Twilight_Snow

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So your saying that some a Damage type that gets Defence and Resistance is the weakness of a set where there are Damage types with NO Defence or Resistace....right-o


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I didn't say that psionic is not a weakness of energy aura. Thematically, negative energy is already a weakness of energy aura. So, it's not a must for the set to have more weakness.

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What the heck does a +Stealth power have to do with your own +Perception? Besides the strech that because your hidden you can obseve things at your own pace.


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You can read the description of cloak of darkness, that will give you an explanation at least for this power. I don't think it's obvious to relate +perception to cloak of darkness either.

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Focused Fighting implies that your Focused on Fighting, seems easy to deduce a resistance to confusion from that. Focused Senses well thats a no brainer mate, its not like focusing ones senses wouldnt add to Perception.


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For example, if the powers of super reflex are called melee dodging, range dodging and aoe dodging, then having confusion resistance is not that obvious. So, you can see that the name of a power matters sometimes.

For energy aura, you can look at section B of the original post for several examples. For example, kinetic shield may have -speed, -movement resistance, because kinetic is related to movement. Power shield and energy protection can have energy drain protection added(or even detention resistance), because this can be implied from the name of the power.

I know that this kind of thing might be obvious sometimes. I try to collect more ideas, and this is one of the purpose of the thread. Very often, we might be limited by the fact that the set is called energy aura. But we can in fact go to each power and try to relate the power to something that is only loosely related to energy itself.

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Psi Defence, maybe but then EA wouldnt have much of a weakness would it. Psi has always been its weak point so Id stick to saying no or 10% Defence max with no Resistance.


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The intrinsic weakness of (positive) energy is in fact negative energy. That's why energy aura has a slightly lower negative energy defense. You can also find that electric armor has a slightly weaker negative energy resistance too. The opposite is true for dark armor, they are slightly weaker in energy damage.

For psionic defense, please refer to my post higher up in this thread. That post summarized what kind of power will have psionic defense.

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But Really, +Perception isnt needed for EA and its not really justifiable with the base Theme of the Powerset. Unless you get excessivly conseptual and say 'Yea, im bending my shielding around my head to magnify, and reflect so i can see behind me and far away and Etc'


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The original version of the suggestion summary didn't include +perception to energy cloak. Later, there are several posts mentioning that cloak of darkness has +perception. What I think is that cloak of darkness is probably special, and I guess the intention of energy cloak is probably just to be stealthy. But the suggestion of adding +perception to energy cloak was later included in the suggestion summary as I think it adds some flavor to the set. And it is just a minor thing, we can simply leave the decision to the dev if they look at this thread.

I also want to mention that certain abilities are added not because it clicks with the theme of the power set, but the ability can be implied by the name of a power within the set. I think super reflex is a good example, focused fighting has resistance against confusion, and focused senses has +perception. Apparently, super reflex is all about dodging attacks. But the name of the power can imply abilities more than just dodging.

So, I think there are some flexibilities in adding secondary bonus and abilities to powers in energy aura.

FYI, we are on the gimp list.

For fortitude, I now look at who take a lot of damage, and then put the buff on them. The people who take damage can be anybody actually, and depends strongly on the chemistry on the team. I recommend adopting a flexible scheme rather than a strict buff-order rule.

For adrenaline boost, I'm trying to put it on somebody who relies on regen for survivability, for example regen and willpower people. It's pretty effective, I think. I basically can forget about them and let them regen themselves. In the past, I tend to reserve it for blasters after nuke. I found that they can handle the end crash themselves, with blues or whatever. AB does have a nice recharge buff, I generally leave the job to kinetics, they just do it better.

For clear mind, I think you put it pretty nicely. However, I rather take tactics for the perception. In general, I think buffing clear mind is a real labor. The buff expires in 90 sec. If you have a team full of squishies, counting the animation time, you've to buff every minute. I mainly use it reactively. If I'm in good mood, I'll use it more on squishies in certain missions. I think laziness is the real factor here, not because we don't know how to use it.

I tried binds for a while for my empathy defender. It's not bad in particular if you get used to it. With the power tray detachable and customizable now, what I do now is to have a power tray for empathy powers, shape the tray in the way you want, then place it just beside the team window. This way, I can select team mates with mouse and then move the mouse pointer by an inch to click a heal or buff. I found it quick and convenient.

