Maximal survival guide for fiery melee/energy aura brutes
By
Calvin-,
Posted on: 2010-04-06 23:02 in Player Guides
Decent guide. Glad to see there is another 50'd Fire/EA Brute. =)
G. Should you try out energy aura?
I think the key to the question is whether you will enjoy playing energy aura or not. Very often, it is related to whether you can find something special or spectacular about the power set that you cannot find in other places. Here are a few perspectives that can help you decide.
- Stealth
You should pick energy aura if you want to play a stalker but with higher hit points, or if you want to make an invisible character. Since the stealth from energy cloak is not suppressed during combat, you can accomplish such concept with energy aura, which is otherwise impossible with power pools or IOs.
- Endurance management
Energy drain allows you to make a "toggle monster." Imagine a character running tough, weave, maneuvers, assault, tactics, and darkest night. Maybe energy aura is weak by itself, but it allows you to use many power pool toggles to augment yourself. I hope the guide above has already conveyed the idea that the ability to maintain such power pools makes energy aura stronger than it should be.
Energy drain also makes the endurance usage of certain primary power sets more manageable, for example the rage and hasten crash plus foot stomp combo of super strength. From single-target attack chains, the endurance usage of battle axe, stone melee, and war mace are on the high-end. Instead of figuring out how to solve the endurance issue through recovery bonuses and cardiac alpha boost, energy drain is much more convenient, and allows your build to focus on other areas.
- Is energy aura the worst?
I believe some people have fun making the worst power set combo decent. While there are people who have a busy real life, and they can only afford to play one character. They want the character to be worth playing, and not something at the bottom. Hence, the performance of energy aura is relevant in determining which power set to play. It is confusing to obtain an answer from the forum because there are great variety of opinions regarding energy aura. Most opinions that I read in the forum have a point. The opinions depend a lot on the build setup, the amount of investment, and the perspective that the person is taking.
- Out of the box
Out of the box, i.e. a plain SO slotting without taking power pools into account, energy aura is probably among the bottom. This is related to how players analyze power sets. Typically, we measure how well a power set performs by putting a character under certain environment with an incoming stream of damage (can be either realistic or fictitious), and see how long the character can last or whether it will be defeated. There are variations to the measure, but the basic idea remains the same. See, for example, immortality line. The relevant attributes under such measure are defense, resistance, hit points, regeneration, and healing.
Immediately, we can see why energy aura is a bad performer by simply looking at the power line-up without any quantitative analysis. Energy aura consists of standard toggles and passives of defense and resistance, and two characteristic features (stealth and endurance management). By standard toggles and passives, I am referring to the fact that all secondary power sets have toggles or passives of comparable strength. Basically, what differentiates the performance between power sets are the characteristic features. If a power set has its set-defining powers that have nothing to do with defense, resistance, hit points, regeneration, nor healing, then it will be at the bottom. Obviously, stealth and endurance management are not within the scope of typical measures, resulting in energy aura ranked pretty low by default. Recently, energy drain is given a healing component. However, it is still too small to be relevant against small number of mobs.
Energy aura is capable of running many toggles to augment its powers. Unfortunately, typical measures do not consider the endurance usage. For example, if darkest night is taken into account for energy aura, then the toggle is also taken into account for all the other secondary power sets during comparison, regardless of whether it is practical to run such toggle or not. Perhaps, one day, if we can come up with a well-rounded measure that can gauge the performance of a power set from various perspectives, then energy aura can be compared to other power sets on a more equal footing.
- Moderate IO investment with soft-capped defense
Beyond the out-of-the-box comparison, as a defensed-based secondary power set, it is quite easy to soft-cap defense with just a moderate investment in IO. The improvement in performance is huge, and players can start doing missions spawned for 8 people. Comparing secondary power sets at this level of IO investment, energy aura is in fact pretty good with the huge leap in performance. Together with the heal and endurance from energy drain, energy aura can solo large spawns with ease. In addition, for players who take darkest night, which can be considered "ghetto" damage resistance and to-hit debuff resistance, the performance of energy aura is kicked up another notch.
- Multi-billion IO investment
I think the issue of energy aura is that its performance is very close to its peak after soft-capping defense and taking darkest night. Beyond soft-capping defense, energy aura needs resistance and hit points against tough bosses and AVs. Unfortunately, IO bonus for resistance is scarce. Hit point bonuses are not really good enough if energy aura does not offer hit point buff itself. Hence, multi-billion investment on ultra-rare IOs does not improve energy aura as significantly as other secondary power sets that rely more heavily on recharge, hit points, and regeneration. At this level of IO investment, even resistance-based secondary power sets can bring their defense up to a respectable level. Add to the fact that defense buffs from teams are very common compared to resistance buffs, energy aura does not perform as great compared to other high-end builds practically in teams.
I think this summarizes the different points of view regarding energy aura, from the worst, so-so, to great. As you can see, the opinion depends quite a lot on the setup, investment, and the environment that energy aura is put in. Typically, such discussions end up in a lot of arguing, where people talk about their own points in their own context. - Out of the box
Hey Snow~
Great guide. I'm actually now very interested in running Fire/EA as my next toon. I tried it back in the day and like many was turned off by how squishy it was at the time.
I was wondering if you had any slotting recommendations for SOs and simple IOs though. I usually don't have a lot of money to start with and make builds with basic enhancements before delving into sets. Is EA an armor that works without set bonuses or should I start making money on another character to get ready for this one right away?
thanks again!
