Make Energy Melee great again

[Haijinx]

11 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Yep. That's why I recommend avoiding it.

They should swap out Stun for whirling hands.

 

Give stalker EM the same stun chances as everyone else in the other attacks 

 

And same as the other ATs fix ET animation. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by Haijinx

[aethereal]

All I want is for Energy Melee to be good.  I love the looks of the set so much.  I'm fine with a single-target focus.  But it feels like it has so many problems.

 

So, TF is presumably going to get some better animation time per the Dom changes (or at least they're going to try to push in that direction, who knows if they'll make it work).  What if we say that all your ST damage needs can be handled by barrage, energy punch, bone crusher, total focus.  That is after all four single-target punch-y powers.  It feels like five such powers is gilding the lily.  Just change their damage and recharge times until you can make a first-tier single-target attack rotation with just those four powers.

 

Now we have space for stun and energy transfer to be things that don't need to be in your main attack rotation.  Maybe stun could be a zero-damage AoE stun on a long cooldown that could be an "oh shit" button for a set without much AoE.  Get yourself into trouble, bam, you're a fake controller for this mob, take eight seconds to focus down a few more mobs before they resume kicking your ass.

 

Okay hear me out for Energy Transfer:

Maybe give it a fast animation, give it low cooldown, and its schtick is it gives your enemy -30% resist energy damage (plus maybe energy-punch levels of damage), and it gives that for a long time, like 30 seconds.  And the resist energy damage debuff stacks with self.  BUT, it also gives you a tag for the same 30 second timer, and each tag you give yourself multiplies the self-damage.  So basically you can up your damage a lot, but if you do you are really badly hurting yourself.  Or alternately you can use it every 30 seconds for a mild damage increase and negligible self-damage.

 

Stun and this version of ET have a certain amount of synergy, too: find you're flying too close to the sun in your use of ET?  No problem, stun everyone to reduce incoming damage a lot, and breathe out for a few seconds, stop spamming ET.

[Troo]

It's possible folks over think this one.

 

At one point Energy Melee was fun to play and very effective (okay maybe too effective). That version of the game is looong gone.

 

Just change the set back.

 

It won't be top dog in the current version. It's not gonna be the top farmer or displace AoE monsters. It'll be fun though and folks will play it.

If for some very unlikely reason it did break the game, then we address that. In my not so humble opinion it's pretty unlikely.

[Troo]

put it on test, let's see.

 

10 hours ago, Infinitum said:

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.

Corpse-blasting^tm is the problem. The set has a couple big hitters that often don't end up hitting anything. That would be awful even if I never played it before.

 

yes I totally stole corpe-blasting and threw a tm on it.

 

Edited January 9, 2020 by Troo
eliminated a post

[Haijinx]

EM is great on blasters.

 

So maybe until they fix it, play it there.

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, Troo said:

put it on test, let's see.

 

Corpse-blasting^tm is the problem. The set has a couple big hitters that often don't end up hitting anything. That would be awful even if I never played it before.

 

yes I totally stole corpe-blasting and threw a tm on it.

 

A lot of sets thats more played than EM corpse bombs though, Rad does and its a good setand people like it.

[BrandX]

1 hour ago, Infinitum said:

A lot of sets thats more played than EM corpse bombs though, Rad does and its a good setand people like it.

Done it plenty of time with Crushing Uppercut.

[Infinitum]

1 hour ago, BrandX said:

Done it plenty of time with Crushing Uppercut.

Same here, and KO Blow, and Greater psi Blade.

[nihilii]

I'm with Troo. Let's take the old ET animation for a spin on Test. No other change needed just yet. I bet everyone will end up loving it, and that it won't be overpowered.

[aethereal]

"Just make the big single-target damage plus chance-to-stun attacks good" has the problem that the design space in the set for "good damage single target attacks with chance to stun" is pretty crowded.  There are five attacks in the set that are just "let's hit 'em and do some damage and maybe stun," six for Stalkers (so that's barrage, energy punch, bone crusher, energy transfer, total focus, and optionally assassin's strike).  Of those, only ET has a slight complicating factor, and it's widely agreed not to be a big deal.  The remaining four powers in the set are two generic ones (build up and either taunt or assassin's strike), stun (which is pretty bad), and whirling hands (which is mediocre).

