Spiritchaser

I'd suggest quiet discussion amongst ourselves untill the set gets proliferated to scrappers. That's our best chance to get the problem looked at.

In open (or if any of us are lucky in closed) beta we'll have a chance to test out such things as fire/ea scrappers, and make all appropriate comments.

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Considering that it's quite easy to softcap most /ea defenses, I think the prior Idea was not an idea, It was just another attempt to poke fun at /EA.

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While I'm not going to call softcapping most defences "HARD" I certainly wouldn't call it easy. You end up with all your power pools spoken for, you need to use IOs and IO sets to get there and you have very few spare power picks left.

Yes the IOs to get there are cheap, But I find that the IOs I need to make the rather odd build work well on offense despite it's commitments to defence, are generally not cheap.


EDIT: fixed quote! (sorry frost and enamel, had that mixed up due to hamfisted double-window copy paste mistakes!)

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Also: does Cloak of Darkness give perception? Between Mid's and City of Data, I can't tell. Both say Energy Cloak doesn't have it, but both say different things about Cloak of Darkness. Why would that be?

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I can attest to the fact that EC does not give +perception... as to why...

er,

well no clue actually, it just doesn't

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the Problem with this is that we allready get that in overload.


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Even such a simple thing as taking the health in overload and putting it in the passives, or splitting it three ways amongst overload (such that we don't mess up that existing slotting) and the two passives could make one heck of a difference to the set.

Not perfect, but functional, and one would think relatively easy.

I'd be very surprised if there were any meaningful increase to the toggle defences of EA.

There might potentially be some small room to move on the resists, though without making them toggles, there's a fairly serious limit to how high they could go, or at least, there is no precedent for them going higher than they are as passives.

Ok, I'll try and keep my semantics to myself

for at least a day...

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I bet energy aura is more or less working as intended from the dev's point of view.

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I'm not so certain that /EA is working as intended... It might be more accurate to say something more along the lines of:

All brutes are so fundimentally strong when measured against (some metric or other) that even the weakest amongst them is still high up on the curve.

Yup, I certainly agree that you've found something that needs fixed.

Unfortunately I think it's a little unrealistic to hope that the power might be re-examined due to the consideration of one bug... but you never know.

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the base there is reporting 33. I exited the game back to my desktop 2 times switching from opening energy drain first then power sink. even had one open on one computer and the other opened on another. didn't matter which power info in game says it should be -40 end to target.


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Sounds odd...

Every time when I go to the in game enhancement/powers detailed info page and inspect power sink, I see 40, every time I look at energy drain I get 33.

Given that it seems possible for the game to give you two different values... yes I guess by definition SOMETHING that you're seeing on your screen is wrong... though I conceed that nothing is established as to which is wrong just by seeing the difference.

Accordingly: Find a level 46 or 47 minion (others will probably work, these are just the two I tested) and power sink and end drain them with fully slotted level 50 powers. I went to the RWZ to find rikti and nemesis test subjects which I tried each brute on.

The reason I choose these levels is because at this level, power sink will fully drain the foe, while energy drain does not.

That way one doesn't have to try and decide just how much end is left on a foe's bar. Gone is gone, not gone is... well, they still try and hit you.

Accordingly I submit that:

<ul type="square"> [*] The general player impression is accurate
[*] The data on the power/enhancement screen, either accessed by mouse over or by "view details" is the correct data.
[*] Energy Drain is the inferior power, although that may not be intentional.
[*] You have found some innacurate in game data.
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EDIT: Just thinking about it: It's very very unlikely, but just possible that each foe tested decided to attack right at the moment I drained/etc. Were this the case the attack used might have varied, and power consumed could have been a factor. I've been unable to produce different results, but Ideally I'd do this on a foe that could consume no endurance.

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according to the real numbers provided by the game. Power sink and Energy drain are identical.

-40 end to target, 30% chance for -100 recovery, +25 end to self per target

did I mention that it has a Taunt component in there too?

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I'm not sure about that. When one goes into the detailed power info, the numbers for power sink are as you report, energy drain is, however rather less potent, with the drain component some 33, rather than 40, and with the taunt component absent. Not only this, but I might note that the presence of lightning field significantly modifies the capacity of any drain power. Energy drain cannot be used to persistantly curtail incoming damage. Because of lightning field, Power Sink can.

This is VERY non-trivial. With lightning field slotted with a couple of endmods, all you need to do is sink your foes twice and they're out. If you can survive for the recharge time of power sink, you're pretty much golden.

CoD on Dark tanks is likely to be a good indicator of how tanks would feel about energy cloak

Now I'll admit, EA is not Dark, an EA tank would probably "Need" a taunt aura to function, but the cloak in and of itsself is not problematic.

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For a scrapper though, wouldn't they just leave the values as is?

