Weekly Discussion 68: Energy Melee

[GM Miss]

Weekly discussion 68 - Week 9/13/20-9/18/20:

 

⚔️YOU VOTED: Let's talk about Energy Melee! ⚔️ 

 

❓Things to think about:

>Here is a link to Energy Melee: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Energy_Melee
>How does it compare with other melee sets?
>Where is it lacking?
>What do you love about it?

 

Don't just use these prompts, talk about whatever you want from this weeks prompt! 

 

Let's Chat 😄

[ForeverLaxx]

It's lacking its old title of "King of ST Burst" and I think that should be brought back. Yes, I know the game is more AoE-centric now than it used to be but not every set needs to bring "sufficient" AoE for +4/x8 content.

 

Return Energy Transfer back to it's former glory and that would go a long way to restoring this set's identity.

[Greycat]

I ran both an Energy/Energy brute (recreated here) which I loved - I tended to call her a "heavy stalker." It was a lot of fun. First villain to 50.

When I tried a fire/energy tank... I hated the set. I'm not sure just what didn't click there. It's not like I didn't know it was ST heavy. Something about it with tanks - or at least that one - just didn't mesh for me.

 

And, yes, I like having "big rewards come with a cost," so the way ET was appealed to me.

[tidge]

From the PoV of an Invuln/EM tank from launch day of live:

 

What I miss is a set that delivers top-notch single-target damage. I don't want (or need) anything more than this.

 

The one existing PBAoE (Whirling Hands) is fine for my tank. I find that it compliments other taunting activity.

 

The Stun secondary effect has been fine since the original game modified the behavior of Stunned enemies; they used to wildly sprint-stagger away from the attacker. If PVP requires a change the secondary, I would accept this.

 

Stun is not a particularly useful power on the ATs with resists/defenses, especially considering how late it comes in the power sets. My own first (simplest) idea would be to straight-up replace it with a passive power that conserves Endurance.

 

I definitely think the animations need to be revisited: including the 'target is already defeated' aspect of Energy Transfer.

[Galaxy Brain]

What if when you attack and hit, you get a buff that reduces animation time for 5 seconds?

[Hew]

I feel that EM needs a second, moar better aoe, and maybe some sort of instant tf or et or something.

[Bill Z Bubba]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

What if when you attack and hit, you get a buff that reduces animation time for 5 seconds?

My primary issue with a mechanism like this is that it would make it a total PITA to figure out an optimal attack chain if there's any kind of randomness involved.

 

I would vastly prefer that ET and TF just have their animation times cut down permanently and leave it at that. Simple fix, easy to work with.

 

Edit: To add a bit to this, the PRIMARY reason I do not play anything with TW is due to the slow/fast nature of the set. I can't stand it.
If I had to experience that with EM, my 5 or so current EM characters would not be pleased with the outcome.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Bill Z Bubba]

I love energy melee. The big, bad pompoms of doom. Loved the set far more before ET was gutted and turned into the garbage it is today, but two of my EM users are running ET-BS-TF-BS-repeat as a single target chain is it's great.... when solo.

 

On teams, it's flat out horrific garbage due to how often your target dies while you're sitting in the middle of your ET or TF animations. I mean, really, it's bad to the point of needing two builds, one for solo and one for teaming, where the team build can just cycle through Barrage, EP and BS.

 

If I could be granted a wish it would go like this: ET would be given its old animation back. TF would have some splash damage added. Rebalance as necessary and that's that. Done.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[jojogladco]

EM/ELA was my 1st 50. I'd love for a rework to make EM tolerable to play again. After the ET animation change he got shelved and never brought out again. I'd love to see the old animation come back, maybe tied to some sort of energy builder/spender mechanic that gives you the old animation and damage when you've built up enough energy to transfer out.  A 2nd AOE would be nice also. 

[Bopper]

Some ideas...

