I recently levelled a Fire/Energy brute - I was looking for something different and had only ever seen one other EA brute so figured it would at least be unusual. I wasn't expecting much, given the general negativity about EA, but I have to say I really liked the set and found it to be a really enjoyable journey to 50 although I struggled a bit until SO levels, at which point I began to put sets in, and that really helped me.
I grew to really like the stealth (wasn't sure about it at first) which I found to be a real benefit when soloing with the difficulty slider turned up. Having a way to recover endurance and health was also really nice, and kept me rolling along at max speed pretty much constantly.
I skipped the passive energy resistance, but the S/L res seemed to work pretty well with tough in keeping me alive so that the small heal was enough to keep my green bar topped up most of the time. In general though I felt I had to do more to survive than I did with Super Reflexes, but I like that I had to be more pro-active than with an SR brute.
The biggest problem with the set for me was the glaring lack of psi defence which became more noticeable as I got higher in level. I did the RWZ arcs solo which got me through most of the 40s and the psi hole was a real problem sometimes. Getting some decent ranged defence helped, but this was definitely an area where SR was much stronger. I had a huge problem with Vanguard as well, as the bosses just seemed to bypass my defences easily.
The other big issue for me was the defence debuff resistance which is just not high enough in my opinion. Keeping a luck insp or two in reserve to prevent being debuffed too far was essential until pretty late on, when I could get enough of a buffer to survive (I think I ended up with about 55% smash/lethal def, enough to take a few hits from Cimerorans without worrying). I took Overload at either 47 or 49, and with hindsight maybe should have grabbed it earlier to compensate for the lack of debuff res, but I was already over the S/L and energy cap by level 38 so felt I could live without it (I don't like Tier 9s with a crash in general).
On the whole I was pleasantly surprised and impressed by energy aura - it had its good points and bad points but was nowhere near as bad as its forum rep suggested. I have to stress that I was using sets way earlier than I normally would though, so I have no idea how it would fare with just SOs.
I played it to the low 30s and found it okay - In the end I deleted the toon because I could not stand the looping sound effects anymore.
I have a level 50 Stone/Nrg Brute that I enjoy playing a lot. I run speed LGTFs and ITFs w/ no heavy problems. I was able to softcap everything but psi, the AoE stun is a godsend and I believe is what really keeps the toon alive. Nrg is great because of energy drain and conserve which makes running stone melee crazy smooth. I even tossed a +rech proc into fissure and tremor which helps energy drain recharge quickly.
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Turning off the sound was out of the question?
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Originally Posted by Star_Seer
I played it to the low 30s and found it okay - In the end I deleted the toon because I could not stand the looping sound effects anymore.
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My EA brute is only level 28 but I do have level 50 SR and SD brutes (fully equiped with IO sets of course) as well as some other non-brute AT characters with various degrees of focus in defense. Here is my observation.
With SR, it is quite easy to reach well above the 45% defense cap (mine sits around 50-52%) if you take the fighting pool and use IO sets. From playing around in Mids, I couldn't figure out a way to get my EA brute to similar numbers (50%-ish) without some sacrifice in other areas. You might say that "oh, anything above 45% defense is gravy and not really necessary". Well, that is true unless you get debuffed (a concern for EA due to its middle of the road def debuff resistance) or if you're fighting enemies with +to hit bonuses (not exactly a rarity either). Also, I just find it simply easier to focus on 3 positional defenses to get them comfortably above the cap as opposed to trying to do the same for the 8 typed defenses. This holds true not just for defense based brutes but any AT you wish to get some defense for. Now I'm not saying that typed defense is not worthwhile. I'm just saying that it just takes more work (and potentially more sacrifices/concessions) when it comes to slotting because you have to be more concerned with the IO set bonuses involved. Granted, if you're comfortable with sitting at about 45% defense then EA will do just fine. But for me, I like planning ahead for those contingency situations even if it's not an everyday occurance and 45% just don't cut it for me.