I like the idea of crash friendly.

As mentioned before, EA is pretty good in endurance management. However, endurance management does not help you survive directly. It is great that endurance management can work with overload to smooth out the crash. Both energy drain and conserve energy are already doing their job pretty well in this aspect. Maybe something more along this line can be done. I can see why whenever someone suggested to remove conserve power, someone else will object.

The suggested clickie(which is called power-up) and overload(together with energy drain and conserve power) as a whole package might be problematic. Because with sufficient +recharge, one can alternate overload and +def clickie the whole time. If a person can handle the crash really well, this combo might be a bit too good.

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Whatever are you talking about?

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Sticky got 5 stars!
/em dance

I'm depressed that this thread gets 5 star, but the poor sticky gets nothing.

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By the way, what exactly is the "theme" of Energy "Aura"?

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I mentioned about the theme of energy aura in my first post. But I didn't explain what it is, because it is quite subjective about what energy is. For example, there are spiritual energy, as well as high-tech energy as in Star Trek. Both are energy but completely different in nature. I mention about the theme simply because I hope that the audience can think about how the power set is designed, and not just in terms of balance with other power sets.

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I never understand why you get a "stealth" power in an Energy set.
When I think of Energy or Energy powers in general in this game, it's a mix of these:
1. stuns
2. knockbacks
3. +recovery
4. drain endurance


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For the stealth, I think the dev probably borrows from the sci-fi shows, like the cloaking device. For the stuns and knockbacks, I think that it is more related to the attacks with both energy and smashing components, or even attacks with just smashing damage. In fact, someone(Frostweaver if I'm not wrong) said that repulse fits the theme of energy well. It's a good observation actually.

Sometimes, certain abilities are not obvious from the name of the power set, but the abilities are added due to the name of the power itself. For example, in SR, focused fighting has confuse resistance, and focused sense has a perception bonus. Both confuse resistance and +perception are not really obvious capability of super reflex, but are implied by the names of the powers. I think such scheme can be applied to energy aura as well(see section B.4 and B.5 in the first post for some examples).

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Of course, considering that despite sending messages to several rednames, none has even showed up in the thread to say 'It's far down on the power list' or even 'it's working as intended'. The best answer I have been able to come up with so far is "I am not prepared to comment on it." from Castle.


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Castle is smart. And the dev team has their own priority. We just need to continue our /em riot.

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And I am sorry if my comment seemed like it was poke fun at /EA. My main, first and favorite character is a lvl 50 sm/ea and I just wanted to throw out an idea that would make the set more unique comparatively to the other sets.


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There are a bunch of out-of-the-box suggestions in the first post that I collected. All ideas are inevitably criticized by the community. And after all, the thread is alive just because you all poke it from time to time.

The thread is being poked every few days. It seems like it is growing pretty slowly though, as we get a bit tired of it. I can update the first post with new suggestions, probably through Ex as I can't update it anymore. I'll wait till the thread gets bigger before making an update.

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3. Make the power able to accept Health Enhancement and have a base of 40% HP. This will be a Dull Pain/Conserve Power.

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The problem with this is that we already get that in overload.


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It is pretty tough to have a good solution for energy cloak and conserve power. They fit the theme of the set, sort of useful sometimes, but not that great in terms of survivability. I don't think dev care much about survivability as players do, I think they focus on concept and design variety.

A feasible way is to shuffle the abilities a little within the set. For example, take the defense out of energy cloak and put it in another toggle, then energy cloak can be truly optional(unsuppressed stealth is still superior than normal stealth). And also put the +max hp from overload to conserve power.(Personally, I don't think it's a big deal that overload already has +hp, as I doubt that you're using overload as if it is dull pain)

I think it is not a bad idea to add +hp component into conserve power, because it will still keep the original function, and simply add more flavor into it. It is better than removing a power and replace it with something else.

It is not easy to establish a firm ground that EA needs fixing. In particular, there are things outside of EA that needs to be taken into account. For example, how players slot with IO and HO. This is a cooperative game, so it is expected to leave room for buffs. It is supposed that an EA brute will desire buffs from ice shield, force field bubble and VEAT. Add on top of that, there are different playstyle for brutes.

