siolfir

It's off-topic since Dominators get Energy Assault, not Energy Melee, though I happen to agree with you - but it wasn't intended to help Doms, it was intended as a nerf to getting double damage on Whirling Hands with Energy Focus active by forcing them to use double the animation time to get the same damage. I think reducing the extra damage would've been a better (and more popular) way of dealing with it, but that idea was certainly brought up in the feedback thread and didn't go anywhere. I also find the statement that "no class owns a mechanic" laughable in a variety of ways (isn't that what inherents are, a class(AT)-specific mechanic? plus, on a silly note, you would think that robot Masterminds are probably very good mechanics), and as such just took it as a troll response. But since the troll has already been fed I thought I'd add in how silly I thought that particular argument was.

Taunt has the advantage of range and applying a -range effect, but skipping Taunt is a frequent choice for Brutes, and you can tank fine without it. Every time a Brute deals damage they apply a taunt effect to what they hit (Tankers apply a taunt effect to an AoE around the target they hit); Dark Armor has multiple auras that affect the mobs around you, which will keep the mobs' attention focused on you. If there's not a Tanker or another Brute, you'll end up as the de facto tank on teams because of this, whether you intended to be or not. Hasten is not a must-have, but is almost always a nice-to-have. I usually try to fit it in, but... ...Hasten will also cause you to burn through endurance even faster, since your powers will recharge faster and it has an endurance crash when it wears off. That said, Dark Armor has a lot of toggles and is considered bad for endurance usage if all of them are running (this is the key: if all of them are running). You can build for endurance efficiency to overcome it, get temp powers (ex: Recovery Serum from the P2W vendor), refill through IO sets (Panacea, Performance Shifter, Miracle, Numina's Convalescence, and Theft of Essence procs) or Ageless Incarnate, or manage toggles to recover between fights (not ideal for a Brute since you want to always keep moving). @Lazarillo covered this pretty well, and there's a guide here on efficient slotting for endurance recovery. I use -KB enhancements, especially for Dark Armor where yet another toggle is just a way to use more endurance. A list of enemy attacks that do knockback and what magnitude they are can give you an idea of how many you need to get, keeping in mind that the magnitude will be increased when mobs are higher level than you due to the purple patch. My Electric Armor Brute has Grounded (mag 10 while on the ground) and a Steadfast Protection -KB so I don't get tossed around if I'm jumping. Looks like @Luminara has an answer for this... good thing, since I avoid weapon sets and wouldn't know.

AVs yes; GMs probably but it's going to be build dependent for the higher level ones (even though they ignore your level they still have a level that affects their hit points and thus, their regen).

Maybe, but I thought that @Bopper was doing primary comparisons instead, and someone else did the comparative survival spreadsheet. Was it @Werner? In any case, @kcfalcon, the reason that you were told that it may not be that helpful is because additional factors such as IO sets, mitigation from your primary, and other factors have as much or more of a difference on your survivability than strictly looking at defense and resistance numbers from your armor set. It's good to know the general strengths and weaknesses of each set for building, but a specific build can overcome any of those (in either direction; a bad build can make a good armor set trash as easily as a good build can plug holes in a weaker set).

@Solarverse- I'm not going to try to rehash it or call out specific people in an attempt to not derail this thread even further, but several people in the "focused feedback" thread actively argued against any feedback that they personally didn't like, up to and including personal insults (most of which were purged), on both sides; it was also made abundantly clear that full-time fast ET was a non-starter long before most people were actually able to provide feedback on the changes (even while threads in suggestions and feedback were requesting exactly that). I'm not saying that the new EM is bad - I'm just saying that what's there is already a compromise that doesn't offer all of the things that people liked about the old version (and does offer other things that weren't present before), in response to someone else saying that it doesn't feel the same - a statement I agree with.

Whirling Hands can be classified as a bug fix, really: the power was doing too little damage for its recharge and AoE size. Now it follows the design formulas. As for fast teams, it likely feels slow because fast ET is tied to Total Focus, which, while faster than it used to be, is still a relatively slow attack. But if you don't use Barrage between Total Focus and Energy Transfer (which uses up your charge of Energy Focus and makes ET slow again) you have a little under 15 seconds where you'll get a fast ET so if your target dies during Total Focus, you can still rush to the next spawn and land the fast ET - presumably while dragging any stragglers from the previous spawn. I agree it's not the same feel as old EM, but by the time it hit open beta the fluctuating animation times were locked in whether people wanted them or not, complete with zealots trying to chase off anyone who dared say it wasn't the best thing ever.

It's a good set for PvE, but not a standout compared to other Stalker primaries. Definitely not "horrible," at least for Stalkers.

