Saikochoro

Or Tank of Death. You guys are making me question my name. Even so, I think I’ll keep it.

So then my tank will definitely have capped resists at low health. Awesome!

How much resistance does the scaling add as you go down in health? Does anyone know? I was wondering with a good base, and especially with rune up, if they can cap out.

So, I got really into energy aura in the last month and made a post in the scrapper forums why there are so few scrappers taking EA. During the discussion I was told about how strong SR can be on tankers. In my quest to see theoretically how strong energy aura might be able to be I put together an MA/SR build for tankers to export totals for set bonuses that I thought could be pretty close to what I could use on EA. However, in putting that build together I saw how strong MA/SR can be and decided to make one using the build I put together. Here is the build: Capped positionals (of course), very high resistances with rune (respectable without), and 12 seconds short of perma hasten. Now here are the totals. First set is with rune of protection on (50% uptime) as well as the defense/tanker ATO resistance proc bonuses on storm kick (no incarnates and not taking into account scaling resistances): Now, the totals when rune is off and storm kick bonuses/tanker ATO resistance proc bonus is off (no incarnates and not taking into account scaling resistances): What do you guys think? Still going to need to probably carry around some greens. Or maybe I can take the rebirth destiny for healing when I need it.

I definitely not denying there is a psi hole. Most sets have something that is a little annoying to deal with. While I think it would be nice for older sets to not have huge holes, I do think they can be mitigated solo to some extent. On teams is rarely an issue due to everyone having maneuvers. I doubt they are going to go and fill in the holes though. If they are it’s probably not high on their to do list.

I do understand what you are saying. Don’t get me wrong. That’s why I always qualify that I’m using rune, which will usually have 50% uptime. It’s still a pool power that is factored into the strength of a build. Being that the base mitigation of energy aura is capped defenses the rune can be applied to buff up resistance values whenever lucky attacks get through. The fact is that given the same tools that other builds have with power pools and set bonuses energy aura is a power house for any archetype that can take it. It has a base of very good defense, resistances that can be boosted very high to lower any damage that makes it through the defense, and a heal that takes care of the rest. Not saying other builds can’t be made strong with pool powers and set bonuses. The while purpose of the thread was to highlight that energy aura is indeed a very strong set. Edit: not to derail the thread too far, but our discussion made me interested in MA / SR tanker. The build I made in mids for it to export set bonuses has incarnate capped defenses just like you said. With set bonuses, rune, and tanker ATO proc I have 86% s/l, 75.6 f/c, 69.6% e/n, and 53.1 toxic/psi resists. That is before scaling resist are taken into account. Subtract 25% from each to get the non rune totals. Looks to be very fun indeed. Starting making him last night as we were having a discussion.

I never said it was. It just stacks well with it. It is used quite often in many builds. There is no reason to not use various tools. It’s no different than including tough, weave, and hasten in builds. Set bonuses aren’t part of any powerset either. They are additional. I would use rune with super reflexes as well.

Nope. No incarnates. I would have indicated so in my calculation if I included incarnates. Just rune of protection. But I use rune on most any defense set. EA is mainly a defense set. It just also has resists that can be boosted very high with rune and set bonuses. It also has a self heal, recovery, and recharge powers. It is an extremely strong set no matter how you look at it.

I was over zealous in my assumptions for tanker values and forgot to exclude toxic as well. Energy armor on tankers would give 25% more base resist than on the other melees. My brute is capped on S/L. So tanker would easily get that. He is at 60% on F/C, 66% energy, and 54% negative. The higher base values would give a bit more. I had incorrectly assumed that rune may provide higher values on tanker. Based on set bonuses though the tanker could still get very high resist values on f/c/e/n. Still I am sure energy aura would still be extremely strong on tankers. Having higher health and self heal would only make it more so. All that said, energy aura is far more than just an “adequate” set for stalkers and scrappers. It is amazing and easily top tier on both. It is equally strong on brutes. Edit: I played around in MIDs for set bonuses using MA/SR tanker as a baseline to export set bonuses since both sets would have a lot of defense slotting. Slotting would be slightly different, but I could largely use the same sets. The resistances given by energy aura for e/n/f/c would be about 14.86%. The set bonuses for f/c would be about 40.25%. The set bonus for e/n would be about 34.25%. The tanker ATO proc would be 6.7%. Rune of protection would give 25%. I believe I’d be able to achieve within a few percentage points: 90% s/l, 85% f/c, and 80% e/n. Toxic and Psionic would obviously be less. This would also still be high recharge. I can’t say for sure because Mids doesn’t have EA for tankers. This isn’t to say it would be better than SR. Just saying I think that EA could still achieve very close to capped resistance for most types. Along with having good defense and a self heal.

