Well a quad-super steel plated metal armor with regen vest costs like 13,000 charons which is kind of brutal. On most of my tank builds, I just layer on the Nimble feat w/ 1-plate super steel and regen vest to have 50% -> 35% armor penalty only after Nimble. While importantly, still just barely accounting for proccing Juggernaut properly (yes Nimble works for that; after the Juggernaut check). You can reach that with 202 Mechanics skill if my math isn't terrible, with the mythical, quality 180 plates. You'd need a similarly high Tailoring skill for the 160 qual Regen Vest (193 like on Eidein's doc I think), as well as the ~109 or so into electronics and biology too. Movespeed gives a lot of effective durability too, so I like the boot-spring + lower armor penalty set-up.
But yea, crafting stat requirements at higher levels are really high this update, so I'd probably either go all-in (regardless of INT) or barely invest into them outside of the low-stat breakpoints you can see on the wiki, like 45 BIO (either before or after other boosts, w/e) for Focus Stims recipe is a good example for some criticals boosts. You don't need to go high Intelligence to use crafting, just don't put INT below 4 imho if you're going for higher quality end-game crafts.
For leveling crafting breaking-points, it unfortunately is dramatically different for every weapon-type and build-type both. If you want durability, use Mechanics and Tailoring (and biology ~7-14 for psi beetle carapace on a tac vest). I will sometimes skip electronics entirely for a good while, until level ~9-11 or so. The tasers and energy shields are both strong, but you can also get some low value shields outside of crafting. You can buy and find medium-power grenades without the crafting stats in chemistry. I'd recommend just going Mechanics/Tailoring in the early game if your skill points are really tight. And then later game you can fill in other skills if you have points lying around.
