OneWhoBinds

I agree.

My argument is purely from the game mechanics point of view. Right now, there is NO 'Tourist' content. And unless/until we get some, the Devs are going to work under the idea that, if you are running these missions, you ARE working to change your alignment. Because that is the only reason you have for being there.

Is it right? No. Both RP and game continuity wise, this makes no sense. But until there content exclusively designed for Rogues in Paragon, or Vigilantes in the Isles, the Devs have no reason to add a morality choice to these missions.

While the practical reasons for pairing Gravity Control with Energy Assault are fine, I am mystified... HOW are Gravity Control and Energy Assault a 'Thematic Combination?' If Gravity did some energy-based damage somewhere, maybe I could see it, but it is all Smashing damage. They just... really don't seem all that matched, to me.

Honestly?

I want one that puts some effort into +Range. Right now, if you want any significant +Range (for, you know, cone attacks?) then you are limited to... Detonation. Which may bring some added range to the plate, but lacks Accuracy. (I'd have rather lost some damage, than lost a reasonable amount of Accuracy.)

Throw in the meaningless set bonuses attached to it, and all Detonation is good for is frankenslotting.

That's what I would like to see. One that boosts recharge? Sure, why not.

It would. But I don't think they would add that, because that's Electric Armor's schtick.

And to compare... Dark Armor can stun enemy minions, at the cost of the their own HP. And they pay the HP cost, even against enemies that can't be stunned, so the power can quickly become counter productive.

Putting in a sustainable -Recovery power will effectively completely shut down anything that doesn't die too fast. Not like the End Drain in Electric Armor, where they will still get off the occasional attack, but a complete shut down when they lose all their endurance. Which means that you'll see it most on the tougher enemies... like bosses and higher.

Considering the price DA pays for a minion stun... I really don't want to think of what kind of cost the Devs would level against a sustainable -Recovery power...

Except the added typed defense are to the attacks that Ice Armor provide either extreme amounts of resistance to (Cold), or is its thematic hole (fire.) So yes, Fire damage can be annoying, but at least they can still be slowed and the attacks weakened.

Additional typed defense isn't more mitigation in this case, its just... more of the same. And stealth just falls flat, compared to the plethora of tools Ice can provide.

Yes, I consider Entropy Shield underwhelming. No other set uses a toggle that JUST provides mez protection. Would turning it into the Taunt aura be ideal? No. But it wouldn't break the cottage rule, so it could be done.

If this were ideal, Entropy Shield would provide the stealth and +Def, as well as the mez protection, and Energy Cloak would be a proper form of taunt aura. But they aren't, so I'm trying to work with what is available.

Numbers would have to be handled delicately, but I think it would only be a issue if the self buff power could be made permanent, or worse, stacked. If that is avoided, then I think it would be balanced.

See above regarding the -recovery idea. (And actually, now that I think of it... wouldn't changing a click power into a toggle be a violation of the cottage rule? I honestly don't know...)

I think you are expecting too much from these, if you think they may break the set. The reason I proposed these is because (a) I thought they would fit with the theme of the set, and (b) Energy Aura ALSO possesses the some of the only remaining Auto powers that don't provide some kind of perk besides its primary effect (the small amount of resistance.) Which again, makes them ideal placed to add something to bolster the set without violating the cottage rule.

I can get behind those changes, although I suspect reducing the activation time might be a pipe dream...

Nope. Starts at 40 seconds, and can easily be brought down to 20. Of course, FA will almost always be using it whenever it comes up, so there is a reason for that...

And, in regards to Leo_G... yeah, Energy Drain is auto hit. But since it still needs those targets to feed off of, the comparison can still be made. And I, personally, have no idea how Energy Aura is supposed to keep 10 targets around them even using Energy Drain primarily as a taunt...GAH! Why did they screw with that power so much?

On the other hand, making Conserve Power have a +Energy Damage effect might be a nice alternative...

Wait... you think adding more HP would make EA too much like Ice Armor, but adding -Recharge won't?

Oh, wait. You're recommending adding a Recovery debuff. Oh, yes... I really see that happening. Instead of continually draining the enemies energy, you prevent them from gaining any back... uh huh. You don't think that sounds, I don't know... a little overpowered on a melee set? Especially one that is perpetual, meaning that enemies in it might as well be stunned, for all the effect they will have? No, I think asking for more base HPs and an added damage boost is FAR more likely to happen, then that.

I'm also going to guess you don't know Ice Armor too well, then. In addition to Typed defense, Ice Armor provides:

A Dull Pain clone (Click heal and +HP)
Chilling Embrace - a powerful taunt aura that also inflicts -Dam, -Speed, and -Rech on enemies.
A Damage Aura
And Energy Absorption, which is may not give as much End per enemy as Energy Drain, but also significantly boosts their defense.

