I think Stalkers would have a few things to say about that.
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I dont think its ideal to specifically fix EA in PvP in a way that is independent of other sets. I see a need to fix two very broken things in PvP that will both directly modify EA..
First off: Defence. This has been covered in spades, but the bottom line is that defence sets have no valid way to protect themselves from tohitbuffs.
Secondly: Melee in general. Melee attacks are very much more difficult to deliver consistently, particularly in a debuff heavy environment. Id say its far out of whack with any added benefit they provide over ranged attacks. Further to this, melee characters have a far more difficult time of synchronising their burst damage. Even disorganized shambles of Zone PvP teams can relatively easily get three blasters/corruptors/fortunatas (fortunatae?) to fire off their alphas at the same (ish) time. Getting 3 melee toons with buildup up, in melee range delivering their chained attacks to a foe that does not want to be hit? Much harder.
If both these are addressed, EA will probably still be a less widely useful set, by virtue of its lack of a self heal, but with sources of external healing? It might become quite valid. Further changes to the meds pool (not a priority, but still worth thinking about) could potentially address even this issue.
There are potential solutions for both the defence problem and the melee mobility problem. They would have to become a significant priority though, since I dont see the resulting playtesting being simple.
Random Speculation: The first part of the answer to this might actually be to provide some unique PvP rewards of significant power, perhaps something thats difficult or impossible to trade. With the demand for these will come the demand for improved PvP balance. With the demand for balance will come response.
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random weird idea
What about a passive power than buffs End. Not recovery, your actual Max Endurance.
say, a 10% buff that's enhanceable.
I'm think of this in place of Conserve Power.
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Honestly I do not think of EA as force fields. I think of it rather as becoming energy. Like you are only partiall physical and partially energy, so there is a chance the attack just passes through you. And I would put the psi defense in energy cloak. Kind of like they can't mess with your mind if they can't see you because you are an invisible only partially material phantasm.
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In my opinion, energy can be more broad. As you and Soul capacitor have mentioned, it's energy. Psionic is also a form of energy. This can open up a lot more possibilities in enhancing the set in several different ways.
Linking energy aura to force field is more like an observation of the current status of energy aura. It doesn't mean that energy aura should be close to force field conceptually, but the design of the current energy aura seems like to be quite related to force field. You might not like it, or you might not agree, but energy aura is like that right now.
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What about stealth buffing?
Does anyone advocate making the stealth from energy cloak stackable with stealth from the concealment pool? With a stealth IO that would give 1078 feet of stealth in PvP. Not enough to hide from an SR scrapper running focused senses and focused accuracy, but enough to hide from standard toons running focused accuracy or tactics.
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It's a valid suggestion, I think. I'm not sure if the dev wants energy aura to be that stealthy.
In fact, regarding stealth, some people don't like to be stealthy on a brute. I know that you like to stealth a lot, but there are some who don't. If I were to change something about energy cloak, I would take the defense out of energy cloak and put it in entropy shield. Then for people like you, you can still enjoy a stealth with no movement penalty. And for people who hate stealth, they can skip energy cloak since it no longer offers defense.
Depending on the magnitude, and what the AT hard caps are, I'd go for that.
It could solve the double cp issue if the set were ported to scrappers/tankers and wouldn't exactly replicate something like quick recovery.
It would give you a type of ablaitive endurance drain protection, but do it in a unique way.
End recovery is more scalable than total endurance, so it would increase the net benefit of stamina, and of IO +recovery, probably more than qr increases the value of +end. The bottom line is that while it wouldn't scale with IO expenditure on recharge the way CP would, it'd probably scale well with IO expenditure in general, maybe to the same order of magnitue anyway.
It would potentially add value to energy drain. The bigger the end bar, the more you can pack away.
Would you have it accept endmod sets? (there are some nice ones...)
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Yeah, I think I would have it accept End Mod sets.
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Does NOBODY but me play staminaless?
Conserve power is important if you are staminaless. You don't necessarily want to pop overload just because you whiffed and accidentally fired off energy drain to inadequate gain because for some reason (like a corruptor waxed your target just as you were about to drain him) there was only one or zero targets around.
