Focused Feedback: Powerset - Energy Aura / Proliferation to Tankers

[Americas Angel]

On 5/26/2025 at 12:59 PM, The Curator said:

 

 Power Shield

 

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

 

 

This achieves very little other than forcing players to respec. Suggest reverting.

 

Rest is great.

[Psi-bolt]

So I've played this for a little while.  It's just as good as I thought it would be on Tankers.  Did EA/EM because I don't think EM adds anything to survivability over other sets.     All Tanker sets allow you to get to stupid defenses and EA is no exception.   This set makes this VERY easy.  Before I knew it I had Incarnate soft-capped defenses to most damage types and high resistances.   By the 40s, was 90% smashing lethal resists and 50-60% on the others.  On a "defense" set.  

 

EA is just a very good set and very good on Tankers.  Not sure that the nerf to the other ATs is warranted, but it's irrelevant for Tankers.   One slightly negative feedback would be that Overload is pretty skippable after finishing your build, but it's a nice option that doesn't need to be slotted before that.  

 

I don't see anything else to test.  It all works, works well and is fun.  Good job.

 

 

 

[BrandX]

23 hours ago, Americas Angel said:

 

This achieves very little other than forcing players to respec. Suggest reverting.

 

Rest is great.

 

What change in slotting did you do, because of lower defense?  I would think one would generally slot the power the same.

[FupDup]

6 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

What change in slotting did you do, because of lower defense?  I would think one would generally slot the power the same.

Yeah, basically the build would probably need to be adjusted assuming that they only build F/C defense up to 45% and no higher. Somebody weird with overcapped F/C defense can potentially ignore the nerf, but that's probably not too common. It's not some sort of extreme struggle to find that extra defense (maybe grab a Winter Set somewhere) but it's kinda unnecessary.

 

IMO, the current live version of Energy Aura is an almost perfectly balanced armor. I can understand nerfing the Tank version a bit (because their scalars are so high) but I think the other ATs don't need any negative changes applied. It's definitely weird to give Tanks a better version than other ATs when the original fear was that it would be too good on Tanks. 

Edited May 31 by FupDup

[macskull]

47 minutes ago, FupDup said:

Yeah, basically the build would probably need to be adjusted assuming that they only build F/C defense up to 45% and no higher. Somebody weird with overcapped F/C defense can potentially ignore the nerf, but that's probably not too common. It's not some sort of extreme struggle to find that extra defense (maybe grab a Winter Set somewhere) but it's kinda unnecessary.

 

IMO, the current live version of Energy Aura is an almost perfectly balanced armor. I can understand nerfing the Tank version a bit (because their scalars are so high) but I think the other ATs don't need any negative changes applied. It's definitely weird to give Tanks a better version than other ATs when the original fear was that it would be too good on Tanks. 

I don't really understand why the set had to be toned back to be ported to Tankers when they could have just made the base number for the Tanker versions slightly weaker. Of course, none of that really matters all that much considering Tankers got a completely unchanged version of Super Reflexes which allows you to softcap all three positional defenses without a single IO.

 

EDIT: For disclosure purposes, I should point out that I don't have a horse in this race. The single Energy Aura character I have is a PvP Scrapper that I have barely touched in the last five and a half years, and porting the set to Tankers isn't going to get me to make another one.

Edited May 31 by macskull

[arcane]

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

It's definitely weird to give Tanks a better version than other ATs when the original fear was that it would be too good on Tanks. 

I thought that too. Giving Tankers the no-crash Overload after allegedly worrying that the other versions would be too strong is pretty wild.

 

But obviously I’m looking forward to it.

Edited May 31 by arcane

[PeregrineFalcon]

Ok, I finally had time to get back on the test server, check the numbers, and do the math correctly, by multiplying the unenhanced Brute numbers and then adding in the enhancements.

 

Actual Tanker numbers on TEST w/even level SOs:

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

 

What Tanker numbers would be if it was a straight port from Brute (assuming I actually did the math right this time) w/even level SOs:

42.79% E Defense
34.22% S/L/F/C Defense
29.56% N Defense
7.76% P/T Defense

 

35% E Resist
19.45% S/L/N/P/T Resist

 

So, it looks like the actual Tanker version has a little lower defenses and a little higher resists than it would have if it were a straight port from Brutes. Also Brute and Scrapper EA actually has some Psi and Toxic defense while the Tanker version has none.

 

Also, I think I found a bug on Brute EA while on test. Brute EA/Energy Cloak grants 3.75% Defense to all. But, when enhanced with even level SOs Brutes have 5.85% Psi defense but 6% Toxic defense. I can't account for the difference unless it's a bug. Obviously I don't know if the bug is with the power or with the powers display.

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 5/31/2025 at 10:07 AM, arcane said:

I thought that too. Giving Tankers the no-crash Overload after allegedly worrying that the other versions would be too strong is pretty wild.

I don't think the developers were worried about Overload being too strong, I think they were worried about the set itself without Overload being too strong.

 

I also suspect that the devs are going to proliferate the new Overload to the other ATs. I suspect they didn't do it in this patch is so they could watch it and see how people like it and how it preforms on live before changing the other versions.

[PeregrineFalcon]

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

Energy Aura Proliferated to Tankers

 

I'm liking Tanker Energy Aura less and less.

 

One of the neat things about Energy Aura is Energy Cloak. This causes the set to play differently than other sets, and is one of the reasons that people wanted EA proliferated to tanks. And it's not like stealth is verboten on tanks. A tank can still have a stealth IO and/or a stealth power pool power, so why was it necessary to remove Energy Cloak?

[Psi-bolt]

2 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

I'm liking Tanker Energy Aura less and less.

 

One of the neat things about Energy Aura is Energy Cloak. This causes the set to play differently than other sets, and is one of the reasons that people wanted EA proliferated to tanks. And it's not like stealth is verboten on tanks. A tank can still have a stealth IO and/or a stealth power pool power, so why was it necessary to remove Energy Cloak?

 

 

While I like Tanker Energy Aura, I would second this remark.  The in-set stealth powers are fun and provide good utility.  I really don't understand why Sentinels didn't get it though. 

[Rimerat]

Please take this with the biggest grain of salt; this is just an opinion, and I have not yet done any in-depth stress testing of the changes.

 

Speaking strictly for Brutes, I've always kind of felt like Energy Aura was kind of a 'mid' pick for PVE armor sets - kind of like a hard to go wrong, hard to go too right thing.

 

And all I can really speak on is anecdotal evidence and 'feelings', but I play this game a lot and it really seemed like other armor sets could perform significantly better across a wider range of use-cases when it comes to just raw endurance. I know that's super subjective, just during content I always felt significantly more impactful and immortal on something like Invuln or Bio. (I'm not trying to start a brute armor tier list, just giving a few examples of sets)

 

With that in mind, it feels pretty bad to see non-insignificant nerfs to an armor set that I felt was agreed to be pretty okay and fun just so Tankers can get a new toy.

 

Of course, I don't fully understand the true intentions behind these adjustments, but this is what I perceive it as. Looking forward to spending some time on the test server either way, though - thanks for all you guys do.