spending that additional EHP in places where it doesn’t belong or won’t be needed (i.e. if you are shield tanking, damage should never hit your hull, so additional EHP would be better spent being applied to the shield).
Now, all that’s well and good in theory, but there are some realities to consider as well.
- You will really need to understand fitting to get more benefit out of adding something instead of a DC.
- Something else needs to be more important (an extra damage mod for example)
- You will need pretty good skills, more bling, or both to get more benefit from a different, single module
- You need to understand the application and how you are tanking- and be able to optimize that really well to get more benefit out of a different module.
- Sometimes you just want that extra across-the-board buffer to be more relaxed. Nothing wrong with that.
So, DCs are good and there is nothing really wrong with using them, but there are certainly situations and fits where they can and arguably should be skipped. How and when to do that is up to the pilot and their experience.
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That depends and I have to say that the fitting screen is somewhat misleading.
For example if you fly an armor boat and fit 2x eanm II instead of one eanm and a damage control, the fitting screen will tell you that the latter combination gives you more ehp but fitting 2x eanms will give you more armor resistance.
I recently started to remove the damage control from from some of my fits but I still like to fit it if I don’t need the slot for something else.
My advice, look at the fitting screen and keep an eye out for your resistances, depending on if you fly a shield or armor boat.
Sometimes a power diagnostic system can have more value on a shield boat.
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@Leah_Crowleymass has it right. When you’re starting out, you can feel free to slap a DCU onto pretty much everything. It is the only way to gain Structure resists, which could make the difference between squeaking out of a mission site that went pear shaped, and limping home in a Pod or a Corvette.
But once you get the hang of stuff, the “necessity” of a DCU lessens.
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For a Shield boat, you could use it for a bit of extra Shield resist. But the armor and hull won’t be as important. And you could use that same Low slot for an extra Shield Power Relay or an extra damage mod (less enemies means less damage to tank).
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For an Armor boat, the Reactive hardener is better for you in the long run. DCU II gives 15% across the board. Reactive starts at 15% across, and adjusts itself based on the damage you’re taking. So if you’re fighting rats that only deal pure EM, the DCU will still only give you 15% EM. But the Reactive will adjust after a minute to give you 60% EM. And the Reactive doesn’t have stacking penalties with the other Hardeners. But it does have stacking penalties with the DCU. So if you want to maximize flavored resists for any given mission, use the Reactive and other Hardeners, not a DCU.
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Great examples, and well said- thanks!
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meh, on an armor ship you might as well have fit an extra resist mod since you know what you are up against, or just an EANM as that will give more armor resist than a DC. And as said above if you have the cap to spare reactive hardeners are pretty nice for armor tanks. In a frigate 1v1 where you don’t know what you will face and every single HP matters then yea a DC is great, but in missions that extra specific resist will soak up more damage than a DC ever will.
on a shield ship maybe you can argue it a little more since there isn’t much else to modify your tank in the lows, that said I’d rather just go with an extra damage/application mod. Also now that MJDs are a thing they can get you out of most bad mission situations, so I’d rather have that then a low effect mod in the lows.
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We used to live in a time when it was not considered optional - you either had 60% structure resists by fitting DCU, or 0%. CCP surveys found that most every ship in EVE fit one, by default. Game designers decided this was out of balance and tweaked it. Today, the decision to fit a DCU is worth talking about, where it wasn’t before.
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No damage control.
I used to fit a DCU on my Golem, but found I didn’t need it and a fourth BCU was more efficient.
The only ship I use a DCU on is my Bowhead when I pack everything up and move regions. And that’s just to minimise chances of being ganked.
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Fit for purpose. If you can, always sacrifice defense for offense. You won’t make more money by tanking the rats harder, you will make more money by destroying them faster and getting to and from your agent faster.
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Unless you have good (Lv4-5) armor/shield skill or logi support, fit the dcu.
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TLDR : it’s only interesting for active shield tanks.
ok let’s start by stating what a DC II does
- 12.5% stacking shield resists
- 15% stacking armor resists (penalized with RAH)
- 60% stacking hull resists.
In PVE you don’t need lots of buffer, so adding more buffer is often useless (not always, but in most cases). From now on I assume you are in the general case. Specific cases must be handled each with specific study.
To say if the DC is good or not, needs to answer the question : can I add something better ?
i.e., is there a module in the low slot that can do better in term of rep ?
If you are shield tanked (active), then there is no module in the lows that increase the EHP/s , so the 14.2% added ehp/s is definitely worth it. However in some cases you may instead use capacitor module, in order to use an upgraded shield booster(eg pith instead of gist) and/or a solidifier rig.
If you are passive shield tanked, then don’t use a DC. Your raw ehp/s is increased by 14.2%, however
- shield power relay II gives -25% shield recharge, so 100/0.75 = +33.3% ehp/s but at the cost of lots of cap
- flux coil II gives -30% recharge time and -15% shield capacity, so total 100/0.7*0.85 = +21.4% ehp/s
- a power diagnostic system gives +5% shield hp, and -8.5% shield recharge, so total 105/0.915 = +14.7% ehp/s. Plus gives more cap and more powergrid, so you may be able to fit that compact 50mn …
so for eg a drake, don’t use a DC.
If you are armor tanked, then an important thing is, the DC bonus is penalized with the reactive armor hardener bonus. Since the RA will adapt towards the type you take the most damage from, the DC will actually only provide 13% armor resists( or +15% EHP/s).
An EANM gives 25% resists, second one is 21.7, third is 14.2%, 4th is 7 % : so a DC is worse that the first and 2nd EANM you put. it’s also worse than a RAH though it does not consume cap. For Cr and above, RA+EANM(up to three) is better than using a DC. If you want to save CPU, nano plating II are still better (but only up to two) than DC.
If you use tank hull, then I have no answer for you. I mean, sure, whatever … I guess you enjoy the game, in your own way.
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If you are new to say l4s use it extra hp and hull buffer you get will often be difference between your ship warping out or becoming salvageable wreck.
After you get in high end battleship and general knowledge of each mission you wont need it.
DCU as a must apply in higher end PVE such as assault ,headquarters incursions where if you broadcast rats aggro swap to you late you will be in a pod opening a wreck to take a look see of how much ships is left in there.
I wouldn’t dive in abyssal space T4 and expecially T5 without one…well except when in Gila…because Gila.
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Thanks so much for this advise months ago on my newbie thread, so far one of the most useful advise I’ve had on the forum.
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Personally I like the Damage Control a lot since it’s compatible with most resist modules. Plus it gives significant boost in structure resistance, big boost in armor and small boost in shield. The only drawback it has is stack penalized with Reactive Armor Hardener as many others mentions.
However, I personally find there is nothing wrong to put both Damage Control II and Reactive Armor Hardener in low slots. As a newbie running some lvl 3, 4 missions, I find DC II hull buffer being incredibly useful when I messed up and need to wrap out. DC II saved me many time.
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And if you had not used a DC you may not have had to warp out.
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