Don't use conserve power very often at all, but I still 3-slot it because of those times when I do need it up. When I talk about EA having unlimited endurance, I am speaking of a three tier endurance package. Energy drain, conserve power, overload. Missing any one of those three is going to hurt.
If we are going to talk about conserve power going away, we need to ensure that the devs replace it with an endurance system that is just as or more effective to play STAMINALESS.
I think most people think EA has way more endurance management than is necessary and speak lightly of giving up conserve power. But most people take stamina. It would crush me if some 'improvement' to EA made the set need stamina.
I am quite comfy with conserve power. It is there to get rid of the annoyance of endurance derived solely from mobs that can get annoying.
/e raises hand
I play staminaless. 
That's why I made the suggestion. i highly value the ability to skip stamina. (hate that power and how difficult it is to replicate it)
That's why my suggestion was a novel way to provide end management to the set in a way that works with its end recovery power.
Think of this: get both accolades, slot my power, get 4-5 IO bonuses and you'd have 141.4 max endurance.
With slotting, hitting 3 targets in Energy Drain could give you an actual 140 endurance every 30s.
How's that for Staminaless?
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does NOBODY but me play staminaless?
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I played this way for about 3-4 months. It wasn't my favourite, but it did work. My biggest problem with losing stamina on EA is that I also lose Health and Swift and or Hurdle. All of these are excellent powers in their own right and I'm loathe to miss out on them. If I'm going to build with swift and health anyway, well stamina is a pretty good choice.
Back when I went without stamina, I found conserve power to be fairly critical. This was before there were IOs, and even with serious endredux slotting, I needed it. The thing is, I actually think SF's potential replacement for stamina would serve /EA better than the original.
Sure it wouldn't be as intensely beneficial when it's up, but it'd have a much more effective, sustained performance all the time, and of course there'd be room for another +5% movement bonus to help make up for losing that speed from swift/hurdle.
We also have to consider that to be ported to scrappers and or tanks, EA will almost HAVE to surrender its CP. The possibility that both at once could be permitted seems to be remote.
The one place where I feel that CP is really critical is when dueling with another /EA brute. Now take this in the context from which it comes: I'm hardly a PvP expert, in fact I suck, but as far as I can tell, more often than not, the EA brute with CP is the one who's going to win.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
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Honestly I do not think of EA as force fields. I think of it rather as becoming energy. Like you are only partiall physical and partially energy, so there is a chance the attack just passes through you. And I would put the psi defense in energy cloak. Kind of like they can't mess with your mind if they can't see you because you are an invisible only partially material phantasm.
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In my opinion, energy can be more broad. As you and Soul capacitor have mentioned, it's energy. Psionic is also a form of energy. This can open up a lot more possibilities in enhancing the set in several different ways.
Linking energy aura to force field is more like an observation of the current status of energy aura. It doesn't mean that energy aura should be close to force field conceptually, but the design of the current energy aura seems like to be quite related to force field. You might not like it, or you might not agree, but energy aura is like that right now.
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What about stealth buffing?
Does anyone advocate making the stealth from energy cloak stackable with stealth from the concealment pool? With a stealth IO that would give 1078 feet of stealth in PvP. Not enough to hide from an SR scrapper running focused senses and focused accuracy, but enough to hide from standard toons running focused accuracy or tactics.
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It's a valid suggestion, I think. I'm not sure if the dev wants energy aura to be that stealthy.
In fact, regarding stealth, some people don't like to be stealthy on a brute. I know that you like to stealth a lot, but there are some who don't. If I were to change something about energy cloak, I would take the defense out of energy cloak and put it in entropy shield. Then for people like you, you can still enjoy a stealth with no movement penalty. And for people who hate stealth, they can skip energy cloak since it no longer offers defense.
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I also referenced EA being similar to PFF and said make buffs to EA that are similar in mechanic to ice *raises guilty hand* But yes it is like a force field made out of energy lol.
Seeing as the Brutes Stealth cap is 570 odd feet at level 50, a stealth IO and Energy Cloak hits that cap easy. Seeing as you cant change an ATs Caps by power set if you wanted it to be higher All Brutes would have a higher Stealth cap.
