What's your Adaptation armor swapping rule of thumb?

[Heliopause]

I've a level 12 Bio Armor Scrapper.   I find myself not really knowing when best to use which armor -- Efficient/Defensive/Offensive.   What circumstance rule of thumb do you find works best for you  of when to use which?  Thanks.

[Gobbledigook]

Offensive for the extra dps boost if you have nothing to fear and no endurance issues.

 

Efficient if you have endurance issues and want survivability.

 

Defensive if you want to tank up but i find efficient is enough most of the time.

 

You can switch stances quickly to get benefits if you want extra regen/recovery for example from efficient stance with your heals then switch back to offensive. Entirely up to you and what you need.

[Werner]

Roughly the same strategy while I leveled:

• Offensive by default.
• Efficient if I'm running out of blue and still fighting, or the enemies drain my endurance.
• Defensive if I'm running out of green and still fighting, or the enemies are generally too tough.
• Switch back to Offensive as soon as my blue and/or green bars have sufficiently recovered.
• If I'm Efficient too often, I focus on improving my build's endurance management.
• If I'm Defensive too often, I focus on improving my build's survivability, or turn down the difficulty.
• If I'm never Defensive, I turn up the difficulty.

Edited March 20, 2020 by Werner

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Werner said:

Roughly the same strategy while I leveled:

• Offensive by default.
• Efficient if I'm running out of blue and still fighting, or the enemies drain my endurance.
• Defensive if I'm running out of green and still fighting, or the enemies are generally too tough.
• Switch back to Offensive as soon as my blue and/or green bars have sufficiently recovered.
• If I'm Efficient too often, I focus on improving my build's endurance management.
• If I'm Defensive too often, I focus on improving my build's survivability, or turn down the difficulty.
• If I'm never Defensive, I turn up the difficulty.

 

You have forever been quite groovy on replies like this.

[Camel]

I finally caved and made a TW/Bio. And woah... Uber good. I approach my stance the way Werner explained it. I’d say 75% of my time is in Offensive. The added DPS and +to-hit is incredible. If you build some global recharge bonuses, you can switch modes in Adaption rather quick. Basically, if you need HP, enter Defensive, if you run low in endurance, switch to Efficient. Then pop back into Offensive and tear up some baddies. 

[Frosticus]

prob 98% offensive. Efficient for really long fights.

I dont have defensive on my bar haha

[siolfir]

Since my IO build, I'm in Offensive nearly all the time.

 

Leveling up with almost entirely SOs, I would swap between Offensive and Efficient as I needed endurance or just the bit of resistance that Offensive removes, so I made keybinds to swap between all three modes quickly and easily and then removed them from the tray. Defensive is occasionally useful if you want that extra absorb on Ablative Carapace, but otherwise not really worth the damage penalty, so I tended to only ever switch to it for individual activations. So basically I got there by using @Werner's priority list.