Make Energy Melee great again

[Saiyajinzoningen]

Energy melee used to be a single target powerhouse. now in a world where aoe is king single target is left in the dust. Long cast times on this powerset just exasperate the problem. will reducing the cast time make this set viable again?

AND yes its possible to reduce cast times on powers, they did it for dominators. 

[Outrider_01]

Over used modified Trump slogans has less of a ground to stand on.  Only saying because I am tired of these stupid memes.

 

Suggestion: Energy Transfer has fallen to the roadside

 

And think there is a thread somewhere already.

[siolfir]

If it's not broken for Stalkers to have Assassin's Focus backing Assassin's Strike, it's not broken for Energy Transfer to do less damage (scale 4.56 vs scale 5) in the same animation time (1 sec) that also does self-damage, meaning the more often that you use it the more you suffer the penalty. I was one of the people who argued against it being nerfed before the Stalker buffs because of the lack of AoE in the set (particularly for Stalkers, who didn't even get the "meh" that is Whirling Hands), and it just makes even less sense after essentially giving ET to every Stalker was the "fix" chosen for an entire AT.

 

The worst case scenario is that another melee set might compete with Titan Weapons for single target damage while still falling far behind on AoE.

Edited January 7, 2020 by siolfir

[Menelruin]

I've actually heard the suggestion of keeping the animation, but just scaling the damage even HIGHER.  The biggest annoyance with EM is the "wasted" strikes -- you line up a crushing blow, and the mob is killed by AoE from teammates before you land.  But if you're fighting AVs, it takes much more to bring them down, so it's less of a concern.  Scale the damage up for ET so it takes a while to hit, but even Lord Recluse is gonna stagger with every blow.  Make it THE Boss-Killer set, as a trade-off for lack of AoE.

Edited January 7, 2020 by Menelruin

[Lazarillo]

Step 1: Swap the Energy Punch animation.  Use, say, the Bitter Ice Blast animation instead (see Vanden's avatar on this forum for how awesome that would look as a melee power).

Step 2: Swap Stun's animation for the current Energy Punch animation.  Increase to Mag. 4(?).  Remove damage component, making it into a quick, heavy disabler that can't be turned into a proc monster.

Step 3: Swap Energy Transfer's animation for the current Stun animation.  Increase the self-damage component to compensate for its insane DPA.

Step 4: Swap Total Focus's animation for the current Energy Transfer animation, so it'll look like an actual "Total Focus".  Don't do anything else with it.

Step 5 if you're feeling nice: Make Whirling Hands an AoE with hits that are small AoEs, like Beam Rifle's Refractor Beam for Sentinels.

 

Voila, Energy Melee is peachy.

[Saiyajinzoningen]

37 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Step 1: Swap the Energy Punch animation.  Use, say, the Bitter Ice Blast animation instead (see Vanden's avatar on this forum for how awesome that would look as a melee power).

Step 2: Swap Stun's animation for the current Energy Punch animation.  Increase to Mag. 4(?).  Remove damage component, making it into a quick, heavy disabler that can't be turned into a proc monster.

Step 3: Swap Energy Transfer's animation for the current Stun animation.  Increase the self-damage component to compensate for its insane DPA.

Step 4: Swap Total Focus's animation for the current Energy Transfer animation, so it'll look like an actual "Total Focus".  Don't do anything else with it.

Step 5 if you're feeling nice: Make Whirling Hands an AoE with hits that are small AoEs, like Beam Rifle's Refractor Beam for Sentinels.

 

Voila, Energy Melee is peachy.

delicious

[Galaxy Brain]

21 hours ago, Lazarillo said:

can't be turned into a proc monster.

1) Why not?

2) You underestimate our slotting potential 😛

[Infinitum]

59 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

1) Why not?

2) You underestimate our slotting potential 😛

I think the biggest problem is its not fun for those of us that remember it as it was - not that it can't be made to do pretty decent damage.

 

You felt like a nuclear powered bruiser before the nerf, now I'm not sure what you would call it but the flow and look of the marquee power in ET just isn't there.

 

I would much rather play SJ for the feel and have less damage than what EM is now.

 

Just doest look or feel the same since the nerf.

[Lazarillo]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

1) Why not?

