Focused Feedback: Powerset - Energy Aura / Proliferation to Tankers

[The Curator]

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Energy Aura

 Energy Drain

• Per target +def lowered from scale 0.5 to scale 0.4.
• Up-front +def lowered from scale 0.1 to scale 0.08.

 

 Power Shield

• Fire and Cold defense lowered from scale 2 to scale 1.7.

 

 Overload

• Added visual indicator of an impending crash within 10s of expiration.

 

 Power Armor

• Fixed power description.

 

Quote

Design Notes:

The set is getting some minor toning down on its defenses due to some relatively minor over-performance. This also helps the set's portability to tankers, despite the tanker version not being a carbon copy of the set.

 

Energy Aura Proliferated to Tankers

•  Kinetic Shield: Toggle: Self +DEF(Smashing, Lethal, Energy), Res(DeBuff DEF)
•  Dampening Field: Auto: Self +Res (Smashing, Lethal, Energy, Endurance Drain)
•  Power Shield: Toggle: Self +DEF(Fire, Cold, Energy, Negative), Res(DeBuff DEF)
•  Entropic Aura: Toggle: Self +Res(Knockback, Repel, Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Teleport, DeBuff DEF), Self +Recharge, Foe -Recharge.
•  Energy Protection: Auto: Self +Res (Energy, Negative, Toxic, Psionic, Slow)
•  Power Armor Energy Reserve: Auto: Self +MaxHP, +Resist(All DMG)
•  Energize: Self Endurance Discount, Heal, +Regen
•  Energy Drain: PBAoE, Self +End, +Def, Foe -End
•  Overload: Self +DEF(All), +Recovery, +MaxHP, Res(DeBuff DEF)
  • This power is different from other versions of Overload.
  • 300 second recharge, 30 second duration
  • 25% def against all but toxic/psi
  • 20% def against toxic/psi
  • +30% MaxHP
  • Scale 1 Res(-Defense)
  • +100% Recovery
  • Has no crash.

 

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[PeregrineFalcon]

On 5/26/2025 at 3:59 AM, The Curator said:

Energy Aura Proliferated to Tankers

 

Sorry. That's all I have for right now. I'll do some testing after work. Carry on.

[Aoleleb]

The description for Power Armor incorrectly states it increases Endurance and does not mention the damage resistance function of the power at all.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Sorry. That's all I have for right now. I'll do some testing after work. Carry on.

I saw your recent post about EA and went "Should be interesting when it hits beta soon"

[Crimsanotic]

The power Kinetic Dampening on Stalkers and Sentinels still doesn't give psi resistance. Arguably Sentinels don't need it on that because they have Power Armor, but Stalkers got forgotten about.

 

Also, for better or worse, Power Shield gave increased defense to Fire and Cold because EA doesn't get any resistance to it (again, other than the Tanker and Sentinel specific power, Power Armor). Making the set's defenses weaker to those two damage types without giving Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers anything to compensate is a little weird, to say the least.

Yes, I understand the set is being nerfed. I'm saying nerfing Power Shield specifically is a bizarre choice.

[Erratic1]

So all existing ATs with Energy Aura get nerfed so Tankers can have it?

 

I don't know...it is not possible to customize the Tanker version of it?

Edited Wednesday at 11:31 AM by Erratic1

[Heatstroke]

SO tankers get a crashless version of Overload but no one else does ?? Really ??

[Riverdusk]

3 hours ago, Crimsanotic said:

The power Kinetic Dampening on Stalkers and Sentinels still doesn't give psi resistance. Arguably Sentinels don't need it on that because they have Power Armor, but Stalkers got forgotten about.

 

Also, for better or worse, Power Shield gave increased defense to Fire and Cold because EA doesn't get any resistance to it (again, other than the Tanker and Sentinel specific power, Power Armor). Making the set's defenses weaker to those two damage types without giving Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers anything to compensate is a little weird, to say the least.

Yes, I understand the set is being nerfed. I'm saying nerfing Power Shield specifically is a bizarre choice.

 

Agreed that stalkers could use some psi resistance in their version that everyone else gets, and it'd be nice on sents too.   

[macskull]

I still think it's a little weird that the stated reason Tankers didn't get Energy Aura was because it would be too good, but Tankers now get a better version of the set than any other AT.

