Energy Aura?

Why exactly is this set a joke to most people? Aside from Repulse most of the powers seem like your standard defensive set, and energy drain and converse power seem great for dealing with high endurance primaries. Is there something I'm missing or does it just not perform quite as good as other defense sets?

Is it better for some ATs then others?

Positional defense is far superior to typed defense. That's about it.

For what reason though? That is to say, I can see why it would be easier to stack positional but just set to set comparison don't they come out fairly equal with all the toggles/passives factored in?

Psionic attacks (most of them, anyway) carry positional tags.

The stealth is counter-intuitive to Brutes and the repel is counter-intuitive to both Brutes and Stalkers. Plus the typed defense.

So it's a few bad powers, or in Stalkers case one, and a Psi hole? That doesn't seem to bad, unless I'm still missing something. Well that and that it's not positional defense.

It's not terrible, it just takes more to IO it out and the other defense sets can pretty much do everything it can and better.

On its own merits, the set works well enough for a solo player that enjoys looking cool.

Compared to the other defense based sets, however, it just doesn't offer the same level of mitigation. It's weaker. It's got larger holes. It's got a great tier9 and if you leverage on that as much as possible with global recharge buffs, you can do some cool things.

I'd like to mention that I do have an /EA stalker, and I enjoy him immensely. It was very easy to softcap to S/L/E, which is more than enough for me, but that will never compare to the survivability of a fully softcapped /SR.

Energy Aura is not technically a pure defense set, and the lower amount of defense it offers reflects that, as does the poor defense debuff resistance. In practice, though, it tends to play like a pure defense set with some minor additional tricks. It's got no psi defense outside of Energy Cloak and no toxic mitigation at all outside of fairly minor resistance from one of the passives that a lot of people skip because they only offer minor resistance.

Energy Drain is a fantastic utility power but saps less than Power Sink--not enough to be useful for mitigation except in protracted fights--and is only useful as a heal if it is slotted for healing and is sufficiently saturated (I'd say 5+ targets to get your money's worth). It also makes Conserve Power in the same set pretty redundant.

The only thing it really has that goes firmly in the "advantage" column with no qualifiers is Overload, as Bill pointed out. For Brutes, that is. Stalkers can't take full advantage of it because the unslotted HP buff already exceeds their max HP cap.

You can certainly build a sturdy /EA character (I have a 45 fire/EA who solos pretty comfortably at +1x6 without Aid Self, although he was about 37 before he had sufficient slots, pool powers, and IOs to not feel like tissue paper *with* Aid Self) but it's not especially easy or fast.

Oh, and it's an Energy-themed set with no protection against endurance drains. Yeah.

Also, I'd much rather have Repulse on my EA Brute than the stealth power...

A downside to that "heal" is you click the power, and then you wait, and then you get some health restored.

For me the biggest downside to my EM/EA brute is I'll be soloing and having a great time and then I get an invite to a team and they expect me to tank. I might be able to survive the Alpha, I'm not gonna be able to hold agro.

Also...unless I'm missing something somewhere...Energy Aura lacks a taunt aura. While not a problem for stalkers, brutes will definitely miss having it.

It looks, on the surface at least, as though Energy Aura was designed for stalkers, and brutes only got it when they realized Ice was going to cause problems. (I have no idea if this is true or not, but it's the only reason I can think of why a brute secondary would not have a taunt aura in it)

Energy Aura advantages:
-Skippable powers. You can skip the resist passives or conserve power or even Overload (in Stalker's case) after you cap your defenses.
-Pool Friendly. Once you get Energy Drain, you can skip the fitness pool without major adjustment to slotting. The only other defense set that can do that without sweating is Ice Armor, IIRC.
-Steadfast protection mule. You got a passive with +res to stick that extra +3% def IO. SR has to take 2 powers for that.

On the whole, it's very underrated, much like any set with endurance tools, or that heavily relies on its T9 tends to be underrated (and EA does both at the same time !).
There's only three flaws with EA, the lack of taunt aura, the lack of psi defense, and one of your defense powers completely ruining your costume (Energy Cloak).

Other than that, you're looking at a set easy to softcap, that can bump its HP to the HP cap (which is ~3200 on brutes) while also having fantastic defense even against high tohitbuffed foes half of the time, along with endless endurance all the time. There's also a small heal in the set.

That being said, it's not such a good set for stalkers, and the endurance management might become less useful once GR hits, if brutes get access to CP. Good news is, between player perception and that, the set might get buffed into godliness somewhere down the road.

Your mileage may vary, but you can make up the Taunt aura bit by using a massive aggro-generating set.

Mine is a Stone Melee/Energy Aura Brute and between Fault, the mallets and Tremor stuff is swarming me and getting dropped in short order. I definitely prefer her to my Fiery Melee/Electric Aura Brute; Energy Drain lets me get small heals and replenishes my end bar, you can pump up defenses through IO sets and the Tier 9 grants a hit bonus as well, doesn't it?

EA isn't "top of the line" at anything though, so you're more likely to see Fiery Aura or Willpower Brutes than EA...

