marcussmythe

Then what may be interesting here is that my helpful Thugs Mastermind never had more than one proc on the target pylon, despite having his full set of Thugs hammering away on it for minutes, while I could fairly casually generated 5 stacks between myself and my lore pets. This suggests that MM pets are behaving differently than Lore Pets, and makes me wonder how APP Pets (and perhaps Soldier of Arachnos pets) are doing. However, if there is a hard absolute limit of around 5 instances of the debuff on the target, it probably does not matter all that much.

Double Post Deleted

RE Pylons, Pets, and Procs (with a nod to Mastermind Performance) I recently discovered that lore pets are applying the -Max HP debuff from the Degenerative Interface (I only have it at T3, can provide screen shots). This is news to me. At some points, my character had 4 stacks of the proc for nearly -4K max HP on the thing, with at times another stack or three from my Vanguard buddies. Total was as high as -7000ish HP at some times. IF Mastermind Pets (or Epic Pets, or Soldier of Arachnos Pets) are handing out that Proc, they could easily be crushing the Pylons HP Total. Similarly, if Storm and other 'Pseudopets' are applying Degenderative - well, weve see insane times out of Storm, right? If this is old news, Ill hush and go sit in my corner - but it was news TO ME, and interesting at that. Its also got me wondering if we arent seeing performance that (to me) is surprising out of really-fast-attacking sets.. the faster you can toss attacks out, the more procs, the less regen and total HP to deal with (of course, this is trivial compared to just having more attackers!) EDIT - Just did some testing, thank you Cortege of Excelsior.. while myself and my caraphract and my nullifeir might have 1-2 stacks each (once up to 4 for me very briefly), Cortege and all his pets and all their powers created at most 1 proc on the target.

Thank you, Aehteral. That does help illustrate the issue rather starkly.

Tidge - Yes. Exactly. As I see it, the only ways to get there are: 1.) Even Bigger Numbers! (Unlikely, if PvP is a consideration) 2.) Shorter Animations. (See 1, though less so) 3.) Stacking -Res (enough to floor a 54 AV/GM given time) (Semi New Mechanics, but fairly easy and harmless to overall balance) 4.) Stacking -Regen (as in 3 above) (New Mechanics and ‘strange’, but the least dangerous to balance concerns - all it really impacts is AVs and GMs)

It would be FOTM for hard target hunting/head hunting as melee (Though as to if it would outperform the real giant killers such as Illusion/Traps, etc, or the real DPS monsters like Thugs MMs, is another question and one we probably know the answer to). But in the broaders sense - you just dont spend that much time in COH going 'Well, I cant punch out an AV, so despite my ability to murder the entire room of minions and normal bosses in seconds, I am dissatisfied'. ((Well, unless you are me)). I mean, if it ends up more popular than Fire Brutes and TW Whatever, then we can tune it back. 'Why wouldnt we do this ASAP'? Well, because you and I dont make the decisions here. 🙂 This whole thread is probalby meaningless - I anticipate that the Devs worked out their fixes internally based on their own sense of things, without reference to anything we write on the forums (they have better things to do with their time than read these forums!)

I am a much simpler creature - I rolled EM because it was the best tool available to a tank for standing up and punching out really hard targets. As a comic book reader, I always found the ‘Stopor Guy fights Thanocide for an hour, cant crack his regen, goes home’ aspect of CoH rather troubling - so I wanted something that got around that, and I had that, until the ‘Cottage’ that was Energy Melee got turned into a slightly leaky tent. So long as what comes out the back is that cottage, I dont much care how we get there. Proc friendly or not? Whatever. Reduced Animations vs Wierdo Mechanics vs. Raw Numbers? Im easy. ‘New’ approaches, likely slowly but eternally building -Res and/or -Regen? That would be different, and avoid the big spikes that damned the set originally. As long as Energy Melee is the set for big game hunting, I’ll be satisfied. Likely other people have other priorities - Im strange. 🙂

Medium popular, I reckon. Its still strictly the worst at AOE under that math, and as discussed 95 % of the game is AOE. However, that would increase single target output radically - to the point of outperforming War Mace and I think TW in that role. (Ignoring TWs - Res built in and proc advatages - but maybe even then.)