[Maxzero]

5 hours ago, macskull said:

I still think it's a little weird that the stated reason Tankers didn't get Energy Aura was because it would be too good, but Tankers now get a better version of the set than any other AT.

 

City of Tankers baby.

[Heatstroke]

11 hours ago, macskull said:

I still think it's a little weird that the stated reason Tankers didn't get Energy Aura was because it would be too good, but Tankers now get a better version of the set than any other AT.

 EXACTLY... Tankers get no crash from Overload but every other AT does. And with a 300 second recharge you can make it Perma?? Yeah thats not skewed toward Tanks at all.. At this point II would reroll my SS/EA Brute into a EA/SS Tank... He would be much better off with a Perma Overload..  And Perma Energize.. 

 

 

[arcane]

2 minutes ago, Heatstroke said:

 EXACTLY... Tankers get no crash from Overload but every other AT does. And with a 300 second recharge you can make it Perma?? Yeah thats not skewed toward Tanks at all.. At this point II would reroll my SS/EA Brute into a EA/SS Tank... He would be much better off with a Perma Overload..  And Perma Energize.. 

 

 

You can’t perma a 300s recharge 30s duration power….

 

Honestly my only qualm about all of the armor set changes is the big reduction in skippable powers. Electric, Energy, and Ice all have 9 great powers now. Which is cool but… going to hurt my offense a little inevitably. I think my Dark and Elec Tankers will just be dropping Leadership, but my Ice Tanker is going to have to let go of an attack.

[Heatstroke]

16 minutes ago, arcane said:

You can’t perma a 300s recharge 30s duration power….

 

 Thanks for the correction. I didnt see the Duration on the power.  

[Warshades]

Did some quick slotting of EA on a tank and it truly looks powerful. Able to relatively easily hit or get close to tanker HP cap, 60ish HP/sec regen with energize, 50%+ typed defense (excluding psi/tox, slightly lower on negative), around 65% DDR, and some mid-high resists to all damage types. Love the no crash Overload (although might still skip if build is tight on power slots). 

 

21 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

So all existing ATs with Energy Aura get nerfed so Tankers can have it?

 

I don't know...it is not possible to customize the Tanker version of it?

 

I kinda have to agree. EA was in a very good spot of being a great armor set but not completely OP that it needed any nerfs on the other ATs. At least the nerf doesn't look terribly significant, haven't yet tested it on Sentinels or Brutes.

 

Just doing some quick numbers, the initial hit on Energy Drain gave 0.75% def to brutes, 0.6% after nerf. The per target went from 0.38% to 0.304% if mid's values are accurate. With a saturated 10 target hit (slotting 2 lvl 50+5 def IOs in mids), the initial hit would give 0.9399% def post nerf (1.17% pre nerf) and 0.476% per target post nerf (0.59% pre nerf). At 10 targets, that's 5.7% def post nerf and 7.07% pre nerf on a brute. A difference of ~1.3% isn't terrible. Nerfing Power Shield should also have relatively low impact due to the rarity of fire/cold attacks.

[glycerine102]

On 5/26/2025 at 7:59 AM, The Curator said:

 Power Shield

• Fire and Cold defense lowered from scale 2 to scale 1.7.

 

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Is this supposed to affect the Stalker version? My Fire and Cold defense from Power Shield on live is the same as it is on beta (16.5).

Edited Thursday at 01:23 PM by glycerine102
Get text out of the quote box

[Divi]

Why?  EA already has:

 

- Toxic weakness

- Lower Negative defense

- No Psi defense or resist*

- No Fire/Cold resists

 

Meanwhile Tanker EA is getting:
 

- Max HP passive

- More passive resist to all

- Crashless T9

 

Nobody has ever said EA is overperforming due to 3.6% F/C def. Even if it were, countless things exhibit "minor overperformance" that aren't worth the grievances changing them would cause.  No, the issue obviously lies within the Tanker port.  Let it be adjusted there instead of forcing every current EA to rebuild.  Proliferation doesn't justify blanket nerfs when that new thing can still be implemented in a way less damaging to collective invested time and effort. Minor unnecessary changes only build negative goodwill.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

I was on the test server and this is my feedback:

 

Years ago I ran the numbers and figured out what Tanker Energy Aura would look like. I believe I took the Brute numbers and applied the Tanker modifiers. So my numbers said it should look something like this with even level SOs:

 

EDIT: Deleted. These numbers were wrong.

