Revisit the Energy Melee nerfs

[Kimuji]

Well, same as most of the posters here. I made an (pve) EM brute, thinking it would be like old times: bad aoe but very good single target damage. I thought I knew what I was getting into and the bad aoe wasn't a turn off to me. But I as was leveling up I realized that EM had been hit really hard with the nerf bat. Even the single target damage is disappointing. Total Focus damage is not on par with the super long animation time and Energy Transfert has become extremely slow.

 

I've read some posts stating that EM wasn't nerfed because of pvp and I couldn't disagree more. Because EM was kind of "OP" in PVP, it had the highest single target damage AND stacking stuns was ridiculously easy. That was the stun + damage combo that made people complain, not the damage alone. A vocal portion of the pvp players  had been crying for years for an EM nerf (mostly on the Heroes side, where only tanks had access to EM). So I can't believe that it is not what sparked the intent to revisit (nerf to oblivion) EM.

 

The funny part is, as "OP" as EM might have been in pvp it was still not enough to counter Regen's OPness. Yes the best and "OP" melee set couldn't beat the scrapper's Regen. And EM never was the best set for pve, but it was alright no one minded.

 

Now, new powers sets have been introduced, some older sets have been overhauled and they're competitive with the newer ones. I don't think EM needs to be held back anymore I'd say just let it be what it was meant to be: subpar aoe with excellent single target damage. I don't really see what harm reverting the nerf could cause.

EM would still be inferior to most other sets when it comes to AOE and top tier for single target. It's not like we don't have other sets like TW that destroys everything in both AOE and Single Target...

 

I'm not a big fan of making EM competitive AOE wise and let its single target as it is. This is not EM. I don't really like the "let's give it a cone", "let's keep TF as it is but make it aoe damage" fixes. This is not EM's signature. I can live with mediocre AOE capabilities. People have always been choosing EM for burst and single target damage. That's what EM has always been about, and that's what it should be.

 

As for the pvp crowd, just make the stuns harder to stack against players? (And that's one of the reasons why Regen was holding its own so well against EM, Regen is virtually immune to stuns).

[OpMegs]

I can definitely say having revisited my old Willpower/Energy Melee tank that there feels like a definite gap between your first three powers and then the heavy hitters at the end. Build Up is a thing, but with such low base damage it doesn't feel like it's really effective. Similarly, Stun feels almost useless since it's single target, while Whirling Hands is pretty but I wish it actually did decent damage rather than seeming to be built for AoE stun.

 

People have gone back and forth about whether Energy Transfer and Total Focus need a buff, but at low levels, my tank is taking the Fighting Pool just to fill her attack chain with attacks that do decent damage unless I want to be a 24/7 tauntbot

[BlueOne]

It sounds like the animation time on Energy Transfer needs to be lowered, and that would go a long way towards making EM a reasonable set.

 

Have the new Devs made any such balancing changes to anything yet?  Or is that something that haven't started doing yet (just quality of life improvements.)

[marcussmythe]

It sounds like the animation time on Energy Transfer needs to be lowered, and that would go a long way towards making EM a reasonable set.

 

Have the new Devs made any such balancing changes to anything yet?  Or is that something that haven't started doing yet (just quality of life improvements.)

 

Given their current willingness to kick the tires on Snipe times, a much easier to implement change, with less balance implications, seems to be something we can hope for.  Unless they so buffed EM that it seeiously outperformed TW in single-target damage, there is no apparent danger of making the set too good.

[Rylas]

Given their current willingness to kick the tires on Snipe times, a much easier to implement change, with less balance implications, seems to be something we can hope for.  Unless they so buffed EM that it seeiously outperformed TW in single-target damage, there is no apparent danger of making the set too good.

 

I think EM could just be reverted back to how it was before the changes, and would still not be the highest performing set. The only thing it would excel at is being a boss killer, like it was before.

 

Granted, I don't have the previous numbers to show how it was performing before (and I would probably fail at presenting them well), so I'm open to being corrected on that view. But I'd rather see the damage tweaked down a bit than keep the longer animations.

