So is Energy just an anathema to good players?

[Lifeboy]

most annoying thing with energy/ that I have not seen in this thread is Nova.  From my testing, you can't get rid of the kb, the IOs don't reduce it enough.  With the way nukes work now, Nova becomes situational vs other nukes you can use every time they are up.  This was annoying on my blaster compared to playing fire/

[Without_Pause]

5 hours ago, Lifeboy said:

most annoying thing with energy/ that I have not seen in this thread is Nova.  From my testing, you can't get rid of the kb, the IOs don't reduce it enough.  With the way nukes work now, Nova becomes situational vs other nukes you can use every time they are up.  This was annoying on my blaster compared to playing fire/

+1. I ran an En blaster into the 40s. KB wasn't issue with common IOs and Hover. Nova has been a bane to my Kins though.

[Tugzug]

To help alleviate the IO tax, one of your 3 AoE powers can be slotted with Overwhelming Force instead of Sudden Acceleration. It gets damage with its KD conversion and has pretty good set bonuses, so you'd only end up losing 1-2 slots total instead of 2-3.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 10/31/2019 at 10:25 AM, Possibly said:

The concept is a robot controlled by a hyper intelligent baby panda. It's a terrible idea.

Au contraire!  I have a toon based on much the same concept, World's Smartest Cat

 

Granted, I haven't leveled it much, but it's still there.

[Clave Dark 5]

On 10/31/2019 at 10:25 AM, Possibly said:

The concept is a robot controlled by a hyper intelligent baby panda. It's a terrible idea.

Au contraire!  I have a toon based on much the same concept, World's Smartest Cat

 

Granted, I haven't leveled it much, but it's still there.

[Pzn]

  Good players generally don't pick energy blast.  There's no reason to play energy blast outside of theme.  It's playable, but it's simply worse than comparable sets.  It could really use some love so that it has something unique outside of knockback.

 

Edited April 14, 2020 by josh1622

[Brynstar]

On 4/14/2020 at 7:35 AM, josh1622 said:

  Good players generally don't pick energy blast.  There's no reason to play energy blast outside of theme.  It's playable, but it's simply worse than comparable sets.  It could really use some love so that it has something unique outside of knockback.

 

I have to agree with this. IMO it's not that you can't make energy blast work, but what argument is there to even take it at all? It's fairly easy to make arguments for most of the other blast sets as to why to take them, but energy blast's selling point is "you can make it work". Now that being said, with high end builds it isn't necessary to have only "the best" sets. If it fits your toon and you like it, energy blast is just fine. Have at it.

 

[Hjarki]

While the knockback is frequently cited as the core flaw of the set, it's not a tremendous flaw. You really only need to reduce the knockback on the AE powers. When you use single target powers you're generally either fighting something immune to the knockback or you're fighting an enemy by yourself so no one else cares.

 

So I tend to take a most positive view of Energy than most.

 

That being said, I can get most of the advantages of Energy from other sets that only have one or two knockback attacks (Archery, Dark, Psychic, Beam, Dual Pistols, Water) while also having faster activations, better secondary effects or a better overall structure.

 

 

 

[Ironscarlet]

On 4/14/2020 at 7:35 AM, josh1622 said:

  Good players generally don't pick energy blast.  There's no reason to play energy blast outside of theme.  

 

Not true there is a min/max reason to go energy and that is for a high recharge builds if you are trying to spam a certain power in the 250-300% global recharge area energy will help get you there with perma force feedback. For example energy/storm. Energy gives you less damage than other range damage sets but lets you spam 2 tornados, 2 lightning storms and sub 6 min burnout times for up to 3 LS. Now with that extra damage from extreme recharge you have just surpassed some other combos. Somethings get a bad rap I think energy more so than it deserves.

 

So for the op Energy/Empathy could be a good combo if your focusing more on team buffs than damage. Why? Recovery aura and regeneration aura have 500s recharge times and 90s duration if you have max recharge you could get it to 100s that is almost perma recovery and regeneration in theory it could be a good combo if your goal was perma Empathy buffs.