 

 

Even without including the +Def from Energy Drain it's easy to see why the devs were worried about proliferating EA to Tankers. When I was on the test server and slotted my level 50 Tanker w/even level SOs here were the actual numbers:

35.1% E Defense

26.52% S/L/F/C Defense

21.84% N Defense

0% Psi/Toxic Defense

46.8% E Resist

31.2% S/L/N/P/T Resist

11.7% F/C Resist

 

That's quite a difference. Those numbers are mediocre for a Tank and, in the case of Energy Defense, actually worse Defense than I've seen on my EA Brute. Shield tanks get numbers like that and they have a combat teleport and a damage buff!

 

So, other than Overload being better, how exactly is this version better than the EA that all other ATs get?

Edited 17 hours ago by PeregrineFalcon
Numbers were wrong

[Erratic1]

23 minutes ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I was on the test server and this is my feedback:

 

Years ago I ran the numbers and figured out what Tanker Energy Aura would look like. I believe I took the Brute numbers and applied the Tanker modifiers. So my numbers said it should look something like this with even level SOs:

55% E Defense

47.06% N Defense

32.4% F/C Defense

29.12% S/L Defense

21.16% Toxic Defense

6.5% Psi Defense

29.32% Energy Resist

14.66% S/L/N/T Resist

 

Even without including the +Def from Energy Drain it's easy to see why the devs were worried about proliferating EA to Tankers. When I was on the test server and slotted my level 50 Tanker w/even level SOs here were the actual numbers:

35.1% E Defense

26.52% S/L/F/C Defense

21.84% N Defense

0% Psi/Toxic Defense

31.2% S/L/N/P/T Resist

11.7% F/C Resist

 

That's quite a difference. Those numbers are mediocre for a Tank and, in the case of Energy Defense, actually worse Defense than I've seen on my EA Brute. Shield tanks get numbers like that and they have a combat teleport and a damage buff!

 

So, other than Overload being better, how exactly is this version better than the EA that all other ATs get?

 

Did you consider what EA looks like on other ATs just using SOs without set bonuses?

 

My level 42 SS/EA Brute, who has all SOs, is as follows (live):

 

 

[csr]

On 5/28/2025 at 3:37 PM, Warshades said:

Did some quick slotting of EA on a tank and it truly looks powerful. Able to relatively easily hit or get close to tanker HP cap, 60ish HP/sec regen with energize, 50%+ typed defense (excluding psi/tox, slightly lower on negative), around 65% DDR, and some mid-high resists to all damage types. Love the no crash Overload (although might still skip if build is tight on power slots). 

 

 

I kinda have to agree. EA was in a very good spot of being a great armor set but not completely OP that it needed any nerfs on the other ATs. At least the nerf doesn't look terribly significant, haven't yet tested it on Sentinels or Brutes.

 

Just doing some quick numbers, the initial hit on Energy Drain gave 0.75% def to brutes, 0.6% after nerf. The per target went from 0.38% to 0.304% if mid's values are accurate. With a saturated 10 target hit (slotting 2 lvl 50+5 def IOs in mids), the initial hit would give 0.9399% def post nerf (1.17% pre nerf) and 0.476% per target post nerf (0.59% pre nerf). At 10 targets, that's 5.7% def post nerf and 7.07% pre nerf on a brute. A difference of ~1.3% isn't terrible. Nerfing Power Shield should also have relatively low impact due to the rarity of fire/cold attacks.

 

Keep in mind that you can go over 10 stacks of Energy Drain.  In quick testing I was running 18-26 stacks on my Brute on both Live and OB.  He still goes over the Incarnate soft-cap on everything except P/T.

[Warshades]

24 minutes ago, csr said:

Keep in mind that you can go over 10 stacks of Energy Drain.  In quick testing I was running 18-26 stacks on my Brute on both Live and OB.  He still goes over the Incarnate soft-cap on everything except P/T.

 

That is true, and usually it's relatively easy to keep it double stacked at minimum.