2) You underestimate our slotting potential 😛

I feel like an attack that fast with a high-ish-but-manageable-Recharge is probably a little...excessive if it can be loaded out with procs, which defeats the purpose of trying to make it more useful as a mitigation tool while also (total 😛 )focusing on it as such a tool.  Without a damage component it loses access to any damage procs at least, which is my thought in this suggestion.  Disorient sets get Knockback, Immobilize, and ToHit Debuff procs, which, at least, maintains the "vision" I'm thinking for the power.

[siolfir]

55 minutes ago, Lazarillo said:

Without a damage component it loses access to any damage procs at least

Without a damage component it loses access to any builds. It's already skipped because there's enough stun in the rest of the set to reliably stunlock bosses for Tankers and Brutes, and for Stalkers if they use Total Focus, also.

 

There's also no reason whatsoever to increase the self-damage on Energy Transfer (it's not a penalty for high DPA, it's for the endurance cost discount and 1 scale damage for that recharge), and changing the animation for Energy Punch to that of Bitter Ice Blast would make it worse for your attack chain. If you're going to add it in, use the backhand for Energy Transfer (making it much faster but not quite as fast as it used to be), leave Stun alone unless you're going to give it the Cobra Strike treatment, and if you really wanted to make it over-the-top give Total Focus the Dominator animation that animates nearly one second faster.

 

Personally, I'd play the set again if all that changes is to revert the ET nerf; the problem with the set is that the animations take a long time and the damage doesn't occur until the end of the animation so you spend your time corpse-blasting. Which is incredibly stupid when the power usually doing this also happens to do damage to you even when you're hitting nothing. Having the damage hit near the beginning of a 1 second animation made it far less likely to be wasted. I was willing to trade off having nearly no AoE for the sake of having enough quick burst single-target damage that I could simulate it in small groups, and honestly think most of the ideas to add more AoE damage simply turn Energy Melee into Rad Melee.

Edited January 8, 2020 by siolfir
rewording for clarity

[Saiyajinzoningen]

of course a far reaching solution would be to change the interrupt reduction IO's into cast time reduction IO's. Then other sets could benefit, a new set of ios would be used and EM wouldnt need to be adjusted perhaps?

[Lazarillo]

2 hours ago, siolfir said:

Without a damage component it loses access to any builds. It's already skipped because there's enough stun in the rest of the set to reliably stunlock bosses for Tankers and Brutes, and for Stalkers if they use Total Focus, also.

The difference is that EM already has 5 other attacks that do the job of "single target hit".  It doesn't need another.  Stun needs something that only it can do, and is weak because it animates so slowly.  Moving it to the fastest hit of the set gives it a reason to be used, particularly if the Magnitude of the stun is upped so that you can even knock a boss out of the fight effectively, without having to rely on stacking many attacks and/or the RNG factor.

 

Giving ET the current "Stun" animation moves its DPA higher than anything Brutes can get except for Freezing Touch (which is a DoT), and the self damage is already negligible as a "cost", so I feel like it's a fair trade off.  Reverting it completely makes it more than triple the DPA of any non-Freezing Touch hit.  There's no way that's a realistic expectation without some sort of drawback.

Edited January 8, 2020 by Lazarillo

[boggo2300]

On 1/8/2020 at 2:35 AM, honoroit said:

#perfectphonecall - i bomb cultural sites because I finally decided to learn gov by playing civ

ok that made me laugh so hard I actually cried

[oedipus_tex]

The changes to the Dominator Energy Assault set telegraph the direction Energy Melee may go, I hope. Energy Transfer isn't part of the Dom set, but I can see it getting the same treatment. Whirling Hands is now one of the higher damage Dom PBAoEs.

 

ET just feels weak overall though. The wind up looks very silly and the "crunch" of the power is unsatisfying. Could it get the fast animation back when the set "powers up" using the dom mechanics but use the old slow animation at other times?

[BrandX]

Why not get rid of the self damage of Energy Transfer?

 

Insane damage?  3 Lvl Damage IOs and no Fury, have it at 132.3 DPS.  Super Strength's Knockout Blow comes at level 8 instead of level 32 and does 126.2 DPS.  And all because Energy Transfer gets 2/3 of it as Energy?

 

Greater Psi Blade has 128.9 DPS, and it's Psi Damage and comes at level 26.

[siolfir]

8 minutes ago, BrandX said:

Why not get rid of the self damage of Energy Transfer?