 

Edited April 18, 2020 by Ironscarlet

[Darkir]

On 4/18/2020 at 6:23 AM, Ironscarlet said:

Not true there is a min/max reason to go energy and that is for a high recharge builds if you are trying to spam a certain power in the 250-300% global recharge area energy will help get you there with perma force feedback. For example energy/storm. Energy gives you less damage than other range damage sets but lets you spam 2 tornados, 2 lightning storms and sub 6 min burnout times for up to 3 LS. Now with that extra damage from extreme recharge you have just surpassed some other combos. Somethings get a bad rap I think energy more so than it deserves.

For min/maxing just go DP instead if this is your goal. You'll get the same constant uptime of the FF proc and do more damage without the knockback so you can more effectively harness all that AoE and/or have more slots due to not needing to slot kb to kd ios.

[eiynp]

The tragedy of energy blast is that once you slot the aoes for knockdown the secondary effect is actually kinda awesome; if you rotate the cone and the TAoE it's almost like the enemy group has an ice patch under it. Unfortunately we gotta spend slots to achieve that behavior and years of live performance have given the set a bad rap.

 

Its damage isn't that great and smashing is frequently resisted, but in terms of DPS it isn't that much worse than all the other sets that are Not Fire.

[Doomguide2005]

On 4/14/2020 at 7:35 AM, josh1622 said:

  Good players generally don't pick energy blast.  There's no reason to play energy blast outside of theme.  It's playable, but it's simply worse than comparable sets.  It could really use some love so that it has something unique outside of knockback.

 

Ooof.

 

Good players are good players.   Being a good player is a separate thing from being a role player or power gamer or min/maxer.  If I go from my highly IO'd  maxed Claws/SR with 1000's of hours game time to my Storm troller or Energy blaster I'm still me.  I do get that I might not be as capable of playing a particular set(s) well but I don't think that suddenly makes me a bad player merely one whose goal with the set(s) is different or is simply still learning how to play the set(s).  Putting anyone in an across the board category of Good, Bad, (or Ugly) Player based on a single factor such as how they handle knockback is probably a mistake. 

[Psyonico]

9 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Ooof.

 

Good players are good players.   Being a good player is a separate thing from being a role player or power gamer or min/maxer.  If I go from my highly IO'd  maxed Claws/SR with 1000's of hours game time to my Storm troller or Energy blaster I'm still me.  I do get that I might not be as capable of playing a particular set(s) well but I don't think that suddenly makes me a bad player merely one whose goal with the set(s) is different or is simply still learning how to play the set(s).  Putting anyone in an across the board category of Good, Bad, (or Ugly) Player based on a single factor such as how they handle knockback is probably a mistake. 

Agreed,

 

one of my mains on live was an Empathy/Energy and he absolutely destroyed stuff, I wish I still had his build, because the one I'm using is not as effective as it was on live.

[Pzn]

38 minutes ago, Doomguide2005 said:

Ooof.

 

Good players are good players.   Being a good player is a separate thing from being a role player or power gamer or min/maxer.  If I go from my highly IO'd  maxed Claws/SR with 1000's of hours game time to my Storm troller or Energy blaster I'm still me.  I do get that I might not be as capable of playing a particular set(s) well but I don't think that suddenly makes me a bad player merely one whose goal with the set(s) is different or is simply still learning how to play the set(s).  Putting anyone in an across the board category of Good, Bad, (or Ugly) Player based on a single factor such as how they handle knockback is probably a mistake. 

Ooof.  Yikes.

 

You're taking what I said the wrong way.  Good players generally don't play energy blast.  I never said good players can't play energy blast.

