What's wrong with energy armor?

Hey all,

I'm looking at making a new brute now that GR is live. I've generally played scrappers and tanks, though have played a /inv brute to 50. I was looking at /ea, because I like defense sets, and was thinking it looked like a decent set. I don't see a lot of /ea brutes around, and seem to get the feeling that people think /ea is bad.

/ea doesn't seem too hard to soft cap with some IO investment, and would seem to be strong with endurance management. I'm wondering what's wrong with it? One weakness seems to me that it doesn't have a taunt aura, plus it has a stealth power. It would seem that these two things would hurt gaining aggro, and thus fury generation.

Any other thoughts on /ea? I know all sets are playable, and I have not doubt that /ea is no exception. I'm just wondering what, if anything, makes this a weak brute set?

Thanks

Big holes to psi and toxic. Needs to lean heavily on its tier9. Takes a lot of work to softcap. On the plus side, it does get a minor self-heal and very good endurance management.

It's a good set, but as stated.. harder to soft cap than some despite having a few "perks". It's easier and at less sacrifice of other set bonuses to go Super Reflexes or Shield Defense. EA has 8 damage type defenses to work on, even if Fire/Ice, Smash/Lethal, and Energy/Negative are paired. Toxic and Psionic aren't as easy to build up even with IO set bonuses when you can fit them in. This versus Super Reflexes and only 3 positional defenses to work on with plenty of higher IO set bonuses to be found.

Actually I'm gonna give this set another go around in combination with KM. Conceptwise it seems to fit much less a theme I came up with. It's a solid set you just need to work at more than most whether you IO or not.

EA is one of those sets that is OK until you get IO's in it. After that is a very good performing set. I have my WM/EA softcapped to all but -nrg(35%) and psi(25%) and I skipped the tier 9 since I have crashes. I can run at +2/x8 against most enemy groups without any problems also.

I will say there were times while I was leveling it that I considered deleting him. It was more of a challenge to play before IO's and I avoided psi heavy groups like the plague, but in the end I really enjoy playing the set. I actually tank with him now and have pulled aggro off other brutes with very little effort.(lots of AoE's and Energy Drain going off every 25 seconds)

EA isn't as bad as some say, but it isn't really good, either. It's one of those sets that you need to rely on IO bonuses to get more than a mediocre performance out of it.

The issues can be summed up as follows:

1 - rather like Super Reflexes, this is a Tissue Paper behind Armor Plating set. Which is to say, Defense is ALL that it has. (The piddling resist values from the Auto powers are meaningless.) Unlike SR, though... EA only gets 51% Defense Debuff resistance. It's still enough that you aren't going to get slaughtered after a few -Def attacks hit, but that is low enough that Cascade Failure is possible when such attacks become common place. But hey, Ice Armor and Invulnerability are in that boat to, aren't they?

Which leads to...

2 - Lack of useful utility. What else does this set offer, than defense? Um... Okay, Energy Drain means that you have no endurance worries (barring a Malta Sapper), and I suppose some will find the stealth useful... but that's it.

Sure, Energy Drain now also taunts and heals... which I still think was a completely bone headed decision on the Dev's parts. In my experience, the heal (even when maxed out) isn't enough to compensate for the incoming damage, unless you are at the soft cap. before that point, it generally just means you are getting enough health to recover what was lost during the Energy Drain animation time. Throwing the taunt in there as well just means they have now added too many things to reasonable enhance with 6 slots. Even frankenslotting, you are going to have to sacrifice some aspect.

There are no +HP powers, the resistance values are meaningless, and no debuffs or self buffs. When something gets through EA's defenses - or, like Psychic, EA simply has no defense to - EA can do nothing but fall, where most other sets still have something to bring to the table.

That's it, right there. And really, those are both the same way of saying the same thing: EA has incomplete Typed defense, unlimited endurance, and nothing else going for it. And unlimited endurance is a lot less useful than you'd think to your over all survival.

Eventually, EA's going to get another pass from the Devs. I only hope their next look at the set does a much better job than the LAST attempt to buff it.

Based on this thread I've decided to roll a Kin/EnA brute.

What's wrong?

Look at Stalker's Repluse Aura in Energy Aura. That is WHAT IS WRONG!!!

I don't know why they have to give a serious knockback aura on a melee character. I actually have tried it and I just don't know how to make it work because the endurance drain is crazy too. I eventually respec it out.


Brute's EA is better IMO because you at least can pretend to be a semi-Stalker with Cloak. Stalker's EA is nothing special when there's SR and Nijitsu.

I got a PM about my earlier posts, so just to explain what happens when you crash. You will lose all endurance, your toggles will drop, and you will have no recovery. However, if you time Energy Drain properly, which can be done reliably with just a bit of practice, you will immediately receive full endurance and be able to retoggle instantly. Given that Overload will be increasing your max HP by 80% all by itself and Energy Drain will be providing a Heal along with refilling your blue bar, you will likely be at full health as you quickly retoggle.

I haven't died from this crash for quite sometime now and have even started just cycling it as often as it's up just for the nice feeling of being HP capped and having 87% DDR (and having over 100 defense to all types but psi...). I basically cycle between Overload and Conserve Power and never even have to use Energy Drain for endurance management except for in crash situations-- so it's reserved as a heal.

Just to point it out since Ive seen it mentioned multiple times in the past few days, there is no such thing as toxic defense. So dont be sad that you cant seem to get it higher, because it doesnt exist.

Thanks for the info julius, Ive seen similar things done with similar powers, but EA really does look built for it.

Though toxic has no specific defense, I was under the impression that most (read: not all) toxic attacks use lethal to-hit values. Correct me if I'm wrong...

Only if they also did lethal damage. Anything that's more or less pure toxic (vomit, etc) tends to be purely positional.

The problem with Energy Aura has never been what it is. It's always been what it isn't.

At first, Energy Aura stood out as one of two high-defense sets available to Brutes, if you care to count Stone as one. Compared to Stone and its inherent weaknesses, EA was the only 'offensive' Defense set. Unfortunately for EA, that was all it had going for it. It had a good T9, and Energy Drain. Stealth was a novelty. The rest was weak. It was even worse than it is now, in an environment completely devoid of +defense set bonuses.

Now, it's been upgraded markedly. Small improvements across the board, and access to hole-fixing. The problem isn't how good EA is compared to EA, though.

Now, EA competes with Super Reflexes and Shield Defense. The former has higher defense numbers than EA, and with positional defense, can get higher bonuses to those numbers. It also enjoys much more resistance to defense debuffs. In survival terms, it's better out of the box and easier to put on the shelf.

Shield Defense is comparably survivable to EA, in that it is moderately survivable on its own merits, albeit probably slightly less so, and that it can become quite resilient when you can put sets into it. The difference is that SD makes no pretensiosn towards being a survivability set, and offers the alternate defensice mechanism of killing everything incredibly fast.

EA is a decent set trying to compete against good sets. There's better offensive sets and defensive sets. That's why nobody takes it for power reasons; not because of what it is, but because of what it isn't.

Energy Aura is one of them secondaries, that really you could mix alot of power pools with to make it not just good but rather good and then see yaself with some Psi def and Toxic res anyway both possibly 15% plus and soft cap the rest but perhaps NEG is a bit hard to do..Leveling up prior to IO sets though Overload is more of a must have to me but we are talking about a set that can potentially come back from the crash better than most though aren't we? I'm not brilliant with EA but still I have made my second one.