Communities Thoughts on EA revamp.

To get the thread back on topic, I am excited about the changes. It's already relatively easy to get EA's defense figures close to the soft cap with set bonuses, but the changes to energy drain should make it even easier.

What i'm hoping is that it will be a direct port of Ice's Energy Absorbtion power. Currently, that provides 1.6% def for the first target and 0.6% for the 9 subsequent targets hit by the power, slotted with two lvl 50 def IO's this rises to 2.4% and 0.9% which means a total possible buff of 10.5% for 45s (all numbers from Mids). Obviously the brute figures would be scaled back, but i'd hope 1.2% and 0.4% would be realistic, which would become 1.8% and 0.6% slotted as above. The max buff would therefore be 7.2% for 45s. That's pretty nice in my opinion. In teams, you're going to be getting ten stacks quite often if you stick near the tank, and so a def of only around 38% would lead to you being at soft cap alot. That's easily achievable for EA.

The only drawback that I can see with it, is that you still have the problem with alpha-taking that EA currently suffers. Once you're in a big group with your def capped, you'll be relatively solid, but you're going to have to take the alpha before you can receive the benefits of the improved def. Two lucky hard hits in that section will be risky.

Conserve Power -> Energize is a nice change so I am happy with that. I think I will still keep aid self in my build though, since Energize will have a recharge of around 30secs with some recharge.

Anyhoo back to OP: I think it will be a better set. EA has been a tough secondary relatively, and as a lot of people have mentioned, I think it was invented as an alternative to ice armor since IA for brutes didn't test well in the devs' tests as mechanics stood back then. I also think it was a poor idea to create a secondary for brutes that had no aggro aura and also made your typed defenses dependent on being invisible, making it a "useless" brute before you could go to both sides.

But I have a WM/EA brute and he is both strong and pretty!

Now that I can drop Stimulant and keep Aid Self, while picking up Energize, I am much more content with the change personally. That said, I still am not a fan of the change to ED and Conserve Power, I wish they could have adjusted the powers to be unique to EA rather than clones of powers from Ice and Electric.

Like so:

Quote:

Originally Posted by StratoNexus Honestly, my preference would be to keep ED as is and make Conserve Power something new. Focused Shield. Give it the same end discount and recharge as Energize, but instead of a heal have it add some resistance all. Either 15% for 30 seconds or 40% for 15 seconds, depending on your goal for the power. I could see perhaps front-loading some of the ED heal. Make it 10%, non-stacking and then 2% for each enemy in range. That makes the heal 12% for one target and 30% for 10. Alternatively you could make it 15% for one target and 3% for each enemy in range and cap the power at 5 targets (which is much more viable now that the set will also have a taunt aura). There was never an end recovery reason to have a 10 target cap on the power (but you lose some of the possible mitigation from end drain). The latter method gives the heal an 18% to 30% range.

I've got a Brute KM/EA/en 50 I'm fond of. He's pretty tough already with heavy IO'ing, but I'm looking forward to a better heal and the recharge aura sounds very interesting.

The changes they announced sound reasonable on the surface; once we can see the actual numbers we'll know for sure.

I'm eager to see at least.

As much as i gripe about the current standing of Energy Aura its not bad...its just kinda so/so, the passive powers have always been pointless to me outside of a slot for a steadfast defense because the resistance it granted is so low. Even when soft-capped to all types save for psi which i'm at about 20% currently it's performance is very bi-polar, you're doing well and kicking *** then the next moment you're on the floor before you get the chance to heal yourself with energy drain.

One of my suggestions to fix the set had always been to remove the +hp from overload and put it into one of the two passive powers to help out the set some by giving it a little more HP outside of its "You better make this count cause you're going down in 3 minutes time otherwise." The increased HP would make when you do end up catching an alpha through your defense a little easier to bounce back if you get tagged with a follow up hit or by another enemy.

With the incoming changes i plan on building for recharge more then a soft capped defense and hope that energy drain will make up the difference of at most 5% (for negative energy) on my recharge centric build to hit at least standard soft cap. which i know isn't incarnate soft cap and having a real heal will be fun on the bun for me with the added benifit of the end redux.

The set works 'good enough' when IO'd to the soft cap. These changes will make huge improvements for the QoL for up and coming EA characters.

It was needed, and I hope it makes the set 'pretty good' amongst it's peers prior to IOs.

Maybe SR needs something like Fast Healing to boost regen and maybe a -damage aura -20% damage unresistable not sure how they would do it that it only counts for SR users to give a idea that you dodge the attacks and even if they hit they did not hit on the critical spot.

I like the people who say "maybe it'll be better then SR, now!"

Kids, it already is. It already is.

These changes are going to turn EA into one of the top three armor sets.

A lot of people here are comparing EA to Ice and Super Reflexes and wondering if it will outperform them. I am a bit more concerned about comparing EA to ELA, as the sets appear to be converging more than ever with +recharge, Energize, Endurance Protection, and other perks being granted to EA.

What about thoughts on the stalker changes? I've never played an ea stalker before but I like the sound of disruption replacing repulse.