What (if anything) in elec/is skippable?

I'm slowly but surely levelling up my elec/war mace tanker. I have ZERO experience with elec and would appreciate opinions on what powers (if any) others who use elec find skippable (and to what degree they find them so).

As a side note, I'm forgoing travel powers per se, and using Ninja run and jetpacks to get me around (I'd rather use powers and slots on stuff I'm more likely to use when I'm in the mission).

Given the choice to skip one power from Electric Armor I would skip Power Surge instead of Lightning Field.

A damage aura on a tank is one of the most damaging and end efficient attacks that you'll have. Check hero stats to see. Those small ticks of damage in Lightning Field add up, and even more so on a fully aggro'd mob. It is also your taunt aura which makes it easier for you as a tank to hold aggro. The other bonus of LF is that it slowly drains your opponent's endurance, which in a long fight will end up acting as a bit of mitigation.

Power Surge is nice, but I'm not a fan of powers with that much of a crash. I prefer to build for +def, +hp, and +regen on a resistance tank. Enough +def and you'll rarely need an "uh oh" button like Power Surge.

Of course YMMV.

No offense, Inferno, but that's a pretty strange build there.

First off, no tank should ever skip his taunt aura. Ever. Full stop. Second, not only did you skip lightning field, you also skipped your PBAoE and put off taunt until the 40s. Combining that, how are you going to hold aggro? Punchvoke can only go so far.

Also, you have some pretty weird slotting and power choices there. Why do you need stamina, PP, a performance shifter proc *and* both recovery uniques on the primary with the best endurance management tools the AT has (especially since you skipped your most expensive toggle)? You're also over the resist cap to everything but psi/tox with an *unslotted* power surge running, so what's the point in putting resistance enhancements there? Also, you have no other defense whatsoever, so why slot the steadfast 3% (other than to spend more money). I honestly wouldn't use this build as a guideline for an electric tanker.

Troy, as far as electric armor goes, unfortunately I personally don't see much in the way of skippable powers. The only one that comes even close is grounded, as you can get KB from IOs and immob from CJ, and the rest of what it does isn't really worth the power slot. Unfortunately, that only saves you a power choice if you were planning to take combat jumping anyway, which you weren't. If you were going for a pure meatshield type tank I suppose I could see skipping lightning reflexes, but frankly I'd never turn down the free recharge since I think pure meatshield tanks are boring. Endmod slotted power sink combined with lightning field is actually an important part of the set's mitigation through sapping, so that's in. There really isn't anything else skippable.

For mace, you can get away with skipping one of the ST attacks (I dropped jawbreaker on my /mace), and since you don't have something like lightning rod or shield charge I could see skipping build up. Honestly that's where I'd look first for skippable powers, as electric armor is just so tight.

As far as what's skippable in Elec armor:

Power surge: You're already at a high resistance. One reason I hate elec armor, is because the tier 9 just bumps that up, and you still have the cap, not a very good tier 9 at all. (still hate that they need very badly to either increase the regen duration of energize to 60 seconds or reduce the powers recharge to 60 which is what they really need to do). But the tier 9 would benefit much more from either a +defense, or mixture of +defense/+resistance and/or more unresistable +regen.

So skip power surge. And While it's nice, I also find it easy to skip power sink. While you may initially think zomg, its great for end, you need to also think, how much is that needed. With energize reducing your end consumption, and with an IO build providing lots of end reduction, recovery bonuses, max end, and picking up physical perfection (mainly for regen/bonuses, but the recovery is bonus, as well as the same reasoning with the numina unique) You should not be having any end problems to need power sink. And in my experiences the drain of it, without any reasonable enough -recovery, makes that part fairly useless.

Third, you *could* skip grounded. If you pick up some kb resistance IOs. But for a base slot, I find it useful enough just to stick in the steadfast +3% defense IO and call it a day, the extra end drain resistance helps too.

I have to get to work now but I'll post you a build when I return.

Since you're leveling, it's not so much a question of what to skip, as what is priority. I'd rate the Electric Armor powers in this order.

-- strong defenses
Charged Armor
Energize
Static Shield
Conductive Shield

-- offensive
Power Sink
Lightning Field
Lightning Reflexes

-- weak defenses
Grounded

-- situational
Power Surge

During early levels on my Elec tank, I took both res shields and grounded right away. While this gave me early capped Energy res, most enemies doing Energy damge do energy/smash... making the result much less impressive. The second shield was an endurance waste most of the time. So - I don't recommend doing what I did.

You want Lightning Field but only when you have the endurance to support it. Taunt will do in the meantime.

Id personally keep Power Surge.For those +4/8 Missions.