With the changes made to fury, it takes more than just unlimited endurance to sustain Fury. And the kind of playstyle that DOES sustain their fury... is pretty much counter to what EA seems to be built for.

And unlimited blue doesn't seem to prevent other sets from getting better mitigation, better damage, and/or just more perks & bennies than Energy Aura can provide.

But hey, what do I know? I'm not a numbers guy. I can't crunch up data showing that the combination would be overpowered or not. My proposal is honestly more about make four near-useless powers in the set (Okay, 3 near-useless and one ultimately underwhelming) into something viable, while covering the holes in the set, as I see them.

... did you just compare Energy Drain's heal to Fiery Aura's Healing Flame? Healing flame is up far more often, takes much less time to cast, and is far more reliable.

Energy Drain's heal is more like a much, MUCH weaker form of Dark Regeneration.

Huh... I did not know that. But we'll just have to disagree on the last bit. I think EA needs SOMETHING else to back up its defense, and additional Hit Points is simply one of the easiest ways I can think of to provide that.

All true points. Save that - in my opinion - EA has no real strengths to play to.

Still, Dark Melee works great with any defense based primary, and EA is no exception to that. Yes, sets like Super Strength and Stone Melee can give EA some more breathing room. But where other armor sets* eventually develop into into a set capable of standing on its own, without relying on additional mitigation from the melee set. Energy Aura never achieved that for me.

(* - Okay, I'll admit, EA's not alone in this distinction. Fiery Aura is in the same boat. But nobody take FA for its defense value... they take it to kill things faster.)

I will admit, I missed the point about the additional End drain in your original proposal. I don't think that will happen - Electric Armor's already covers sapping enemies - but it is there.

The heal is pathetic. In my experience, the heal manages to just cover the amount of damage you take while Energy Drain activates. You'd need to be near, if not at or past, the soft cap to actually get health back from that 'heal.'

End draining the enemies does bupkis unless you can get them to zero. In its current form, EA can not do that. Thus, it is not an additional form of mitigation.

And yes, the raw defense numbers given are decent. That is undeniable. But when there is NOTHING backing that defense up, 'decent' doesn't cut it.

If it 'excelled' at the defense it provided, it would - at the very least - have more Defense Debuff Resistance. Instead, it has the same kind of DDR as Ice Armor or Invulnerability get, without the additional tools those sets have to handle a cascade failure.

No, not every set has strong utilities, or even provides much of any at all. EA has two - Endurance management, and built in stealth.

The Endurance management, in its current state, is provided in redundant amounts. And it IS very sweet to just keep going and going... like a wreaking ball version of the Energizer Bunny. But that alone doesn't help too much. If you can't keep your Green Bar filled, than an unlimited Blue Bar is meaningless.

The stealth... I have many complaints about the stealth, but will freely admit that most of them are simply me. (Pss... Devs... if I wanted to ply my character's silhouette, I would have rolled a Stalker in the first place. You gave Dark Armor the ability to lessen the visible effects of their stealth, can't Energy Cloak get the same?) The only mechanical complaint I have is that... well, the Stealth isn't OPTIONAL. The defense numbers for the main toggles were all adjusted to compensate for the defense provided in the stealth... which means you need to run the stealth to get the kind of numbers that you are expecting.

And an offense boost can come in more forms than direct damage or recharge buffs. Invulnerability, for example, gets +To Hit through Invincibility. The only other set I know that does not provide SOME form of offense boost... is Regeneration.

Again, this may just be me, by my experiences with three EA brutes (Super Strength, Kinetic Melee, and Dual Blades) SOs just don't cut it. I never got to the point where I was confident that I could survive increasing my difficulty settings. A brute in his/her late 20s and early 30s should not still feel like I can't dare run anything over +0/+0 for fear of continual faceplanting.

I've done that before. I keep holding out that the Devs will eventually go back and try to fix this set again. (And hopefully actually do something that makes a difference, rather than just stack ANOTHER effect onto Energy Drain.)

My personal suggestions are to add +HP to Dampening Field, Slow and Endurance Drain resistance to Energy Protection, turn Conserve Power into an +Damage, +Recharge, Endurance Discount self buff click (basically a variation of Accelerate Metabolism, using an Endurance Discount instead of an Endurance Recovery boost.) Finally, I'd make Entropy Shield also be a Taunt aura, and have it inflict anyone within 8 feet with a To Hit debuff. To complete everything, have the taunt and to-hit debuff suppress while steathed, just like several Auras do for Stalkers.