The whole thread has been focusing on suggestions for fixing, and implicitly assumed that something needs to be fixed. And we're in fact not quite explicit about why it needs to be fixed, and whether it is really necessary. And even if we try to explain, we don't really have concrete quantitative data to back us up.

My personal opinion is that there are things that click with the theme of energy aura, which are not yet incorporated into the set. Please see Section B in the first post of this thread. Most of the suggestions in that section (except B3) are at the level of QoL improvements.

Also, if you look at the thread as a whole(and previous threads), we are basically asking for a trick or two when the mobs are attacking EA's weakness, rather than just taking the hit. I think it is not entirely unjustified.

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and I am still not sure that I consider elec's 41% resistance and huge toxic hole to be superior to /ea's 25% s/l/n defense, 30% to everything else except 6% psi, and 12% resistance to s/l/n/e types. Oh, and a better tier 9. Truthfully I think it needs improvement even more than /ea does cause it's harder to 'fix' it to have reasonable defenses, but I am not going to have this huge discussion again.


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I also played an electric armor brute. I agree with you that electric armor might not be better. My feeling is that the performance of electric armor is average most of the time, while energy aura has up and down. Energy aura doesn't have extra tricks when it's not working. I think it is a general feature of defense sets to have up and down, just that it is more apparent for energy aura because of the various weakness in the defense.

And btw, thanks for messaging Castle about this thread. We'll see what will happen. There are two stickies in the brute forum. Beside the brute guide and faq, this is the other sticky. If Castle doesn't know the existence of this thread, I'm wondering....

yeah, Spiritchaser. But I don't really want to say it out.

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I don't have any idea why we are still discussing this. No dev has even the slightest interest in improving or even looking at EA. To them it's working as intended.


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Yeah, I know, Frostweaver.

I bet energy aura is more or less working as intended from the dev's point of view. There is a lot of difference between powerset designing and players' expectation, as players spend hours on their toons and develop a passion on them, while the dev can be pretty cold on the issues we suggested. I'm not really surprised if energy aura is not being looked at. But who knows, we never know dev's plan.

I'm just giving the thread a kick, and keeping the thread alive. I know that we're just repeating the same thing over and over again, maybe a little different perspective every time. I still think that this is a great resource when energy aura will be proliferated in the future.

The thread starts off with various ways to fix energy aura. However, we're not really clear in what ways energy aura is lacking. I don't really mean specifics like no psionic defense, as there are sets that have similar weakness but they are fine. I'm thinking about some general feelings about the set.

You're welcome to write your own. If you like, I do have some specific questions that you can follow:

1. Do you think that energy aura is gimped or broken? Or is it simply under-performing when compared to other secondaries? Or do you think that it is terrible just because it is defense-based?

2. What do you think about energy aura regarding:
a) overall powerset design(do you like the theme of the powerset? Any bad design in the set?)
b) survivability in real in-game experience(any problems with AV, large teams, or specific mob groups that nail energy aura too easily? Feel free to express your own experience)
c) IO slotting(how easy it is to softcap defense, or to patch up the defense holes? Is energy aura ok out of the box with simple slotting or do you need to dedicate more resources in slotting energy aura than other powersets?)

Actually, most of these questions are implicitly answered or being mentioned in the thread. Just that the information is usually embedded with some other things, it would be nice to have a list of issues, and then a list of suggestions.

Yes, there is a 30% chance of -recovery for 4 sec.

It looks like the info in the power management screen is ok. For the info window, the window with the enh is also right. The info window without the enh is not right. But I wonder why the info window without enh(the 4th hyper link) is blue in color, which looks like a hero window to me.

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Energy Aura also does not proliferate well. When it goes to Tankers and Scrappers, they will have the ability to have two Conserve Powers. And we'll most likely see CP removed from EA when it goes hero-side, which means it'll probably be replaced with another effective damage mitigation method. Translation: EA will be better for Scrappers and Tankers than it will be for Brutes and Stalkers.


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It'll be interesting to see how proliferation will do to energy aura. Will they remove a power(for example CP)? If they remove a power, will they really give the brute's energy aura a similar treatment? You know, they might just change the proliferated set and leave the original as it is. I can imagine a mini riot if the hero's energy aura can get a click heal, and villains continue to conserve their power.

Every time I think about conserve power in energy aura, it reminds me of force field. Force field has the same knockback implemented in 3 or 4 different ways. Energy aura has endurance management implemented in two different ways, while players are more interested in survivability.