[Coyote]

What surprises me is that in all of the "fix EM" threads I've read over the years, there has been so little discussion about turning ET into either a "bounce" effect or a ball AoE effect centered around the primary target. Other bounce powers use single-target sets (melee or ranged), so this wouldn't affect slotting (unless they switch it to an AoE), and it would both make ET useful and more fitting to the animation.

[marcussmythe]

What surprises me is that in all of the "fix EM" threads I've read over the years, there has been so little discussion about turning ET into either a "bounce" effect or a ball AoE effect centered around the primary target. Other bounce powers use single-target sets (melee or ranged), so this wouldn't affect slotting (unless they switch it to an AoE), and it would both make ET useful and more fitting to the animation.

 

I think the drive for the people pushing for a fix is that they want EM's original hat (single target damage) back.  The set we rolled was the highest single-target tank set in the game, and gave up pretty much everything else on that altar.  While making ET a nice big bounce or explosion or whatever might be fun, the design space has no paucity of AOE centric sets (driven no doubt by the fact that DPS is King in City, and AOE DPS is the best kind of DPS).

 

And your right - if you reverted it to its original animation time (and did nothign else), the set wouldnt even be the top single target (which I feel, honestly, it should be - having limited other utility)

[Rathulfr]

I played a WP/EM tanker on live, and recreated him as an EM/WP brute on HC, because nostalgia.  I knew that EM was bad then, and it's apparently still bad now.  So +1 to any suggestions of giving EM some lovin'.

 

Because early HC made creating and leveling alts so easy (back before Canada), I genuinely tried out every other melee set to see which one could replace EM on my retconned hero.  But while all of them were superior in numbers, nothing quite felt so heroic as Energy Melee.  I love the animations, and I love the pink pom-poms of doom*.  So I'm sticking with EM, even though it's frustrating to see all the other kids beating up the monsters better than me.  And to see them run off to the next room down the hall to beat up another set of monsters while I'm still waiting to gracefully float down to the floor at the end of Total Focus.  :P

 

(*: YMMV)

 

[marcussmythe]

Testing Results: 

EM/Bio Brute - Pylon DPS 315

TW/Bio Brute - Pylon DPS 442

 

Builds Identical save for different primaries.  EM forced to go out of set for Gloom to get the above DPS numbers.

 

Given better CC and far better AOE capacity of TW, suggest reduce EM animationntimes by 33% or a bit more.  This wont actually give as much DPS as it first appears, as will increase reliance on lower DPA powers (Energy Punch and Bonesmasher), but would get it within screaming distance of TW for aingle target, while still being grossly inferior in AOE capacity.  If we want it to be better than TW at the one thing it does, will have to add additional effects (RES Debuff or the like)

 

[Xaeon]

Given their current willingness to kick the tires on Snipe times, a much easier to implement change, with less balance implications, seems to be something we can hope for.  Unless they so buffed EM that it seeiously outperformed TW in single-target damage, there is no apparent danger of making the set too good.

 

I think EM could just be reverted back to how it was before the changes, and would still not be the highest performing set. The only thing it would excel at is being a boss killer, like it was before.

 

Granted, I don't have the previous numbers to show how it was performing before (and I would probably fail at presenting them well), so I'm open to being corrected on that view. But I'd rather see the damage tweaked down a bit than keep the longer animations.

 

Honestly even if you restored it to its prime it'd still be well behind the boss murdering prowess of Titan Weapons and arguably Street Justice.

[Rylas]

Testing Results: 

EM/Bio Brute - Pylon DPS 315

TW/Bio Brute - Pylon DPS 442

 

Builds Identical save for different primaries.  EM forced to go out of set for Gloom to get the above DPS numbers.

 

Given better CC and far better AOE capacity of TW, suggest reduce EM animationntimes by 33% or a bit more.  This wont actually give as much DPS as it first appears, as will increase reliance on lower DPA powers (Energy Punch and Bonesmasher), but would get it within screaming distance of TW for aingle target, while still being grossly inferior in AOE capacity.  If we want it to be better than TW at the one thing it does, will have to add additional effects (RES Debuff or the like)

 

Wow! Thanks for putting in the time and effort for some real comparison numbers. It seems it would be easier to bring EM up with just more reduction in animation times than by introducing debuffs or other secondary features.