So as a I stated above this thread renewed my interest in sentinels. I also have started to really like energy aura so I wanted to try that on all archetypes that could take it. So I power leveled a beam rifle / energy aura sentinel to 50 and gave it a full build of set IOs yesterday. It is softcapped to all types, except Psionic. It has 72.5% resist to S/L and 50-55% to E/N/F/C and a smaller amount to toxic and Psionic resistance. These are with rune of protection that has about 50% uptime. I don’t have a lot of experience with sentinels so I still played it safe. I ran a few radio missions fighting council and CoT at +2/8. My health barely moved at all. I never had to use energize to heal myself. I also rarely had to use my endurance recovery even though I was attacking the entire time and kept sprint on. Opportunity bar filled extremely fast. It was up every mob and sometimes twice per mob if the mob had a lot of bosses. I would open with the nuke, which would completely fill the bar. I didn’t take my tier 1 blast so I used defensive opportunity each time. The heals provided healed any and all damage that the mobs managed to get in. There was one point (and only one time) where the mobs got in a few lucky hits and I dropped to half health while rune was on cooldown. However, opportunity was ready and I used defensive opportunity and within a couple seconds I was back to full health. I didn’t have time to try +4/8 yet, but I’m confident I could do so with the easier mob groups at least. Now for comparison. I am confident on my main blaster, which is dual pistols / martial combat. It is softcapped to s/l/e and almost softcapped to negative energy. Nominal resists, but does have rune. I have no problem jumping into +4/8 council mobs on that one. Not a good test as they are an easy mob, but comparable because that’s what I did with the sentinel. Also my blaster has the t3 musculature alpha and the sentinel doesnt. So blaster has a level shift and extra damage. My blaster definitely clears mobs noticeably faster. Even at +3/8 (taking a level off to account for level shift) versus +2/8 on my sentinel. Blaster also kills bosses faster. The blaster kills the mobs fast enough that they don’t really have a chance to beat down on my defenses enough to start getting my health down. I hardly ever get mezzed. I give credit to placing the blaster ATO set with mez protection in burst of speed. I use burst of speed to leap into a mob and it always procs. So, yes, sentinel do indeed to appear to be more survivable. The damage was decent, but noticeably less than blaster. They are two different blast sets so that is also a variable. I am going to play my sentinel and push it to its limits with higher difficulty and harder mobs. I feel confident that it will likely survive a lot better than the blaster will on harder mob factions. However, I don’t think it will ever have the same damage potential. I think that is a fair trade off. I will report again later after I’ve played sentinel some more.

Yeah I have a feeling they don’t want to risk EA on tanks. Soft cap defense to every type but Psionic. Capped resists to every type but Psionic. High recharge. All within possibility on tanks. I don’t think an EA tank could die even if it wanted to.

I agree claws / EA is a monster. I didn’t make one for farming, but for general content. But it is a beast. I can’t get enough of EA. I even just yesterday decided to try it out on a sentinel and it rocks on that archetype as well. I can only imagine how awesome this set would be if tankers were able to get it.

Using energize as an endurance tool as opposed to saving it purely for a heal also helps a lot.

I was thinking of possible further rewards past vet level 99. I don’t like the idea of adding enhancement slots or permanent buffs. However, one thing I think would be nice is adding inspiration tray slots. I may not be completely knowledgeable about the game, but I’m not aware of a way to increase past the cap of 20. Of course you can always keep a mailbox full of them, so it’s not like it would have a huge impact, but it would be nice quality of life bonus for high vet level characters. It could be a slot every 20 levels with the first one being awarded at vet level 120. This would equate to 5 slots per 100 levels up to a new cap. Or something along those lines.

The whole argument that farming AE shouldn’t get veteran rewards or levels is a bone starter. At it’s core, it is rooted in the opinion that farming is not a valid way of playing the game and thus is not deserving of rewards. One way of playing the game is not more valid than another. There really isn’t anything more to it than that. Edit: my phone autocorrected “veteran” into “better” for some reason. Edited to correct.

Once again you can’t harm legitimate players to get to the abusers. That is basically saying to hell with you and your play style. People are so quick to lump farmers into a basket and let anything happen to them because they think it a lesser way of playing. There is absolutely no good reason to harm active farmers that use AE. They are not exploiting. They are not hacking. They are using in game features. I think it’s great that Veracor has helped run many raids and whatnot, but that doesn’t justify harming a different play style. As for saying positive farmers wouldn’t mind nerfs, I say some might not but others would. I actively participate in raids, trials, and TFs and listen to league leaders with complete compliance. I don’t afk farm and I shouldn’t be punished because other people do.

Well I don’t think anything comes close to the joy of playing a dual pistols martial combat blaster. I personally didn’t like the low damage output of sentinels compared to blasters so I gave up on them pretty earlier on. I am sure that sentinels can be built tanker. Of that I have no doubt. However, blasters can be built pretty dang tough especially when they pick up rune of protection. I have a soft capped s/l/e defense + 70% s/l and 45-50% e/n/f/c resistance blaster with just over 50% up time on rune. And that is without sacrificing damage or recharge. The blaster can survive easily and dish out insane damage. I would put my vote in favor of blasters. That said, this thread has renewed my interest in sentinels and I plan to create and kit out a few to challenge my own vote.

