Saikochoro

In my next testing I will try it on both a damage capped brute and a damage capped scrapper to see how they compare.

I was actually thinking that brutes may turn out ahead because of fury affecting TF and ET. I made a EM/bio brute with a very similar build to my EM/bio scrapper. On even level mobs even at 80 fury, the brute still did 200-300 less damage than the scrapper with energy transfer while using build up + guassians. I will do some more testing tonight though with more scenarios. I didn’t have enough time to do much more than build the brute last night.

I did the standard mission testing AE missing with my archery/ninja blaster and this bug kept going off at random times. I even made sure not to use aim at all because I know that causes the bug. The bug still happened a lot though. I do have several procs in passives such as numina’s, miracle, power transfer, and performance shifter. Not sure if it relates to those. The bug is making it very difficult to actually test the power. Though I’m glad we have this testing period to find bugs like this 😜

Oh, I know. I still think energy transfer ranks up there even without being able to crit. I haven’t done a ton with psi melee so not sure how GSB with insight crit stacks up against ET. I just followed up with adding TF due to BZB’s comment.

True enough. My I didn’t grab my crit number for total focus but it was about 1400 on a non crit. So maybe around 1600 on crit? So, about 3,500 damage in 1 + 2.53 = 3.53 seconds of activation (not counting arcana). I know with arcana time it is a bit longer, but I don’t know much about arcana time so don’t want to give wrong numbers. This was on bio armor mind you. I’m thinking fiery aura with fiery embrace would definitely yield a higher number though.

Not sure what the highest people have managed is and what against what level npc, but with an even level mob I hit for over 1900 with energy transfer on my beta server EM scrapper. For such a low cooldown and more importantly with fast activation of 1s, I don’t know that you will have a power with much better of a DPA. Haven’t tried it with fiery embrace though.

I can’t agree with this enough. All powers in a set should feel great and rewarding enough to take and use. Throw away powers should really never be part of sets.

My two cents on the dark melee changes. My dark melee/shield defense is my favorite scrapper by far. While I do appreciate the work to add in more AoE, I personally am not a fan of the changes. I will likely still skip ToF and just keep shadow maul for a couple reasons: 1. I don’t like that ToF uses targeted AoE enhancements. It’s screws with my builds set bonuses and make it so it doesnt work anymore. That alone will prevent me from taking the power. That is okay though. It won’t work for everyone. 2. I will echo that I don’t like the spammy nature of it. I would much rather have a higher cooldown more powerful AoE. If ToF were changed to use PBAoE enhancements I would be much more likely to use it in a final build. If the recharge were increased and damage increased to match I would probably most definitely take it. Anyway, just my thoughts on it. I am totally fine with the changes because at worst it won’t change my current playstyle/build. Albeit the slight nerf to shadow maul will affect me a bit, but I’m okay with that if the majority of people like the ToF change. I still appreciate all the hard work that went into this update!

I’m very impressed with how MA has ranked up. I may be recalling incorrectly, but I thought MA was on the bottom half of the original rankings. I find it Interesting that making eagles claw a cone boosted it so far up. I guess it was a good change.

It is better than it was before, but I can only go based off what I’ve tested and experienced. Several other sets still have better AoE and some sets crush it in terms of AoE. That is honestly expected though from a set that has such strong single target. With the AoE buffs it may have better AoE than some sets now, but EM is not in the top contenders for AoE. At least not based of of my testing so far. It is however, a top single target set. I still think this is a single target focused set overall, but it did have its AoE improved.

Ideally all sets would be middle of the pack, but one set has to be last. I think the difference between top to bottom is a more important consideration. It still might be quite the gap. I’m not sure I haven’t studied the updated list yet. Is the spread huge? Or has it tightened up some? One consideration I keep in mind is that this EM has extremely good single target burst damage. It might be paying for that with overall slower clear times.

Not sure, but it is still largely a single target set. Single target focused sets will usually have slower clear times than AoE heavy sets. Most of the top sets in his list have very good AoE. Although they did give us power crash that doesn’t change that EM is still single target centric, which is how EM should be. Single target though is very much improved. We don’t want it to be amazing in both single target and AoE otherwise it’s just the new titan weapons.

Okay did a little more testing, but with an EM/Bio stalker. This thing is a monster. The epitome of what a stalker should be. EM was my favorite stalker back before the nerfs on live. However, I didn’t play it much afterwards. This is even better. That said, I am finding that I actually enjoy the scrapper and tanker better for EM. Stalkers have always done single target better than scrappers so it doesn’t feel as special on stalkers as it does on scrappers. It just feels amazing on a scrapper. I’m sure the fact that scrappers couldn’t have it before contributes to that. I know the stalker will do more damage overall, but I still like it better on scrapper. I love it on tanker because it just feels awesome being invincible and still hitting for 1200-1500 damage! I am loving the new EM!