[Supreme Ballista]

I would PAY good money to have the old ET back. I am not joking!

 

I had many characters with 100's of hours of gameplay on them, to only have them put away, never played again. To say I was angry when they made that change, would be an understatement. It completely changed the set and how it played. The whole rhythm of battle, going from a group of mobs to another group of mobs was fun to keep fury up to one shot minions to the next group. I have even tried Rad melee to level 37, but just not getting into it like EM.

 

I am up for switching the animation on character select screen and compromising on a balance if someone chooses the longer animation. If someone likes the new animation I would hate to do to them what was done to me on my characters. 

[Solarverse]

I would PAY good money to have the old ET back. I am not joking!

 

I had many characters with 100's of hours of gameplay on them, to only have them put away, never played again. To say I was angry when they made that change, would be an understatement. It completely changed the set and how it played. The whole rhythm of battle, going from a group of mobs to another group of mobs was fun to keep fury up to one shot minions to the next group. I have even tried Rad melee to level 37, but just not getting into it like EM.

 

I am up for switching the animation on character select screen and compromising on a balance if someone chooses the longer animation. If someone likes the new animation I would hate to do to them what was done to me on my characters.

 

I have not picked up Energy Transfer since the nerf. I have left games over animation changes before, because I get in to games more for theme than the numbers a lot of the time. When they suddenly changed the animation, I was thinking to myself, "Why? Couldn't they have just lowered the damage, or made it hurt you more? Why in the hell did they have to change the animation?"

 

I have literally left games and never returned over that crap.

[Heraclea]

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker.  Rolled the character during i2 if I remember rightly.  Still have some early screenshots of her in the Atta caves.  I wanted a 'DPS tanker' and understood that Fire was the DPS tanker primary.  I chose Energy Melee because I thought the combination would look good together in the days before power customization. 

 

The nerf simply broke her.  One thing about fire armor is that its survivability is dependent on your self heal.  Having it uavailable because of a seconds long forced AFK while you watch an animation play made her no longer capable of fulfilling her role.  If you're a tanker who relies on the self heal, three seconds of forced inactivity is a long time.  The fact that your big attack does damage to yourself to activate compounds the problem.  I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.  Towards the end she made occasional appearances when Tanker Tuesday rolled around to that server. 

[Rylas]

*sad music playing in background*

 

The change killed my main. 

...

Fix it and I can play my main again.  Nuff said.

 

I played an EM/WP tanker on live, and recreated him as an EA/WP brute on HC, because nostalgia.

 

I had many [EM] characters with 100's of hours of gameplay on them, to only have them put away, never played again.

 

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker. 

... 

The nerf simply broke her. ... I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.

 

When the changes went live I abandoned a level 50 tanker and never played her again.

 

I leveled a Stone/Energy Melee Tanker to 50 purely because I liked his character (for roleplaying) and as much fun as I had roleplaying the character in Pocket D, I don't think I ever had fun actually playing the game with him. Part of this was due to Stone, but mostly it was EM.

 

[Solarverse]

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker.  Rolled the character during i2 if I remember rightly.  Still have some early screenshots of her in the Atta caves.  I wanted a 'DPS tanker' and understood that Fire was the DPS tanker primary.  I chose Energy Melee because I thought the combination would look good together in the days before power customization. 

 

The nerf simply broke her.  One thing about fire armor is that its survivability is dependent on your self heal.  Having it uavailable because of a seconds long forced AFK while you watch an animation play made her no longer capable of fulfilling her role.  If you're a tanker who relies on the self heal, three seconds of forced inactivity is a long time.  The fact that your big attack does damage to yourself to activate compounds the problem.  I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.  Towards the end she made occasional appearances when Tanker Tuesday rolled around to that server.

 

I swear, that story got me right here (points toward my heart) because I know how that feels. I have stories similar involving a few powers that were changed here and there, the EM Nerf being one of them.

 

Once proud Heroes, no old has-beens because of the nerfs...doing nothing but collecting dust.

[Legree]

Once proud Heroes, now old has-beens because of the nerfs...doing nothing but collecting dust.