Don't toss Hawaiians into a volcano for that. It was made by a Canadian. He's dead now. Without a taunt, DoT effects cause mobs to flee more (this is why even without a specific effect making the mobs flee, Caltrops, Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, and Burn all make mobs try to run away). You'll have to use Total Focus first, the base duration will be slightly less (under 2 sec iirc?), and you'll give up the fast Energy Transfer, but an Energy-Focused Barrage can replace Stun one-for-one while doing more damage in a faster animation for less endurance and applying -special. I don't mention "with a lower recharge" in this instance because of the tie to Total Focus and its 20 second recharge. If you used Stun before there's less of a benefit to the other changes in the set, but you're still better off than you were just by using Barrage compared to taking (and slotting) Stun. That said, with my (pre-original EM nerf) Brute I never used Stun because the 60% chance in both Energy Transfer and Bone Smasher meant it's easy to reliably stun without it, and a dead Sapper is better than a stunned Sapper (I used ET first back then since it was always fast, now you can use TF on the Sapper and follow up with ET on something else instead... or lead with ET (or, I guess Barrage) if you still have focus from the previous spawn).

That's what I expected - like I said, having the resistance numbers open didn't help. 🙂 The rest of the post was directed to the OP, but since I didn't include the link I thought it might be worth pointing out where I was pulling those numbers from: Attack Mechanics from the wiki. The to-hit bonuses don't kick in unless the mob has a power that provides it (Build Up!), it's an Incarnate mob (64% base chance to hit instead of 50%), or the mob is +6 or higher to you.

While it started here and might be useful for people, the target macro assistance is at best tangential if not completely off-topic since it's not specific to the set and/or changes made to it, so if it's going to continue should probably go to PMs or another thread. Although honestly I think this thread has pretty much run its course already - the PvP numbers brought up are the closest to relevant but impact melee as a whole more than this set in specific, although if there was a split for full damage criticals on Total Focus and Energy Transfer in PvP-only it would certainly make the set significantly stronger in PvP.

I missed that you could delete them and assumed they would show up under Accolade Powers as the clicks share cooldowns with the PvE Accolades and the auto powers replace several others. Sorry for inadvertently encouraging the mess this thread has become by suggesting a possible bug. I thought I recalled a post in the PvP feedback stating they were listed as temp powers for consistency with the vendor, so thought that they might have been miscategorized. @Troo: to echo others this seems a strange thing to be obstinate on, and changing the label isn't going to happen because as has been mentioned that's the name of the powerset the powers belong to. If you change it for one you change it for all of them. Since they can be deleted, they are temporary.

They also had the defense numbers (in the middle) with 45.52% SL defense, 60.35% melee defense, and 46.38% ranged defense showing, and I'm pretty sure they were talking about the 32.71% chance for the SL Farm Elite Boss to hit them with those defense numbers. I will agree that having the resistance numbers up don't help much, though. The 7% and 7.35% for the minions makes perfect sense once the purple patch is accounted for (minions are at 1.0 accuracy and a +4 mob is 1.4, so 5% floored to-hit * 1.0 * 1.4 = 7% and Storm Kick gets an accuracy bonus). Elite Bosses get 1.3 accuracy, so to have a 32.71% final chance at +4 (1.4) using Call Hawk (base accuracy), the mob's to-hit was at 64.35% once you account for the 46.38% ranged defense (it's higher than the lethal defense so it gets used). So that means the EB had a to-hit bonus active which also needs to be accounted for with the defense to floor the chance to hit: did it use Build Up just before this, or does the custom mob have Rage in one of the powersets? For reference, a floored +4 EB will have a 9.1% chance to hit, but each point that its base hit chance isn't floored gets multiplied by 1.82 (1.95 for a +4 AV, they have a 1.5 accuracy modifier).

Fair enough, I missed the line where it was included, but AS recharges faster than Total Focus and the new ET recharges faster than either (plus the i27 version has critical damage as well as the self heal) so you could probably lead into both powers with it (no, I haven't tried to come up with attack chains based on this).

Since nobody else said it, I'll put it out: the new EM (only in beta currently) is downright silly for Stalker single target damage and - assuming a critical - includes a self-heal in your high DPS attack chain from ET. If you want to wreck one target, it's a great set to use.

Why would it not not go into General Feedback? I mean in the very first post it states that its purpose is "to discuss any changes not covered by any of the focused feedback threads." If not there, then file a beta bug report for text errors (such as the "Temporary" PVP Accolades).

Then explain it without blatantly false statements such as "There just simply isnt any good reason to not like this set aside from being difficult for the sake of being difficult." Not everyone thinks the set feels the same (or better) compared to old EM. Not everyone wants variable speed animations, even if they come with higher performance. Several people complained about the loss of Stun - which I still don't understand given how terrible a power it is on live - but that doesn't make their feedback irrelevant and you aren't the one who gets to decide that. I agree that they should try it, but if they have and still don't like it, they get to not like it.

Well, it also can do extra damage on Contaminated targets, too. I personally think that the expectation of more critical damage out of the set is unfounded without (at least) losing the self-heal in Energy Transfer, but I wanted to address the point brought up about Devastating Blow, and that I brought it up a couple of patches ago hoping for more critical damage on Total Focus, and ended up getting more potential critical damage because it was put on Energy Transfer instead.