I don’t think making another thread is a good idea. The other one got shut down for good reason.

There is no way to distinguish afk farming versus active farming. I think if there was a way the devs would have already done something to eliminate afk farming. Anything done to punish afk farmers will harm active farmers. Unless the devs figure out a way to separate the two, then nothing should be done to harm it. As I said, farming is a legitimate play style and thus has every right to all rewards same as other play styles. I’m not saying I condone afk farming. I’m just saying there is not a good solution to it without harming a legitimate play style. They could nerf IOs so that people must take active care to not die. That would be harmful to all play styles. They could nerf farming rewards, but as seen in the most recent nerf it affects all players not just farmers. They could nerf AE even further than they have, but again that would harm more than just farmers. The devs may have something cooking, but they have expressly stated that farming is valid. They probably won’t nerf AE further. And I highly doubt they will kill IOs. Like I said no good solution. The fact is, most anything can be “abused” to do something that may not have been intended. In some cases those loopholes can be fixed, but in other cases they can’t easily be fixed without harming something they don’t want to change. Thus sometimes you have to take the bad with the good. The point is, people who play story content to vet level 10,000 still get all the rewards of the vet level. Just because another person may have it as well is irrelevant. To me it’s like a person in first class on a flight upset because someone else lucked out and got bumped up to first class. The person still gets to be in first class with all its luxury. They shouldn’t base their satisfaction on knowing that everyone else is in coach.

I disagree with this completely. One method of play is not more valid than a different method of play. You can’t say that there isn’t a farmer that honestly just enjoys farming and thus plays that way all the time. That person reaching a super high vet level is every bit as valid as someone playing story content to the same vet level. In fact, I think it selfish to claim that other play styles are not valid and thus shouldn't be able to have the same achievements as others. One is not better than the other. One does not invalidate the other. If both methods play 5000 hours and reach an insane vet level, then both are equally deserving of said vet level. This is true for all play styles.

I think veteran rewards are currently fine. I wouldn’t say no to a small reward at longer intervals past vet level 99, but don’t think it’s necessary. As for the “game is to easy” argument and wanting to make it more grindy...an absolute hell no from me. All that would do is likely make me quite the game. I loved the live game, but especially in the earlier game it was a slog, especially the lower levels. I really appreciated that homecoming removed a lot of the grind and made it more player friendly. The quality of life improvements have made the game much more fun and accessible. There will always be players at end game that don’t know what they are doing. That is a player problem not a game problem. Best way to solve that is to teach them. If they don’t want to be taught, then put them on global ignore. Problem solved. People who want a long hard game can still choose that route by not taking double xp, not farming or doing any other sort of power leveling, not playing the market to get influence, not using IOs or incarnates to make content harder. The options are there. If you like grind you can still do so. The point is there are options for pretty much any playstyle and that is how it should be. Many of us are older now and have more responsibility. I can not devote a solid block of time to the game because I have family and work responsibilities that can interfere at a moments notice. Homecoming has allowed this game to appeal to casual players who use the game as a hobby as well as hardcore grinders that enjoy spending 10s of hours per week on it. I vehemently disagree with the fun police that want to try taking away certain playstyles under the banner of game integrity or game health or whatever other buzzword none sense that is used. Game is just about perfect as is because it has options and accessibility that can apply to just about everyone.

I know this is a bit of a necro, but I wanted to provide an update regarding my addiction to bio armor. I used to only use bio armor secondary on scrappers, stalkers, brutes, and sentinels. I have since been converted to other secondaries with a particular emphasis on energy aura. I have remade all my stalkers as energy aura as it is just so much better. I don’t have many brutes, but I remade my non fire farmer as an EA as well. For scrappers, I branched out a bit more. I have a couple shield defense, a couple energy aura, and one super reflexes. I have official been talked out of bio armor. Now, I have a hard time not using energy aura 😜

Yeah I’ve had this happen before. I think it does probably have to do with the server catching up and thinking you are still moving. I rarely use slow assassins strike. I pretty much only use the fast version. But when I do use the slow version, I wait a split second before casting it and that seems to resolve most of the issue. Though honestly fast assassins strike with the stealth proc into your heavy hitter is where it’s at 😁

My vote would also be to run a second blaster. Duo blasters are a blast (pardon the pun). Ice blast does great dps. It is slightly more single target focused than some other sets. It can stack holds on bosses. I suggest a dual pistols / martial combat blaster. You can take the alpha and wipe out the trash with your high AoE damage. Your wife can supplement the AoE with blizzard and focus on the bosses with her single target excellence. I honestly think the most fun would be two blasters.

Ugh. That blows. My DP/MC blaster is my favorite toon.