For Balance reasons I would put the Toxic resistance (if at all any) and Psi Defence (with a little Psi Resistance if at all) on Entropy Shields because adding the new Defence Value is balanced by having to Enhance it (unlike my other suggestions that didnt require any, this one would because its a new defencive Value)
Perhaps I'm way off here, but I'd like to see EA as being an offense-oriented alternative to FA, not SR with typed defense. Maybe replace cloak with an inverted Invincibility that adds RES and damage instead of tohit and DEF. Instead of being a pure defensive set, maybe a hybrid def/res set?
QR
Weatherby_Goode - "Heck, Carrion Creepers negates the knockdown from Carrion Creepers."
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random weird idea
What about a passive power than buffs End. Not recovery, your actual Max Endurance.
say, a 10% buff that's enhanceable.
I'm think of this in place of Conserve Power.
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Ok, here's another take on it. What if instead of just +end we go with +X% end, +Y% health?
Such a change would potentially solve a lot of problems, and could potentially be safe to graft into /Ele as well, to avoid the cp redundancy there as well.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
it's a good idea and makes sense. maybe remove some of Overload's +HP too?
make it available to slot for both heal and end mod sets? or neither?
oh, the dilemma!!
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I'd also be inclined to give it a larger magnitude for /EA than for Ele.
Partly this is tit for tat, if /Ele is going to get the better end drain, /Ea should get the better passive, but really, that would probably have to come down to hours on the test server...
As for sets, I'd make it fully slottable with either.
And if it's going to be a tank set, then I'd definitely tear some HP out of overload. There's no need to design a set for tanks that tanks cannot effectively use without blowing through their hardcaps in set.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
pretty sure the stalkers would build a shrine in our honor if Castle implemented this passive and the overload change.
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There have been so many great ideas for EA posted here. I hope the Devs see EA for what it is... potentially the most fun Brute secondary. It already has a great look to it and people want to see another excellent defensive set that distinguishes itself from SR, Ice and Nin.
EA already has a good base, if a few of these ideas are implemented I think it will be on top of the fun scale.
Rumour has it, Castle is looking at /EA. Rumour has it.
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Rumour has it, Castle is looking at /EA. Rumour has it.
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I'm sure they are looking at it, the question is how. Do they want to leave it basically the same and just tweek it a little, or do they want to make a few drastic changes? I just see EA as an excellent platform for a new power or two that doesn't currently exist in any set. I hope the Devs go that route.
I really want EA to remain the same and just be tweaked a little. I like my brute managing it's end bar with clicks and not Stamina and I definately like diving into groups with non-suppressing stealth. Furthermore, I really really really like Overload as a tier 9. This keeps me from getting on board with about 90% of the changes mentioned here.
What I'd like to see (in order):
1) Give us energy drain earlier - you can have it swap places with one of the resist passives to do this. Being able to buff your endurance recovery in any way is nice, but its much, much nicer when you can do it before Stamina is available
2) Adding some extra functionality to that energy drain would be nice too. A taunt element, debuff of some kind...anything would be nice really (I'd be willing to give up the power being auto-hit to see this too). I'd really like to see this become the defining power of the set.
3) Speaking of those passives - more resist please. If this means buffing the equivilant passive resists in Invulnerability...I'm cool with that too. I'd like to see them start at 12.5% and 15%.
I personally like to see them just tweak it a little myself.
So if were talking about adding +HP to the EA passives, or creating a passive to replace CP for /EA, (and probably /Ele) then we are talking about increasing the straight up survival of these sets.
What fraction of the short and long term durability that /Fire has do you think these two sets deserve?
Against S/L?
Against Fire?
Cold?
Energy?
Negative energy?
Toxic?
Psi?
Lets call long term infinite and short term the 30 second case, since we need to pick something.
That is to say, weighing in, as best you can, the value of damage auras, firey embrace, burn, rotp, consume, vs. a tier 9, and /EAs stealth, /Eles end drain resists and so on
how much less durable do you suggest that /EA and /Ele should really be?