When I went through the previous thread about energy aura, discussion about energy cloak popped out occassionally. In fact, I didn't really say much about it in the summary in the first post.

I'll attempt to pull several arguments together. I find it hard to write it well.

First of all, I'll put it up front, there is nothing wrong with a brute(and also scrapper and tanker) to be stealthy. In fact, being stealthy is a playstyle, which can be very effective depending on the player. Secondly, a player can be stealthy and draw the aggro at the same time. These two things are not really mutually exclusive. It depends on what powers that a character has. (But it is true that you have to work a bit harder to draw aggro if you are stealthy.)

However, there are suggestions to replace energy cloak by something else. Usually, the suggestions were vetoed. The reason is pretty simple: don't take away an existing ability. In fact, this is the very essense of the so-called cottage rule: Even if you don't like a power, there are always somebody who has a use of it.

I think I can understand why some people don't like energy cloak on a brute. I believe we all understand. At a conceptual level, being stealthy doesn't really look like a brutal brute for some people(just some people, not all people). Although, as I said above, you can take aggro and tank even being stealthy, the dislike towards energy cloak is more related to personal preference or character concept, rather than the functionality of the character.

Therefore, I think the issue is not really about energy cloak itself, but rather the set doesn't really give one an option to be stealthy or not. Apparently, you can skip energy cloak, which is an option. On the other hand, you don't want to miss out the defense that energy cloak offers. Basically, you pick energy cloak just because of the defense, whether you want to be stealthy or not. This is quite different from a tanker, for example, who wants to be stealthy. The tanker(except dark armor) will need to take the stealth power pool, or maybe buy a stealth IO, which is really optional.

This post is not intended to make a verdict on energy cloak. Very often, the discussion about energy cloak is something like "remove energy cloak!" And then somebody else will say,"don't touch my energy cloak!" all in caps. Hopefully, people will find this post helpful, whether what I wrote click with what you think or not.

Actually, it would be interesting to have two conserve powers. /em chuckle. Afterall, it's not really a power that is directly related to survivability. And it's not uncommon to have a power in a powerset that acts like that in a power pool. Two conserve powers might lead to builds without stamina, for example. Maybe it's a bad thing. But anyway, it would be nice to have a power trimmed off during proliferation, then many suggestions in this thread and previous threads can be considered.

And I'm not sure what the community would think about a stealthy tank. One can argue that brutes are not tanks, so a stealthy brute can be a viable playstyle. But I'm not sure about energy cloak on a tank. I guess the tank might like it, but then other teammates would complain.

Here is Snow's style "reverse quote":
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CoD on Dark tanks is likely to be a good indicator of how tanks would feel about energy cloak


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The situation is a little different though. Dark is mostly a resistance set, so cloak of darkness is optional. If a tank doesn't want to be stealthy, the power can be skipped, or temporarily switched off. But energy cloak is kinda mandatory for energy aura because the little defense would be helpful and most of us don't want to skip it.

Note that click heal can be implemented through suggestion B3(energy drain) in the first post, then your concern #1, 2 and maybe even 4 are resolved.

The popular suggestions for improving EA is to add some sort of heal/regen and to patch the defense holes in EA.

We all know that EA's defense has a weakness in psionic, toxic and negative energy. Here, I'll present some information about which power/powerset gets psionic and toxic res/def. Hopefully, this will make us have a better idea on how to add psionic defense and toxic resistance into EA.

Below are the powers that grant toxic resistance(tier 9 powers not included):

I. High-tolerance powers
invulnerability: resist element
willpower: high pain tolerance
regeneration: resilience

II. Healing/HP powers
fiery aura: healing flame
stone armor: earth's embrace
regeneration: reconstruction
ice armor: hoarfrost
ninjitsu: kuji-in sha
cold domination: frostwork

III. Poison-related
poison: alkaloid, antidote, elixir of life

IV. Bubble-buff powers
force field: deflection shield
sonic resonance: sonic barrier, sonic dispersion

V. dark armor: dark embrace
(I don't know how to understand this one, because my knowledge of black magic is limited to Harry Potter)

From this summary, it is quite obvious what kind of theme will have toxic resistance. For brute secondary sets, we probably need some kind of type I and II powers, which EA lacks actually. To add toxic resistance to the existing EA powers, one way is to add it to the tier 9 power overload as in electric armor.

