Is Grounded skippable?

OK, I have made an electric armor brute but never got out of the teens with it. So, is Grounded skippable? I'm thinking mainly of tanks. Tanks have higher resist starting points than scrappers and brutes and I was thinking tanks would still be capped to Energy even without Grounded. I'm willing to deal with potential KB and Immob and most likely take CJ to remedy this.

Basically, as a tank, take Grounded or go with CJ?

I've got Grounded on my Brute and it doesn't have any Enhancements slotted into it. I use it exclusively for knockback and immobilize protection, which you can easily get by taking Combat Jumping and Acrobatics if you have power choices to spare.

Do keep in mind that Combat Jumping does not protect you from knockback. It's more worth it from a power-budget perspective to get Grounded, as that's one power, instead of Combat Jumping and Acrobatics to do the same thing.

With just Charged Armor and Conductive Shield on a Tanker, you'll be at 70% resistance to Energy. You'll hit the Tanker cap of 90% with just one Resist SO in both of those.

You're right about CJ but I was thinking of the Karma KB IO for its first slot.

Unless you're thinking of taking Super Jump as your travel power, I see no advantage to using Combat Jumping in place of Grounded.

Don't skip Grounded. You need every bit of Negative resistance you can get.

Grouded protects from End drain too.

It should also be noted that if you are leaping, flying through the air and get hit by a knockback/knockdown attack, Grounded will not help prevent it. As the name of the power implies, you need to be close/on the ground in order to resist that particular affect.

If that annoys you, using a knockback resist IO in your build will cover you for the most part unless you get stacked knockbacks on you. And if this annoys, then you should think about getting Acrobatics.

Is Grounded skippable? Well, it depends on what you can live with. If you are getting into the Leaping pool for travel power (SJ) and a little more defense and aerial maneuverability (CJ) maybe you can work in Acrobatics as well.

For me, I couldn't stand it so worked in Acrobatics because part of my playstyle involves jumping around for taunting and positioning.

And as the others have mentioned, Grounded also provides other functionality that make it worthwhile to pick up.

Of particular note is if you pair electric armor with electric melee. Grounded will not protect from knockback for a split second while teleporting in Lightning Rod. Visually, this looks like you teleport in upside down and land on your head; It's rather amusing when it happens. Since everything else gets knocked down by the power, I'm not really that vulnerable when it happens, so I don't mind it.

Static Shield is more than enough enddrain and endurance protection for Tankers, capping both(95%) at level 27.

For Tankers Grounded is basically just for negative energy res and partial KB protection.

Either go Grounded, CJ/SJ/Acro, or CJ+KB IO

That's all there is to it.