Energy Armor

Is it worth it now? I read all the numbers (some of which mean nothing to me!-ha), but I am wondering what the experience is like for those that play it now. Would you building another? I am mostly thinking brute, but want to hear it all.

New EA is mad excellent, G. It's sort of like ice armor but with better all-round protection, no damage aura and no immunity to slows. Also, instead of looking like jack frost swallowed someone whole, you look like a sneaky energy skeleton that appears only to attack. I won't be building another any time soon but that's because I like the one I've got so much. The principal advantage for an EA brute is 160 extra hitpoints at 50 and 66 extra hitpoints from overload. If you crave scrapper damage, you lose essentially nothing by going that way.

Just for reference it is Energy Aura not Armor .

I just created one to go with Titan Weapons to help manage the endurance. I must say I like it very much.

It compares very well to /Shield though /Shield has some advantages. Energy Aura is typed not positional defense and it has a slight Negative Energy hole and a big Psychic hole. Covering those takes some work that /shield doesn't have to do. /Shield also gets a damage bonus while /Energy gets a recharge bonus, I consider those two a wash myself. /Energy has a heal in place of shield charge that also has a endurance discount with it and /energy has Energy Drain that gives a defense bonuse (typed again and not to psychic).

Overall like I said I like it and have had a lot of fun with it and Titan Weapons. The only complaint I have is that Energy Aura has stealth but has a taunt radius (the recharge bonus) in its status protection toggle. So to stealth you must turn off status protection, which means if you get seen you can be mezzed before you get it back on. Wish they had attached the taunt to something else but oh well it works.

I have a StJ/EnA Brute. I like playing her, can be EnA is very clicky. If i get distracted with the offense or just play a bit too lazy, I end up eating floor since I wasn't healing myself or boosting my Def with Energy Drain. I also haven't worked in Fitness or Set bonuses yet, both of which should help immensely.

I also had A LOT of endurance issues with this set, until I got Energy Drain. All the +recharge you get from Entropic Aura means you're just attack cycling that much faster. Great for DPS, but hard on the blue bar.

Also- the Stun protection hole... ugh.

Energy Aura is awesome now. I can highly recommend it. I have a SJ/EA scrapper that I just got to 50 recently when Street Justice came out.
You can easily get your defenses to 45+. The self heal and recharge is nice and being able to replenish your endurance often is great also.

EA's biggest weakness is the heal coming so late, especially for brutes. The heal is a huge part of the set, and waiting until level 35 is a big deal.

But overall, it's now a very good set.

Nrg Aura is epic win sauce these days. Easy to soft-cap to s/l/f/c/n, at which point energy def will be near the incarnate cap (59%), and there's quite a bit of pure nrg attacks going on in iContent. Good defense, a little resistance, Energize for a heal and a brief regen buff, and the end drain means not chasing as many recovery bonuses and such.

It's a slug-fest to level before the drain (28 for brutes, 35 for scraps), especially with an end heavy primary (like titan in my case). As mentioned the psi-hole can shaft you if you're not careful. Just hunt down the psi users in a group with extreme prejudice; I'm looking at you Tarantula Mistress, you're first, then your Queen dies too. Little Fortunata, save us both the trouble and run away or mark my words, you're going down.

As far as stealthing with the taunt toggle - just haul pancakes past mobs, most of the time you can zip past them between notifies, which means they just ignore you. Like "brute stealth," but with a bit of actual stealth.

How about the other side of the toon though - what are some great concepts for nrg aura? I kinda have one I like (except that it's accidentially derivative of that Jet Li movie, "The One" ), but I want to rename my scrapper and might go with a different one. Drawing a blank and I was logging into to ask the forumites for ideas when I saw this thread.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MaHaBone23 Also- the Stun protection hole... ugh.

Wait .. What?

Have a 50 DM/EA brute who is immortal and a 50 KM/EA who is nigh immortal. Both are obscenely fun. EA is my favorite armor set now, slightly edging out Shield.

I've noticed My StJ/EnA brute getting stunned on occasion. I usually chalk that up to a toggle drop, but it was always a Stun.

I thought maybe EnA had a stun gap, like DA's Confuse gap.

Then I checked the wiki:
Toggle: Self +Res(Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Repel, Knockback, Teleport, DEF Debuff), Self +Recharge, Foe -Recharge
So technically it does have Stun protection. Its just this game employs gifted chimps to write its copy, and keep switching terms as the whim pleases them.

It was on a recent ITF. Not just Romulus' obnoxious rez Stun (which my WP tank had no problem with), but the Mintotaurs and Cyclopes as well.

I have a KM/EA scrapper 50+3 and it is WONDERFUL. Great fun leveling it, each click makes something good happen for you and bad for the enemy.

It's aces. I had already gotten my EA brute to 50 before the set buff and with Io'ing he was very tough despite the nature of the set as it was. Now he's simply "uber".

Energy Aura is very good.

The only thing I would change about the set, if I could, would be to take the +recharge taunt aura out of Entropic Aura and change Energy Drain from a +end clicky to a taunt aura toggle that does both +recovery and +recharge. But that's my own personal preference, and the set works just fine as is.

The only real downside of the set is that the stealth power is a vital part of your defense, making up ~5-6% after slotting. This becomes a serious pain in missions where you have to escort someone AND fight off enemies at the same time. It's more of a nuisance than a dealbreaker, though.

Last night my level 41 TW/EA Brute ran level 50 tips sidekicked. His slotting isn't fully complete and won't be until 47, but even then he was surviving +3x8 spawns without too much trouble other than some difficulty landing hits. After slotting and getting the Alpha in place, he'll be well within a purple's distance of Incarnate softcap (hitting 56% defense on a max target Energy Drain).

Oh yes, and regarding the mez protection: the Energy Aura holes are confuse and terrorize. Everything else is protected.

It is, as others have said, 'very good'. It is an excellent defense-based set now.

It works as well as other defense based sets, in that it is relatively easy to softcap, and provides a 'fair bit' of S/L Resistance on top of that.

It does, however, suffer from the fate that all defense based sets do in that A) the game has several situations that negate defense (e.g. Devouring Earth Quartz emanators, etc.) B) lucks provide a greater boost to survivability than sturdy, and C) Defense buffs are very common (in both powersets and IOs) whereas resistance buffs are rare.

Once your reach 45% defense (and 59%, is it?, in iTrials), the only thing that will really boost your survivability is resistance. Resistance sets have a huuuge advantage over defense sets in that they can easily achieve the magic 45% defense number with either IOs alone or often they reach 32.5% Defense with IOs (where only one [luck] will achieve the 'soft cap' defense).

Having played numerous armor sets to 50 and beyond, I find my /EA to quite strong, but will never match the performance of my resistance based characters simply due to the nature of IOs having defense bonuses being so common, and lucks being stronger than sturdy.