 

Make it part of the character.  Rework the costume to thicken the waist and thin (and grey) the hair.  Use an older face.  Start every tactics discussion with the words "Well in my day..." and refer to your teammates as "You kids"  :)

[Infinitum]

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker.  Rolled the character during i2 if I remember rightly.  Still have some early screenshots of her in the Atta caves.  I wanted a 'DPS tanker' and understood that Fire was the DPS tanker primary.  I chose Energy Melee because I thought the combination would look good together in the days before power customization. 

 

The nerf simply broke her.  One thing about fire armor is that its survivability is dependent on your self heal.  Having it uavailable because of a seconds long forced AFK while you watch an animation play made her no longer capable of fulfilling her role.  If you're a tanker who relies on the self heal, three seconds of forced inactivity is a long time.  The fact that your big attack does damage to yourself to activate compounds the problem.  I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.  Towards the end she made occasional appearances when Tanker Tuesday rolled around to that server.

 

I swear, that story got me right here (points toward my heart) because I know how that feels. I have stories similar involving a few powers that were changed here and there, the EM Nerf being one of them.

 

Once proud Heroes, no old has-beens because of the nerfs...doing nothing but collecting dust.

Right there with you, my main was invul/em, I had it IOd out, tons of game time-I was one that played end game with it more than rolling new ATs.  I was so frustrated I quit the game for 2 years because it wasn't fun anymore.

 

I came back and enjoyed it for a few months then it shuttered and I felt awful.

 

I feel like I got a second chance so I'm not going to complain too much.  I just can't bring myself to enjoy EM because I'll always have that tingly feeling in my fingertips of how ET used to feel.

 

Funny thing is, that same animation works well on /Rad because of how that set plays as a whole.  So my main now is a Rad/ Elec brute.

 

I would roll 3 EM types in a heartbeat and play the crap out of them if they ever reverted this.

[Solarverse]

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker.  Rolled the character during i2 if I remember rightly.  Still have some early screenshots of her in the Atta caves.  I wanted a 'DPS tanker' and understood that Fire was the DPS tanker primary.  I chose Energy Melee because I thought the combination would look good together in the days before power customization. 

 

The nerf simply broke her.  One thing about fire armor is that its survivability is dependent on your self heal.  Having it uavailable because of a seconds long forced AFK while you watch an animation play made her no longer capable of fulfilling her role.  If you're a tanker who relies on the self heal, three seconds of forced inactivity is a long time.  The fact that your big attack does damage to yourself to activate compounds the problem.  I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.  Towards the end she made occasional appearances when Tanker Tuesday rolled around to that server.

 

I swear, that story got me right here (points toward my heart) because I know how that feels. I have stories similar involving a few powers that were changed here and there, the EM Nerf being one of them.

 

Once proud Heroes, no old has-beens because of the nerfs...doing nothing but collecting dust.

Right there with you, my main was invul/em, I had it IOd out, tons of game time-I was one that played end game with it more than rolling new ATs.  I was so frustrated I quit the game for 2 years because it wasn't fun anymore.

 

I came back and enjoyed it for a few months then it shuttered and I felt awful.

 

I feel like I got a second chance so I'm not going to complain too much.  I just can't bring myself to enjoy EM because I'll always have that tingly feeling in my fingertips of how ET used to feel.

 

Funny thing is, that same animation works well on /Rad because of how that set plays as a whole.  So my main now is a Rad/ Elec brute.

 

I would roll 3 EM types in a heartbeat and play the crap out of them if they ever reverted this.

 

Hopefully the revert it back to its original state.

[marcussmythe]

I will note in passing that a recent discussion of ‘What powers to take for my EM Brute’ turned quicjly into a discussion of the relative merits of using the fighting and leaping pool powers to fill out your attack chain and give some AOE capability.

 

At least one poster also suggested skipping Total Focus entirely, and this seems reasonable.

[Rylas]

I've currently shelved my re-rolled main from Live. Made it to 32 and decided to wait until EM is rebalanced to (hopefully) what it used to be. That time may never come to pass, but he's just not that fun to play as is.

