Focused Feedback: Powerset - Electric Armor

[The Curator]

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Electric Armor

 Static Shield

• This power now grants scale 2 Toxic resistance.

 Grounded

• This power now grants scale 0.8 resistance to Smash/Lethal/Fire/Cold.
• Knockback protection should now last for up to 5 seconds after touching ground.

 Power Sink

• This power now adds a regeneration buff for each enemy hit.
• 17.5% regen for the first target hit.
• +17.5% regen for each additional target.
• +End per target lowered from 25 to 15.
• No longer has a chance at lowering enemy recovery.
• -End lowered from -40 to -35.

 Energize

• Regeneration buff duration increased from 30s to 45s.

 Power Surge

• Crash removed (EM Pulse remains).

• Recharge lowered to 350s.

• All effect durations lowered from 180s to 30s.

• Power now grants a +400% regen buff.

• Resistances lowered.

 

Quote

Design Notes:

 

We are seeking to upgrade the overall sustainability of this set. Although the set provides some solid resistances (making its burst/alpha survival rather solid) it suffers in sustained survivability. For this reason, we are giving Power Sink some scaling regenerative buffs in trade of some of its endurance drain capabilities. The duration of Energize's regeneration buff is also being extended and Power Surge is getting a makeover that is more in line with the live version of Icy Bastion while retaining it's closing AoE burst. We are going to evaluate the viability of this change based on feedback, there is a high possibility for it to  get very minor adjustments or being rolled back to it's live form.

  

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[Auroxis]

• Power Sink -End lowered from -40 to -20. *

This seems like a big missed opportunity to me. While maybe not as powerful as something like the modern Elec Blast, Elec Armor has always been the only armor set having multiple endurance draining capabilities, and now its signature endurance draining power in Power Sink has been reduced to being worse at draining endurance than the equivalent ones in Energy Aura's Energy Drain and Ice Armor's Energy Absorption. If Power Sink's drain isn't meaningful, then so is the case for endurance drain on the damage aura and T9.

 

I'm a big proponent of keeping options available and balanced for players to keep building characters interesting, so it hurts to see a nerf to such a unique feature of the set.

 

*EDIT: There appears to have been a patch note error, the original note said -40 to -20 and not -35. So it's not a big issue now!

Edited Tuesday at 03:23 PM by Auroxis

[Player-1]

Endurance Drain in general is something I want to take another look at. Once it comes up, the drain mechanics for both Electric Armor and other powersets will be adjusted.

[skoryy]

1 minute ago, Player-1 said:

Endurance Drain in general is something I want to take another look at. Once it comes up, the drain mechanics for both Electric Armor and other powersets will be adjusted.

 

It's my understanding, or at least what I've learned in the past week or so, that an empty blue bar on the mob doesn't really affect anything? They can still use their attacks as normal.

[Player-1]

2 minutes ago, skoryy said:

 

It's my understanding, or at least what I've learned in the past week or so, that an empty blue bar on the mob doesn't really affect anything? They can still use their attacks as normal.

 

The issue is a bit more complex due to NPC endurance values, power endurance costs, and recovery.

 

NPCs have different endurance amounts based on their rank. Minions have 100 just like players, Lieutenants have about 140, Bosses 200, and Elite Bosses and above have 800. However, they all have the same endurance costs per power and same relative recovery rates. A power that costs 15 endurance on a minion is effectively 15% of their blue bar, but 7.5% of a Boss' bar and 1.875% of an Elite's.

 

Enemies cannot use powers if they do not have enough endurance, but the moment they have enough they will queue up and use the available power. Given this is queued up, they will often spend their endurance the instant they get it which looks like they use powers without end as they effectively keep themselves at 0. This is worse as you go up in rank as less and less of their overall endurance is needed to use a power. The more endurance they have, the more they get back per recovery tick so they can use expensive powers while seemingly having minimal endurance. 

 

This relationship, even with player endurance drains largely being percentage based, is what we want to reevaluate. 

[Player-1]

The patch notes have been updated as well, the -Endurance drain changed from -40 to -35, not to -20.

[WindDemon21]

On 5/26/2025 at 7:58 AM, The Curator said:

 Power Sink

• This power now adds a regeneration buff for each enemy hit.
• 17.5% regen for the first target hit.
• +17.5% regen for each additional target.
• +End per target lowered from 25 to 15.
• No longer has a chance at lowering enemy recovery.
• -End lowered from -40 to -35.

 Energize

• Regeneration buff duration increased from 30s to 45s.

Power sink. Yeah i've been suggesting this so this is nice, though it would make more sense if it offered more resistance, but leading into the other aspect:

 

Energize: this and the energy armor versions always just needed to have the recharge reduced to 60s even if that means removing the new regen from power sink. Then on that note the resistance would make more sense versus the regen.

[Lazarillo]

Still think, for both practical and thematic reasons, that Static Shield should give Terrorize resistance, but these changes look nice.  Power Sink's drain effect kinda got gutted by the changes to how enemy Endurance works a few "pages" back anyway, so giving it more buffs balances that back out and should make it worth taking again.

