I had heard EA was broken..sooo

Base level shields, SR, Elec, stone and even FA, you mean.

I've played them all. Stone's a little better thanks to rooted's regen, but the speed debuff kills it for me, as mentioned earlier.

In the end, I'm not seeing a case made here that warrants a further buff to EA.

You had ET and TF, you say? Hmmm, yet another case of EM making someone hate the secondary they paired it with. Just like me and FA. Interesting.

I don't know... SR lacks the minor heal and the major end, but gets more solid resistances, complete defence, more movement, and what can only be described as broken defence resistances. I'd still have to give SR that one, though my SRs have been DM.

I've taken Elec to 50 with the same sets that my EAs have had and I do think that, in general, EA is better post heal buff.

I've played FA with just about everything except SM and DB (oh and BA and WM, I always forget those). The survival is solid against plain vanilla damage, and the extra damage is worth a lot.

WP... Invul... both generally more solid than EA.

Don't get me wrong, in the end game, with IOs, I like EA a lot, in fact I think it probably moves up the rankings quite a bit.

I wouldn't consider /stone to be the same AT.

Now while I will agree that the damage taking ability does seem low by the standard of the avj brute/tank, I can work around that, not what I call a hole per say. What I call a hole is the lack of passive aoe auto taunt, in fact they have one that does the exact opposite. While soloing that helps make up for the lack of damage taking ability it does nothing for being the group 'tank' (by tank i mean the job on the team, not the class, MeatShield if you will). There are pool powers that make up for lack of dmg resistance but there isn't one to make up for that, closest there is would be the taunting pool, but that isn't really the same thing.

While energy aura is a fun set, and lends itself really well to a stalker or even a scrapper, but I don't consider it appropriate for a brute or a tank the way it sits now. If you want to play your brute stalker style or scrapper style it's awesome, but to play like a brute it is detrimental to your party members.

As for every toon needing XX pool power, if every one needs it then it is irrelevant to the debate, because they all have it. While I agree that almost every toon need fitness (few exceptions) I have yet to take fighting on a brute/tank (tho i did take it on a regen scrap i had) and I do quite well over all.

and for comparing to WP, I know logic has little to no place in a game, but Energy Aura (as well as most of the rest) is someone with a super power and willpower (in theory) is not. we all know in game that is just not the case, WP has hard core regen if nothing else. but if we were using logic inv would be the #1 and stone #2, seriously, who really thinks the Thing could take the Hulk or Superman in straight up damage resistance? just not happening.

Spiritchaser, I did have that gorram PvP flag on. The numbers I posted earlier are all frelled up on the first build.

Here's the corrected numbers:

Defense:
S/L: 41.5
F/C: 44.5
E: 46.2
N: 36.1
P: 19.6

DamRes:
S/L: 29.2
F/C: 1.6
E: 11.8
N: 9.5
T: 14.9
P: 2.5

HP 1741
Regen 25 hp/sec

/grumble... gonna purge that setting from Mids one of these days

This might have been mentioned already, but EA peaks really early because the smashing/lethal defense power is so versatile, providing a full plate of defense against groups like Mooks, Goldbrickers, low-level Council, etc.. Survivability is really out of the box with that set. Ice armor can say the same thing, but with SR you really need to wait a long time to fill out AoE defense before the survivability really kicks in.

Also, I love energy drain. I think of it as a free small green or large blue depending on what I need at the moment. I would love more powers to be as versatile.

That isn't to say the set doesn't need any work. Mostly, I would like to see it get some additionally debuff protections (slow, end drain, etc.). Also, I have been experiencing it on a Stalker and I am concerned that Repulse adds little more than novelty to the set (though I can imagine situations in which it would be useful).