1. For stalkers, instead of having Crits remove the self damage, let the attack crit for double damage but you also take double self-damage. Is it chaotic? Yes. But omg it would be fun dropping Hemorrhage strength crits on somebody (and not in DoT form!).
2. Reduce the cast time of TF. No single target attack should have a cast time higher than 3s in my opinion (I'm looking at you, too, Concentrated Strike), unless it gets a damage multipler based on the length of the cast time. 
3. Give Whirling Hands a damage buff. It currently does less damage than it's supposed to per the design formula. Whirling Axe is the same way, that needs a damage buff too. Give these attacks damage closer to Whirling Mace or Whirling Sword.
4. Add some knockup to the set.

[Tsuko]

Just give us back the old Energy mélée.

 

Having the baddest area DPS of the game is already the highest price we can pay in such a aoe centric game.

 

In a world of Rend Armor, Clobber, Crushing uppercut and other monster combo, the old Energy Transfer will not be so impactfull.

 

Being a former NRJ / Elec brute on live since it was possible to play it, i m ok to have long animations or no aoe if and only if when i hit transfer this happened :

 

 

 

Not to mention, that just

 

giving us back the old EM in all his former glory will never "beat" the modern masters of DPS, both single and aoe.

Edited September 14, 2020 by Tsuko

[Bill Z Bubba]

Just spent 30 mins looking through wayback on the original forums in an attempt to find the player that had as their avatar a girl, I think with pigtails, from some anime or other, that had energy melee with her martial arts. Think she even had glowing feet of doom. Failed to find it. Found my old one. Reread the old scrapper vs brute thread for a laugh.
 

[Tsuko]

It would be nice too that the in Game Tooltip had a good calculation of damage on Energy Transfert :

 

Here on the Tanker version,

 

 

The average damage ADD the self damage to the total damage of the power.

[Spaghetti Betty]

EM to me always sounded the most impactful. Whenever you hit something, everyone hears it for sure. That's just from a spectator viewpoint. I can't speak on its actual damage because all the hearsay about how gutted the set is strayed me away from trying it.

 

As for looking at the set and touching it up, I can think of a few low impact changes that might help the set, but this is just my opinion - one of many.

 

First of all, I would wanna change Stun. It's just too slow. I would give it the Cobra Strike treatment. Way more damage and possibly a faster animation so that it's worth taking.

I would give Total Focus the double-handed Knockout Blow animation. And cut it down to about the same animation time (or possibly shorter) as KO Blow as well.

And then for ET, I would honestly just increase the damage. I think the animation is fine, but the move should hit like a dump truck. If I'm channeling my life force into an all out attack, the opponent should be blown away, but right now the damage is comparable to other T9's at best.

Also buff Whirling Hands.

 

My far-reaching idea for the set is to give it a sort of "concussive strikes" gimmick. Maybe something like after hitting so many attacks on an enemy, the stuns start turning into low mag holds or something similar to that. I don't know how easy that would be to balance, but to me it compliments the impactful and overwhelming nature of the set.

[Tsuko]

The Dominator Energy Focus could be a good solution for Energy mélée to shine again : instead of buffing ranged or mélée damage, it could buff Energy transfert or Whirling hands.

[Myrmidon]

2 hours ago, Bopper said:

Reduce the cast time of TF. No single target attack should have a cast time higher than 3s in my opinion (I'm looking at you, too, Concentrated Strike), unless it gets a damage multipler based on the length of the cast time. 

And now I care less about Energy Melee and more about a Kinetic Melee buff.

[Infinitum]

6 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

What if when you attack and hit, you get a buff that reduces animation time for 5 seconds?

If i had that, man ill tell ya what, i would focus all my energy - my lifeforce if you will - into playing this till my fingers fell off - and 60 days later they would find my broken husk of a body glued to my computer chair at the logon screen.  lol

[Saikochoro]

Don’t want to get boo’d off the stage, but I also don’t particularly want an AoE buff on energy melee. Sets whose main claim to fame is single target damage should double down on that instead of making every set AoE monsters. 
 