EA should work pretty well with just darkest night and SO. You can simply take the IO build in the first post, and slot it with SO. However, there are some differences between an optimal IO and a SO build.
For power choice, SO builds do not have global recharge bonus. You may want an extra attack (either scorch or slot up boxing) compared to an IO build in order to have a smooth attack chain. While soul tentacles is a good IO set mule, it can be replaced in a SO build. Since a SO build does not really have soft-capped defense, you may find overload helpful more often compared to an IO build.
There can be minor variations in slotting for a SO build. For attacks that do damage, they can be slotted with 3 damage and 1 accuracy. For the remaining 2 slots, you can consider another accuracy, an endurance reduction, or a recharge reduction SO. For energy drain, while IO sets allow us to slot heal, endurance modification, and recharge reduction fully, it is impossible using SO. Feel free to adjust their relative strength in the power.
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Fiery Melee
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Fire Sword -- Dmg(A), Dmg(5), Dmg(5), Acc(7), EndRdx(7), RechRdx(9)
Level 1: Kinetic Shield -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(19), DefBuff(21), EndRdx(21)
Level 2: Cremate -- Dmg(A), Dmg(9), Dmg(11), Acc(11), EndRdx(13), RechRdx(13)
Level 4: Power Shield -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(23), DefBuff(23), EndRdx(25)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff(A)
Level 8: Incinerate -- Dmg(A), Dmg(15), Dmg(15), Acc(17), EndRdx(17), RechRdx(19)
Level 10: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx(A)
Level 12: Build Up -- RechRdx(A)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump(A)
Level 16: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Tough -- ResDam(A), ResDam(25), ResDam(36), EndRdx(39), EndRdx(39)
Level 20: Energy Cloak -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(40), DefBuff(40), EndRdx(40)
Level 22: Weave -- DefBuff(A), DefBuff(43), DefBuff(46), EndRdx(48), EndRdx(48)
Level 24: Stimulant -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Fire Sword Circle -- Dmg(A), Dmg(27), Dmg(27), Acc(29), EndRdx(29), RechRdx(31)
Level 28: Energy Drain -- EndMod(A), EndMod(31), Heal(31), RechRdx(33), RechRdx(33), RechRdx(33)
Level 30: Aid Self -- IntRdx(A), Heal(34), Heal(34), Heal(34), RechRdx(36)
Level 32: Greater Fire Sword -- Dmg(A), Dmg(36), Dmg(37), Acc(37), EndRdx(37), RechRdx(39)
Level 35: Dampening Field -- ResDam(A), ResDam(50)
Level 38: Overload -- Heal(A), Heal(48), Heal(50)
Level 41: Gloom -- Dmg(A), Dmg(42), Dmg(42), Acc(42), EndRdx(43), RechRdx(43)
Level 44: Darkest Night -- ToHitDeb(A), ToHitDeb(45), ToHitDeb(45), EndRdx(45), EndRdx(46), EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Taunt -- Taunt(A)
Level 49: Energy Protection -- ResDam(A), ResDam(50)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- EndMod(A), EndMod(3), EndMod(3)
I also made an IO build for people with a small budget. The build avoids expensive IOs like kinetic combat, while keeping the important defense types soft-capped. There are still a few pieces of relatively expensive IOs. However, I believe the build below should be quite affordable. In fact, a power set with mainly defense benefits mostly from soft-capping defense. Energy aura does not rely on recharge, and it does not have extra hit points (outside of overload) and regeneration intrinsically. Hence, energy aura does not benefit a lot from expensive setups with rare and ultra-rare IOs compared to other secondary power sets.
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/
Click this DataLink to open the build!
Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Fiery Melee
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Fire Sword -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx(5), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(7), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(9)
Level 1: Kinetic Shield -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(9), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(11), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(11)
Level 2: Cremate -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx(13), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(13), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15)
Level 4: Power Shield -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(17), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(17), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(19)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- DefBuff-I(A)
Level 8: Incinerate -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx(19), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(21), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(21), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 10: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Build Up -- Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(A), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(23)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Jump-I(A)
Level 16: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam(25), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(25), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(27)
Level 20: Energy Cloak -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(27), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(29), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 22: Weave -- S'dpty-Def(A), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx(31), S'dpty-Def/Rchg(31), S'dpty-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 24: Stimulant -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Fire Sword Circle -- Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(33), C'ngBlow-Dmg/Rchg(33), C'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(34), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg(34)
Level 28: Energy Drain -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(34), Dct'dW-Heal(36), Efficacy-EndMod(36), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(36), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx(37)
Level 30: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(37), Dct'dW-Heal(39), Dct'dW-Rchg(39), IntRdx-I(39)
Level 32: Greater Fire Sword -- S'ngH'mkr-Acc/Dmg(A), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx(40), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/Rchg(40), S'ngH'mkr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(40), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Mako-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 35: Dampening Field -- Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(A), Aegis-ResDam(50), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(50)
Level 38: Energy Protection -- Aegis-Psi/Status(A)