There you go. Added Hit Points (which helps both the small heal, and natural regeneration) some additional debuff resistance, a source of additional offensive power - to aid in the 'kill it first' form of mitigation - and a taunt aura in a rather wasted space that provides a nice, complimentary debuff that would really improve the sets performance. All in a nice package that does not require people who like the set as is to change their play styles.

...

A 50% heal? Only if you have enough enemies in range. And my experience with Energy Aura is that it needs less than 30 seconds to go from full health to dead.

And frankly? The last thing it needs is MORE Endurance Management tools.

Energy Aura is my perfect example of a kludge (a clumsy and inefficient - but successful - solution to a problem.) That problem being that Ice Armor wouldn't work with the Fury mechanic at CoV's launch, so the needed an alternative ASAP. It started off as a kludge, and it is STILL a kludge. But it IS working, (however poorly) so they don't have to fix it.

Energy Aura's issues can be summed up as this:

1) It provides only a single form of damage mitigation, and it doesn't even excel at it.
2) It provides limited utility, and managed to be redundant at that.
3) It provides absolutely no form of offensive boost.

Energy Aura is a barely working set. It, quite frankly, can not stand on its own merits. Heavy investment in IOs can bring it up to some decent levels of performance, but that's not what the game is supposed to be balanced around, is it? With only SOs, it is a mighty squishy set, and one that can not stand without significant aid from its primary, and pools.

So, yeah. I've got to agree with Nethergoat - Fix Energy Aura for Brutes, before considering taking it to Scrappers and Tankers...

???

Okay, so... you don't want a set called "Psychic Armor" to be primarily about psychic defense? What? I think your explanation if going about ten feet over my head.

WHAT is the purpose of your set, then? Because, looking back at the original, is seemed to have a low defense values, a lot of clicks that provide little to moderate survivability boosts, and a pretty serious mez hole.

Maybe. I just know that I hate having to rely on enemies being close by when I need a boost. And, I figured since the set would have lower resistances to most of the damage types in the game, it would need some extra help. But if the psynergy is too much, then oh well.

Weave gives Immobilization resistance, not protection. Combat Jumping gives Immobilize protection. But Immobilizes aren't really the issue. Your original set had no HOLD protection. And leaving a hole to a hard mez like Holds is simply not acceptable.

Furthermore, no set should be balanced around the idea that the players need to take pool powers X or Y to work. That is just a bad design to begin with, and while some legacy sets can get away with it, new sets should not.

...

Yeah, I'm still not seeing it. If you want to go that route, then it should be a variation of Hibernate. Because right now, here's what it sounds like:

You trigger Out of Body Experience -> Character goes intangible for 3-5 seconds -> Suddenly is impervious to damage for X period of time -> Becomes intagible again, JUST as they crash (likely losing all End and a lot of HP in the process,) conveniently allowing them to escape without consequence from their crash.

How is that, at any point an "Out of Body Experience?" It makes no sense, it mitigates its own crash, and simply does not strike me as a feasible design.

Hmm... never used a resummoning strategy, myself. Would you bother using the upgrades in this strategy?

Okay, while I dislike the idea of a melee Psy set ("I can melt your brain with the power of my mind! I... just need to get within 5 feet to do so....") I'll take a stab at this.

The main issue here is that your sacrificing a power attack in your single-target attack chain, for either a short-range AoE, or a non-damaging PBAoE of dubious value. (-Perception does nothing if you already have the enemies agro, as once that happens, they ignore perception. And -to hit isn't likely to be significant on its own, but there's nothing else in the set to stack it with.)

The second issue I see is the lack of alternate damage types. With the roadblock like robots and Carnies in the way of psychic damage, this set should have no more than 2 or 3 pure psychic damage attacks. Everything else should have an alternative component. (Probably Smashing, but I could see arguments for Lethal or Fire, as well.) As it stands, you've only provided 3 such attacks (one of which doesn't make any sense), and I just don't think that will go over well.

Here's a quick redesign...

1. Mind Tap - minor single target damage (smash/psi) -recharge
2. Mind Probe - moderate single target damage (psi) -recharge
3. TK Burst - Melee cone; Moderate Smashing/Psi damage, with a good chance for a Knockup, -Recharge.
4. Pyrokinesis - single target attack, high Psi/Fire damage, with a fire DoT chance rather than a -recharge.
5. TK Smash - Short range cone (or targeted AoE), Moderate Psi/Smashing damage, Knockdown, -Recharge
6. Taunt
7. Mind Spike - Single target, Superior Psi/Lethal damage, and -Recharge
8. Psychic Vortex - "Soul Drain" type power; The more targets it, the stronger the +Damage, +To Hit boost; Instead of doing damage, Vortex applies a -recharge, -damage, -to hit debuff on the targets. (Maybe a low magnitude stun as well/instead?)
9.Psychic Roar-PbAoE high Psi damage, with a long (cooldown), Mag 3 stun and -Recharge.

