Let’s talk Energy Aura

[Dying Eagle]

So I was researching what kind of Titan Weapons toon I would want to build and I settled on a Brute over a Scrapper. I noticed that there’s some interesting theories on secondaries, and I wanted to ask about Energy Aura. I am somewhat new to homecoming but I’ve played for a couple months now. 
 

I knew that TW should pair with an END healthy secondary , which brought me to willpower, elec, or energy. However, Energy Aura is the only secondary available to Brutes and not Tankers, which made me think about that.

EA provides def, res, end, a heal, a taunt aura, recharge, and interestingly, a stealth.
 

From researching across several older forums, I’ve found that a HC developer hinted EA would be too strong if ported over to a tanker. But it’s available to Brutes… So is there something here that could be very strong but isn’t really talked about? Or is EA just another armor, but nothing special. That’s the basis of this discussion. I am no expert by any means so I’m opening this to the community to explore. 
 

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[Uun]

EA is a defense armor with supplemental resistance and healing. Unlike SR, it's based on typed rather than positional defense. It's fairly easy to hit the defense soft cap for S/L/F/C/E. There's a mild weakness to Ne attacks, but there's no defense to Toxic or Psi outside of Energy Cloak, Energy Drain and Overload (the T9). Energize is a decent heal that also provides an endurance discount. Energy Drain can refill your endurance bar from zero and also provides additional defense based on how many foes are near you. While Overload does provide additional S/L/F/C/E/N defense (which you shouldn't need), it's primarily useful for the Tx/Psi defense and a very large hp boost. It does have an endurance crash, but you should be able to use Energy Drain to refill. EA is a very good set, but it's certainly not overpowered.  The reason EA won't be ported to tanks in it's current form is that tank defense modifiers are 33% higher than brutes and the set would be too strong (in particular, the defense buff from Energy Drain). 

 

In general, resist-based armors are better on brutes because they can take advantage of the higher resist cap, while defense-based armors perform the same on brutes as they do on scrappers. Electric Armor is a very good resist-based set. You can hit or get close to the resist cap for S/L/F/C/E/P. There's a moderate weakness to Ne damage and no Toxic protection outside of Power Surge (the T9). It has the same heal EA gets, as well as a very similar endurance recovery power (without the defense buff). It is completely immune to end drain and recovery debuffs.

 

Willpower is a hybrid resist/defense/regeneration/+hp set. It's largely set and forget (it has no clicks outside the T9). It's very sturdy until it's not - it has significant weakness to debuffs, in particular -regen and end drain.

[Erratic1]

Energy is a wonderful set. You will want to up your defenses up to a good value (35%+) quickly to really enjoy its protective benefit and to make use of its scaling +Rchg when foes are near. To that end, even if you are not planning to IO out your build (until later or at all) it is still worth purchasing the two +3% Def IOs and slotting them. Not something you need to do immediately, but as you move into your 30s.

[Dying Eagle]

Sounds like electric is fit for Brutes because of the caps. I’m still newish to IOs and all but I’m just brainstorming here. 
 

If energy is giving defense values alongside some res, then does that mean we can skip tough/weave in favor of other powers? Whereas that would be required on electric since it’s res based, I’m guessing. To expand on that further, would energy be able to start slotting other IOs instead of defense since it already hits pretty good levels? I’m imagining electric and res based sets still want defense to hit the caps , but energy is already there. That could open up different IO sets and bonuses than what tanks and brutes normally run. The T9 on energy sounds a lot better since it has no HP crash. Brutes benefit a lot more from the +HP effect due to scaling. So I think it’s worth trying out, at least for me. However I can’t imagine using power surge without waiting for it to crash out of combat before continuing on your mission. That’s detrimental to a brute. 
 

 

Edited April 23 by Dying Eagle

[Uun]

It's possible to hit the defense soft caps on Energy without Tough/Weave, but you'll need them if you want to hit the Incarnate caps. I wouldn't bother chasing defense on Electric and would focus on capping resists. Power Surge is skippable. My /Electric brute only has low 20s defense and is still virtually unkillable.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Dying Eagle said:

If energy is giving defense values alongside some res, then does that mean we can skip tough/weave in favor of other powers?

 

Short answer: No. 

Longer answer: Depends on the content you are going to play. On their own, none of the armor sets gets you to a place which cannott be improved upon by having at least one of Toughness or Weave. If you plan to push further than SOs, both powers, on top of their obvious benefits, offers valuable slots for IOs as well.  Electric or Energy you should fully enhance the powers of the set, then get Toughness or Weave to further push your Smash/Lethal resistances in the case of Electric or Weave in the case of Energy. 