Rad Melee was brought up earlier in the thread (I know it's a slog to go through, that's why I'm addressing it again here). It was my example of a power that has a full critical for why we could increase the damage on Total Focus criticals, because it does scale 3.08 damage (without Contamination), and can generate Contamination on a target, and does scale 3.08 critical damage for a total of 6.16 on a critical, while Total Focus is capped at scale 4.56. It wasn't specifically answered but the next patch saw a 28% damage critical for Energy Transfer, which previously had no critical damage (instead healing instead of hurting you), recharges faster than Total Focus, and does more base damage. So I think this is about all the critical damage we can expect out of the set.

Oh, look @Bill Z Bubba, here's one of those now! No, it is purposely obtuse to list your opinion as the end-all and be-all of valid feedback. The whole point in such a post is to suppress feedback by claiming some "objective truth" on things that are almost entirely opinion-based. Even throwing key words such as how things should perform is a cute little red flag of "this is my opinion," which means that you don't get to tell someone else that says, "No, it should work this way," that they are wrong and purposely obtuse. So let's go through your points: This is an opinion, as is anything related to "feel." Others are allowed to disagree because that's what an opinion is. Again, an opinion - however, it is objectively less simple than it was and anyone with two brain cells to run together can see that. "Much" is open for interpretation on the pre-nerf version, which never saw the proc-happy builds. Better than the current live version takes little to no effort. Both of these goals could have been achieved without a mechanic. That said, this is the closest to a factual statement you made so far in your post. Good job. It works with AT inherents - by itself only has significant changes for the Stalker version, where the increased recharge on PC helps for it being the only AoE, and the same changes every Stalker primary get with Build Up, Assassin's Strike, and Placate. The Brute, Tanker, and Scrapper versions are literally only different in how they deal with target caps (Tanker) or criticals (Scrapper). But hey, keep padding it so the list of points looks longer, good on you. Is it, though? It's still down in AoE damage, which is made up for by paying hit points to use your best attack more often. You've already got the complains in the TW thread about how EM is the new TW from people who feel it's (apparently) not balanced, although those are mostly trying to preserve the status quo on Titan Weapons. But see where this whole opinion thing comes in? Again, a matter of opinion. It's versatile at what, exactly? Punching things? It doesn't provide AoE crowd control like Stone Melee, Electric Melee, or Super Strength; it doesn't heal you like Dark or Rad Melee. The -special is nice and it's the only melee set to offer it, but you also give up the animation change for ET to use it. So the long and the short of is you can say you're being objective, but you're only being hypocritical by doing so, and not being at all objective. Whether others like the changes or not.

I found it very useful in my Fortunata's Aura of Confusion also - the 5% ranged defense puts me over the softcap without Mind Link. I don't actually use Aura of Confusion very often, but when I do it's as a panic button so it's nice that it hits bosses.

The bug is probably in Tanker Shadow Maul allowing the arc buff, but that's for @Captain Powerhouse to decide. An arc reduction to 90 degrees on PC on the Tanker version only, while removing the flag to ignore the Tanker inherent buff, would allow it to be 135 degrees instead of 120 (and theoretically it should also do more base damage per the design formulas, but since the "nerf" is just to widen the actual arc that may not happen). Just removing the flag would have it hit 180 degrees, like Shadow Maul is doing. Or it could be left as-is, and the Tanker inherent is just the higher target cap.

Kinetic Melee is decent on a Stalker (having the fastest of fast Assassin's Strikes does that), but there's no excuse for Concentrated Strike. Despite having a shorter animation, the damage hits later from power activation than Total Focus - even the slow one and not the faster beta version, so you end up blasting corpses with it more often than any other single target attack in the game. Unlike slow Energy Transfer, at least it doesn't hurt your hit points. For Stalkers or Scrappers, it provides no critical damage, instead recharging Power Siphon or Build Up - except it doesn't do it at the rate it should for criticals on a Scrapper, since it's not affected by things that affect the critical rate, and the benefit is moot for Stalkers since with the ATO every attack has a chance to recharge Build Up. And as you said, having a situation where ignoring half of the set consistently gives you better performance than actually taking and using any of the powers means that something is wrong.

Yes. From the beta patch notes. As for what's wrong with Ninjitsu... uhm, they added a lot to it that Stalkers didn't get when they moved it off of them?

Ghost Widow's first arc is pretty quick (with a drop) when you stealth it also, but I usually do Black Scorpion when I'm just trying to get it done asap. As for the boss in the second to the last mission, he spawns early in the map and talks - it takes less time for me to find him than the odd minion hiding in the house in the gutters, so I skip the defeat all. But really, other than Scirocco, the first arc for all of them is pretty quick - and Scirocco's is only slower due to the EB/AV fights, which is also what makes it more fun.

Just stealing from the first post in the pylon thread, the equation is ((30677.15+(102.26*Time))/Time)/(1-0.20)). Your times averaged over the four posted runs were 101.25 seconds on live, and 156.75 on beta. Plugging in 101.25 we get 506.55 DPS on live, and 372.46 DPS on beta. A 20% drop in DPS from 506.55 would be 405.24, 372.46 is a 26.5% reduction. It's a small number of tests and the beta numbers fluctuated a lot more, so you'll have to decide your own tolerance on "close enough."