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They will most likely have to do something about conserve power, or at the very least, they'll need to carefully consider the set before it gets transferred. Even just that might be enough.

EDIT: who was it that suggested replacing conserve power with something that did the same thing (albeit less powerfully) as drain psyche?

I know we've talked about +hp on drain before... I think you were a part of the discussion??? (It would have been 4 or 5 "fix ea" threads ago... and my memory has faded somewhat) and such a buff would be scalapble, it'd be self limiting, it'd be brutish, and would genuinely help I'd say that this with +psi def on entropy shield and more energy def... well anywhere really... would be a great change.

Sure it'd be soft against AVs, but that's not the most important point.

I might quibble with the exact numbers, but that's hardly important.

Personally I'd still prefer EG's static values, but I'd be thrilled with this too.

We'll probably have to wait for EA to be ported before it gets looked at though...

I'd certainly prefer a + heal, +regen or +HP/Regen addition to energy drain than I would a straight up click heal.

The heal would potentially be quite challenging to scale... Good enough on an AV, but not too good in a crowd... Consider what dark regen would be like if it also restored endurance...

I'd say having +HP per target with some minor +regen would be much easier to scale. The HP hardcap is quite accessable as a self limiter to how this power could work. You could easily boost HP very significantly from a single target without breaking things at the top end. Any + regen would have to be more carefully controlled, or limited in other ways.

Keep in mind that a click heal is going to have a couple of things against it:

1. It's going to make /EA rather similar to /nin in terms of it's survival mechanics

2. It's going to require a fundimental rework of at least one of the existing powers (+hp or +regen, debuffs or other mechanics could more easily be piggybacked on to the foundation that currently exists) Not that it couldn't be done, but it isn't something that's been remotely common.

3. It doesn't give /EA brutes the capacity to avoid being crushed by single big hits, something that damage debuffs, resistances or +HP potentially could do (though which +regen clearly would not)

4. It would be a new conceptual addition to what energy "is", and a playstyle change to what /EA has been. There are currently no energy or similarly themed powers that have heals, although other potentially useful energy themed effects do exist. Sets can, and should be able to function well without heals. Some heal-less sets are excellent. /EA has always been a heal-less set, but it is not amongst the happy few such sets that work well.

I really don't see it happening, but if it does come to pass, I personally hope for more of a dull-pain style power than a clicky heal power... but that's me.

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A major part of the problem though is IO's. Positional defense is much more readily available and is only 3 categories.

Typed defense IO's need to be more prevalent and perhaps typed defenses should almost always be paired on sets so that you don't need 7 different sets.


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I think you've touched on one of the two big problems with this, though not the one I'd consider the most critical.

First off, with sufficient attention to IOs and pools, EA is fine, even more than fine. It's EA's base performance that is so deplorable. Yes some attention should be paid to what a set can do with no holds barred, but it's far more important to consider the set alone, or even the set with pools than it is to consider the monsters.

EA needs a base survival buff that does not depend upon IOs becuase the premise of game balance has always been that IOs are optional for balance.

The second point about WP is another complication. WP is already very strong. If we add somewhat more typed defence availabliliy, then WP tanks will easily be able to softcap defences. That's a very dangerous thing.

If we add significantly more typed defence then even WP brutes will softcap, and that's just broken.

It might be possible to allow maybe another 3-5% across the board and still stay on the rails, but much more than that and you'd start seeing a rather degenerate selection and build process. Everyone except hard-core concept builds would be max-def /WP.

As a final note: with the new prevalence of SoAs, and the fact that EVERYONE AND THEIR PETS are now softcapped half the time, getting some +HP, some +REGEN or some other mechanism into /EA might be rather nice.

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That would still qualify as a no defense for /ea.

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No.

Remember that your cloak still gives you that positional defence to stack with that steadfast IO.

Sound like meaningless semantics? 3.75% unslotted sound worthless? well for many builds, sure. It will be.

It does however have a pretty big contribution to other types of builds, and should not be totally discounted. To put it into context it's still possible for EA to solo the elder snake AV, and cloak is a meaningfull part of why.

EDIT: to clarify, the eldersnake AV is one of the few high level sources of pure toxic damage that actually IS out there.

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We all know that EA's defense has a weakness in psionic, toxic and negative energy.

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Just quoting for emphasis. /EA in fact has NO defense to toxic. None at all. Just wanted to emphasize that.

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Well... Against toxic attacks that have no other type that's mostly true... however:

1. Most toxic attacks have more than just a toxic component. They're toxic-lethal, or whatever. Your defences work just fine against them (well... they work as well as they do against anything else. With no regen, +HP or a heal to shore things up, this is arguably still grim, but that's not my point)

2. Other pure toxic attacks are still going to be posistional. (EDIT: or rather, I am unaware of any non-positional toxic typed attacks) Given that you have the steadfast protection IO, and you really really should, you'll have about 8.8% defence against such attacks. That's still pretty pathetic, but it's not "none"

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honestly, /ea SHOULD have had power boost. it honestly should have to match the other sets thematically.But castle doesn't like PB.