 

For content as you level, at normal difficulty, you won't need IOs or utterly maxed values of defense/resistance. Those become your focus as you push difficulty settings (which you can start early, but are not obligated to ever do).

Edited April 23 by Erratic1

[Erratic1]

8 minutes ago, Uun said:

I wouldn't bother chasing defense on Electric and would focus on capping resists

 To expound on this, there are foes which lower defenses. Defense sets have various levels of protection against that. Resistance sets do not. You take Weave on a Residence set only for IO slotting reasons.

[Haijinx]

I never skip tough and weave on any character.

 

Especially not a Brute 

[Dying Eagle]

Sounds like electric is a “better” set on brutes due to the resistance based scaling. Tough and Weave are in all builds I see , so that makes sense. 

[Erratic1]

38 minutes ago, Dying Eagle said:

Sounds like electric is a “better” set on brutes due to the resistance based scaling. Tough and Weave are in all builds I see , so that makes sense. 

Electric is better in a Brute than on a Scraper.

 

Electric is not better than Energy on a Brute. It is different, with other benefits and negatives.

 

 

[evetsleep]

On 4/23/2024 at 10:04 AM, Erratic1 said:

 To expound on this, there are foes which lower defenses. Defense sets have various levels of protection against that. Resistance sets do not. You take Weave on a Residence set only for IO slotting reasons.

Just wanted to point out this actually isn't entirely accurate.  The amount of resistance you have to a type is also the amount of debuff resistance you have to that type.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/39896-resistance-resists-resistible-resistance-debuffs/

[Erratic1]

 

4 minutes ago, evetsleep said:

Just wanted to point out this actually isn't entirely accurate.  The amount of resistance you have to a type is also the amount of debuff resistance you have to that type.

 

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/39896-resistance-resists-resistible-resistance-debuffs/

 

That is talking about  Damage Resistance debuffs, not Defense debuffs.

[LKN-351]

What primaries fit well with Energy aura and what makes them fit well?

[Erratic1]

Just now, LKN-351 said:

What primaries fit well with Energy aura and what makes them fit well?

 

I am not aware of any primary which does not fit well with EA. EA provides endurance, healing, and +Rchg--things any primary benefits from.

[Erratic1]

On 4/23/2024 at 12:12 PM, Haijinx said:

I never skip tough and weave on any character.

 

Especially not a Brute 

 

Skipping Weave on my current go at a FM/EA brute as without it, not factoring in Energy Drain, S/L/F/C defenses are all at 50% in my current build plan. And I am eyeing Night Fall from the Dark Mastery epic mastery.

[evetsleep]

31 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

 

That is talking about  Damage Resistance debuffs, not Defense debuffs.

Right.  Maybe it's the way it was worded but I thought you were saying that defense sets have various levels of defense debuff resistance and that resistance sets do not (resistance debuff resistance).  Guess it depends how you read it :).  That said there are exceptions.  Pretty sure /inv has defense debuff resistance.

[Erratic1]

3 minutes ago, evetsleep said:

Right.  Maybe it's the way it was worded but I thought you were saying that defense sets have various levels of defense debuff resistance and that resistance sets do not (resistance debuff resistance).  Guess it depends how you read it :).  That said there are exceptions.  Pretty sure /inv has defense debuff resistance.

 

Resistance sets do not have Defense Debuff Resistance. So if you load up on a bunch of Defense on Electric Armor, the moment something comes along with Defense Debuff, that defense you invested in will be stripped from you.

 

Invulnerability, while often thought of as a Resistance set, is to my mind really a hybrid* one given it has DDR.  Dark Armor, Fire, and Electric do not. But even if you want to call Invulnerability a resistance set, it is a singular exception.

 

 

*I would also call Radiation Armor a hybrid set too, just it dabbles in the oft forgotten third method of melee survival--health/absorption. 

[Uun]

14 minutes ago, evetsleep said:

Right.  Maybe it's the way it was worded but I thought you were saying that defense sets have various levels of defense debuff resistance and that resistance sets do not (resistance debuff resistance).  Guess it depends how you read it :).  That said there are exceptions.  Pretty sure /inv has defense debuff resistance.

Invulnerability is a hybrid resist/defense set. While it has high levels of S/L resistance, its resistance to other damage types is moderate at best and it relies on defense from Invincibility and Tough Hide. It originally had no DDR, with 50% added to the set in Issue 13. It currently has higher DDR than Ice or Stone, both of which are defense sets. 

 

Bio*, Dark, Electric, Fire, Radiation and Regen have no DDR and building these sets for soft-capped defense is a waste. Willpower has a nominal amount (17.3%) that doesn't do much. 

 

*I'm surprised that most versions of Bio don't have any DDR (the sentinel version does), since it relies on defense for its F/C/E/N protection.