What happened to energy melee?

[Mansome]

I have not noticed any energy melee stalkers since I started playing the game. Is this set so bad now since we got new powersets? I remember on live servers this the set to pvp with back in the day. Did it get nerfed out something?

[Croax]

Energy Melee was a PvP powerhouse back in the day. I remember my EM/Nin Stalker running around and killing everything but tanker in Recluses Victory. You could AS->Energy Transfer->Total Focus. That was 3 hard hitting abilities and ET had a amazingly short animation time. Also a lot of Archetypes were disoriented and did not have that much life anyway. Then i had Moonbeam for the ones that ran away with little to no life. Nostalgia....

 

But then the nerf came and ET got such a long animation time, that it was basically useless. Today it is even worse, because ET can not crit. Even out of hide. So basically you are looking at a primary without ANY area damage and two attacks that have a very long animation time which one of can not even crit. The only thing it has going is the glowing pompons and sound effects that stimulate my nostalgic memory....

Edited September 13, 2019 by Croax

[Haijinx]

Its only good on Blasters. 

[M3z]

ET animation change really gutted the set.

 

They really need to have ET/TF do full crit and revert ET animation to old animation. Funny thing is this set probably still won't be better than psi melee in pvp even if they did those changes, but atleast you'd have another viable stalker set for pvp.

[EldritchDrake]

2 hours ago, M3z said:

ET animation change really gutted the set.

 

They really need to have ET/TF do full crit and revert ET animation to old animation. Funny thing is this set probably still won't be better than psi melee in pvp even if they did those changes, but atleast you'd have another viable stalker set for pvp.

I'd say the set needs a complete and total overhaul for the full set. It just has so much wrong with it.

[LeapingLemur]

I love my EM stalker, but she's redside and I don't end up playing her much. I really is a great set for stalkers. It's just with her concept, she doesn't belong in Paragon City AT ALL.

[Call Me Awesome]

I'll certainly agree with the ET animation change killing the set; it really killed it for all AT's not just Stalkers.  Back in the day I had a Stone/EM tanker that was fairly effective pre-nerf.  Then the ET change came and a mediocre set lost the only redeeming feature it had.  That was the only level 50 I ever stripped and abandoned.

 

I never played it in anything but the Tanker version but as it is today I'd generally rate it dead last in the melee sets.  Pre-nerf it kind of sucked before you got ET, then it redeemed itself somewhat.  Today I'd play literally anything else instead.

[Tater Todd]

I hope it gets the Energy Assault Dominator treatment.

[drbuzzard]

I cannot imagine making anything with Energy Melee anymore as it currently stands. It's just not great at anything.

[Call Me Awesome]

4 hours ago, drbuzzard said:

I cannot imagine making anything with Energy Melee anymore as it currently stands. It's just not great at anything.

It's been nerfed into the ground due to it's former status of being mediocre to poor outside of one power.

[ShardWarrior]

I shed a tear every time I think about how much fun EM used to be...

[mbre2006]

It wasn't just pvp that ruined it. Overall the set was just a powerhouse in single target dps that other sets could not keep up with. When Castle was asking about switching the animation for ET I asked if you could just switch the animation with stun. Stun would be better off with a faster animation than that baseball pitch animation. But he went that that shit we have today.

[MIG]

If we think about all the PvP abuse EM caused over the relatively brief time it was in its original form, we probably have another year of jail/nerf time to . make up for our prior sins.  I ran a INV/EM tanker to great success early on in the game and when stalker became available I immediately went EM.  The one and two shot combos were outrageous, but you had to wait for the opportunity to catch people sitting still to unload the full wrath of EM with AS.  In the "stupid funny" category was pairing with another Stalker friend and having him TP-other heroes at entrance and greet them with AS-ET-TF combo of love.  Almost as much fun was running into the hospital in pairs to actually get off an ET-TF combo on a hiding hero you wanted to face-plant.  Yeah, crazy times... but now we must do penance because Castle received hate-mail for three years straight from traumatized players.  

[Troo]

On 9/12/2019 at 8:58 PM, Mansome said:

I have not noticed any energy melee stalkers since I started playing the game. Is this set so bad now since we got new powersets? I remember on live servers this the set to pvp with back in the day. Did it get nerfed out something?

