There is no "best". Depends on the circumstances. Nanoweave reduces the amount of damage you take from small arms, allowing you to tank one or two more bullets, depending on level. You can see that from the ingame tooltip as well.
Since it doesnt protect your head anymore it´s no longer worthy wearing (atleast for me). There are better options for your suit slot, like the grenade bandolier. Rockets can be taken by the your friendly engineer that should be always in your platoon or squad. Other suitoptions might be more usefull like maxed out flak armor. A buff so it does protect your head again would be nice. But the tears that will flow outgoing from this unholy day, will flood the forum and no useful suggestion can´t be seen until it has been nerfed again.
I think Flak armor is the best overall suit slot. You're always going to get hit by a random explosive somewhere. Also, If you're using Resist shield, Advanced shield capacitor is very good.
I've always used Nanoweave but that was when it gave you more health. i guess nanoweave is the safe all purpose option considering that most people aren't headshot shooting machines. I'm sure that the suit has saved me more option then i know.
HA should mainly be using flak armor. Bandolier and ASC (ASC = for resist shield users only) is also good. Things to consider is that nanoweave and flakarmor doesnt stack with the HA shields. If your running Resist shield then nanoweave and flakarmor will be completely useless. Nanoweave can be useful when not using resist shield but the moment you encounter a high BR player then its effects is basically nullified (as they tend to hit you mostly in the head). In short Adrenaline shield: Flak or Bandolier Resist shield: Bandolier or ASC Rest is basically junk.
In PS2, "Small arms" are basically any weapons carried by soldiers that shoot bullets (or plasma in the case of VS). Nanoweave also protects against "rapid-fire vehicle secondary weapons" (machine guns and presumably the canister). I personally use Nanoweave most of the time since I die to bullets way more often than I do to explosives, and most peolpe generally don't aim for the head (or if they do, they can't seem to hit it ). But I'll swap out to Flak on occasion if I know I'll be going up against vehicles or AV MAXes.