 

If ET were better, that'd obviously be better for the set than the status quo, but it feels like Energy Melee needs something else going on than "five or six attacks that are basically all the same except for DPA."

[BrandX]

5 hours ago, aethereal said:

"Just make the big single-target damage plus chance-to-stun attacks good" has the problem that the design space in the set for "good damage single target attacks with chance to stun" is pretty crowded.  There are five attacks in the set that are just "let's hit 'em and do some damage and maybe stun," six for Stalkers (so that's barrage, energy punch, bone crusher, energy transfer, total focus, and optionally assassin's strike).  Of those, only ET has a slight complicating factor, and it's widely agreed not to be a big deal.  The remaining four powers in the set are two generic ones (build up and either taunt or assassin's strike), stun (which is pretty bad), and whirling hands (which is mediocre).

 

If ET were better, that'd obviously be better for the set than the status quo, but it feels like Energy Melee needs something else going on than "five or six attacks that are basically all the same except for DPA."

 

But I like that Energy Melee is a chance for stun on every attack.  I like the one mediocre PBAOE.  Just needs to be better ST DPS with just TF as the big long attack.  

[Galaxy Brain]

I think if EM had something like Assassin's Focus... that would make sense.

 

Stalkers had a similar problem as an AT where they relied heavily on Assassin's Strike... which halted all momentum. Much like how ET / TF work. 

 

If EM had like, the dominator /nrg gimmick of powering up you could "spend" that on like an instant ET or such?

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, BrandX said:

 

But I like that Energy Melee is a chance for stun on every attack.  I like the one mediocre PBAOE.  Just needs to be better ST DPS with just TF as the big long attack.  

 

I'm not saying "stop stunning on every attack," and I'm not saying it shouldn't have a good set of single-target attacks that do stuns.  I'm saying do we really need 5 or 6 powers to achieve that?  And really it's to some degree 6 or 7, because Stun is another single target damaging attack that does stuns, albeit one that swings way more stun and way less damage.  (But some of the proposals I've seen here are "up the damage of Stun," at which point it's YET ANOTHER thing that does exactly the same as all the other powers in EM).

 

In all fairness, there are other power-sets that kind of follow this pattern.  Battle Axe and War Mace are basically this except the T9 is a cone.  Broadsword is this except the stun-equivalent is parry, which is better than stun (maybe, depending on how easily your armor set soft-caps you), and the T9 is a cone.  Martial arts is maybe the closest comparison.

 

Ultimately what I'm saying is that we should be able to (easily) give the player all the "I do high single-target damage via an uncomplicated attack chain that involves punching people with pom-poms" in at most 5 powers, and then use Stun or Energy Transfer to give the player some kind of other tool besides yet more ST damage.

Edited January 10, 2020 by aethereal

[siolfir]

51 minutes ago, aethereal said:

I'm not saying "stop stunning on every attack," and I'm not saying it shouldn't have a good set of single-target attacks that do stuns.  I'm saying do we really need 5 or 6 powers to achieve that?

I had a long post earlier, but forum maintenance ate it when I clicked Submit Reply. The long and short of it was that if you don't count Stun, Energy Melee is hardly alone in having 5 single target attacks: Kinetic Melee, Martial Arts, Street Justice, Super Strength, and for non-Tankers, Fiery Melee all also have 5 single target attacks, and that's not including the tiny cones for Broadsword and Katana/Ninja Blade. As for them all having a stun effect, at one point it was considered almost overpowered that it had a chance to stun in every power. Whirling Hands is average in every way for an AoE, so it's not really the problem. Stun is a useless power that adds nothing to the set, and is the outlier.

 

With that out of the way, back to the long and boring part: Barrage used to be complete garbage until the recharge was tripled with a corresponding damage increase (it was Jab, but in a longer animation with damage over time in a set without double-stacked Rage). It still only has a 10% chance for a mag 2 stun; Energy Punch and Whirling Hands are also mag 2 at 30%, except the Stalker version which is 10% also. That means your reliable stuns are in Bone Smasher (60% mag 3), Energy Transfer (60% mag 3), and Total Focus (100% mag 3), ignoring Stun for now (more on that later).

