How does elec rank now?

Or how do each or the armors rank for that matter?

• Top Tier: Invulnerability, Shield Defense, Stone Armor, Super Reflexes, Willpower
• Middle Tier: Dark Armor, Electric Armor, Fiery Aura
• Bottom Tier: Energy Aura

Rank in terms of what??? The sets that aren't as good defensively make up for it with added offense or end tools. It all depends on what you want out of a set.

I might bump Invuln down to the top of Tier 2, and Dark Armor down with EA on the bottom. But yeah, that's pretty much the jist of it. lol

Granted, I have yet to see how Elec performs with perma Energize. Has anyone been able to pull that off yet?

I don't have Energize perma but having it at 35s works well for me so far.

SR is top tier? Is that general farming or against AVs too? The only time I teamed with a 50 SR was at the LRSF and she sucked horribly, but the player was pretty stupid too. She refused my advice to use more oranges and spammed purples while buffed by vengeance.

SR gets very silly with IOs. Once soft-capped and backed by tough which stacks on the S/L portion of the passive scaling dam-res and juiced up with HP and Regen, yea, it ranks high.

But it takes a lot of "work" to get there. Add in Aid Self and you become functionally immortal.

I think it might be worth making a distinction between 'big IO builds' and 'SO/generic IO/frankenslotting builds' in this case. I have a feeling that the 'top tier, middle tier, bottom tier' ranking of the various armorsets might be considerably different between the two types - for example, it could be argued that SR is only middle tier without IOs.

I find the whole notion of tiers laughable.

Nope.

I would say that ELA is still one of the squishiest sets, certainly bottom of the pack for mitigation. However, it's survivability is now commensurate with its perks. Before changing Conserve Power to Energize, it was far too squishy. And while it's still quite squishy, the set can better take an alpha and survive long enough for endurance modification to lower incoming damage.

The set now does well what it was designed to do-- drain enemies of endurance and provide unlimited endurance in return. Before, it had issues with lasting long enough for Power Sink and Lightning Field to have an impact on overall survivability in too many situations. Energize was a great addition.

Yet neither of you used smiley faces to suggest that you actually are laughing. hmm

That depends on your meaning of squishy. Any secondary that can withstand a number of hits does not belong in that category. The only thing ELA was missing was a decent means of healing. With Energize, one doesn't have to make a choice between the Fighting and Medicine pool.

Electric is still a bit squishy, but it's an OK set now. It's about where Fire Aura is. Fire has a bit less protection and lesser endurance tools, but a much better heal.

Now that you can actually repair yourself, having actual resistance (instead of huge chunks of +HP) is great because it affects your health bar more.

Also, the +regen aspect is more useful when you have some means to stop or halt their attacks a bit with enddrain (works best against 0-+2 mobs, slightly less useful against +3s and meh against +4s, IME)

I'm actually a bit curious about the relative power of the secondaries (tiers if you prefer).

When would you say the "top tier" sets manage to fully mature? I can see Willpower being pretty strong even with SOs. It seems like SD and SR have a much bigger hurdle in terms of IOs to reach "top tier" status.

How would you guys rate the secondaries if you were, say, looking at a character in the 30s with SOs, as opposed to a level 50 character with IOs?

I think the ranking depends on the mobs. For example, putting a scrapper in front of Rularuu eyeballs will make super reflex drops to the bottom tier (there are not much Rularuu on the villain side, but it illustrates how easy it is to nail a power set). To rate a power set, it is a bit misleading just to give a number. While it means something, there are a lot more that goes into that number or ranking.

Elec is sparklier than WP or SR, but not as sparkly as Inv or Stone.

Of course, EA is still prettiest.

Personally, I discount Shields as a top tier set since I don't feel like spending more on a Shields Brute than on all of my other characters combined in order to get it from what I consider "worst survivability evar" to near best. Sure, if you spend enough inf to provide +25% defense to all 3 positions and perma-Hasten-level recharge so you have enough defense debuff resistance to hold onto that softcap you'll do okay, but when a Willpower with Tough and Weave, using 4 Reactive Armors in the resistance toggles and ED-limited defense slotting in the defense toggles can get the same or better survivability it seems a complete and total waste of inf.

With SOs only - and only including the sets I've played to at least level 40, since it wouldn't really be fair to rank them without having played them to the point where you have the whole powerset and a chance to fully slot it - I'd rank them more along these lines:

1. Stone Armor (which really doesn't get decent until this point)
2. Willpower (dropped below Stone because of the number of powers needed)
3. Electric Armor
4. Fiery Aura
5. Energy Aura
6. Shields

The sets that were not included due to not having one high enough: Invulnerability (she's 32), Dark (I've never liked the look enough to get one past level 9), and Super Reflexes (she's 29). Were I ranking them based on their appearance thus far, I'd put SR just below Willpower, then Electric, with Invulnerability very close behind. Pre-Energize I would've reversed Electric and Invulnerability - but having a nearly-constant endurance discount means that I can use Power Sink offensively without ever worrying about my endurance bar, which means mobs often don't get to attack more than once or twice. Edit: The Random Number Generator hates me today, and I was nearly constantly hit with my just-SOs DM/SR. Shuffling things around a bit to put it below Invulnerability with just SOs.

And no, I don't have some spreadsheet or metric - that list is purely subjective. Shields is dead last because in my playstyle, I die the most often on my level 43 SS/SD (who has no IOs) than any other Brute, including the Elec/Elec and EM/Elec that I levelled to 50 prior to IOs - the Elec/Elec didn't have Tough or Aid Self, either.

Now, counting IOs I'd have to rank them in terms of expense to build to get something capable of doing +3/x8 - once again putting Stone and Willpower at the top, followed by SR (cheaper to cap than Shields by a lot), Shields, Invulnerability (for scaling), Energy Aura (because soft cap defense > not soft capped and resistance), with Dark (AoE mez toggles + 0->full heal every 10 seconds), Electric (better resistance than Fiery so able to withstand more initial punishment) and Fiery Aura (uh... it has Burn!) bringing up the rear.

Quote:

Originally Posted by PleaseRecycle it has gone from unconscionable to downright appalling that we have no way of measuring our characters' wetness.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Brillig It's hard to beat the entertainment value of Whackjob Wednesdays.

When brutes get a ppp with fire attacks I'll like /fa a lot more what with its delicious 30 second duration FE!

I don't know much about elec armor other than that it seems robust enough to get you to where you need to be and offers a ton of extras like unlimited endurance, immunity to end drain, slow resistance, and even +rech.

It's too bad brutes have to wait until 28 to get energize though.

how does it rank doing what?
all the sets can be strong , but what are you asking ? vs AVs? Soloing +4 +8s? soloing +2 +8s? farming? Strike force play? becasue id say each of the things i just listed have a different number 1

Obviously EA is gonna rank higher than what some of you are placing it at