[Uun]

I thought Electric Armor was pretty solid before the changes, and these are all improvements. The +regen from Power Sink was more noticeable than I expected (and that was without changing my slotting).

 

I didn't respec to try out Power Surge. While the changes are an improvement, the power is still largely superfluous. On my brute I've already got capped resists to S/L/F/C/E, 81%to psi and 53% to neg and toxic. So the only reason to take it is for a 30s buff to N/T resists and regen rate? Seems like an inspiration (or Destiny/Barrier or Hybrid/Melee) would cover that.

[ScarySai]

I have basically nothing bad to say about elec armor now, aside from lacking a taunt aura for scrappers.

 

Can't say the sapping will be missed. Elec melee and elec armor were never good at sapping, nor were they intended to be, really.

Edited Wednesday at 12:57 AM by ScarySai

[Heatstroke]

11 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

It's my understanding, or at least what I've learned in the past week or so, that an empty blue bar on the mob doesn't really affect anything? They can still use their attacks as normal.

 

Not so.. I play multiple " sappers " while they will still attack with a minimal end bar. They will tend to stick to the low end cost, fast animating, weaker damage attacks. if you are built to keep draining their end they become a lesser threat.. 

[ScarySai]

14 hours ago, skoryy said:

 

It's my understanding, or at least what I've learned in the past week or so, that an empty blue bar on the mob doesn't really affect anything? They can still use their attacks as normal.

 

When elec blast got buffed, they overcorrected in response to it being actually good as a sapper set and made some changes that essentially made sapping a useless endeavor.

 

Elec melee and elec armor were never really tuned to sap to begin with, so that's moot here.

Edited Wednesday at 04:55 AM by ScarySai

[Heatstroke]

I dont see amy reason to really remove the - recovery from Power Sink. Lower the chance.. but removing it completely seems kinda stranger to me since its designed to drain things.. 

[Uun]

2 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

I dont see amy reason to really remove the - recovery from Power Sink. Lower the chance.. but removing it completely seems kinda stranger to me since its designed to drain things.. 

The -recovery was never significant enough to keep foes drained. The existing version is 30% chance of -100% recovery for 4s. Compare that to Short Circuit, which has 100% chance of -100% recovery for 10s (-110% for corruptors, -125% for defenders). 

[Heatstroke]

3 minutes ago, Uun said:

The -recovery was never significant enough to keep foes drained. The existing version is 30% chance of -100% recovery for 4s. Compare that to Short Circuit, which has 100% chance of -100% recovery for 10s (-110% for corruptors, -125% for defenders). 

 

Which IMO is not reason for it to actually be removed.. 

[Player-1]

10 hours ago, ScarySai said:

When elec blast got buffed, they overcorrected in response to it being actually good as a sapper set and made some changes that essentially made sapping a useless endeavor.

 

This only effected high-rank targets to grant them an endurance floor to prevent them being neutered too quickly. Normal enemies can still be completely drained. 

[ScarySai]

Yeah, but nobody cares about sapping things that would be dead with the same amount of effort. It was a bad change.

[Uun]

33 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

Which IMO is not reason for it to actually be removed.. 

Depends on the options. I would gladly exchange the -recovery for the +regen. Not sure that having both is on the table.

[ScarySai]

Power sink is a recovery tool and it's better at that than ever now. Seems like a win to me.

[Heatstroke]

11 minutes ago, Uun said:

Depends on the options. I would gladly exchange the -recovery for the +regen. Not sure that having both is on the table.

 

The -recovery isnt a deal breaker to me. Especially if it remains an Auto Hit power.. 

[Proteus50]

I might be the only person who will say this.. 

 

On my tank I liked the original Power Surge.. I had learned to manage the timing on the crash on my tank very well so it never bothered me. 

I personally liked the longer duration on the power...

 

My Elec Sentinel never took it because he didnt handle the crash well. I could see him talking this now..

 

Maybe a compromise is to make the duration a bit longer than 30 seconds/ Maybe 45 seconds ?

[Auroxis]

I think Power Surge would benefit greatly from the Icy Bastion treatment. Make it a toggle, so if someone wants to use it for the EMP burst they can.

[Uun]

3 hours ago, Proteus50 said:

On my tank I liked the original Power Surge.. I had learned to manage the timing on the crash on my tank very well so it never bothered me. 

I personally liked the longer duration on the power...

Why on earth would you need Power Surge on a tank? Your resists should be capped to everything but Ne and Tx without it.

[FupDup]

Power Surge really shouldn’t give resistance at all anymore. It had little value before, and the baseline res buffs made it even less useful. Tank out the last bit of res and beef up its regen buff, then it has value. 

[BrandX]

2 hours ago, FupDup said:

Power Surge really shouldn’t give resistance at all anymore. It had little value before, and the baseline res buffs made it even less useful. Tank out the last bit of res and beef up its regen buff, then it has value. 

 

Have to disagree.  I'd see it useful in such things as Aeon SF, where we deal with lots of -Resist.