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I'd argue that castle probably dislikes PB for some good reasons, and further, that of all the things that you could do to balance /EA, adding PB would be one of the most difficult to do well.

You'd start off by considering a valid magnitude that doesn't mess up the defence/tohit equation more than it is, then consider which defence toggles will be modified by it (almost certainly not all, but some will have to be or the benefit may be minimal or none) then start thinking about overload, or pool def powers, then about it's effects on different primaries, and non-synergies between that power and either fire or SS (arguably both already counterindicated on /EA) vs. strong synergies with EM.

This is before even talking about PvP.

I am not stating that all shortcomings could not be addressed, but do we really need to take the hard road here? particularly when I haven't exactly heard an outcry demanding this specific capacity...

Electric armor has a similarly low immortality line in many cases. In fact, in some environments (High S/L/Fire/cold, low energy) it's meaningfully lower, of course:

Because it's a res set, damage spikes are less problematic, even with lower absolute mitigation, you may well have a lower probability of critical burst damage.

Because it's a res set the absurdity of some tohitbuffs/defdebuffs isn't there to haunt you.

You don't have the psi hole.

You have very effective mitigation by sapping. With properly slotted lightning field and power sink, once you fire off your second drain in a spawn, you'll pretty much have drained it dry. That means that in many cases, if they can't kill you in the cycle time of power sink, they simply cannot kill you. With Hasten, and possibly recharge IOs, you can take that time down to 20 seconds. If you get obsessed you can get it close to 15. That's power.

I guess it all comes down to priorities.

Even with almost no impact on existing slotting or build choices, /EA can be made just as powerful as castle feels is appropriate.

The number of suggestions there have been over the years, and it really has been years now, is monsterous... and I'm really beginning to wonder how many things really need fixed before EA... surely we must be getting close to our turn...

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Change the passives to passive +def that stacks with the toggles, add a small per target +DEF to energy drain just the ice armor drain. Finnally change energy cloak to something usefull.

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Actually if you just changed out EA's passives for HPT and fast healing from WP, you'd be ok. If you also added psi def to entropy shield? you'd be done.

Cloak? some love it as is.

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So, just make it Willpower with a Stealth power?

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Not even close.

Not in playstyle (scaling sustainable damage vs. fixed, taunt aura vs. none, stealth vs none)

Not in vulnerabilities (burst vs. sustained, tohitbuffs/def debuffs vs res debuffs, even energy end drain vs. psi end drain depending on the magnitude of psi def, different performance vs. such things as rularuu or rogue vanguard, different problem mobs all around)

Not in build style and options, not in best IOs, not in leveling progression and strong and weak level ranges, not in out of the box performance, not in maximum performance, not in available toys (radically different tier 9s, different end management style, different "throwaway" power)

I will admit that such changes WOULD make /EA far more like /WP than it is now, particularly in one most critical area: it would close in somewhat on the general performance metric.

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Change the passives to passive +def that stacks with the toggles, add a small per target +DEF to energy drain just the ice armor drain. Finnally change energy cloak to something usefull.

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Actually if you just changed out EA's passives for HPT and fast healing from WP, you'd be ok. If you also added psi def to entropy shield? you'd be done.

Cloak? some love it as is.

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Sure, his powers don't work the same as Empathy in City of Heroes, so perhaps Linderman is a better example.

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As far as I'm concerned this is pretty much a conceptual coffin nail in any argument that empaths aren't evil

Linderman is more or less a one man refutation of that whole position.

Sure call it something else... change absorb pain for another power, but basically... same set, just used for different goals.

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He can heal people! Clearly he must be an Empath!



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Actually, it's not just that he could heal... though he certainly could do that... it's that he used his understanding of peoples motives, goals and desires to manipulate them into following the path HE has chosen, to the point of marionetting two people into falling in love and having a child...

His understanding of human feelings, his "empathy" wasn't perfect, after all, he did end up with a hole in the back of his head, but it was that understanding which made him dangerous, not just that he could heal.

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I'm guessing the numbers behind the Psi/Mind powers will be tweaked downward to balance this set.

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Fixed that for you.

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So unless you are talking like less than defender level damage I just dont see how. Damage will suck so bad no one will want to play it anyways?

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Psychic Shockwave for Dominators is an AOE power which does damage as it if it a single target power. For Blasters, this will not be the case -- the AOE divisor will be in place. In other words, divide damage by 4.75.

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Thanks for the update... now I need to do some math I guess.