Also, in addition to my observations above I have an additional theory as to why a lot of people percieve EA as being inferior to other brute secondaries. In addition to their primary functions, each secondary generally have another area(s) where it is uniquely superior when compared to the others. For example WP has its high regen. DA has its crowd control, -tohit debuff, and the biggest self heal in the game. Fire has its burst damage boost and big heal. ELA has its unlimited end, -end debuff and recharge. Invul and Stone have their HP boost and high defense. SR has its scaling resists and recharge boost. SD has its massive AoE attack and persistant damage boost. EA on the other hand is like the jack of all trades defense based secondary as it doesn't really have an area where it actually outshine the others. As a result I could understand why some people would percieve EA as not bring particularly attractive. It performs well enough to be sure but the problem of being average or above average at everything is that you tend to get overlooked. EA isn't the only victim in this percieved discrimination either. In terms of resistance based secondaries, DA is often considered to be a jack of all trades set as well and suffers some perception issues due to it.
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For anyone that enjoys the vast majority of the sounds in game while they play, yes.|
Originally Posted by Vitality
Turning off the sound was out of the question?
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Luckily for us, there are ways to deal with annoying sound FX in game.
I've nuked energy melee's hum and the peacebringer whine completely by replacing the two sound files with dead silence.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=113746
There's the guide.
A few posts into it, someone posted a silence.ogg file for easy download instead of going through the hassle of making your own.
It's honestly very easy.
Create a couple new directories. Copy the silence.ogg file into the correct directory. Rename it to be the filename of the sound you're trying to silence. Done. If you search through the thread, you'll probably find the filename for the effect you wish to silence.
On topic, EA is weak until softcap and a pain to get there. While the heal added to ED helped some, I found it didn't help enough. I still haven't deleted my 32ish claws/ea brute, but that's only because I haven't come up with anything else that fits the name Singularity's Edge.
Be well, people of CoH.
I like my Claws/EA brute, but i know that my Claws/SR scrapper is vastly more survivable at level 50. The SR takes 3 toggles and 3 passives to get to about 30% defense, where EA takes 3 toggles to get between 22.5%-32.5% defense not including Psi.
The EA is really using less end for a lower average amount of defense and less DDR but gets basically unlimited endurance with energy drain. When I got to 28 I found the EA to be more enjoyable through the middle levels while waiting for IO sets and bonuses. Straight up SO builds would probably be closer in survivability than IO builds will be with the heal in EA helping out. The most depressing matter for me is, with an IO build that caps everything but Psi and with ~30% ranged def, any time I need the heal in EA, I'll need it again before it recharges.
I do like the stealth in the power set, it may not be the greatest for grabbing and holding agro for Brutes that are tanking, but I think it would be a very interesting scrapper secondary. Solo it does limit grabbing extra agro in some situations.
EA also has a nice plus HP component to the tier 9.
Another thing to consider is that many forum posters are looking towards top end builds not middle of the road ones. While SR will always be easier to softcap and make into a monster, EA isn't as horrible as it is perceived to be.
Poisonous Ice 50 Ice/Rad
Icy Jax 50 Ice/SS
Jaxon Penn 50 Shield/Mace
Cpt Clax 50 Thugs/Dark
Lady BlackIce 50 Dark/Cold
Lady Black Ice 50 Dark/Ice
Bella Jax 50 Storm/Sonic
Operative Jax 50 SoA
Level 50 Trick Arrow Alts
TA/A-Plant/TA-Bots/TA
Level 50 Claws Scrappers
SR-Regen-DA-Invul-WP-FA
so ive read this and found it quite intersting but i was wondering what softcap is yeah ima noob but just trying to understand what i read thanks
"Softcap" is a term which applies to the amount of defense you need to cause an enemy to have their minimum chance of hitting you. An even-con minion has a 50% chance to hit you, and the minimum hit chance of any (non-autohit) power is 5%, so the "softcap" in that case would be 45% (50 - 45 = 5). Enemies of higher levels or ranks get accuracy bonuses (as opposed to tohit bonuses, which are more powerful) and so they will have slightly higher chances of hitting you at that 45% softcap, but adding more defense past that 45% is a waste unless you are fighting enemies that:
* Have tohit buffs
* Have defense debuffs (not so much a worry for SR, but somewhat of a concern for Ice, Shield, and EA characters or non-defense-based builds with +def from IO bonsues)
* Are more than 7 levels above you (very rare occurrence especially with the new SK system)
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"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
thank you
Sure you could play with the sound switched off (I happen to like most sounds in the game), or you could do some shiannigans with sound files.