Level 41: Gloom -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(42), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(42), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 44: Darkest Night -- DarkWD-ToHitDeb/Rchg(A), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(45), DarkWD-Rchg/EndRdx(45), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(45), DampS-ToHitDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Dark Obliteration -- Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(A), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(48), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Det'tn-Acc/Dmg(50)
Level 49: Taunt -- Zinger-Dam%(A)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(3), P'Shift-EndMod(3), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(5)
------------
Set Bonus Totals:
- 12.38% Defense(Smashing)
- 12.38% Defense(Lethal)
- 10.19% Defense(Fire)
- 10.19% Defense(Cold)
- 11.13% Defense(Energy)
- 11.13% Defense(Negative)
- 3% Defense(Psionic)
- 7.688% Defense(Melee)
- 8.938% Defense(Ranged)
- 8% Defense(AoE)
- 1.8% Max End
- 4% Enhancement(Heal)
- 10% Enhancement(RechargeTime)
- 19% Enhancement(Accuracy)
- 9% FlySpeed
- 179.91 HP (12%) HitPoints
- 9% JumpHeight
- 9% JumpSpeed
- MezResist(Immobilize) 15.4%
- MezResist(Sleep) 1.65%
- MezResist(Terrorized) 4.4%
- 20% Perception
- 9.5% (0.159 End/sec) Recovery
- 16% (1.001 HP/sec) Regeneration
- 2.52% Resistance(Fire)
- 2.52% Resistance(Cold)
- 1.875% Resistance(Energy)
- 3% Resistance(Psionic)
- 19% RunSpeed
- 1% XPDebtProtection
Part 2. Optimal attack chain for fiery melee
- An overview of the fiery melee power set
Fiery melee is one of the highest single-target dps primary power sets for brutes. Fiery melee consists of 5 single-target attacks (scorch, fire sword, cremate, incinerate, and greater fire sword), 1 pbaoe attack (fire sword circle), and 1 targeted aoe attack (breath of fire). Utilities include build up and taunt. The power set has a fairly standard line up with an emphasis on single-target damage. Fire sword circle is the main aoe attack of the power set, as breath of fire only has a narrow short cone. You may find it helpful to pick extra aoe attacks from either the patron power pools or ancillary power pools. A brief description and detailed specification of each power can be found in the Paragon wiki web site and City of Data respectively.
In terms of damage types, the 3 swords (fire sword, greater fire sword, and fire sword circle) deal fire/lethal damage, while cremate has fire/smashing damage. Scorch, incinerate, and breath of fire deal pure fire damage. The secondary effect of fiery melee is a dot (damage over time), except incinerate which is a dot by itself. Depending on the attack, the dot consists of 3 to 5 ticks of fire damage. Compared to smashing and lethal damage, fire is a less resisted damage type.
- Single-target attack chain
An attack chain is a sequence of attacks. Ideally, an attack chain should be smooth such that there is no time gap in between two consecutive attacks. Usually, a high dps (damage per second) attack chain is sought. It is in fact quite easy to find the highest dps attack chain. By putting together the attacks with the highest dpa (damage per activation), the highest dps can be achieved.
For fiery melee, the highest dpa attacks are incinerate, greater fire sword, and cremate. Therefore, you just need to have high enough recharge rate such that you can cycle these three attacks without any time gap in between. However, such attack chain requires recharge rate at the level of perma-hasten (that is, hasten is immediately available as it expires). Since not everyone has a multi-billion purple build, the goal of this guide is to suggest attack chains for builds with a low to medium level of recharge rate such that the dps can be optimized. This may give you some ideas on which attacks are crucial, and which attacks can be skipped. If you have specific attack chain in your mind, the guide can also give some rough ideas on the necessary recharge rates.
- Technical details:
What I do here is that for a given recharge rate, I run an automated script to search all the possible attack chains to find the one with the highest dps. The recharge rate is specified by a percentage. A recharge rate of 100% reduces the recharge time of a power by half. 200% reduces the recharge time to one third. The recharge rate does not differentiate between the source of the recharge reduction, which includes the effect of recharge reduction enhancements, global recharge bonus and alpha slot. For simplicity, I assume that every power is slotted with the same amount of recharge reduction enhancements.
Technically, it is impossible to search all the possible attack chains. Simplification is made by assuming that an attack chain is periodically repeating itself. The number of attacks in one cycle of a periodically repeating attack chain is limited to a maximum of 10. In addition, the effect of build up and fury are not taken into account.
- Suggestion on single-target attack chain
Short form is used to denote the attacks in an attack chain: SCO for scorch, FS for fire sword, CRE for cremate, INC for incinerate, and GFS for greater fire sword. Each row is for a specific recharge rate with an increment of 33%, which roughly corresponds to slotting an additional SO. In addition to dps, eps (endurance per second) and the time to cycle through one period of the attack chain are listed. You can add the eps provided here to the endurance usage in Mids' planner to estimate the total amount of recovery needed to sustain fighting indefinitely. Both dps and eps do not take into account the effect of enhancements.
Certain permutations of the attacks in an attack chain can give the same dps. Here, I only list one of them for each recharge rate. Note that not all permutations are equivalent in terms of dps if the same attack appears twice or more in an attack chain, because that attack may not have time to recharge if the ordering is not right.
Recharge rate..Attack chain......................................dps....eps......Cycle time (s)
33%...............GFS>SCO>FS>INC>SCO>CRE>FS>SCO...47.7....4.29....12.8
66%...............GFS>FS>INC>CRE>FS>SCO..................48.4....4.41....10.46
100%.............GFS>INC>CRE>FS>SCO........................49.6....4.45....8.84
133%.............GFS>INC>CRE>FS...............................51.3....4.56....7.66
166%.............GFS>INC>CRE>FS...............................51.3....4.56....7.66
200%.............GFS>INC>CRE>FS>INC>CRE..................51.7....4.47....11.25
233%.............GFS>INC>CRE....................................53.0....4.60....6.11
266%.............GFS>INC>CRE....................................53.4....4.62....6.07
From a dps point of view, greater fire sword, incinerate, and cremate are the crucial attacks that you should not skip. Although greater fire sword has a long animation and incinerate is a dot, they contribute significantly regardless of the recharge rate. Scorch is a filler attack, which can be skipped if your recharge rate is high enough or a replacement attack can be found.
