Pepperidge Farms remembers,. It would be nice they made Energy Armor Viable again. They could give you all the effects at once and double prismatic and the armor increase. or something similar.
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The only time I remember it being used was when you couldn’t fit in a ring slot.
Most notably tal/vyr Manald Heal I believe?
Early Diablo III, pretty much when the game first came out, Energy Armor was the most used armor skill for wizards; particalularly the “Force Armor” and “Prismatic Armor” runes, that is before their nerfs.
Force Armor was used often for high pushes with Vyr’s before they added Squirt’s. Endless Walk + CoE + Obsidian meant no room for a defensive ring. CoE + Force Armor was pretty common.
Force Armor and Prismatic Armor were also very popular in early RoS. Basically until Halo of Arlyse came out in season 2, then Ice Armor was very popular for a while. Until they added Karini and Storm Armor became popular.
There’s a trend here: the most popular armor has been determined by whatever strong defensive rings were available at the time.
Want to bring back Energy Armor? Add an energy armor ring. Or actually, maybe a pair of Energy Armor pants or shoulders instead. We don’t have a whole lot that’s usable in those slots.
I doubt we’ll see it though. I think the devs were unhappy with how ubiquitous Energy Armor was, so they added Arlyse and later Karini to make Ice Armor and Storm Armor more compelling choices. It kinda backfired, because now Energy Armor isn’t really popular at all, but if they added a strong Energy Armor defensive item there’s a good chance Force Armor would rocket back up to the top of the popularity charts again.
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Part of the reason it was so ubiquitous back then is that taken by themselves the other options were pretty bad in comparison due to the then-extant Inferno difficulty being way over-tuned.
Now that the other options have item support and difficulty goes even higher than old Inferno, Energy Armor just cannot compete as the incoming values are so high that EA’s ablation basically does nothing.
If it were to gain item support the old problem would likely resurface, as its draw was the (much) greater durability it offered compared to the other runes.