Fix energy aura summarized

just happened to check the test server, there was a patch.

ED heals for ~50 hp per activation at level 50

and Power shield has 15% defs to psi in PvP only

wait...

does math...

the patch notes were right at first, it was healing 20% per target and now they changed it to...

3%?

buffed already!

more like set to what he originaly stated. Castle did say it was going to be like 2% per target buffable to 4%

he said 2%. that would 30 hps.

this is 50hps, 3%.

a slotted 10% heal would now be 60% instead of 40%.

Since I'm not in the Closed Beta I don't know what Patch notes you are refering too. All we have to go on is Castles Post about PvE Changes coming to the game with i13

In Which he Said the Following

[ QUOTE ]
Energy Drain: Added a 2 scale self heal to each target affected by this power. Un-slotted, the player will recover 2% of their maximum HP per target affected. This can be enhanced to up to about 4% per target. This change was made to offer the power set some minor healing ability to increase their survivability but not offer an overwhelming heal.


[/ QUOTE ]

When it was announced that i13 would be going to test in closed Beta. Like any good CoH addict I logged on to see if I was in it. Email or not. Since I'm not all I could do was look at what was listed on the "Show Real Numbers" screens for Energy Aura Energy Drain power to see what the base heal will be at 50.

And I said.

[ QUOTE ]
according to the Real Numbers Energy drain will do 299.85 Heal to self. which will make it half as good as Dark Armors Dark Regen. but without the tohit check. This change should make Energy Drain just plain Awesome Sauce


[/ QUOTE ]

Emphisis on the heal numbers. Thats about 20% of a brutes HP at 50. Making one think that either castle forgot a 0 in his original post or someone put a decimal in the wrong spot.

then after making my regular guess at if there was a new patch to the test server. Not being in beta i wouldn't know unless i tried to log into the test server I decided to check what the new number, if any, the heal in Energy Drain is.

and it is about 50HP per target now. So from this point of view a decimal was misplaced when i13 first went to test.

I'm not in closed beta either.

my point was that they told us 2% per target and the new number is 3% per target. that's a buff

going from 20% to 2% is a decimal error being corrected, yes. ending at 3% is a buff of some sort. Even Arcana was saying 2% was a little low. 2.5 to 5% was her idea. So 3% is right in there.

now looking at it that way, it is a buff indeed.

I wonder if a dev could chime in on my question as to wether they have decided to increase the defense debuff resistances to EA?

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I wonder if a dev could chime in on my question as to wether they have decided to increase the defense debuff resistances to EA?

[/ QUOTE ]
Considering the debuff numbers are still exactly what they are on Live, and still say "Not affected by buffs or enhancements"...

... I'd say they either haven't decided or have said "No."

Still waiting for his Official BackAlleyBrawler No-Prize

SR only has defense, so there are various things to help it out, including good defense debuff resistance such that SR won't be so easily defeated.

For EA, the set is not a one-trick pony to start with. And the dev decided to put in some healing now, so EA starts to look more like a real multi-faceted power set now. Personally, I would like all the little suggestions that we made (for example higher defense debuff resistance) to be labeled as thematic change and put them all in beta. Right now, I think it's kinda hard to argue from a balance point of view that EA needs more than some healing.

I would like the Smash/lethal passive turned into defense with a added energy defense. Entropyfield -end resist with toxic resist.

no psy resist or defense for there needs to be some sort of weaknes.

The set should be higher energy defense and negative energy defense.

Maybe change overload to AB from the Ice Aura set.

honest to heck I just would like a set that were you dont need to go heavy on pool powers.

So what's your feeling on the change (heal portion added to EA) since we are now in open beta ?

Enough or not?

It doesn't help me with the things I'd had problems with, but it does increase overall survival against the unwashed masses.

I'd have much preferred a buff that was a little more specific at patching up the holes, rather than a general buff... but after all this time, I'll take what I can get.

In a lot of ways, the provision of darkest night in the patron pools is a far greater buff to EA than the changes to the set itsself... only after level 47 of course.

EDIT: I wish darkest night for brutes would take taunt enhancers...

The animations sucks, too.

It is kind of eye damaging...

That said, it does let you run with fewer pool defences if you're fighting generally uninteresting foes.