As expected, the highest dps attack chain is GFS>INC>CRE. Basically, a lower recharge attack chain can be constructed by shoving into the best attack chain with lower dpa attacks like fire sword and scorch in some specific way such that the long-recharging attacks (GFS and INC) can have enough time to recharge. Actually, a low-recharge attack chain is only ~10% lower in dps compared to the best. While this does not take into account build up and damage proc, a cheap build is not necessarily a lot worse than a highly optimized one.
For recharge rate lower than ~100%, it is necessary to have a filler attack. For fiery melee, a good filler attack is scorch. For a tight build, boxing from the fighting pool can be used in place of scorch as the fighting pool is usually taken for melee characters. There are significant improvements in dps by increasing the recharge rate from 33% to 133%. 33% corresponds to slotting one recharge reduction SO into each attack. 133% is roughly slotting two recharge reduction SOs and a global recharge of ~60%, which can be quite easily achieved for a defense-based IO build using LotG in the defense toggles. After that, there is a plateau in dps with higher recharge rate till you can achieve GFS>INC>CRE as the attack chain. However, it would be quite an expensive setup.
Since the build in Part 1 of the guide suggests Soul mastery and gloom is an attack with pretty high dpa, I also did a similar analysis of single-target attack chains for various recharge rates taking gloom into account. In the table below, GLO stands for gloom.
Recharge rate..Attack chain......................................dps.....eps......Cycle time (s)
33%...............GFS>GLO>INC>SCO>CRE>FS>SCO..........48.3....4.72....11.51
66%...............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE>FS>SCO.................50.5....4.92....10.16
100%.............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE>FS.........................52.1....5.08....8.98
133%.............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE>FS.........................52.1....5.08....8.98
166%.............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE..............................53.8....5.24....7.39
200%.............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE..............................53.8....5.24....7.39
233%.............GFS>GLO>INC>CRE..............................53.8....5.24....7.39
Using gloom does increase dps across the board, although eps increases correspondingly. The extra endurance usage should not be an issue for energy aura. The highest dps attack chain should be GLO>INC>CRE. However, it requires an even higher recharge rate than those considered here. With moderate investment in recharge rates, an attack chain with gloom can easily perform better than the best chain with only fiery melee attacks.
- Technical details:
I stumbled on this older post doing some research.
I have a lvl 50 KM/EA brute that I lavished some love on, which I've posted about previously. I've also played a few other EA's here and there to mid levels. All in all I've found the set to be very competitive with SR if you invest reasonable time and resources to get IO'd out. In fact, I often compare my lvl 50 KM/EA brute and my lvl 50 MA/SR scrapper side by side by running the same missions and tf's with both to see how they stack up.
The mixed nature of the EA set allows the slotting of a lot of different kinds of IO sets, and is in a backwards way an advantage. I went for 4 sets of LotG a couple of decent resist sets, and Numina's in Energy Drain to make it more useful as a heal. I use Maneuvers, though at this point I'm far enough over soft cap that I don't really need it except as a safety buffer, and avoided the Fighting Pool altogether. I'm going for perma-hasten (currently have a few second gap), and am recharge and damage centric.
The character does really well, though any Psi based AV or sometimes EB is problematic due to the huge Psi hole. Negative is sometimes a problem; Ghost Widow for instance; but generally not noticeable.
The combat stealth is a HUGE boost to the survivability of the set. Unless you are reckless or occasionally unlucky it allows to carve out manageable numbers of enemies and fight only as many as you can handle. Many times I've taken down mobs while other mobs stand 5 feet away with their backs turned, completely oblivious.
I use taunt (useful as a set mule as well) to pull aggro and can even tank for a smaller team of 2-5 players without problems; I've been on many teams where an actual tank wasn't cutting it and ended up becoming the lead unintentionally. Tanking an AV is not a good idea as EA can't take the big hits that get past the RNG, but with the t9 running or a good buffer / healer it's doable in a pinch.
The primary set has a lot to do with EA survival as well. KM has some damage debuff, but also a very reliable circle knockdown in Burst. Most opponents spend the fight on their rear ends not attacking while I beat them up. The "active defense" of the primary would help any secondary of course, but the amazing endurance management of EA once Energy Drain is available allows even a casual player to constantly spam attacks while running toggles without having to tune for endurance.
On that note, I suppose once fire ramps up it kills quick, but when I tried a Fire/EA to lvl 10 I found it squishy. I've had better results with Dark and KM. Thematically I wanted EM/EA to work but I abandoned it after level 12 as it just wasn't doing it for me.
All in all EA is a non-standard defense set and it lags in several areas on paper, but in actual game play it works well if you find it's "groove". It's fun and toolboxy, and offers up some options normally not available. I find it to be a counterpoint to Dark Armor, another set I really enjoy. You can't dabble in EA and form an opinion; you really need to stick with it long enough to get Energy Drain and slot it; I recommend slotting it as a heal. If it's still not doing it for you after ED, then bail because that's the pinnacle of the set.
Quote:
If you follow the guide, you can routinely solo and herd in 8-people missions, not just small teams. The mobs can be anything, although Carnies, Rularuu, and Devouring Earth can be problematic.|
Originally Posted by KillerShrike
The combat stealth is a HUGE boost to the survivability of the set. Unless you are reckless or occasionally unlucky it allows to carve out manageable numbers of enemies and fight only as many as you can handle. Many times I've taken down mobs while other mobs stand 5 feet away with their backs turned, completely oblivious.