For powers that grant psionic res/def, we have(tier 9 powers not included):

I. Dark powers
dark armor: obsidian shield
dark miasma: shadow fall

II. Mind-related
willpower: mind over body
willpower: indomitable will
ninjitsu: kuji-in rin

III. "Specialty" powers
electric armor: static shield
stone armor: minerals
force field: dispersion bubble

If a power is dark-themed or mind-related, then it is entitled to some kind of psionic protection. EA doesn't have powers of these two types. However, one can add psionic defense to overload, and can fight for having a "specialty" power. For example, many suggestions want to add psionic defense to entropy shield.

Actually, in my request to Ex to make this thread sticky, I said that EA threads come up frequently and similar suggestions are made over and over again. A sticky will probably make the forum cleaner. The request was granted from a forum management perspective. So, don't have high hope that EA is now a priority project for the dev. But of coz, the thread is sticky now, it can potentially have more influence than the original intention.

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I also want to add. I do NOT Agree with some of the points the OP posted. KEEP Conserve Power and KEEP ENERGY CLOAK


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Note that I only try to summarize the suggestions for EA. I'm still taking notes for new suggestions. I try my best not to put a lot of my personal preference on what to be included in the summary.

A lot of the suggestions want to merge the two passives into one. There are some who suggested to throw away conserve power or energy cloak, which is in fact quite controversial. I finally decided to include it into the summary because it is a summary afterall.

Edit: I'll like to add that the summary in the first post is just a collection of most of the suggestions in Big Soto's thread. The summary is still lacking in the sense that it doesn't present any statistics. For example, some suggestions are mentioned many times, while some are only mentioned once or twice. Also, most of the posts present suggestions as a whole package. For example, one popular EA fix is to add a heal, add psionic defense to entropy and add toxic resistance to overload. These three suggestions are highly correlated, but the summary does't provide a hint of it.

Thanks Ex for making the thread sticky!

I bet a lot of us are trying out new powersets and VEAT. In addition, there are power proliferation and brutes get SR. I think EA is still a fun powerset, with some nice tricks and more multi-dimensional than SR. Hopefully, a sticky will make this a central place for more focused discussion. And maybe one day, this poor powerset can get some attention!

I want to bring a couple things here.

The first one is the "cottage" rule as mentioned in the first post. I think that part of the suggestions in section A(merging and replacing powers) can be handled by the suggestion to enhance energy drain(labeled as B3 in the summary). I understand that the set might not be fixed without having a major surgery. However, it would be the best if we can get around the issue without breaking the cottage rule.

The second thing concerns the theme of the set. I think Daemodand has a good point which I quote here:
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....thematically Force Fields in this game (which is what EA is) use typed not positional Defense (positional means you're agile and dodge incoming attacks, typed means things hit you but just get deflected harmlessly).


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The positional defense is usually associated with super reflexes and ninjitsu. For power sets that use a barrier to deflect attacks, the defense is usually based on damage types. I understand that it is really better most of the time to have positional defense, but it might be a good idea to go with the overall design of the game, rather than going against it. (force fields have both positional and typed defense, such that the buff won't discriminate super reflex)

Another thing about the theme of EA is the weakness in negative damage, which is rarely brought up. There is an underlying theme of (positive) energy against negative energy. Both energy aura and electric armor are energy based, and they are slightly weaker against negative energy attacks. The reverse is true for dark armor, which is based on negative energy, and it is slightly weaker against energy attacks.

Thank you. I missed the defense debuff resistance discussions in the fix energy aura thread. Two entries added(B8 and B9) to the summary above.

Edit:

I also added energy cloak as a candidate power to be removed in Section A of the summary. I saw this suggestion several times in the fix energy aura thread and here. I hesitated whether this should be included or not, as the suggestions are usually adding functionalities, not removing the existing ones. But as a honest summary of all the suggestions, I added it now.

Maybe, a viable suggestion is to take the defense out of energy cloak and put it in entropy shield. Then energy cloak will be purely a stealth power that players can choose to skip or not. Right now, energy cloak is practically mandatory because players don't want to miss the defense that it offers, but then players are forced to be stealthy which doesn't click with the brute theme.