Well, to test the changes I ran Darkness Bound on Test... I had an older version of her shelved there, level 37. She is a DM/EA brute.

I respecced her into an all-SO build and built her as close to 'default' as possible (no pools other than flying and fitness)

And then, just to make things interesting, I cranked the difficulty up to max and ran Johnny Sonata's chain.

So far, several missions into the chain, and she is having NO problems. she takes a few hits now and then (with only 25% defense that is to be expected) and her killing speed is far faster than it was previously. She has both of the passives, and they are making plenty of difference. Between having siphon as part of her regular attack chain and popping energy drain frequently, her health bar has yet to bob below 50% in some of the most brutal standard missions available for dm/ea (CoT and arachnos)

I have noticed though that I can actually run my blue bar empty, now, even without tough/weave. Touch of fear has lost some usefulness except against the toughest foes (even bosses die too fast for it to be worth TOF'ing them generally) but that may be due to my slotting. Without pool defenses, though, it plays a lot more like a regen than it did previously, although it feels quite a bit tougher than my regen scrapper does.

In general, it is a lot more confidence-building to play, although some of the challenge has been lost, solo.

In a team however, the difference was HUGE. I ran about 6 radio missions with a team, and was quite easily capable of semi-tanking for them with taunt... No worries whatsoever about getting more aggro than I could handle, since the healing easily kept up with HP loss. This was, once again, with an SO-only build and with some power choices I probably wouldn't take on a normal build. In a team environment, even without any buffs, I was easily holding my own and contributing significantly, as well as consistently dealing with the alpha.

Of course, my teammates did keep griping about the ed special effects. They are nasty.

I think things like wailers are going to be substantially easier with the buff, but wailers were never the real problem with an EA anyway.

How have you found carnie bosses, rularuu, quartz emanators, fortunatae, elder snakes, tarantula mistresses, earth thorn casters, rogue vanguard, succubi, PPD kheld bosses, those possessed scientists that drop tar, or even modest negative energy damage threats like death magi, galaxys, nictus and vampyri? (there are obviously more problems than these for EA, but this is a good start)

I’ve found that against most weak foes, I’m stronger. Against things that do negative damage, the extra heal brings me close enough to par as makes no difference, but against the primary threats? Not much better than before. Things that were problematic generally remain so post heal.

Again, I’d have preferred a buff that helped where help was actually most needed. I can still patch most of these rough spots with pools, IOs and mitigation from my primary and patron pool (toggle debuff ftw)

Fortunatas and tarantula mistresses are almost universally in a group of other arachs, and taking them out first seems to be a perfectly acceptable way of dealing with them. It's not as much of a kryptonite anymore with the heal (it's still much worse of a kryptonite for several other sets)

rularuu, quartz, and other nonresistable defense debuffs are just as much a threat as for any defense sets. It's endemic to defense, not to /ea in particular. The heal is definitely helping with these threats, though, and havign an almost reasonable level of resistance (especially to toxic now!) means that the heal can pick up the slack.

I agree that the heal should be front-weighted to fit more thematically with the rest of the set (stealth) but I have noticed that even against primary threats it seems a ton more survivable.

my testing has feedback opposite from yours, Frost. shocker, i know.

I found the heal making no little to no difference. Siphon Life and Midnight Grasp were used a lot more frequently and that was accounting for my increased survival due to damage. the heal in ED I felt was especially not effective when surrounded by large groups of foe. I'm sure its different in a team with buffs but then we're not talking about EA's mitigation anymore.

Hey I am over here in Iraq and have recently moved to a location with an internet situation such that I am now having problems logging in. It looks like I won't be playing much, if at all, for the next 3 months. So now that open beta is on, I was wondering if anyone could tell me what the changes are. Are they still the same as Castle's initial announcement? I heard the 2% heal was increased to 3%. Were there any other additional changes? Did we get any more energy defense? Did they buff up the passives? One thing I was hoping for was some real attention to the energy theme. (Regardless of whether or not it actually makes the set more powerful, I was hoping it would feel like a toon that is really tough against energy and weak to negative energy. Rather than just yet another toon with a psi hole.)

So if anyone could let me know what the numbers are at this point I would appreciate it.

Also, has anyone taken an EA brute into a PvP zone yet?