I use taunt (useful as a set mule as well) to pull aggro and can even tank for a smaller team of 2-5 players without problems; I've been on many teams where an actual tank wasn't cutting it and ended up becoming the lead unintentionally. |
Quote:
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Originally Posted by KillerShrike
The primary set has a lot to do with EA survival as well. KM has some damage debuff, but also a very reliable circle knockdown in Burst. Most opponents spend the fight on their rear ends not attacking while I beat them up. The "active defense" of the primary would help any secondary of course, but the amazing endurance management of EA once Energy Drain is available allows even a casual player to constantly spam attacks while running toggles without having to tune for endurance.
On that note, I suppose once fire ramps up it kills quick, but when I tried a Fire/EA to lvl 10 I found it squishy. I've had better results with Dark and KM. Thematically I wanted EM/EA to work but I abandoned it after level 12 as it just wasn't doing it for me. |
A Maximal survival guide? What, was this written by Optimus Primal? In all seriousness though, great guide!
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+1 rep|
Originally Posted by Mr_Squid
A Maximal survival guide? What, was this written by Optimus Primal? In all seriousness though, great guide!
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Quote:
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Originally Posted by Twilight_Snow
breath of fire only has a narrow short cone.
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This is wicked because ii just started a elec//ea brute few days ago and she's like eight so far but this will help alot!!!!!
One small question tho
You said something abou ice armor I've never looked at it but does ice armor have alot of def to or just ice armor wouldn't work with brutes that's why they don't have it !.???
(The guide has two sections. The first section is on energy aura, and the second one is on fiery melee. Builds are posted using Mids' designer version 1.92. The final update to this guide is at Issue 19.5, when the incarnate alpha slots were introduced. I am sorry that I cannot update the guide with the latest information anymore as I am no longer subscribing this game.)
Part 1. Maximal survival guide for energy aura brutes
Energy aura has a bad reputation of being squishy. Whether it is true or not, I hope that you can have fun with your energy aura brute after reading this guide. The guide is intended for people who have some experience in energy aura and want to make their character less squishy. There are many different ways to optimize an energy aura brute. Here, I only focus on how to maximize your survival as energy aura brutes are considered among the worst.
Energy aura was introduced in Issue 6 when City of Villains was released. It is a replacement of ice armor as a defense-based secondary power set for brutes because ice armor hinders the generation of fury. Since then, there were numerous discussions in the forum about the problems of energy aura. Between Issue 11 and 12, a list of suggestions put together by players was stickied in the brute forum. The only open response regarding energy aura from the developers is by Castle in the News section of the City of Heroes web site during the testing of Issue 13. In Issue 13, toxic resistance was added to energy protection, and energy drain was given a healing and taunt component.
I do not think that it is necessary to explain each power in details nowadays. A brief description of each power can be found at the Paragon wiki web site. If you want numbers, please look them up in the City of Data web site, or the in-game power details. I shall give an overview of the power set, as well as explaining its strengths and weaknesses.
Energy aura has an overall technology and science theme. It is mainly a defense power set that is based on deflecting incoming attacks. As such, energy aura offers damage-type defense (i.e. smashing, lethal, energy, negative energy, fire, and cold defense), as opposed to positional defense (i.e. melee, ranged and AoE defense) for power sets based on reflexes and dodging.
Various damage-type defenses are provided by kinetic shield, power shield and energy cloak. Status protection is from entropy shield.
Damage resistance (only smashing, lethal, energy, negative energy, and toxic) is rather small and in the form of passives by dampening field and energy protection.
Energy cloak is one of the two main characteristics of energy aura. It is designed to be a combat stealth. Compared to the stealth power pool, energy cloak has no movement penalty. In addition, defense and the stealth radius are not suppressed after attack. Note that the stealth will be suppressed after you click a glowie.
Energy aura is probably built on the concept of using stealth as one of the sources of defense. Apart from defense, it also allows the brute to attack a small group of mobs without aggro-ing the whole spawn or the spawns nearby. However, that is all stealth can provide as far as combat is concerned. One of the main complaints about energy aura is that such design is too stalker-ish and not thematic to the design of brutes. In particular, fury can be generated by aggro, therefore such stalker-ish design is usually considered counter-productive. If the brute is intended to herd and do massive AoE damage, then combat stealth does not serve any purpose, although one can argue that the player should not pick energy aura to start with for an aggro-ing brute. There is nothing wrong to have stealth as one of the utilities of a brute, but it is still under debate among players whether it is an issue to have stealth as a main feature of a brute.
Energy drain is a fast-recharging power that drains the endurance of nearby mobs and adds it to yours. It takes two to three mobs to fully replenish the whole endurance bar. Practically, this gives you ample amount of endurance no matter how endurance-inefficient your character is. In addition, it is an auto-hit. Energy drain is the set-defining power of energy aura.
Conserve power is long-recharging. Most people consider it redundant as energy drain can already take care of endurance. The power is still useful for handling the crash from overload, and after being sapped by sappers, for example.
With IO sets and accolades, there are abundant sources of recovery that players can use to augment their characters. To make full use of the endurance management, players can couple energy aura with endurance-heavy primary power sets. In addition, the endurance management allows players to use many toggles provided by power pools and patron power pools, which are otherwise difficult for other secondary power sets.
Small healing is provided by energy drain. The healing strength increases with the number of mobs around you. By hitting the maximum number of ten mobs, 60% of the hit points can be replenished. Some people consider the healing with 1 mob is too small. I believe the intention is to help energy aura brutes only in large teams.