I am most definitely experiencing this on my archery/ninja blaster on test. I have shinobi toggled on. It happens every single time I activate aim. It also happens every time I load into a zone. I tried turning toggle off and then back on and it still opens the confetti every time I use aim. If I untoggle shinobi the bug does not occur when activating aim. It also has happened several times during a fight even when I don’t activate aim. Haven’t been able to pinpoint other causes, but I have noticed it happens a lot when switching between katana and arrow attacks in quick succession.

Very well said @Shadeknight. I think the Homecoming team has actually been very good about communication with the community. They have asked for our input on several occasions and have always been upfront with their intentions. They have done an outstanding job on being accountable and transparent. That said, I do think forum communities (homecoming included) can become very entitled very fast. This is one of the things that bothers me most about gaming communities. The idea that the dev team are never doing enough, never communicating well enough, not transparent enough, not doing things the right way, etc. For a completely, volunteer team I think @Jimmyand team have knocked it out of the park with how they treat and engage the community. Far better than most paid development teams from large studios. One thing that I have also very much appreciate about this dev team is that they don’t seem to shy away from taking unpopular stances. Nor do they seem keen on beating around the bush in some of their posts. I also especially like that they aren’t afraid of defending themselves and their team from the community when the community is being overly entitled and critical.

Probably not a lot of major respecs. Probably some minor tweaks on my tac arrow blasters. I’m more of a mind to start making some more blasters. Mainly ninja training and sonic manipulation ones. Though I will almost certainly re-roll my main archery blaster from archery/tac arrow to archery/ninja.

My EM/Bio scrapper consistently hits for ~900 on even level mobs with ET. I think it hits for 600-700 with TF. With buildup + guassians ET is up to ~1900 and TF is ~ 1500. I will have to double check with some more testing tonight though. Edit: I went in and tested again on EM/Bio scrapper hitting an even level mob. I have t4 musculature, t4 core degenerative, and t4 assault (not toggled on). ET has hecatomb and TOD procs. TF has no damage procs. Offensive adaptation is on. ET no build up = 1250 ET + build up + guassians = 1915 TF no build up = 838 TF + build up + guassians = 1402 Total focus did not crit with these tests. Since the crit is 28% I could see another 100-200 damage added to the TF numbers upon crit.

It is fine to not like the combo mechanic that was added. Every balance change is bound to have people who love it, people who hate it, and people who just don’t care. I love the changes. You hate them. A lot probably don’t care. All valid opinions. However, I think this is wrong to call their approach a “mistake”. Just because some people may disagree with the approach does not mean the devs made a mistake in their approach.

Super strength is one of the most played and popular powersets in the game. We must be playing different games. Also, the goal posts keep moving with this whole combo argument. You made the claim that there are no more combo free sets in the game now that one was added to EM. This was proven false. Then the goal posts shifted to define combos as basically any mechanic. Now it has shifted again to include any set the someone may deem underperforming as not counting. The fact is there are a lot less sets that use combos (original wording) than sets that do not. It’s fine to not like combos. However, hyperbole doesn’t help win arguments. Shifting goals posts also does not help win arguments.

Well now that beta testing is out and I have tested the new EM changes: My next “three” alts will probably be about 5 different EM scrappers, remaking my EM brute and stalker from live, and a ninja training blaster. So many awesome new changes!

Thank you @Captain Powerhouse. Top notch changes!

I did some more testing last night on a another scrapper build. I also transferred over my shield/EM tank and tried it out. I honestly cannot say enough good things about the updated energy melee. I like it better than pre-nerf days. It feels so good to play now, but not overpowered. I think the devs found a good balance point in pretty much all regards. I haven’t tried the new EM on stalker yet, but that is my privilege to do so today. I’m excited for it. @Jimmy and the dev team: thank you so much for these absolutely fantastic changes. I hope they all make it through as is. It is better than I hoped for and giving EM to scrappers was a very pleasant surprise.

My question about tooltip values aside. I transferred my MA/SR from the live server to the beta and did some minor testing. I appreciate the thought behind changing eagles claw to a cone and that is in line with many wanting more AoE for MA. I did get multiple targets in several times, but rarely more than 2. Im in a minority in that I wanted to double down on the single target nature of MA rather than buff its AoE. I would honestly much rather have them buff the damage of eagles claw a fair amount than to turn it into the cone. The main problem with it is that it doesn’t do enough damage for its animation time to warrant use in the best attack chains. I want eagles claw to hit hard enough that you would be crazy not to take and use it in your normal rotations. That said, I am happy to take this change too even if it is not the route I would prefer.

See below. The beta version has a much higher tooltip value, but when used on a single target it definitely doesn't do that much damage, which is why I was wondering if it was calculating using multiple targets. Ive had a similar question with chain induction in electrical melee having a much higher tooltip than it actually does. I figured it was calculating multiple targets, but never really knew for sure. Wondered if this is the same. Here is the live version: Here is the beta version:

The tooltip for the new eagles claws shows a much higher number than the live version. Is this just accounting for it hitting more than one target with the same damage and not that the power itself does more damage if it were used on a single foe?