Hey man, stay safe over there.

ED
- 3% heal per target
Energy Protection
- 9.375% toxic resists

And that's it.

No increased def debuff resistance
No end drain protection
No increased Energy def/res
No taunt in ED

No Taunt is good, /EA couldn't handle the extra aggro.

How were people planning on slotting ED? I was thinking some +Regen and +Recovery sets.

ea CAN handle the extra aggro with the heal, now. In fact, it's probably going to depend on it.

[ QUOTE ]
my testing has feedback opposite from yours, Frost. shocker, i know.

I found the heal making no little to no difference. Siphon Life and Midnight Grasp were used a lot more frequently and that was accounting for my increased survival due to damage. the heal in ED I felt was especially not effective when surrounded by large groups of foe. I'm sure its different in a team with buffs but then we're not talking about EA's mitigation anymore.

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I think we are having bad conceptual feedback here.

Soloing was never an issue to EA. It has more than enough defense and mitigation to deal with virtually any soloing situation it encountered, save a few AV's. The heal has very little effect on soloing, with the small numbers of foes engaged, but it wasn't required. Soloing is, in fact, barely an issue to any brute, save a few /FA and /INV brutes that have a ton of kryptonite at higher levels.

Where EA needed help, and I feel that it definitely received it, was in teaming. It's native mitigation without heavy pool and IO expenditures and without leaning heavily on it's tier 9 was not up to the task of taking the alpha regularly on a team against some opponents, and neither was it's aggro-holding ability (although it is arguable whether or not aggro-holding is an important function for brutes in the first place, but that is a subject for another thread) In a well-built team that could make up for it's lacks, the /ea user wound up feeling a bit superfluous due to how such a team could effect others as well.

This was the core of the EA issue. EA was a set built around providing 'enough' mitigation with some other utilities to make soloing, especially in the 1-49 game, a lot easier. What is obvious from this change is that it was discovered that against large groups of mobs, such as you would typically find in a heavy team environment, /EA's utilities did NOT provide 'enough' mitigation, and this was addressed by providing a scaling heal based on the number of mobs you are fighting.

I didn't expect the solo experience to change at all, and in fact it really did not... a fact for which I am glad... I LIKE the idea of /ea being a stealth-based brute, a mold-breaking brute secondary just like there is a mold-breaking secondary for every other AT. For completing mission chains solo (and incidentally, obtaining merits!) I expect /ea may soon outperform every other brute secondary save, perhaps, dark armor.

I actually really like this solution, It applied help where it was needed (the team) and didn't effect /ea where it didn't require help (soloing).


The only thing I think still 'needs' to be changed is to apply a taunt effect to ED. Of course, I do understand the concerns with that, since that will make slotting ED a bit more challenging (as if needing to shoehorn in endmod, end, rech, and heal are not enough... but then again, there are many examples of powers that are even tougher to shoehorn in... look at most of Dark melee)

anyway, just to show some perspective- basic healing requires 240 seconds to go from 0 to 100% health.
That means 'default regen' is .42%/sec

fully slotted(without IO bonuses), energy drain can give you .20%/sec per mob.

Fully saturated, Energy Drain gives you 2.00%hp/sec. fully slotted.

Fully saturated, rise to the challenge gives you 2.84%hp/sec, fully slotted.



You know, after figuring that out, This is looking better and better. I wonder why castle decided on 3% instead of the 2% originally suggested?

[ QUOTE ]
You know, after figuring that out, This is looking better and better. I wonder why castle decided on 3% instead of the 2% originally suggested?

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because ED isn't front loaded like RttC.

for simplicity's sake, slottting = doubling effect with this chart
numbers are %hp/sec

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>target ED Rttc
1 0.20 1.04
2 0.40 1.25
3 0.60 1.46
4 0.80 1.67
5 1.00 1.88
6 1.20 2.08
7 1.40 2.29
8 1.60 2.5
9 1.80 2.71
10 2.00 2.92
</pre><hr />

Essentially, it's much easier to leverage better Regen from RttC than to get more healing from ED.

Plus, there's also the fact that EA needs more defensive strength to even be competitive with the average defensive set and by bumping it up, Castle's trying to do that.

In the average situations, RttC is nearly twice as strong as ED will be.