Well, the thread title assumes it needs some attention, and you seem opposed to giving it very much. “Not that Bad”, implies a small fix will do it. I suppose I am unfair; and you are here as a serious advocate that the set is mostly fine as it is, and only minor tweaking is needed to make it mathematically competitive in the game as it exists.

Then this is probably not the thread for you.

"Meta-Game Complaints"? Performance is performance. I mean, if we want to balance on SOs, without sets, procs, and incarnates, we can.. but thats not the game most people are playing (though such servers exist, I am told) As for taking procs out behind the woodshed - that would make me sad. The IO system is excellent for buffing the survival of low-toughness characters, and very poor at buffing the damage of low-damage characters. Leveraging procs redresses some of that.

I have no business being mentioned in the same breath as Kael, Myshkin, Bopper, or Max.. but thank you, and I am flattered.

After leveling, labouring, proccing, calculating, sacrificing in other areas to focus on making a silk purse from a sows ear... My EM is shelved again. I dont see them fixing it enough to make it competitive in the modern era. Its lack of -RES and -RCHG proc opportunities are simply the insult to the injury of a bad secondary effect, worlds worst AOE, execrable single target, suicide attacks, and make a sandwich animation times. What comes out the back of any review would have to change so many things about this set to make it better than ‘mediocre’, that I dont see it happening. Recommend TW, Mace, Rad Melee, StJ. Hope Im wrong.

Inv/EM tank, T4 Standard Incarnates. DPS Focused/Procmonster style build, but general play (Taunt, Exemp down to Positron functionally, Mu APP for AOEs rather than Gloom or Char, etc) ~250DPS. I may go cry in a corner or give up and roll Titan/Rad.

I would not sneer at AOE, were it offered. With that said, the ‘Hat’ that Energy Melee wore, its selling point, was bar-none #1 Single-Target DPS, all other considerations secondary. Thats why you picked it. So, for me, give it that crown back. And having done so, if additional AOE is seen as necessary, so be it - but only after the single target is pegged to the top of the chart. My 2 inf. YMMV.

Depends on the rest of your plan? Im wondering if Axe (KB!) is an underloved choice, since KB works so well. Or MA for the DEF? Or DM for the heal and -ACC?

Thats an interesting point, VV - You got there with set bonuses on a Fire Tank, I got to damage by eschewing set bonuses (for procs) on an Invuln Tank. Interesting how it converges!

I promised a build, so I attached one below. Power order is different in play - Taunt comes much earlier, etc - to allow better exemp. down. General Thoughts: Resists are a bit lower than I would like, but we quickly get to 90% S/L, 60% or more Energy and 40% or more Toxic/Psi with a proc or hit point loss. Defense is about 1% under softcap when saturated - again, Id like it a bit higher, but those are the 'offensive mode' numbers - both go up rapidly with a switch to melee and barrier (anticipated for any heavy tanking) Afterburner and Vengeance are odd/low value choices, but I wanted the LOTG Mules and to have room room for a full reactive defenses set in Invicibility. I may drop Vengance for Tactics just to get the CC resists, even so. You leave a ~lot~ of recharge and resists on the table by eschewing purps/winters for procmongering, and we are a few seconds short of perma-hasten. A previous version leaned on Adrenal Booster for damage and recharge, but having two maintenance clicks (Hasten and Ageless) on the same timer is bad enough.. having a third on a difference cycle cost too much QOL to me to be worth the payback (I have other characters that are high maintenance supercars - this is not that character) If anyone can see any 'free money' thats been left on the table, please holler. Id be happy to have more damage, or more toughness, but the balance of the two feels about right, and Id hate to lose the one for the other. Specifically Id like to thank Kaeledin, Myshkin, Redlynne, Bopper, and others I am forgetting for anything good, and take full credit for anything bad, in whats below.