Overload provides a significant boost to the maximum hit points. Nowadays, with soft-capped defense being so standard, it is seldom necessary to use overload as a boost of defense. As energy aura does not provide significant resistance, having higher hit points is an alternative way to prevent the brute from being one-shotted by heavy-hitting AVs.
Energy aura provides around 52% defense debuff resistance by the kinetic shield, power shield and entropy shield. Unfortunately, the resistance cannot be enhanced. This is problematic for energy aura brutes because defense debuffs are very common. Extra defense debuff resistance is provided by overload. Energy aura also provides repel and teleport protection, which are probably useful in pvp only.
Toxic defense does not exist in game. There is some history to this weird design. When the game was released, toxic damage did not exist. The attacks that were supposed to deal toxic damage were untyped. Later on, the toxic damage type was added to the game. Only toxic resistance was added correspondingly, but not toxic defense. Fortunately, there are few attacks that are purely toxic. Most of them are coupled with lethal. Most power sets do not have strong toxic resistance. I believe toxic damage is probably a designed weakness for everyone.
Psionic attacks are quite common for villains at all levels, for example Arachnos. Typical power sets based on typed defense or resistance are weak against psionic attacks, unless the power set has a theme that suggests otherwise, for example willpower and dark armor. It is still an ongoing debate whether energy aura should have higher psionic defense.
This is probably a designed weakness of energy aura. If the energy that fuels energy aura is positive energy, then its counterpart is negative energy. This weakness is usually considered minor as negative energy attacks are a small percentage compared to other damage types.
Although energy aura has a decent amount of defense debuff resistance, debuffs are usually quite significant (~10% per hit), and they can stack quickly leading to the so-called cascade failure. Defense debuffs are pretty common, for example from Cimerorans, Arachnos Tarantula (to make it worse for energy aura, the attack is psionic), and Longbow. They are common mob groups for villains.
Currently, only super reflexes has full defense debuff resistance. This is probably because the power set nearly offers nothing but defense. It seems like for defense-based power sets with various abilities, the defense debuff resistance is set to be ~50%, for example invulnerability, stone armor, and shield defense. In this sense, energy aura is not particularly gimped in this aspect. However, defense debuff is something that players should watch out for.
Interestingly, energy aura only offers resistance to secondary effects which you will likely encounter in pvp only. Resistance to –recovery and endurance drain are actually thematic to energy aura but the set does not offer any protection against them.
This is actually an issue of power sets based on defense with minimal damage resistance. While you can deflect many incoming attacks, the unlucky shots that bypass the defense can hit hard if they come from bosses or AVs.
The first step to boost survival for energy aura is to soft-cap damage-typed defense by taking the appropriate power pools (fighting or leadership) and stacking IO set defense bonus. It is quite easy nowadays to soft-cap smashing, lethal, energy, fire and cold defense. It is not crucial to soft-cap negative energy defense. However, it would be nice and not really hard to do so. I suggest leaving psionic defense as a weakness of your energy aura character. It is possible to soft-cap other defense types together with psionic defense. However, you need to dedicate the whole build doing so. As you can see from the weaknesses of energy aura above, soft-capping defense alone can still be easily defeated despite the enormous effort. Note that there is no toxic defense in game.
If an attack can pass through your defense, resistance can reduce the incoming damage. Therefore, the second survival boost is resistance. Although the resistance passives in energy aura offer little resistance, dampening field can stack with tough in the fighting power pool to give a decent amount of smashing and lethal damage resistance (up to ~30%). Unfortunately, this is nearly all you can do for resistance because there are very few IO set resistance bonus. It is more effective to optimize your build for other bonus.
On the other hand, darkest night from the Soul mastery patron power pool offers damage debuff (~20%) on your target. The outcome is effectively resistance because it reduces the incoming damage. Darkest night is a toggle that uses a lot of endurance. Energy aura is one of the power sets that can use the power effectively because of its superior endurance management.
After you get hit, the primary objective is to boost your capability to take another hit and then recover. The higher the hit points, the higher the capacity. While you can use overload to temporarily boost your hit points, your endurance crashes as the power expires. Therefore, it is only good for short fights against AVs. In general, bosses can land heavy hits. You are not supposed to use overload for every mob group.
Fortunately, there are many IO set bonuses that boost your hit points. You should stack the hit point bonuses as much as possible. Both energy drain and aid self from the medicine power pool are effective means to replenish your hit points. The former power is more appropriate when you are surrounded by a large number of mobs, while the latter one is better when facing a single mob like an AV.
The three strategies above are common ways to boost survival. The slightly unusual strategy for brutes is debuff. Usually, debuffing is considered the job of corruptors. Darkest night from the Soul mastery mentioned above not only debuffs damage of the mobs, but also lowers their to-hit chance. At a first glance, it is not obvious that energy aura with soft-capped defense needs to-hit debuffs, because mobs’ to-hit chance is already floored to the minimum, further debuff seems redundant.
The key is that to-hit debuffs can mitigate the effect of defense debuffs from the mobs. Many players choose to enhance their defense to ~50% (usually they can do that for smashing and lethal defense only) such that they can take one defense debuff. Darkest night allows you to take several defense debuffs while keeping mobs’ to-hit chance to the minimum. To-hit debuffs behave effectively like defense, and it can be treated as another layer of defense. Note that to-hit debuffs can be resisted by mobs. The amount of resistance depends on the difference in level between you and the mobs, and the rank of the mobs (i.e. minion, lieutenant, bosses or AV). Therefore, darkest night should not replace the need to soft-cap defense, but considered as a complement to defense.
