I am now planning to shift to ST2.
Even on an editor like ST2 which is awesome anyway. You get to see what an editor is designed for. Its supposed to make 'Text' manipulation easy. So that is what it is, after everything.
So Emacs with all its power is still a Text editor, albeit a very powerful one.
Every time I work on Text editor I focus on reading manuals and understanding stuff no matter which editor that is. But with Java,IntelliJ and Eclipse its different, I just throw in whatever little is there on my mind and just wait for the autocomplete to do the magic.
Some of my colleagues go a step far. They just can't write any Java code without an IDE and I see that's the case with nearly every Java programmer I've met so far! Even in interviews. Its sort of like if you are talking of Java development its taken for granted that its is happening on an IDE. You never know, a few days from now the Java language specification my include a IDE specification.
According to me tools and languages must enable you think more than you write. Unfortunately in case of Java(and now growingly Python) you just can't work without an IDE.
Yes, this is often a good use case for avoiding tools like Eclipse (IntelliJ is somewhat better), sometimes the multi-language pain is just too great. Especially if you already have to set up a complicated build by hand and interact with several other systems, the IDE can no longer gain you very much.
For pure Java, though...I don't know. I use Emacs all the time for other stuff, but I just feel so naked when coding Java within it (I've tried a few times, but always end up going back), maybe I'm just too used to all the help I get from IntelliJ...
Emacs has working autocomplete from Java, especially with Semantic. It's far away from being as smart as something like IntelliJ, but it works well enough. Most functions and arguments you remember after a while. I can type much faster than I can think, so less autocomplete doesn't slow down. In fact, not having to watch if the autocomplete gets it right frees the brain to think ahead more. Maybe it's because I'm used to this.
Import statements are one of those things where you have to switch to Google, though.