As a soloer, you will absolutely despise Stone Armor, since the major reason to even go that route is to pick up Granite Armor, get a Kinetic dude in your team, and run around being invincible. Without Granite, it's an utterly mediocre set.
Energy Aura is a bit of a black sheep: doable, but not really that great. The major issue is the fact that its defenses are spread out over typed defense, rather than positional, which means that it's nearly impossible to get soft-capped in all of the varying defense types EA specializes in. You end up having a lot of survivability holes that are difficult to patch up.
I'd personally recommend trying out Super Reflexes if you're a big soloist. DM meshes very well with any Defense-based set, and SR is one of the best. You barely need any IOs in order to hit the soft cap if you pick up Weave, and you get Quickness on top of all of that, which helps out immensely with Soul Drain and Dark Consumption. It starts off a bit slow when Drain Life is still a bit of an endurance-chugging machine but picks up greatly in power once you get over the initial hurdle. The click mez defense really isn't anything to worry about, as two recharge IOs are more than enough to make the cooldown much, much shorter than the duration. Put it on autofire and Forget About It.
As far as soloing, EA is probably the better route. It is a wonderful set when solo and still a pretty good one teamed, but SA can be a challenge to solo at high levels due to all the penalties from Granite. Lets face it, the only reason to take SA is for Granite and the uber survivability. Without it SA is pretty mediocre.
I have played both to 50 and really enjoy both sets. Luckily my first brute was stone or I don't know if I could gotten through it. I do solo with my SA brute and he does pretty well, but my EA is much much faster and solo just as survivable.
Good day all,
I wanted to get some input on a couple sets - namely EA & SA. I enjoy the versatility of DM right now so that is the primary I am thinking about.
My question is - what would work best Energy or Stone Armor? To give an idea of my play - I mostly solo. Very rarely do I have the opportunity or play time to devote to be a contributing member of a team. So I will end up running through most missions alone with SF's and other team events not really possible (unfortunately). I like the survivabilty of defense sets but I do not prefer the click mezz protection in SR & SD (although they are excellent sets). I also suffer from alt-itis and I really need a set to get me through the earlier levels. Having S/L defenses seems to help with that.
I like EA for the good all-around defense (except psi & neg). I like Energy Drain. I would probably have to find a way to shore up the weeknesses by cobbling together enough inf for sets. I like SA and had it on a tank I got to 39. I like the heal/+HP and Defenses - hate the fact that there is no defense to fire and cold outside of granite. I like mud pots and rooted despite the movement penalty (I'll probably get swift to help offset some of that). I would probably focus on overcoming granite's recharge later (if I make it that long) and can live with the -30% damage with fury and soul drain. In both cases, I would push for capped S/L plus whatever else I can get.
I would ask for some advice here and any experiences that you all have.
Thanks.