ElA's Survivability

After the changes to Electric Armor and the fact that I think the armors look awesome (especially with the ability to change colors), I've decided to create a character using it. I was just wondering how survivable it is in a large group scenario. How does it fare against, say, +2/+4(or higher)? I'm going to be pairing it with Dual Blades, which has some solid mitigation available.

I appreciate any thoughts/comments/musings.

ElA is pretty weak mitigation for scrappers, given the scrapper base resistances and resistance caps. It's a lot like Fire Armor in that respect, but with more passive regeneration and less active healing. And also knockback protection, as long as you don't jump around a lot.

Furthermore, you have a damage aura that gradually drains endurance from nearby foes, and Power Sink, which is a big burst end drain. By using them together, you can reduce incoming damage, potentally by a lot if you can survive long enough to use Power Sink a second time. One application won't really stop foes from attacking; it'll just slow down their use of heavy hitters. The second will basically stop all incoming damage, until the mobs wise up and run out of your Lightning Field. And they will. Overall, mitigation via sapping is a dodgy thing to rely on. It won't help you at all against alpha strikes and only somewhat against sustained "beta" damage. But after a while, anything left standing isn't going to attack you effectively at all unless it runs away and then comes back.

Like FA, ElA can be built for a good amount of S/L/Melee defense, at which point it becomes a very good set, since it already has resists, a self-heal, and the endurance attrition mitigation I just mentioned. This is how I built my Spines/ElA, and it works quite well for me. Of course, killing quickly with Spines is contributing a lot to that efficacy.

I had turned up to +0x6 by level 22, and at 50 I'm running at +2x8 against mostly everything but Nemesis. Nemesis I just avoid. As a spiney, it's hard to avoid killing the lieuts too early. My build hasn't been tested against Cimerorans, but I can already tell you it won't fare well. ElA offers zero DDR, which is a recipe for disaster for a meleer in Cimerora.

tl;dr: Overall in terms of pure survivability from the set ElA is closest to FA, and a very far cry from the strongest scrapper sets. I chose it for the cool FX, for concept, for the damage aura, and for the endurance management tools.

Choose it for those reasons and it won't disappoint. Choose it for its tank, which is relatively weak and easily broken, and it will let you down.

I see ELA mitigation as blasterish : kill them before they kill you. You get a nice package of extra damage tools to help you do just that, a damage aura, a recharge passive, and last but not least endless endurance.

It's also possibly one of the best sets to stack inspirations with, because lucks (+def) are far more efficient than any other kind of insps and you've got resistance and healing covered. Converting all your insps to purple will make you very sturdy, and as you kill fast you're going to get lots of insps.

I've played a DB/ELA to 50 and found the combination enjoyable all the way through. Between the Dual Blades combos, giving you relatively great damage for a low amount of recharge, Blinding Feint raising your tohit and your damage (which affects the damage aura, of course), and all the ELA tools I mentioned above, leveling is smooth and fast. +2/x4 is definitely possible with frankenslotting, and of course you can push it above that on an IOed out build (although lot of it will depend on the faction you're facing, lacking DDR and any base defense makes ELA extremely vulnerable to defense debuffs... and to any strong debuffs, really).

Thanks for the tips. I was just concerned that I couldn't wade into a large group of enemies to make use of DB's aoe's and come out the other side smiling.

On a related note. How good is energized?

I've got a Spine/Elec Scrapper that just hit 48 last night. I just finished slotting up Tough, so now I have 59% Res to S/L and capped NRG. My defence is currently like 6% (combat jumping and a steadfast) soon to be 12%ish once i get weave and slot it up. and i have some decent regen. (Numina/hurminized progs and 2 50 IO heals.) And of course the heal now.

All in all, it's passable. Not an AV soloer without alot, and i mean, ALOT of IO'ing out. But enough defence to keep you alive under normal circuomstances.