Yes it got nerfed.. way back. My bad..

It is still playable? Yes and can be effective.

 

My bad about Siren's Call, my bad about the hero hospitals, my bad about TP Foe, my bad for the demoralized tank & scrapper corpses piled high blocking the moon.

My bad, my bad, my bad..

I'M SORRY.

We're sorry.

Can we have ET back now?

-Troo

 

Insta-assassin's strike, insta-hide, placate, and stuns save it. It has a lot of control can be built around but the T8 & T9 primaries are throwaways for anything but finishing moves when solo. In a team setting, they are a waste of endurance as the targets are almost always defeated by the time these hit.

Is it the top dog? Nope. Maybe middle of the pack with some outliers if they really know what they are doing.

 

Maybe give the old ET just to tanks. No brutes, no scrappers, no stalkers. I would take it and say thank you.

-Troo

 

Edited November 14, 2019 by Troo
I'M SORRY

[KelvinKole]

I remember when this happened. Not because I was playing one, but because the PvP zones breathed a big sigh of relief. These days, isn't Devastating Blow from Radiation Melee just as bad (good) as ET ever was? The description doesn't say anything about not being able to land a critical and no loss to hp, plus the contamination effect.

[Icono04]

Out of curiosity, when did the nerf to EM (or rather, to ET) happen? Back on Live, I only managed to get 2 characters to level 50 the old-fashioned way (i.e. not counting AE farm powerlevelled chars), and one of those two 50's was an Energy/Energy brute who dinged 50 sometime in 2008. So now I wonder whether that was before the EM nerf, or I was simply oblivious to how gimped a powerset I am playing with  :)

[Call Me Awesome]

On 3/31/2020 at 5:40 AM, Icono04 said:

Out of curiosity, when did the nerf to EM (or rather, to ET) happen? Back on Live, I only managed to get 2 characters to level 50 the old-fashioned way (i.e. not counting AE farm powerlevelled chars), and one of those two 50's was an Energy/Energy brute who dinged 50 sometime in 2008. So now I wonder whether that was before the EM nerf, or I was simply oblivious to how gimped a powerset I am playing with  🙂

Well, I rolled a Stone/EM tanker after the GDN and ED, so around issue 6.  I reached 50 just in time to get hit with the bat hard and permanently retire the character, so likely it was issue 7 or at the latest issue 8.

 

I kept the character until around issue 20 in the hopes that the nerf would be revisited, then it became the only level 50 I ever deleted.

[Rathulfr]

My original tanker from I2/I3 was Invuln/Energy.  Then along came I4 and all of the other subsequent nerfs that just destroyed that build.  I actually quit CoH over that, back in the day.  Then I came back after a month or two, because I couldn't find a better MMO at the time.

 

I recreated that character on HC as WP/Energy, just for nostalgia's sake.  I loved the character concept, but rarely play him because it's such a pale reflection of its former glory.  *sigh*

 

[Caulderone]

EM is one of the old sets that lacks any AoE for stalkers, which doesn't help, beyond the other things discussed.

[Heraclea]

I had a Fire/EM tanker that I rolled in i2 or i3 and played to 50.  I made the character back before power customization because I thought the two sets looked good together.  She became doubly unplayable because Fire depends on its self heal for survival, doubly so before IO sets, so I exiled her from Victory to a server I seldom played on. 

[ShardWarrior]

14 minutes ago, Heraclea said:

I had a Fire/EM tanker that I rolled in i2 or i3 and played to 50.  I made the character back before power customization because I thought the two sets looked good together.  She became doubly unplayable because Fire depends on its self heal for survival, doubly so before IO sets, so I exiled her from Victory to a server I seldom played on. 

I shed a tear every time I think about my Fire/EM tank back in the day before all the nerfs.  😥

[siolfir]

On 3/31/2020 at 5:40 AM, Icono04 said:

Out of curiosity, when did the nerf to EM (or rather, to ET) happen? Back on Live, I only managed to get 2 characters to level 50 the old-fashioned way (i.e. not counting AE farm powerlevelled chars), and one of those two 50's was an Energy/Energy brute who dinged 50 sometime in 2008. So now I wonder whether that was before the EM nerf, or I was simply oblivious to how gimped a powerset I am playing with  :)

It was changed in July of 2008.