 

1 hour ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

When I was on the test server and slotted my level 50 Tanker w/even level SOs here were the actual numbers:

35.1% E Defense

26.52% S/L/F/C Defense

21.84% N Defense

0% Psi/Toxic Defense

31.2% S/L/N/P/T Resist

11.7% F/C Resist

 

That's quite a difference. Those numbers are mediocre for a Tank and, in the case of Energy Defense, actually worse Defense than I've seen on my EA Brute. Shield tanks get numbers like that and they have a combat teleport and a damage buff!

 

So, other than Overload being better, how exactly is this version better than the EA that all other ATs get?

 

I don't think they were looking at EA being played on SOs. If we go by the SO metric, I think every set is going to look bad defensively compared to stone armor as just a fully slotted Granite/Stone Skin with 3 resist and 3 defense SOs hits 31% defense, 78-90% resists (excluding the obvious P/T where relevant). I'll try to at some point to port over my EA builds from other ATs to the tank on OB and see where the set ends up in terms of defense/resists when it's more optimized. 

 

This was with what I previously quick slotted (with the addition of pool powers) and regen rate is with Energize buff active. The S/L resist was around 80% iirc (hit the limit on monitored stats). These aren't bad numbers at all, especially considering the defense values are without Energy Drain active and no SMoT/barrier factored into this. Between the relatively high DDR and the extra amount of defensive cushion you can get with Energy Drain while likely hitting 60%+ resist to all (once optimized with better sets), I think it's extremely durable for a tank. It also has an on demand heal in Energize which provides a very solid regen boost as well. 

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

Ok, so I checked the numbers and did a better comparison. Here's the actual numbers for a level 50 EA Brute with even level SOs on test:

            32.17% E Def
            25.74% S/L/F/C Def    
            22.23% N Def
            6% Toxic Def
            5.85% Psi Def

            26.32% E Resist
            14.62% S/L/N/P/T Resist

 

Here's my actual Tanker numbers on Test. Level 50, even level SOs:

            35.1% E Def
            26.52% S/L/F/C Def
            21.84% N Defense
            0% Psi/Toxic Def

            46.8% E Resist
            31.2% S/L/N/P/T Resist
            11.7% F/C Resist

Tanker defense powers are usually 1.33 that of a Brute. So if Tanker EA were a straight port from Brute the numbers would look like this:

            42.78% E Def
            34.23% S/L/F/C Def
            29.56% N Def
            7.98% Toxic Def
            7.78% Psi Def

            35% E Resist
            19.44% S/L/N/P/T Resist

 

So clearly the numbers I had figured out before were wrong. Also, it looks like the devs nerfed Tanker EA's defense numbers, to the point where they're barely above that of a Brute. And my Brute on test actually has better Negative Energy Defense than my Tank. Also the Brute on test has Toxic and Psionic Defense, where the Tanker has none.

 

Ok, maybe Tanker Overload is so much better that it blows everything else out of the water. But, unless that's the case, there's no way that anyone can say that Tankers got a version of EA that's better than any other AT's.

[Erratic1]

Base value for Kinetic Shield on a Tanker on test is: 17% Def S/L, 2.5% N

Base value for Kinetic Shield on a Brute on test is: 12.75% Def S/L, 1.88N

 

So that power starts with a 1.33x difference.

 

Perhaps if you looked at each power individually, you could find where things are off?

 

 

[csr]

It's Energy Cloak v Power Armor.  Brutes get that extra Defense, Tankers get HP and Res.  If you remove those two powers from the comparison the 1.33:1 ratio should be maintained.

Edited 16 hours ago by csr

[FupDup]

I really think Brutes should have the branching mutually exclusive choice of Power Armor because it fits their offtank role better than stealth does, and it helps them leverage their hp/res cap advantage over Scrappers. 

[PeregrineFalcon]

3 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

Base value for Kinetic Shield on a Tanker on test is: 17% Def S/L, 2.5% N

Base value for Kinetic Shield on a Brute on test is: 12.75% Def S/L, 1.88N

 

So that power starts with a 1.33x difference.

 

Perhaps if you looked at each power individually, you could find where things are off?

Oh, man. You're right.

 

I should have done the math on the base power before adding enhancements, not after. I'm so dumb. That's twice now that my numbers were wrong.

 

Ok, I'll go back onto test tonight after work and see if I can math properly.  😟