The reason Im lumping these two sets (EA and /Ele) together here is twofold. First it is actually possible for one similar change to allow the porting of both these sets to scrappers and tankers, and secondly I think comparing /EA to /Ele and then /Ele to /Fire makes for an interesting exercise.
Now, obviously fire runs on its heal, its an active measure, so survival SHOULD be somewhat superior, at least in most environments
But how much? Keep in mind that if were porting this over to tanks and scrappers, were talking about at least some situations where the compensate with your primary argument doesnt hold too much water.
Now theres a bit of a hidden thorn in /Ele if it were ported to scrappers, in that power surge, while an excellent power for tanks and brutes, is actually somewhat less good for scrappers
but thats another discussion, and really belongs in another thread.
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I think I've always been talking of increasing the straight up survivability of EA but at least in a way that didn't break things further like giving more DEF. I speak of 'Tricks' occasionally, but always with the intention of said tricks making EA more survivable in an interesting way.
RE: ELEC. ELEC already has one of those 'tricks' in its better use of End Drains. Even Arcana didn't see why people like Elec so much better than EA until she took a good hard look at End Drains in ELEC. It's just that type of non traditional (not just DEF or RES) power than I'd say EA needs.
I wouldn't discuss EA and ELEC in the same breadth precisely because EA lacks the use of its own trick. IMO, the stealth isn't enough or even worthy of being that trick. EA needs something to better deal with the attackers in front of it, not some better way to avoid more attackers that the other sets have the strength to handle better anyway.
Both need help, EA moreso, and imo they need to be better distinguished from one another. Though I agree, I think the easiest thing they could do would be to swap CP for another power and port them that way. It would suck, but it's an easy way to get both ready for other ATs.
re: comparing to fire.
busy right now but i'd say all three should be lower defensively than the other traditional sets as long as their ability to provide other benefits tangibly balances with the lower mitigation. Burn, Consume, BA, FE all provide lots of nice things for Fire that are not defensive. I'd like EA and ELEC to be similar in mitigation to Fire, roughly similar in burst as long term due to how well Fire can use HF.
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I dont think the same thing HAS to be done, its just a thought. I think double CP is likely to go on both sets, and a single drop in, while hardly needed, is somewhat more elegant than some options.
I agree that /Ele has a very strong survival mechanism in its sapping. With hasten, Powersink is up in just over 20 seconds, or in just under 30 seconds without. No normal spawn is likely to have anything at all left after that second powersink, and LF with endmods will hold them at zero reasonably well. Weaker spawns dont even get to my second sap before drying up.
Its generally possible to survive for just 20 seconds. Throw in IOs (I know a dangerous line of reasoning, but even so) and power sink is up in 17 seconds or some such. There are clearly a lot of things that can cut through an /Ele in 17 seconds, but most of these are getting to be fairly hard on any brute..
Even so, A tank may very well need more than this, and a scrapper, who wont have the same tier 9 at all, will especially need more than this for EBs, who may not be especially bothered by 75% resists in power surge, and who wont be at all bothered by power sink. Also, in their own way, electric brutes still ARE very delicate. Even adding a heck of a lot of extra HP still keeps them fairly low on the totem pole
But again no, theres no real need for any change to /ele to mirror what /EA gets.
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i definitely don't oppose ELEC being a little stronger, i'm just not sure what or how given how different it plays from EA due to the sapping/ no stealth / resistance differences. definitely another thread.
double CP is very likely to go. well, unless they want to make that a selling point, which I doubt.
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What about stealth buffing?
Does anyone advocate making the stealth from energy cloak stackable with stealth from the concealment pool? With a stealth IO that would give 1078 feet of stealth in PvP. Not enough to hide from an SR scrapper running focused senses and focused accuracy, but enough to hide from standard toons running focused accuracy or tactics.
Really, PvP is rock paper scissors. Now the ultimate enemy of the EA brute is the blaster. Primarily because you are running around the zone looking for a rock to your paper and you are about to engage when BAM a nearby blaster sees you and toasts you. But blasters are not an AT with a bunch of +perception. So you could take care of business, running from the broadsword and katana scrappers and finding some martial arts scrapper or something without having to worry about getting torn to pieces by a blaster who sees you from a mile away.
Any thoughts?