Below, I shall suggest a build to maximize survival of energy aura. Based on the discussions above, my idea is to set up multiple layers of protection: soft-cap defense through IO set bonus and fighting power pool, use darkest night as a second layer of mitigation, and pick aid self to replenish hit points. This is tougher than maximizing defense alone as the character will be well-rounded and can adapt to various situations. Such multi-layer protection is made possible by energy drain, which provides an immense amount of endurance.
I tested energy aura with the reputation set to +0/x8 (i.e. even level with the spawn size set to an 8-people team) at level 50 with bosses against Arachnos, Cimerorans, Longbows, and Carnival of Shadows. Energy aura brutes have a lot of difficulties against these groups without all the tools. With the build below, the survival is acceptable, in the sense that the character can live with occasional use of inspirations. It can also complete the so-called RWZ challenge (i.e. fighting a group of level 54 Riktis in Rikti War Zone without using inspirations). You are welcome to use the build as it is, or incorporate some of my ideas into yours to make your character stronger.
Villain Plan by Mids' Villain Designer 1.92
http://www.cohplanner.com/
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Level 50 Magic Brute
Primary Power Set: Fiery Melee
Secondary Power Set: Energy Aura
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Medicine
Ancillary Pool: Soul Mastery
Villain Profile:
Level 1: Fire Sword -- P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg(A), P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(7), P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7), P'ngS'Fest-Acc/Dmg(9), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/EndRdx(9), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/Rchg(11)
Level 1: Kinetic Shield -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(11), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(13), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(13)
Level 2: Cremate -- P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg(A), P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(15), P'ngFist-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), P'ngS'Fest-Acc/Dmg(17), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/EndRdx(17), P'ngS'Fest-Dmg/Rchg(19)
Level 4: Power Shield -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(19), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(21), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 6: Combat Jumping -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), Ksmt-ToHit+(50)
Level 8: Incinerate -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(23), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(23), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25)
Level 10: Entropy Shield -- EndRdx-I(A)
Level 12: Build Up -- Rec'dRet-ToHit/Rchg(A), Rec'dRet-Pcptn(27)
Level 14: Super Jump -- Winter-ResSlow(A)
Level 16: Boxing -- Empty(A)
Level 18: Tough -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), Aegis-ResDam(27), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(29), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 20: Energy Cloak -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(31), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(31), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(31)
Level 22: Weave -- LkGmblr-Rchg+(A), LkGmblr-Def(33), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(33), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(33)
Level 24: Stimulant -- Empty(A)
Level 26: Fire Sword Circle -- Erad-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), Erad-Dmg/Rchg(34), Erad-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(34), C'ngBlow-Dmg/EndRdx(34), C'ngBlow-Dmg/Rchg(36), C'ngBlow-Acc/Rchg(36)
Level 28: Energy Drain -- Numna-Heal/EndRdx(A), Numna-Heal/Rchg(36), Numna-Heal(37), Efficacy-EndMod(37), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(37), Efficacy-EndMod/EndRdx(39)
Level 30: Aid Self -- Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(A), Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(39), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(39), Dct'dW-Heal(40), Dct'dW-Rchg(40), IntRdx-I(40)
Level 32: Greater Fire Sword -- KntkC'bat-Acc/Dmg(A), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx(42), KntkC'bat-Dmg/Rchg(42), KntkC'bat-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(42), Mako-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(43)
Level 35: Dampening Field -- Aegis-ResDam(A), Aegis-ResDam/EndRdx(46), Aegis-ResDam/Rchg(50)
Level 38: Energy Protection -- Aegis-Psi/Status(A)
Level 41: Gloom -- Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(A), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(43), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 44: Darkest Night -- DarkWD-ToHitDeb/Rchg(A), DarkWD-ToHitdeb/Rchg/EndRdx(45), DarkWD-Rchg/EndRdx(45), DarkWD-ToHitDeb/EndRdx(46), DampS-ToHitDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(46)
Level 47: Dark Obliteration -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(48), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(48), Posi-Dam%(48), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(50)
Level 49: Taunt -- Zinger-Dam%(A)
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Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Clrty-Stlth(A)
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Fury
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Run-I(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A)
Level 2: Health -- Mrcl-Rcvry+(A), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(3)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-EndMod(A), P'Shift-EndMod/Rchg(3), P'Shift-EndMod/Acc(5), P'Shift-End%(5)
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Set Bonus Totals:
Discussions on the build:
There is a growing concern about the expensive price of kinetic combat in the market. The poor-man replacement for kinetic combat is smashing haymaker. However, both its hit point and defense bonus are considerably lower. Some people use touch of death instead. At a first glance, touch of death does not look like a right choice, because the defense bonus comes at the sixth slot, and it is probably designed for positional defense.
Even though the defense bonus from kinetic combat comes at the fourth slot, we typically allocate the fifth slot to better slot an attack as mentioned above, unless your primary power set is super strength with rage. The difference in the number of slots between using kinetic combat and touch of death is practically just one slot. Moreover, the sixth slot for touch of death is a damage proc, which even kinetic combat users are interested in actually. Together with the fact that touch of death offers the same hit point bonus as kinetic combat, touch of death is not a bad alternative if you want to use an IO set better than smashing haymaker, but cheaper than kinetic combat.