Shes a reroll of an Issue 0 main. I love her forever. Right now I'm just not sure I -need- a max tank build. But while I'm enjoying running All The Content In City Of Heroes, Im happily scrabbling away a pile of cash. Im also staring down a respec - I may be ditching the experimentation pool (which for me is Adrenalin Boost, Superspeed as a mule, and an utterly wasted power) for Assault, Victory Rush, and Taunt - so as to have Taunt native even in my 'all offense' build (which, as discussed, has proven 'tough enough' so far) Or something similar. I enjoy the +Rchg out of Adrenalin Boost, but I dont enjoy having yet-another-maintenance-click on top of Hasten and Ageless, and I wonder if I can get more utility out of those 3 picks as opposed to just a bit more damage.

Im tanking down in things like Posi on my ‘tough enough’ invuln - even with no taunt and relying on whirling hands for AOE aggro, its been fine so far - only deaths were leeroy jenkins spiritual successors on my team (very common when Incarnates exemplar down - we forget what mortality is!) So far for me 85% S/L, 60% E/N, and down in the 30s for Psi/F/C, along with defenses that only softcap when invincibility is fully saturated has proven ‘tough enough’ that Im reconsidering whether I want to spend the time and flu to do an alternate pure tank build after all (though there may be a respec for easy exemplar in the works). Ill try to tank more ‘hard stuff’ at the top, and once defensive incarnates are filled out, will report back if T4 melee/barrier/resilient swaps are enough for such things.

Id be curious to see your build! When I get a little happier/more polished with mine, Ill throw it out here.

It is amusing in retrospect. Devs: "Aggro caps are needed, people are doing things too quickly!" Devs: "Put timers on missions, people are farming that specific bad guy too quickly!" Devs: "Remove XPs from portaled mobs, people are farming those, too!" Devs: "OMG some baddies are less tough than other baddies, nerf their XP handout!" ~Some time later~ Devs: "Let there be AE"

I'll address these as to my Invuln/EM, as that is the only version nearly mature. 1.) Positron is not the ideal case, as Invuln is so heavily tied up in Invincibility - but this would be the case for a 'natural' invuln at that level. Exemplars are going to be fine as long as you don't skip or underslot powers planning on patching them with a 'superpower' later. Ive not done them all, but the ones I have (even positron) felt pretty smooth, tank wise. 2.) I have not tried on an Invuln, or really on any non-cap-energy tank. Invuln is not as optimized for endgame meta as later sets, lacking the solid resists against exotic damage types that developers became enamored of as CoH developed* 3.) DA and ITF are quite doable.. +4/x8 DA is a given. Ive not tried to solo ITF at +4 yet, and anticipate that even if the debuffs are survivable (and I think they will be), it will be extremely time consuming, and the kill time on the pack of +3 AVs at the end may be enough to render it unfun (maybe once in a 'because it was there' sort of way) 4.) I have not tried. I anticipate that Invuln will perform poorly against an opponent that ignores defense and resist and quickly debuffs healing into uselessness. 5.) Fast.. enough? Mu AOEs and Whirling Hands make crowd management reasonable, but if you want Rad/Fire Brutes, you roll Rad/Fire Brutes. *It seems, on reflection, that they made content, and tanks. Having made content and tanks, the devs found the tanks were too capable of tanking the content. The devs then started handing out psi, toxic, energy, and debuff to threaten the tanks they had created. Later developments and a change in dev focus saw them creating sets (understandably) custom crafted to perform well in the face of that specific content, and (as a side effect) balanced in performance with SOs, while being ideally crafted to leverage IOs. This makes sense - you want New Stuff to keep people playing, and that New Stuff will synch up better to the other New Stuff than Old Stuff does. But I digress.

Interesting point on Thunder Strike - Savage, as much as I'm enjoying it (and TW, as much as I enjoyed the raw damage potential) are probably not the best approaches if I want to leverage the fear and disorient in Dark. My feeling is that neither CC is perfect - Fear allows an attack back after each tic, and in a game of AOE spam, thats basically all the time - though I do sometimes turn off my AOEs and focus down one target at a time while the fear keeps the rest off my back - and Disorient provides for superspeed running away by mobs. Maybe go big on the disorient, and also leverage an immob in somewhere? IDK, thinking.

Hey, I was trying to take SOME of the heat off of TW. 🙂 "In addition to being the best single target and really really good AOE this set is also noteworthy for having really really good mitigation" probably isn't helping our case if we want the set to not be beaten to a pulp by the devs. 🙂