Welcome back to the game.
Energize is definitely a reasonable addition to ELA, and it does help it perform better.
Before the change to Conserve Power, ELA's perks weren't proportional to its survivability. It was just too squishy, and a resistance set with no form of +hp/regeneration is fundamentally a bad design.
ELA is still at the back of the pack for raw survivability in any situation devoid of energy damage, but its other perks-- endrance protection, global endurance reduction, +endurance, psi resistance, +recharge, slow resistance-- are no longer granted at such a steep cost. The heal and regeneration are absolutely crucial to this set.
I have no idea how I played ELA before. Oh yeah... I specifically rolled a DM/ELA for Siphon Life.
Yea, I can definitely tell the difference on my SS/Elec with Energize. I was quite pleased to see the change.
Don't I know you???
Well, its been a while since i've been on the forums, or CoX at all really. I haven't played in a few months, and decided to reactivate my account tonight. I read about energize, and wasn't really all that impressed with the description. Aftering doing some color swapping, which is very sweet, I bumped my setting up to 6 man groups, got me a council newspaper mission, and decided to see how good I am now. I was very impressed. The power seems to fit /ela perfectly. If anyone remembers my name at all, I was one of the biggest whiners about getting /ela fixed. I definitely dont think /ela is THE top secondary for brutes, but with the insane endurance, and now some "decent' survivability (excellent when combined with my IO bonuses) I think ela is a respectable choice for brutes.