Typically, we do not bother going beyond the soft-cap (at 45%) for fire, cold, and negative energy defense. Since energy defense is quite high for energy aura to start with, it can easily go beyond the soft-cap unintentionally when you try to raise negative energy defense. Hence, the real question is whether it worth the trouble to go beyond the soft-cap for smashing and lethal defense. If possible, I suggest doing so by either raising the smashing and lethal defense to ~50%, or use darkest night.
Defense debuffs are typically ~10%. Since energy aura can reduce half of its effect, a defense of 50% allows you to take one defense debuff while maintaining the soft-cap. The issue is that it only allows you to take one hit. You can consider a defense of 55%, which allows you to take two hits, and do significantly better against Cimerorans, for example. In general, the higher the better, but it is a trade-off as you are forgoing other IO set bonuses.
Darkest night debuffs the to-hit chance of mobs, which effectively raises your defense. It allows you to take ~3 defense debuffs, and debuffs the damage of mobs at the same time. My experience is that it is inconvenient to be used in team. Since this guide is on maximal survival, I recommend darkest night, in particular if you solo tough missions. If you choose not to take it, I recommend raising smashing, lethal, and energy defense to ~50%.
Overall, the alpha slot abilities are not significant enough to radically change an IO build. It is best used to complement a build to achieve certain goals, or to make up for useful attributes that are not slotted well in a build.
Higher recharge rate also helps energy drain to recharge faster such that it is available for healing earlier. I believe some people rely on Overload for its boost on hit points and defense debuff resistance. In my opinion, raising recharge does not provide as much bang of the buck to energy aura compared to dull pain in invulnerability and dark regeneration in dark armor, for example. By and large, I think picking spiritual as the alpha slot is not a bad choice, however its main advantage is on boosting your dps, rather than on the clicks in energy aura.
Aid self can be interrupted. The interrupt time is one second. While it does not sound long, you should slot at least one interrupt reduction IO such that you can heal yourself reliably when you need it most.
There is no such thing as "the best" build. Different people come up with different builds, which have their own merit. For energy aura characters, defense, hit points, regeneration, and damage (by raising recharge rates and adding extra slots into attacks for damage procs) are typical attributes that players choose to optimize. Ideally, it would be the best to max out everything. However, limited available slots demands trade-off to be made. I shall suggest some practical goals for these attributes at which it is good to stop going further.
For defense, the soft-cap is at 45%, which is the minimal goal for a defense-based character. As discussed above, it is not a bad idea to go beyond the soft-cap to 50%, or even 55% for smashing and lethal defense in particular, but probably not more than that. There are no guidelines on how much hit points and regeneration are enough. Essentially, the more the better after the goal of soft-capping defense is achieved. In general, I suggest collecting these two IO bonuses as much as possible without slotting your build in a weird fashion. More emphasis should be put on hit points compared to regeneration, because incoming damage is usually large, and regeneration is not high enough to overcome such situations for a defense-based character.
For recharge and high dps (damage per second), as mentioned above, it is necessary to have an attack chain in mind. The Part 2 of this guide is written to help you answer this question. Typically, high dps attack chain requires an expensive setup. For example, use purple IO sets, or use the PvP +def IO such that the build can be less dedicated to soft-capping defense, and spare the slots for higher recharge. Hence, the budget is the main concern here. One thing that worth mentioning is that damage procs can contribute significantly to the dps. As a concrete example, running the greater fire sword > incinerate > cremate > fire sword attack chain at 70% fury, which is considered quite optimal, yields 163 dps theoretically. Such dps ranks pretty low in the Rikti pylon thread in the scrapper's forum, even though fiery melee is considered the best among the primary power sets. The reason is not because other primary power sets out-damage fiery melee, but it indicates the contribution of damage procs at the high end of the dps spectrum and beyond what fiery melee alone can offer. Therefore, a tough yet high-dps build requires a lot of thought and careful slotting.
There are a few items that can help you out during difficult times. Notably, inspirations are most commonly used. With day jobs introduced in Issue 13 and various invention temporary powers added in Issue 17, there are now more options for players to augment their powers temporarily. Here, I compile a list of temporary powers that I think is helpful for energy aura brutes.
Temporary defense toggles can be useful when debuffed or fighting mobs with to-hit buffs. There are even toggles for psionic defense as well to patch energy aura's psionic weakness. Some temporary powers can be obtained pretty easily. For example, kinetic dampener and Vanguard psionic shield can be simply purchased. For day job powers, it is nice to obtain the Cimeroran (logout in Cimerora) and Chronologist (logout in Ouroboros) day job badges for the Time Lord accolade. After that, you can logout in Cimeroran to recharge both the Cimeroran citizen day job power and Time Lord's boon accolade for resistance bonus. While the bonus is nice, logging out for 24 hours can only recharge the powers for around 10 minutes, which is pretty short for a typical gaming section. The duration does get longer with longer logout time.
Using med pack cannot be interrupted. Even if you have aid self, it is not a bad idea to craft a med pack. The heal itself is not really great though.
Phase shift is useful when the brute is overwhelmed by incoming attacks. While phase shifted, aid self can be used. The nice thing is that darkest night will not drop. Therefore, the phase shift can be turned off anytime, and darkest night will be effective immediately. Note that using rest will detoggle phase shift. In addition, activating phase shift is rather slow. It is not unusual to be defeated while activating phase shift. So, it is a bit tricky to use phase shift effectively as an escape power. However, if you will be defeated anyway, it does not hurt to give it a shot. Depending on the situation, calling out a pet is helpful as well. Most people know the powerful Shivans. Backup radio is an invention power for a pet. Although it is not as powerful, I think it worth a mention as it can be crafted easily.