[Doomguide2005]

Fair enough. Players of all sorts can and do play with energy blast/knockback heavy sets.  They probably don't do it generally from a min/max point of view but there's definitely something cathartic after a rough day of simply blowing stuff all over the place, 'painting the instanced map wall' with embedded bodies or knocking level 8 skulls all over Perez Park with your level 50 Nrg, Stormie or even with my "maxed" Claws' Shockwave.

[Peacemoon]

Reading this thread I have a desire to play energy blast and slot for +knockback!

[Doomguide2005]

4 hours ago, Peacemoon said:

Reading this thread I have a desire to play energy blast and slot for +knockback!

FOUR!

[Frostweaver]

Back in the day we used to have KB contests in Atlas to see who could spike a level 2 Hellion the farthest. People didn't mind trashing a bunch of enhancements just for the contest because there was nothing to spend influence on... and a Set of SO's was just a drop.

Energy was a strong contender, able to get hellions from the sewer entrance nearly to the hollows.

It was cruel fun for heroes and I could absolutely see that sort of evil nastiness being a real life game if the capes were real.

 

[Grindingsucks]

The OP thinks a baby panda controlling a robot is a bad idea?  I think it's pure awesome, personally.  I do love creative character concepts, though.  😃

 

Maybe you were referring to choosing energy, though.  If that's the case, never mind (but, either way, the mutant panda idea is aces! 👍).  

[Giocondi]

I think you have an excellent build theme and need to see it through. You already have everything you need to be a great energy blaster in this thread.

 

I just wanted to say, for me, energy blasting is the ranged version of the martial arts melee set. What I mean by that is the sound effects and visuals of energy blast are unparalleled for pure satisfaction. These are the only toons I will have to log on to just get 10-15 minutes of gameplay satisfaction if I've been away from them too long. Hope you made this toon and are enjoying every second of it!

[Sakai]

On 4/29/2020 at 5:32 AM, Frostweaver said:

Energy was a strong contender, able to get hellions from the sewer entrance nearly to the hollows.

 

Wow. Thats a long way. 

[TombTyrant]

Okay man, that sounds like an event I would be interested in running.

[roleki]

On 4/21/2020 at 9:57 AM, Peacemoon said:

Reading this thread I have a desire to play energy blast and slot for +knockback!

 

I have an alt build on my En/En blaster that went this route.  I logged on once and there was a Zombie event in progress right underneath me, so I Nova'd, forgetting that the +KB build was active.  For some reason, nobody was happy with Zombie Rain.

 

In any event, as was posted earlier in the thread, you don't REALLY need to use the KB:KD enhancement if you're smart about how the KB works, but I usually just slot them anyway.  I've already given up chasing MAX DMG! by rolling an EN in the first place, so, what's another 4 or 5% of enhanced damage/acc/rech lost?  That said, I love my Kin/En Defender and my En/KIn Corruptor, they're legitimately just fun-to-run perpetual cannons.

[roleki]

On 7/30/2021 at 10:58 PM, Sakai said:

Wow. Thats a long way. 

 

Used to be, you'd hit one and you'd need a spotter across the zone to tell you where it landed.  You could legitimately fire one so high in the air and so far it would get stuck in the War Wall between zones.  But they dialed down the KB somewhere along the line, and now you can barely get one to fly more than 200'.   I get WHY they did it, but I wish they'd have a server event or something where everybody in Echo: AP got a 10000% KB enhancement just from being there.  You know, for old times' sake.

[Doomguide2005]

1 hour ago, roleki said:

 

Used to be, you'd hit one and you'd need a spotter across the zone to tell you where it landed.  You could legitimately fire one so high in the air and so far it would get stuck in the War Wall between zones.  But they dialed down the KB somewhere along the line, and now you can barely get one to fly more than 200'.   I get WHY they did it, but I wish they'd have a server event or something where everybody in Echo: AP got a 10000% KB enhancement just from being there.  You know, for old times' sake.

"Hellions vs Skulls" golfing contest.  Bring your favorite drivers!  Find out whose more aerodynamic and just who can nail the landings!