...looking at it on paper, it's probably a bit overpowered, now. Hmmm... someone with better numbers knowledge would have to go over it, I think.

Okay, I have to ask what your plan is with Psi Armor? Right now, it looks like a resist based set, that has a lot of holes in it. As it stands, no one is going to go for a defense set that does not provide Hold protection. (Remember, Acrobatics is the only other source in the game for reliable hold protection, and it only provides 2 points.) And, once again, -Perception does nothing once you have the enemies' agro!

Okay, as I see it, Psychic armor should provide absolute superior protection from Psychic attacks, high smashing/lethal protection, and moderate protection to Fire/Cold/Energy/Negative Energy. Leaving mez protection has to at least contain Stun, Sleep, and holds; Fear, Confuse, and Placate would be appropriate. If you want to leave a Knockback and/or immobilize hole... well, I'm not sure how well that will go over these days, but sure.

I like Drain Psyche, but I'd throw in a Dull Pain clone. And I have no idea what your God Mode is supposed to be...

I also don't really care much for Click Mez protection. I did like the concept of spreading it out among toggles, though...

Let's See...

1. Mind Over Body - Smash/Lethal/Psi Resistance; Stun, Sleep protection toggle
2. Psi Shards - PbAoE psionic damage toggle
3. Biofeedback - Dull Pain clone
4. Neurofeedback - Smash/Lethal/Psi Resist Auto; Fear Protection
5. Indomitable Will - Fire/Cold/Energy/N. Energy/Psi Resistance, Hold, Knockback and Confuse protection Toggle.
6. Drain Psyche - PBAoE click, increases the character's Regeneration and recovery rate per target hit, while each target has a -Regen, -Recovery debuff placed.
7. Precognition - +Recharge + Run Speed AUTO
8. Psychic Shield - Large Psychic Defense, minor defense to all other types, Immobilize, and Placate protection toggle
9. Mental Juggernaut - Basic resistance-based God Mode, The crash will drain away most of the character's Health and Endurance, drop all toggles, and inflict an 8-10 second stun.

If I could figure out how to make this a more balanced hybrid resistance and defense based set, I would, but I'm not that good. My thoughts here are that a slotted Psychic Armor Brute/Scrapper should have at least 70% Psychic resistance in the end, with maybe 35% Smashing/Lethal, Fire/Cold/Energy/N. Energy will all be in the 20s. They should also have about 20% Psychic defense, with they other damage types being around 5%. Toxic will be an obvious hole, but the overall numbers for a lot of damage types is low.

Still, I wouldn't want to take this set PvE. There just aren't that many psychic dealing enemies to warrant a set designed around protection from psychic damage...

Same here. However, considering the OTHER issues that Masterminds are having to put up with alone (in addition to the usual cadre of bugs to squash)... I can easily see this being very low on the priority list.

I mean, I can partially understand the reasoning here... they don't want someone to just summon a Shivan/HVAS/Snow Beast and have it just go to town while they wait at the side. Its negative impact on Masterminds is just another unintentional slap in the face.

...correct me if I'm wrong, but the bombs are all on the ground, right? Wouldn't you just need everyone to be flying (you know, with a purchasable jet pack, if nothing else), and then level him with ranged buffs, controls, and attacks?

Or can the mines actually trigger and damage a target 20 feet off the ground? Admittedly, this can make the Tanks/Scrappers/Brutes/Stalkers a bit useless in the fight, but hey...

Give the Electric Melee/Electric Armor Brute (and, I suppose Scrappers and Tanks with that combo) a 5 star too. Power Sink & Lightning rod will decimate the Endurance of an entire group of enemies, with Lightning Field finishing off whatever is left over, and keeping them at 0. Throw on the other Electric attacks? And you're just wailing away at an EB who's down to shooting you nasty glares and the occasional Brawl.

It should also be noted that most of the Electric Melee attacks do have a short -Recovery included. Only Lightning Clap and Lightning Rod don't. (And I'm not entirely sure about Lightning Rod...) (And, okay, Build Up and Taunt don't, either... sheesh...) This is how they can reliably sap hard targets. Pretty much, if you can survive until their End bottoms out, then you are golden. And with Energize in the Electric Armor set now... that's become a whole lot easier.