 

The fact that those 3 powers make up the bulk of your damage in a single target chain is great, but with a slow Energy Transfer you're looking at almost 5 seconds to stack stun magnitude on bosses if Bone Smasher hits - it's about 6.5 if you have to use Energy Transfer and Total Focus - and the set has only Whirling Hands for AoE control. Even if you use Bone Smasher and Stun, you're still looking at about 4 seconds; Stun isn't a short animation, it's just not as long as Total Focus or Energy Transfer. Reverting ET cuts that time drastically.

 

What I'd like to see done with Stun is to turn it into an AoE stun and knockdown effect like Fault, using the Ground Punch alternate Foot Stomp animation (as a PBAoE) or, to keep the "melee damage" IO set slotting so the "cottage rule" people don't have a coronary, leave it with minor damage to a single target and have AoE knockdown and stun (but not AoE damage) from the "shockwave", similar to how Thunder Strike (and Fault, for that matter) behaves. That way you would have an AoE control in a primarily single target set, and if you use the structure of Fault's stun (100% mag 2, 50% additional mag 1) instead of keeping the 100% mag 3 you would still have to stack it with something for more than minions... like Whirling Hands' 30% chance or one of your "reliable" single target stuns. (edit: heck, if you're going with single target damage / AoE mez route and you just have to keep the ET/BFR animation, use it here since an AoE KD/stun sortof justifies the over-the-top animation)

 

But really, it would be played again with just the old Energy Transfer. It would be incredible with the Dominator animation for Total Focus and change to stun; you'd have top tier single target damage in a set that could keep the small fry off of you while you were busy killing yourself as fast as Energy Transfer could recharge. 

Edited January 10, 2020 by siolfir
reason included in post

[aethereal]

I think you're underselling how focused EM is.  It's not just that it has 5 ST attacks, it's that it has fewer distinguishing features than other sets.

 

The closest comparison is Martial Arts, which, yes, has 6 ST attacks, one AoE, a conventional build-up, and then taunt/confront/I forget how stalkers work and don't care.  For brutes and tanks, one of those ST attacks gets +def, which is a useful tool, and also I don't think that MA would be considered by most to be a standout set.  On a purely fluffy level, I think that the diversity of the animations of MA gives it a little more interest when you're executing your ST attack chain.

 

Super Strength and Kinetic Melee both have four ST melee attacks and one ST ranged attack, which is at least supposed to be a diverse tool in your set (I'm maybe dubious of the ranged attack actually being useful).  They also both have variant build ups that give the set more flavor in that power slot.  KM's T9 interacts with its build up, too.

 

Street Justice has its ST attacks broken up between combo builders and combo finishers, giving it way more of a role in using all those things, and it also has a variant build up.

 

Fiery Melee has one of its 5 ST attacks as a DoT, which...  might be relevant.  It also has more diverse animations and okay yeah, it's a pretty boring set and it does have two AoEs in there so at least there's some more utility.  I don't know, I haven't played FM in like 10 years, is it still great damage?

 

There are other sets that, more than the ST/AoE balance, rival EM for just not doing all that much.  Battle Axe and War Mace both have one more AoE but kind of don't do anything besides pile on more attacks that are pretty similar.  War Mace at least is really high damage, right?  And Battle Axe is...  not great, is my impression.

 

I feel like with a reversion to ET animation and nothing else, EM would go from being "arguably the very worst melee set" to "kind of tied with MA and Battle Axe for low-tier melee sets that don't give you a lot to do."

[Troo]

5 hours ago, aethereal said:

I feel like with a reversion to ET animation and nothing else, EM would go from being "arguably the very worst melee set" to "kind of tied with MA and Battle Axe for low-tier melee sets that don't give you a lot to do."

I'll take it!