I prefered to pick another secondary that didn't make annoying sounds 
It's been a little while since I've been playing my EAs (been banging my head against ICC in another MMO, one with orcs...) but the one thing I've found that they do better, and I mean far better, than anything else, is work with builds that consume truly absurd quantities of endurance.
With IOs and accolades, a bunch of secondaries can be considered non-stop for single target work, maybe even all of them... But for AoE chaining with myriad toggles up, Patron blasts etc... EA can keep it all going.
Even IO'd WP isn't good enough for rage + hasten + high recharge constant Mako cones + Stomp without SB, but EA can get you there.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
My SS/WP Brute has no End problems with Hasten, Double Rage, Foot Stomp, and SMASH!!. Maybe it's because of Quick Recovery + Stamina, both 3 slotted with L50 Common End Mod IOs?
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Biggest Troll on the forums? I'll give you a hint:
For most attack chains you won't have issues.
Take a look at the end cost of the Mako patron AoEs and imagine a nearly continuous chain thereof, with stomp in there for good measure.
That WILL cause WP issues unless you have an external end recovery buff
I submit that for a blast brute, EA is one of the best choices out there.
The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
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Not going to read the other posts but here are my observations, leveling an EM/EA at the outset of CoV up to 40, then why it took until Issue...12 or so to get to 50:|
Originally Posted by Motley_Cruel
So why do people think EA sucks?
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1) CoV's favorite mob: Arachnos. They are a constant theme throughout the game and as you level up, they get worse and worse to deal with, eventually culminating in pure Psychic -DEF nukes. If the mob gets past EA's pittance of Psionic defense that Energy Cloak (another matter I'll get to later) provides, you have no passive protection from them. Literally, you have nothing you can do and these are probably the most prevalent enemies in the entirety of CoV. Sure, you can "heal" yourself (something else I'll get to) or drain their endurance (which has mechanical issues unspecific to EA), but these are reactive measures and are not one-offs for reliability. I'd elaborate more but yeah...it's not that I'm expecting immunity but with the sum total of the set's protections, I'd at least like a cushion of some kind at the least.
2) Energy Cloak. I rolled a Brute. Why am I playing a Stalker/Scrapper with Fury because I happened to make the mistake of choosing the thematic Energy Melee pairing at release? It's this one power alone that makes it painfully obvious that this was a rushed port from Stalkers when Fury was still wonky and made Ice Armor unplayable. I've given better treatises [read: walls of text] in the past about my issues with this power and what I'd like in a replacement true aggro aura (I still like the combination -DMG&+Resist&-SPD [no -Rech] Invincibility/CE mix but alas...), so I'm not going to go into it here. The real kicker is that the power itself is such a (relatively) large amount of defense, to everything no less, that it's detrimental to not take and use it.
3) Conserve Power. God I hate this power. I have Energy Drain. It fulfills that function PERFECTLY on its own. I can understand using it or wanting it, but I don't care. It has no purpose. Even when I wasn't so picky on functionality I thought this was the dumbest power to include in the set.
4) The passives. Give them a secondary function like Invuln's and I'll let these slide. Right now though, they take up too much space for too little return as little more than set bonus mules (which, amusingly enough, had been my opinion of the passives for Invuln on anything but a Tank before their relatively recent upgrades--they're still set bonus mules but they actually have a valid primary value to their inclusion).
5) Overload. It's not so much an issue with the power but the fact that because it's probably in the top two for best uberShield™ powers (or simply the best to some but I prefer the current MoG to it), people seem to use it as some sort of justification for the rest of the set having sub-average performance. It's a great power but I really dislike it being used as some sort of goofy leverage against the set's baseline performance (yes, I know this sort of opposes my relevant stance regarding Stone Armor but then, I never thought its early powers were weak, anyway...).
6) Energy Drain's changes. They're a nice try but it doesn't solve the survivability issues acceptably (way too little to save you against a single target--if the heal is large enough to keep you from dying at that moment, you're still going to die while it's recharging because you're likely in the middle of a cascading defense failure when dying in a large group or fighting an AV who will proceed to laugh at the extra 90 hp you gave yourself, plus the 2 or so seconds of animation-stalled regen) and the new taunt component runs completely counter to the people that actually want the stealth that Energy Cloak provides. Additionally, making me open combat with a power like that so that non-stealthed squishies don't eat half of the alpha when they approach completely misses the point of having a heal and endurance recovery attached to it...