EA brutes can play very nicely with AOE-heavy, endurance intensive builds. You can push out endless, relentless AOE damage when you've built up an EA brute well enough to have it survive incoming punishment. That can at least partially make up for not having a damage and/or taunt aura, as endless AOE has a way of grabbing mobs' attention. Essentially not needing to slot for endurance reduction frees up your character for different slotting choices. These capabilities make EA suited for an aggressive, get-to-other-mobs-first-and-kick-their-butts playstyle. Regarding survivability, unlimited endurance means you can swap in the fighting pool and swap out the fitness pool; the base stats of EA start to look better once you add in tough and weave, in place of health and stamina. AOE that does damage and mitigates damage would be particularly helpful, given the limited nature of EA's built in heal, and the downsides of the tier 9.

Also, if you have a way of grabbing aggro in other ways (ie: hit mobs over the head and keep hitting them), then the non-suppressing stealth has the pleasant effect of reducing the frequency with which the team gets beaten on by neighbouring spawns that activate before the team has finished with the current spawn--even good tanks and brutes using a set other than EA sometimes invite over-aggro, because of spawn placement. Also, stealth helps to reduce the importance of the psi hole by allowing an EA brute to close to melee range before opening up on psi damage dealers, such as rikti mentalists and lost bosses and anathema.

Putting everything together, you can end up with layered defenses (defense + resistances + mitigation in the primary + the tier 9 + how stealth puts the player more in charge of when aggro is generated) that are formidable.

If EA is ever ported over to tankers, I believe it will gain a better reputation. It would pair up very nicely with ice melee, given the superior mitigation and AOE damage that ice melee provides.

While it's not a toggle, energy drain provides a taunt for brutes.

Energy Aura generally gets a bad rap for a pretty good reason: it's subpar. It has the survivability of an offensively benefiting set (like Fire or Shield) but no offensive contribution to make up for it. The only "advantages" it gets are largely redundant endurance tools (Conserve Power doesn't really have a purpose when you've got Energy Drain). It's like a defense based version of Electric Armor pre-Energize without the benefit of a damage aura.

Honestly, the best fix to Energy Aura would be a re-purposing of Conserve Power along the same lines as Electric Armor got.

To prevent invoking the wrath of the Cottage Rule, it would need to maintain the end redux portion, and it's not like the set needs another heal (though, if ease is really what's desired, a direct port of Energize wouldn't be all that hard and would likely be enough). I would probably replace it with a power that provided some degree of either defense or resistance with a token degree of end redux: 15% +def(all) or 40% +res(all) combined with 100% end redux for 20 seconds on a base 120 second recharge time. The +res would probably be the more popular option for the optimizing crowd because it would still be useful with the ability to softcap to s/l with IOs, but they amount to much the same end survivability (the resistance is higher because of mitigation stacking to generate higher end survivability). I would rename it something along the lines of Partial Phase or Phase Reinforcement (you're partially phasing out of existence so that you can still attack but are much harder to hit/hurt).

And no tanker in his/her right mind wants this set. It was design badly and the buffs to help it make it barely play able. The only reason I kept my DM/EA brute was she was my first brute I made when CoV come out and DM help after lvl 30 in playing her.

When it comes to Positional and Typed defense don't most debuffs in the game have a positional component. A brute isn't gonna have to worry about a mez, and some of my least favorite debuffs, quicksand and caltrops are autohit. But things like sappers, ring mistresses and vanguard bosses have debuffs that I think are all ranged attacks.

When I softcap a blasters I'll always go for range over s/l since it seems ranged defense will help keep me unmezzed more often then s/l defense.

I have a Lv. 50 EM/EA/Leviathan Stalker, and I seem to do okay with him. It does seem to be more geared toward Stalkers than Brutes. The Stalker version has the standard Hide instead of Energy Cloak, and Repulse instead of Dampening Field. Sometimes I wish the Stalker version got Dampening Field instead of the unwieldy toggle of Repulse for a little extra mitigation. PBAoE toggles tend to be unwieldy for Stalkers in general, as Dark Armor Stalkers can attest to even more so than Energy Aura. Though I often wondered, isn't having Repulse on one and Dampening Field on the other a violation of the Cottage Rule?

Anyway, I used to have a Stamina-less build on my Stalker with Repulse, Stealth, and Combat Jumping, but I respecced out of those three powers and into the Fitness pool because I only used Repulse to juggle bosses when soloing (Which Water Spout from the Leviathan Mastery pool did a better job of, and is more team-friendly with Knockup instead of Knockback), I didn't need Stealth since don't PvP as much as I used to, and didn't need Combat Jumping to unlock Super Jump now that I have the Vet Reward that allows me to take a travel power without it.

For me, a lot of my EM/EA Stalker's mitigation comes not from the defense set, but from being able to take out the most threatening enemies through EM's high burst damage, and solo fights tend to be short enough for enemies to not be able to get many hits in. I have both Energy Drain and Conserve power, in addition to Stamina, so Endurance is no issue at all to him, even in long fights, but I would take something other than the Fitness pool if I could think of something that would suit my needs better.