[siolfir]

13 hours ago, aethereal said:

I feel like with a reversion to ET animation and nothing else, EM would go from being "arguably the very worst melee set" to "kind of tied with MA and Battle Axe for low-tier melee sets that don't give you a lot to do."

I did mention another change in the post that you quoted that I'd like to see - three if you include the Total Focus animation change.

 

Being focused isn't a bad thing, but to be worthwhile you should be great at what you focus on. Energy Melee focuses on single target damage and stuns, and because all of the stuns are single target it's worse than Electric Melee, Stone Melee, and Super Strength at stuns (all of which do it with just one AoE stun) and is only considered good for single target damage when you hit with all of your long animating attacks - if they miss, or more often, hit something already dead, then it's near the back of the pack behind sets who just hit faster.

 

Martial Arts isn't as maligned because it actually gets to hit with its attacks - well, outside of Eagle Claw, which for all the complaints about it still has a shorter animation time (2.53) than either Energy Transfer (2.67) or Total Focus (3.3), plus the damage hits earlier in the animation instead of at the very end.

[aethereal]

Yeah, I also suggested an AoE stun.  I think that's a consistent, relatively large-area control like an AoE stun would be a cool feature of the set.

 

I think that ET was obviously supposed to be an interesting part of Energy Melee, but it's hard to make the health cost be interesting -- if it's big enough to be significant, it works hard against the value that ET provides -- like, in a very tough fight where you need to pull out the stops and end it quickly is the place where you're least likely to want to pay a significant health cost.  And there are too many degenerate strategies, like "just use it at the very beginning of the fight."

 

I did have an idea for making ET more interesting on the way in to work today: keep the current nominal health cost, speed up the animation, and give it bonus damage when the casting toon is low on health (from "good, solid, worthy-of-inclusion-in-your attack chain DPA" when you're at full health to "outstanding, best-in-the-game DPA" when you're at less than 25% health).  Now, I know, this is like old Defiance and everyone hates old Defiance.  But, a few things mitigate that:
 

1. It's not an entire AT's schtick, it's a currently-underused powerset.
2. Modern melee characters have a lot more ability to successfully ride the line of staying at low healthy but alive than old-Defiance blasters did (who had fewer hit points, probably no defense or resistance or healing worth mentioning, and few to no controls).  Especially if we combined an AoE stun with this ET option, giving you an ability to panic yourself out of incoming damage for a few moments while you used a self-heal or whatever.

 

I think this would potentially do what I assume ET was supposed to do, cause EM to be a set that involves playing risky and riding a line.

Edited January 10, 2020 by aethereal

[Saiyajinzoningen]

17 hours ago, aethereal said:

Yeah, I also suggested an AoE stun.  I think that's a consistent, relatively large-area control like an AoE stun would be a cool feature of the set.

 

I think that ET was obviously supposed to be an interesting part of Energy Melee, but it's hard to make the health cost be interesting -- if it's big enough to be significant, it works hard against the value that ET provides -- like, in a very tough fight where you need to pull out the stops and end it quickly is the place where you're least likely to want to pay a significant health cost.  And there are too many degenerate strategies, like "just use it at the very beginning of the fight."

 

I did have an idea for making ET more interesting on the way in to work today: keep the current nominal health cost, speed up the animation, and give it bonus damage when the casting toon is low on health (from "good, solid, worthy-of-inclusion-in-your attack chain DPA" when you're at full health to "outstanding, best-in-the-game DPA" when you're at less than 25% health).  Now, I know, this is like old Defiance and everyone hates old Defiance.  But, a few things mitigate that:
 

1. It's not an entire AT's schtick, it's a currently-underused powerset.
2. Modern melee characters have a lot more ability to successfully ride the line of staying at low healthy but alive than old-Defiance blasters did (who had fewer hit points, probably no defense or resistance or healing worth mentioning, and few to no controls).  Especially if we combined an AoE stun with this ET option, giving you an ability to panic yourself out of incoming damage for a few moments while you used a self-heal or whatever.