[ShardWarrior]

I ended up stripping my fire/EM tanker.  Rolled the character during i2 if I remember rightly.  Still have some early screenshots of her in the Atta caves.  I wanted a 'DPS tanker' and understood that Fire was the DPS tanker primary.  I chose Energy Melee because I thought the combination would look good together in the days before power customization. 

 

The nerf simply broke her.  One thing about fire armor is that its survivability is dependent on your self heal.  Having it uavailable because of a seconds long forced AFK while you watch an animation play made her no longer capable of fulfilling her role.  If you're a tanker who relies on the self heal, three seconds of forced inactivity is a long time.  The fact that your big attack does damage to yourself to activate compounds the problem.  I stripped her of her valuable IOs in a respec and exiled her to a seldom visited server.  Towards the end she made occasional appearances when Tanker Tuesday rolled around to that server.

 

This is near identical to my experience with the nerfs as well.  I also had a Fire/EM tank and the "improvements" just gutted the character to the point of unplayability.

 

Kind of like the idiotic -DEF debuff on Rage we have now...

[marcussmythe]

I've currently shelved my re-rolled main from Live. Made it to 32 and decided to wait until EM is rebalanced to (hopefully) what it used to be. That time may never come to pass, but he's just not that fun to play as is.

 

If you want to get your glowy-fist-punch on, Kinetic, Rad, and Elec both offer glowy fistpunch.  Elec is a known good AOE set, Rad is a late release set with all the new hotness that goes with it, and Kinetic Melee has fun animations and a built-in blast.

 

Now, none of the above are known for their single-target DPS chops, but Electric Melee on a Stalker would seem to offer the best of both worlds.  Glowy fists, good AOE, good single target.  Combine with Bio or Shield and sprinkle lightly with awesome.

[Rylas]

If you want to get your glowy-fist-punch on, Kinetic, Rad, and Elec both offer glowy fistpunch.  Elec is a known good AOE set, Rad is a late release set with all the new hotness that goes with it, and Kinetic Melee has fun animations and a built-in blast.

 

Now, none of the above are known for their single-target DPS chops, but Electric Melee on a Stalker would seem to offer the best of both worlds.  Glowy fists, good AOE, good single target.  Combine with Bio or Shield and sprinkle lightly with awesome.

 

I have two Rad/ brutes, and the set is a solidly fun set. Never felt that excited with the Kin/ I had on live, and Elec/ was fun. But I didn't want EM because of the pom pom's of doom (as cool as they looked and all). I liked the set because of the niche it had as the boss killer. It filled a good spot on teams. Most everyone's melting whole groups away at a time, and I enjoyed killing the boss while they cleared the rest. Fast. Powerful. And with a specific role to fill. It was good like that. Now it's just... there.

[marcussmythe]

If you want to get your glowy-fist-punch on, Kinetic, Rad, and Elec both offer glowy fistpunch.  Elec is a known good AOE set, Rad is a late release set with all the new hotness that goes with it, and Kinetic Melee has fun animations and a built-in blast.

 

Now, none of the above are known for their single-target DPS chops, but Electric Melee on a Stalker would seem to offer the best of both worlds.  Glowy fists, good AOE, good single target.  Combine with Bio or Shield and sprinkle lightly with awesome.

 

I have two Rad/ brutes, and the set is a solidly fun set. Never felt that excited with the Kin/ I had on live, and Elec/ was fun. But I didn't want EM because of the pom pom's of doom (as cool as they looked and all). I liked the set because of the niche it had as the boss killer. It filled a good spot on teams. Most everyone's melting whole groups away at a time, and I enjoyed killing the boss while they cleared the rest. Fast. Powerful. And with a specific role to fill. It was good like that. Now it's just... there.

 

Thats why in part I suggested Stalker with Radiation - single target boss killer.  You can combine with something like Invuln for a suprisingly 'tanky' stalker. 

 

Though I do miss seeing my costume.

 

Mind you, EM is available to Stalkers, but thats a trap - due to decisions made at the time, Stalker EM does not allow full crits for TF, nor crits at all for ET.  Later added sets with ultra-high damage attacks (I'm looking at you, StJ - but Rad also has a world wrecker to hang crits off of) managed to miss the 'must make sure doesnt work right' that they rolled out for EM and KM.