Proposal to change Energy Aura

(Posted it over in AT and Power discussion, and thought I may as well post it over here.)

I took a little bit of time to see what all could be changed/buffed in this set, and I do believe I've come up with something that would be good. MAKE SURE TO READ EVERYTHING BEFORE POSTING Also worth noting that this is for Brutes, as I'm still thinking on some changes that could be made for Stalkers.

Kinetic Shield: 12.8% S/L Defense to 15%, E Defense to 7.5%, 17.3% Def Debuff Res to 20%. An overall buff to defenses so without Weave you're not below 30% S/L and

Dampening Field: 7.5% S/L Resist to 12.5%, res endurance drain. Gave it a passive that would fit the power and bumped the resists to something that could actually be useful.

Power Shield: 17.3% Def Debuff Res to 20%. I didn't really see much of a problem with this power, but bumped the def debuff res to match Kinetic Shield.

Entropy Shield: ADD 22.5% Psi resist. Psi gap filled with something. I debated between 20 and 25%, and compromised with 22.5%, as it is also the base for many resists in other sets.

Energy Protection: 9.38% E/T Resist to 15%, ADD F/C Resist to 15%, res recharge debuff. Again, a passive to make it useful, and added F/C resist because it made more sense to put it here.

Energy Cloak and Energy Drain will remain unchanged if so desired. I am aware that a LOT of people like having Energy Drain, but I tried to compromise and come up with a power that could both have the same overall use as it and still be worth taking. Be the judge if the payout for it would be worth it.

Energy Cloak: Threat Level -1, EXCLUSIVE to Conductive Aura, should it be changed.

Energy Drain: REDESIGN. Inertial Aura: Toggle Foe -End, Taunt; Self +End, +Def.
AoE threat building toggle that provides an unenhanceable 3.5% Defense and an enhanceable +1 End gain per mob, ticking every 2 seconds. Also drains 5 End to those affected per tic. EXCLUSIVE to Energy Cloak, should it be changed.

The reason for the exclusivity is simple: Cloaking yourself tries to draw attention AWAY from you, while having a taunt aura draws attention TO you.

Conserve Power: REDESIGN. Kinetic Conduit: Auto +Recharge, Heal, Movement Speed
Every hit against an enemy causes you to restore 3% HP (1-2 second ICD) and gives a stacking (5 max) 5% Recharge/7.5% Movement Speed bonus lasting (6 + Cast Time) seconds.

The power might sound a bit too overpowered (Healing) but I thought it would work out really well. In essence, you'd be "building up" your momentum (Kinetic energy) to attack faster and faster, while at the same time using the kinetic energies to close wounds, halt burns/poisons, etc. The movement speed bonus was thrown in there because of Kinetics.

Overload: Changed to Resistance equivalent to Power Surge. Bonus HP remains intact. Fairly simple.

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Rip and tear into this as much as you want, but I think these kind of buffs would put the set from possibly the most under performing defensive set (IMO) to a respective force for soloing and teaming, having bases covered and at the same time having the tools needed to recover from an event in which it fails.

/disagree with the exclusivity.

Also, cottage rule for conserve power - I happen to use it for what it's designed for. If you want to *add* functionality, sure, but powers will retain their basic use. Conserve Power's use is a temporary END discount.

Plus you've forgotten that Energy Drain was given +health fairly recently, and dropped that from the power.

(Yes, I am talking about the brute version. First villain 50 = En/En brute.)

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And on top of it, Kinetic Conduit would be very overpowered. Especially because it unfairly benefits builds with lots of extra recharge buffs and fast animating attacks, things that already tend to give a big advantage.

I've always favored the idea of bumping up the heal numbers on Energy Drain (it feels like it's balanced around its saturation point, rather than the realistic usage scenario of 3-5 targets) and turning Conserve Power into Focus Energy, which would be part endurance discount, part temporary resistance buff.

Kinetic Conduit: On a brute chaining 1.33 second attacks (1.581 Arcanatime) you would get ~3390HP/min, a constant 25% recharge buff and 37.5% runspeed from it for no endurance or animation time. Meanwhile Healing Flames gives ~3450HP/min and Quickness gives 20% recharge/35% runspeed. It sounds overpowered because it is.

You've also taken an endurance management power that is currently only slottable for recharge and endurance, renamed it and made it an auto power with no direct impact on endurance; congratulations, you've managed to break the cottage rule further than the example it was named after.

There is no reason to redesign Energy Drain just so you can squeeze a taunt aura into the set. The set wasn't meant to have a static taunt aura and use stealth instead. However, it the set requires it for Tankers (honestly, I'd rather the set be that one defensive set that doesn't), they can simply add it to Entropy Shield and let you slot for it. 2 solutions in one, this gives you your taunt aura and gives something besides rech and endurance redux to slot in that.

Increasing the sets defense to smashing/lethal isn't something you can just add unless you can prove the set should have it. Honestly, that it has decent defense just below the equivalent SR justifies it's huge benefits to endurance management. Although I can get behind boosting its -def resists, which seem pretty low. Around 75% would be great (I think it currently bobs around 55% but not positive).

For the passives, I could imagine combining their effect into one and then changing the buff of the other to an offensive buff like a static +dmg or something interesting like "Chance of adding energy damage 15% of the base dmg of the attack used" but then that'd be violating the cottage rule. So just upping the resistance wouldn't be out of line.

However, just adding and adding debuff resists 'just because' isn't fair. SR has its -def resist and -rech resists...that's it. But you want the set to have -END, -rech, -def resists while having nearly the same level of defense as SR AND big endurance management tools?

They're not going to add a power that's exclusive to another to EA. EA isn't so broken that such a drastic change is even needed.

You're not going to get a redesign of Conserve Power due to the cottage rule. The best you're getting is an alteration/addition to its numbers. You can do several things to it to make the set fun, interesting, unique and NOT overpowered:

-Energize clone with different values. Instead of a heal and regen, maybe just a resistance buff (it'd give you something to slot besides END redux and rech). Or maybe a boost in max HP.
-Make it an offensive power that boosts damage while active. Improving recharge might be out of line though. I like the concept of an Endurance discount power that also adds energy damage ala new fiery embrace tech.
-Create synergy with Energy Drain. Weaken the discount and lower the recharge enough to have it up a lot then you can choose more often to run this power. It could weaken (or stop) the +endurance granted from Energy Drain while boosting the +HP part, effectively giving you the option to switch between an endurance tool to a heal but not both at once.

PS: Kinda sick of how people forget Stalkers. A good change for Stalkers would be to remove the extra non-slottable endurance cost from Repulse (so using it in a group doesn't leave me with no energy). To make it a bit more an in-combat power, I'd even suggest removing the KB and change it to a chance of KU with a moderately long duration -dmg debuff. To keep it as a 'get out of my face' power, maybe give it a one-time pulse of high mag KB upon activating it.

/end rip

Truthfully, when it comes to Energy Aura, I'd only like to see a few changes...

1) Conserve Power to be changed into something like Energize, but with +Resist, instead of a Heal.

I don't think it would be something as powerful as 50% to anything...but I'm sure with testing, it can be figured out what the exact +Resist should be.

2) Softcapped Energy Defense and capped Energy Resist without having to use outside sources (or the new CP I mentioned in #1). It's Energy Aura, Energy damage (imo) should just be really laughable.