Secondary Power Advice (Ice Armor vs. Super Reflexes vs. Energy Aura)

[LordTenma]

Been away for....ages (great to be home by the by) and I'm dorking about with making a Brute. But I'm not going for the norms I'd seen, ya'know will power, radiation, invul.

 

So with that said. What would the strengths/weaknesses be for Ice Armor, Super Reflexes  and Energy Aura. Like what is going to give me the best bang for the buck? (I remeber Ice Armor being...underwhelming on live, not sure if that is changed here) But I'm looking for input and advice (Main power is gonna be Kinetic Melee)

 

Many Humble thanks in advance.

[Parabola]

SR and EA are generally considered to be better than Ice but nothing holds aggro like Ice if that's your thing. They are all sets with big psi holes so that's something to bear in mind. I am a big fan of EA on brutes, you can get really good def numbers against the common stuff, it has end recovery, a heal, and even a stealth power (some people hate this on a brute, I like the extra utility). Also if kinetic is your primary I think EA looks really good with it.

[LordTenma]

4 hours ago, parabola said:

SR and EA are generally considered to be better than Ice but nothing holds aggro like Ice if that's your thing. They are all sets with big psi holes so that's something to bear in mind. I am a big fan of EA on brutes, you can get really good def numbers against the common stuff, it has end recovery, a heal, and even a stealth power (some people hate this on a brute, I like the extra utility). Also if kinetic is your primary I think EA looks really good with it.

So does ice get like that resistance buff Super reflexes gets as hp get lower?

[Parabola]

16 hours ago, LordTenma said:

So does ice get like that resistance buff Super reflexes gets as hp get lower?

No, that mechanic is unique to SR (and the reactive defences proc). Ice does get some resistance, unfortunately the bulk of it is to cold damage which isn't all that useful.

[Saikochoro]

My vote would be Energy Aura. It has really good layered mitigation potential with a very solid defense baseline. 
 

The ease of defense softcapping allows me to forgo maneuvers and pick up rune of protection instead. I like to stack rune with the values offered by EA, tough, and set bonuses to get pretty solid resists with 50% uptime. 

 

Energize is amazing. I use it proactively for the endurance discount, which is awesome. However, it is pretty much always available whenever I want to use it as a heal, which isn’t often.  Between energize and endurance drain you have endurance fully managed.  You also get +recharge to boot. 
 

I do like super reflexes. The only thing it has going against it versus energy aura is no built in heal/endurance management. The scaling resists are pretty awesome though. That said, I prefer super reflexes on tanker. 

[Doomguide2005]

SR has two things that are essentially unique to it.  DDR - your defenses will be extremely stable, defense debuffs just don't work on you.

Scaling resistance - as hp drops your resistance goes up.  

 

For Tanks this means you can get to the soft cap early and relatively easily.  In turn that frees up choices in your build (most builds require set bonuses for getting there, SR does not).  And scaling resistance works better and better the greater your max health and synergizes well with Tanker resistance caps of 90%.

 

That adds up to really not needing a self heal, natural regen will take care of what gets through.  And once you hit Incarnate content the option for Rebirth is available for those oh $&*##^ rough spots that rarely occur.

[Bill Z Bubba]

SR and EA are great. Ice ... is a very weak armor set. It could absolutely use some love but even at tank values it just fails. I would never touch it on a brute or scrapper. I do have an ice/spines tank and he does hold aggro like crazy but I'm probably going to delete him. Defense sets with low DDR are a very bad idea.

[Jaxman100]

Ice does seem to have issues on the high preforming side of builds.  I do enjoy it on Scrappers now with Icy Bastion as the Tier 9.  The 30 seconds of resistance boost is helpful when debuffed. 

 

I'd probably lean towards EA on a Brute. 

[Colder]

I certainly wouldn't say ice is weak. Sure the resistances provided are mostly elemental, which is scarce. But hoarfrost is essentially dull pain, doubling HP is better than absorb. It's super easy to soft cap def to all but psi and the elemental dmg types you resist. And energy absorption can sap the end of minion to boss level mobs from one application and put you well over soft cap. Not to mention slows effectively reduce incoming damage, albeit not by much.