For its recharge, it does more damage than it should and it has a very low endurance cost. Since animation times didn't used to be balanced around, that's where the self damage comes from.

[BrandX]

10 minutes ago, siolfir said:

For its recharge, it does more damage than it should and it has a very low endurance cost. Since animation times didn't used to be balanced around, that's where the self damage comes from.

 

KO Blow is 5 second longer recharge, but it does come with Rage.

 

Greater Psi Blade has a 5 second less recharge, and does about the same DPS.

[siolfir]

2 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

KO Blow is 5 second longer recharge, but it does come with Rage.

 

Greater Psi Blade has a 5 second less recharge, and does about the same DPS.

KO Blow has a longer recharge than it should (and Crushing Uppercut copied the problem due to the combo system letting it go higher). 20 seconds would be scale 3.56 damage (Seismic Smash, Total Focus, Concentrated Strike) and Energy Transfer does scale 4.56 with a 20 second recharge.

 

Greater Psi Blade gets a bonus from Insight that takes it from scale 2.69 to scale 4.04, but GPB also costs more endurance (14.35 vs 10.19 for ET).

[honoroit]

This is the one that on a stalker (and other at?) can't crit for certain powers, right? 

 

Tell you one thing, that fact alone banishes it to the 'will never play' bin for a lot of people, I'm sure. 

 

When folks are all tarted up to the nines with incarnate foo, withstanding 40 incoming missiles from giant robots, 'avoided' flash spam ahoy... Does it really matter now if a thing could crit? 

 

Is / was it that good in puvvupp that it needs ruined these days. 

 

I'd be so happy to find one person to strike me in pvp zones, they're welcome to crit when they do. imo. 

[Haijinx]

On 1/7/2020 at 10:35 AM, honoroit said:

#perfectphonecall - i bomb cultural sites because I finally decided to learn gov by playing civ

Lol!

 

Quoting before the lock!

 

 

Edited January 8, 2020 by Haijinx
Had to add a LOL

[BrandX]

6 minutes ago, honoroit said:

This is the one that on a stalker (and other at?) can't crit for certain powers, right? 

 

Tell you one thing, that fact alone banishes it to the 'will never play' bin for a lot of people, I'm sure. 

 

When folks are all tarted up to the nines with incarnate foo, withstanding 40 incoming missiles from giant robots, 'avoided' flash spam ahoy... Does it really matter now if a thing could crit? 

 

Is / was it that good in puvvupp that it needs ruined these days. 

 

I'd be so happy to find one person to strike me in pvp zones, they're welcome to crit when they do. imo. 

 

Well, I'm not sure about Greater Psi Blade, and if it crits or not, but Energy Transfer doesn't Crit on Stalkers.  Scrappers don't have Energy Melee.

 

However, it's not the lack of a Crit that stopped me from playing it on a Stalker, but the lack of Whirling Hands.

[Haijinx]

I bet even with ET restored to the original anim, it would still be behind TW

 

[siolfir]

25 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

I bet even with ET restored to the original anim, it would still be behind TW

 

This. That's why I don't see it as a problem to just un-nerf it. If they reduced the animation on TF it might beat out TW on single target (and definitely would for Stalkers), but even then it wouldn't have the AoE damage.

 

36 minutes ago, honoroit said:

This is the one that on a stalker (and other at?) can't crit for certain powers, right? 

Energy Melee has a reduced critical on Total Focus (goes from scale 3.56 to scale 4.56), with no self-damage as the "critical" for Energy Transfer, and reduced chance to stun on Energy Punch (10% vs 30%) and Bone Smasher (30% vs 60%). They get Energy Transfer at tier 8 and Total Focus at tier 9 like Tankers do, though; Brutes get Total Focus at tier 7 and Energy Transfer at tier 9. So technically there's a critical. Sortof.

 

Concentrated Strike from Kinetic Melee also doesn't do extra damage on a critical, incidentally, instead providing a recharge to Build Up (made mostly irrelevant by the ATO) for Stalkers, or Power Siphon for Scrappers.

Edited January 9, 2020 by siolfir

[Haijinx]

Wow, Stalker Energy Melee basically bites

[siolfir]

1 minute ago, Haijinx said:

Wow, Stalker Energy Melee basically bites

Yep. That's why I recommend avoiding it.

Edited January 9, 2020 by siolfir