 

I think this would potentially do what I assume ET was supposed to do, cause EM to be a set that involves playing risky and riding a line.

how would this work, some chars are never low on health like regen and willpower also some AT's like the stalker dont get access to the EM aoe power at all. Your suggestions while viable dont work for all AT's that have access to EM. the shtick of EM is its supposed to be a single target monster. It difficult to do that when the cast times are so egregious. Realistically its simpler to just reduce the cast times on EM and this will positively affect all AT's. 

[Sealdy]

I also agree on just changing the set back to its former glory.

[ShardWarrior]

On 1/7/2020 at 10:34 AM, Menelruin said:

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.

This is not exclusive to EM.  Kinetic Melee, Eagle's Claw come to mind right away and this can happen with just about any power.

[Menelruin]

1 hour ago, ShardWarrior said:

This is not exclusive to EM.  Kinetic Melee, Eagle's Claw come to mind right away and this can happen with just about any power.

True, but the most notable powers for EM both have incredibly slow hit times, have no AoE component (so no spillover damage into other mobs), AND one of them costs you HP even if the mob is already dead before you hit.  I think some folks have also mentioned how EM has its hits back-loaded instead of front-loaded.

[ShardWarrior]

21 minutes ago, Menelruin said:

True, but the most notable powers for EM both have incredibly slow hit times, have no AoE component (so no spillover damage into other mobs), AND one of them costs you HP even if the mob is already dead before you hit.  I think some folks have also mentioned how EM has its hits back-loaded instead of front-loaded.

Oh do not get me wrong, it pains me to think about how much fun my EM tank was prior to all the nerfs. EM definitely does suffer from the long animations more than other sets and I say this just having recently leveled a Kinetic Melee scrapper to 50.

[oedipus_tex]

Would it be possible to steal mechanics from Titan Weapons and give Energy Melee fast animating (maybe with no -HP) Energy Transfer and Total Focus only X seconds after hitting Build Up? Would this improve the set or just make it clunkier since it takes a while to get Build Up up frequently when building the character?

[aethereal]

On 1/11/2020 at 5:45 AM, Saiyajinzoningen said:

how would this work, some chars are never low on health like regen and willpower also some AT's like the stalker dont get access to the EM aoe power at all. Your suggestions while viable dont work for all AT's that have access to EM. the shtick of EM is its supposed to be a single target monster. It difficult to do that when the cast times are so egregious. Realistically its simpler to just reduce the cast times on EM and this will positively affect all AT's. 

 

I wasn't suggesting any mechanics that interrelate to whirling hands, so the fact that the stalker doesn't get whirling hands isn't a response to me.

 

I think that almost all characters get low on health from time to time, if they're willing to turn the challenge up high enough.  And, hey, look, if you're on a faceroll all-Council team, no matter what we do with this single-target oriented set, EM is not going to be a great option.  If you are somehow making a WP brute that's so very defensively strong that at +4/x8 solo against all enemy types you never dip below half health, man, okay.  Maybe cut back on your slotting on your armor set, I don't know.  But let me point out that the status quo is that people who are very, very, very interested in extremely high-performance builds are already avoiding EM, and that I'm not convinced that just giving back ET's old animation time would make the set attractive to people who are very, very, very interested in extremely high-performance builds.

 

1 hour ago, oedipus_tex said:

Would it be possible to steal mechanics from Titan Weapons and give Energy Melee fast animating (maybe with no -HP) Energy Transfer and Total Focus only X seconds after hitting Build Up? Would this improve the set or just make it clunkier since it takes a while to get Build Up up frequently when building the character?

 

In other threads, I've seen people say that they don't want special unique mechanics around EM, that if they wanted to manage those kinds of mechanics, they'd play rad or psi or savage or titan or DB or even Kin melee.  Which is a position I'm sympathetic to, but it does play into what I see as the core problem of making EM interesting: that it does very few things right now, and you can easily make the set be great at single-target damage with chance to stun and still have a couple powers left over to do...  what?  Be redundant?  Be bad?  Bad AND redundant?

 

I already see advice on EM to skip Total Focus because you can build an attack chain out of Energy Punch / Bone Crusher / Energy Transfer.  If we make Energy Transfer better than it is today, then that advice presumably gets more relevant.