I know the set can, and does, do acceptably when paired with a set that is, well, better than EM but it really shouldn't force someone to make that choice when say, they're like me way-back-when, not knowing any better at the time and thinking "Hey, let's do both the sets with 'energy' in their names!"
</wandering rant>
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
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From the design of energy cloak, I think it is a stealth for combat, as there are no movement, stealth nor defense suppression. Conceptually, energy cloak should allow a stealth attack like that of stalkers. But brutes don't have assassin strike, so the combat stealth serves no real purpose except to shed aggro, which actually works against fury. Energy cloak can be used as an out-of-combat stealth, but such function can be easily replaced by IO or power pool.|
Originally Posted by LostHalo
2) Energy Cloak. I rolled a Brute. Why am I playing a Stalker/Scrapper with Fury because I happened to make the mistake of choosing the thematic Energy Melee pairing at release? It's this one power alone that makes it painfully obvious that this was a rushed port from Stalkers when Fury was still wonky and made Ice Armor unplayable. I've given better treatises [read: walls of text] in the past about my issues with this power and what I'd like in a replacement true aggro aura (I still like the combination -DMG&+Resist&-SPD [no -Rech] Invincibility/CE mix but alas...), so I'm not going to go into it here. The real kicker is that the power itself is such a (relatively) large amount of defense, to everything no less, that it's detrimental to not take and use it.
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I don't think it's likely to be replaced by a true aggro aura. If you look at the energy aura changes a couple issues ago, we're given an aggro clickie. I think the only suggestion that can keep the theme of energy cloak is to add some kind of damage bonus while the cloak is on.
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Or just stop, or slow fury decay
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Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
think the only suggestion that can keep the theme of energy cloak is to add some kind of damage bonus while the cloak is on.
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The cake is a lie! The cake is a lie!
You folks are missing the best reason to take EA, its one half of the strong and pretty combination!!!!
SR is easier to soft cap and slot for many more IO bonuses besides focusing on def.
SR is also kind of the toggle and forget secondary.
You toggle your stuff on, put PB on auto, then run in to beat stuff up. If you die, it was because the mobs had either very high ToHit buffs or there were mobs with non-positional attacks, a lot of em.
In EA, the dedication to softcapping is higher. Meaning you might have to forgo some of the nice bonuses wyou were reaching with SR in order to slot for typed defense (recharge comes to mind).
Also in EA, you have to mind -def pure psionics. These are a lot more common than than SR's non-positional kryptonite, and deadlier. Since EA has very low Def Debuff Res, a few mobs slamming you with -def psi attacks means you are pretty much dead meat.
You fo have a heal there to help out with these situations, however, in my experience, once you hit many strong -def psi opponents, no realistic amount of self healing can save you from faceplanting.
So in essecne SR is vulnerable to:
Enemies with To Hit Buffs + Non-positinally flagged attacks.
EA is vulnerable to:
Enemies with To Hit Buffs + -def psi attacks +-def debuff to some extent
IMPORTANT NOTICE: I've played SR many times and love it, and I've never played EA, so I'm not an EA fan trying to troll or start a fight. This is an honest question
I know Energy has a rep as "teh gimp" and is often viewed as a joke in comparison to other brute secondaries, but I'm not clear on why. I don't want to compare with shields, because shields is just ridiculously awesome once you softcap, but my real question is, "why is EA worse than SR?" *once you attain the softcap
Frankly, softcapping SR and EA are both ridiculously cheap and easy, even though EA is typed instead of positional. They're both cheap as heck, so that isn't an issue. (But EA has a small hole to negative, which isn't a real issue with softcap S/L)
EA costs more end, but has FAR better end management (equivalent to the old ELA) and has a minor heal, and has more resists but inferior Defense Debuff Resistance (and no scaling resists). However, EA has overload, which is WAY better than Elude, softcap or not. EA lacks a taunt aura, and has stealth, but grabbing aggro with a brute has never been tough, and you could even take taunt (it makes a great set ***** for S/L defense bonuses (especially perfect zinger))
So why do people think EA sucks?