Nanoweave 4 vs Flak 4: Generalisations

I think this is a ploy by tank drivers who recently bought HE on sale to get us to stop using flak so they can farm better.

is the only logical conclusion.

Not necessarily, I tested shooting my own AP mine while close to it with flak 5 and nanoweave 5, flak 5 causes me to only lose half shield, nanoweave 5 causes me to have nearly 2/3 health left with 0 shield. Flak also won't help you when you take direct hits from explosives (AV turret, tank shells, rocket launchers, etc) so there's no real winner here, it's a matter of situation.

LOL who still uses HE these days?

resist shield,and nanowave maxed both, that is how i am rolling.
not planing to go other routes, for obv reasons that the op is wrong on.
I have btw a setup atm with mesh generator , i use that mostly on zerg due to low fps and not having always teh shield on demand , saved me so many times, it does a diff on zerg fights.
In tower fights , i find it most usefull.

Is it 100 or 200 at 4? From the wording I can't tell if it's adding a % of my total health/shield hitpoints to health, or just a % of my health hitpoints.

To be fair, your math is completely wrong. Flak armor reduces incoming damage while nanoweave armor is a direct health bonus. These percentages are applied against different values and are therefore not comparable. In order to compare them, you would need to find the increase in EHP for each suit.

For simplicity, let's just use the max version of each, such that flak armor reduces explosive damage by 50% and nanoweave armor increases health by 25%. Since a player has 500 health and 500 shield, we easily know that nanoweave armor increases health by 625, bringing total EHP to 1125, or a 12.5% increase in total EHP.

On the other hand, flak reduces explosive damage by 50%, which means that it takes twice as much explosive damage to kill the player, for an EHP increase of 100%.

So no, flak is not simply twice as effective as nanoweave, it's roughly 8 times (100 / 12.5) as effective as nanoweave against explosions. Now compare how many times you died purely to bullets versus how many times explosions were the culprit (which also could be that an explosion left you weak enough to die to stray bullets) and see if it is 8 times as often.

If you're not using flak on your engineer you probably don't know what you're doing.

+1, Tarrick - thanks - this is the sort of thing I was looking for. Having the math right certainly helps!
So the flak resist adds to the shield AND health, whereas the nano just adds to health?

Is there any place where we can check if small arms/direct hits are indeed 8x more common? Even if it is approximate (i.e. count lib, tank, APM, grenade kills vs all other, for example....?)

(Although that in turn is a simplification as direct hits would be a significant portion of my deaths since the splash radius nerfs (the main reason I am re-examining flak vs nano)...

...and nano also adds its 125 HP to negate explosive damage, whereas flak has 0 impact on anything EXCEPT explosive splash - correct?

Depends on your playstyle I guess.
Flak saved me many a time from mines and I always run with it.

From personal experience, having no flak and being hit by explosive splash wipes out my shield and some of my health. However with flak armor it only reduces my shield leaving me with full health. I can quickly find cover straightaway to get my shields regenerated then. This is a play style as a combat medic mostly outdoors against an opposition with armor and aircraft.

As for heavies(with medic support) assaulting a tower or in biolab battling infantry head-on, using nanoweave will be good for lasting longer. Depends on the situation.

Heavy Assault + Nano 5 + Resist 5 vs ESAI Mine = Just as good as Flak armor 5

Whenever I go flip a point, I always turn on my resist shield before waltzing in like a boss. Saved me many times.

Honestly I got both Nano 5 and Flak 5 and I really don't use the Flak all that much. You can avoid explosions, but you can't avoid gunfights.

I go Flak on everything except HA. Nano has never saved me. Solo battles are usually one sided as I get the drop on them or they get the drop on me. In more organized play I've been saved more by the game's spotty hit detection than anything else. Running from point to point eating a hailstorm of bullets and surviving. Even with just a sliver of health. Meanwhile I can drop a bunch of mines inside of a spawn room at a base that's about to flip and wait for free kills. Explosives can be anywhere and everywhere. Nano won't save you.

I use resist shield 5 and nanoweave 5 and I can tell you the combination has saved my life many times. Add in a couple med kits and that extra 25% health enables you to get around corners to heal yourself alot more often

Yup. Honestly this combo makes medics obsolete for healing. You should never lose a 1 on 1 and you can get back to full health for the next fight quickly. It's the only way to roll on HA>

How are you getting one-shotted by AP mines with nano 4? My infi runs nano 3 and never gets one-shotted by AP mines (though she's stepped on quite a few!

Health doesn't regen plus flak is just so damn good overall the only other thing i use is ammunition belt for LA

That's a sweeping generalisation.

My point is, we REMEMBER those times we stepped on an APM and survived (hah, that stopped the skilless noob who left it there!). We REMEMBER the times we shrugged off a grenade (bad@ss! cool!). Especially as APMs are noob weapons and OHK weapons at the same time (something guaranteed to drive us nuts when we are killed by them.)

Less memorable are the times you survived a fight (or your opponent survived the fight) on a few bars of health. Nanoweave is the difference here. But which situation actually occurs more often? And how much more often?

Flak is much better at protecting against one specific threat (explosive splash damage) which mostly come in the form of APMs (highly memorable=we love our flak, but rare); grenades (tiny radius and easily avoidable, rare); and vehicle shells (tiny radius, as a vehicle driver over half my kills are literally direct hits to the body which, AFAIK, flak does not help anyway.)

Flak damage is often avoidable damage (i.e. don't run around outdoors under a liberator; run away when a grenade lands at your feet; stay in cover when faced with tanks; don't rush headlong into a spawn room after a cap); bullets are harder to negate with skill. (Unless breaking hitboxes with bunny hopping counts)

Nano is far less useful - almost negligible in the benefits it offers - but is useful in far far more situations.

If flak is 8x more powerful (I'd sat in reality it was 4-6x more powerful if you consider some variables such as the fact nano also negates splash damage - to a lesser extent - and a large portion of explosive shots are direct hits);
therefore
then you'd have to benefit from nano 9x more often for it to be better. Now I really would like some stats to see if this is the case or not....

Since base redesign, lib, HE shell and grenade nerf.... Though it is still a matter of personal preference - flak is perhaps no longer the "best" all round accessory. Do we simply love flak because it denies enemies a large portion of their "cheap" kills?

It's like Mineguard - people say it is essential due to the rage it induces when they are mined - but how many time is your vehicle mined compared to being spammed by HA launchers and AV turrets - let alone lolpods and other vehicles? I'd say it would account for 1 in 50 to 1 in 100 deaths of my personal deaths.... Again I don't have stats, so this is conjecture.

I love flak. I have rank 3 on my medic...

Gives me just enough resistance to survive near explosions, while all my allies die, allowing me to rez them all.

Until it stops giving me XP for revives.

I have both but honesty for most situations I prefer nanoweave even though flak effects shields too. I die mostly to bullets and if a shell direct impacts me it's a OHK with flak on anyway. Usually when I die to explosions there wasn't much I could have done but the hp saves me in many CQC situations and stops the snipers getting OHKs too. It's personal preference though depending on your play-style.

In my opinion, Nanoweave is much better. You never know the situation you're going to be in, and Nanoweave armor gives you slightly more defensive in every situation, where as flak is ONLY for explosions around you. I have survived plenty where I would die thanks to Nanoweave even from explosions.

Flak is way too situational, and should be bought when you got nothing else to cert.