Energy melee should however be a super threat in single target. I think energy transfer should get a full revert of all nerfs. Given the self damage aspect of ET, I personally think this attack should hit harder than anything else in the game.  Then if that isn’t enough, reduce the animation time of total focus slightly without gutting it’s damage. 
 

Those things alone would make me super happy. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Eldyem]

"Fixing" Energy Transfer's nerf would go a long way towards making the set better - I would also consider giving it the (applicable) buffs Dominator Energy Assault received. Energy Melee's current meta flaws are by design and aren't fixable without changing the set significantly. A second AoE would be nice but outside of making ET an AoE or something crazy I can't see that happening.

 

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

And now I care less about Energy Melee and more about a Kinetic Melee buff.

Kinetic Melee is literally "What if we cloned Claws, but made it bad?" which I still can't believe was possible. That being said, I think KM's big flaw is the same as EM's - the level 32 melee attacks, Concentrated Strike and Energy Transfer, are absolute garbage for no reason.

[Galaxy Brain]

34 minutes ago, Saikochoro said:

Don’t want to get boo’d off the stage, but I also don’t particularly want an AoE buff on energy melee. Sets whose main claim to fame is single target damage should double down on that instead of making every set AoE monsters. 
 

Energy melee should however be a super threat in single target. I think energy transfer should get a full revert of all nerfs. Given the self damage aspect of ET, I personally think this attack should hit harder than anything else in the game.  Then if that isn’t enough, reduce the animation time of total focus slightly without gutting it’s damage. 
 

Those things alone would make me super happy. 

There's a difference between "buffing into an AoE monster" and "oh, it really needs some AoE capability since being pure ST aint cutting it"

[Bopper]

2 hours ago, Tsuko said:

It would be nice too that the in Game Tooltip had a good calculation of damage on Energy Transfer

While they're at it, fix the calculation on Barrage, which includes the Fiery Embrace damage (which apparently is a bug for all DoT attacks?).

[Tsuko]

19 hours ago, Bopper said:

Some ideas...

1. For stalkers, instead of having Crits remove the self damage, let the attack crit for double damage but you also take double self-damage. Is it chaotic? Yes. But omg it would be fun dropping Hemorrhage strength crits on somebody (and not in DoT form!).
2. Reduce the cast time of TF. No single target attack should have a cast time higher than 3s in my opinion (I'm looking at you, too, Concentrated Strike), unless it gets a damage multipler based on the length of the cast time. 
3. Give Whirling Hands a damage buff. It currently does less damage than it's supposed to per the design formula. Whirling Axe is the same way, that needs a damage buff too. Give these attacks damage closer to Whirling Mace or Whirling Sword.
4. Add some knockup to the set.

1. If i remember well the dark ages of the Hammer nerf, it was because of PVP that NRJ transfert was nerf before the PvP revamp. Now when i see those numbers on my PVP stalkers

 

                        

 

i dont see where NRJ transfert with normal critical % is an issue now.

 

2.

 

 

3. i really dont care about aoe on NRJ mélée, being weak in the area department is kinda signature of the set.

 

4. adding some Knock would be mandatory to allow energy mélée to enter the Top 10 attack sets.

Edited September 15, 2020 by Tsuko

[Saikochoro]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

There's a difference between "buffing into an AoE monster" and "oh, it really needs some AoE capability since being pure ST aint cutting it"

I understand that, but it does have some AoE. It’s just not very good. Just like martial arts. Both of those were clearly meant to be stand out single target sets and thus have AoE that is on the weaker side. 
 

Right now, there are better single target alternatives to both that also have better AoE. What I’m saying is the AoE can stay weak, but the single target needs to be strong enough to the point that it’s weaker AoE is understandable.

 

I understand, and can appreciate, the desire to buff the AoE of both sets. I, however, would rather them keep their single target focus and instead beef up their single target damage so they are top single target dogs. It’s only fair with the low AoE damage. 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Saikochoro

[Galaxy Brain]

Tbf, Dragons Tail is a pretty dang good AoE in the context of MA

[Troo]

My suggestion is simple. Reverse the July 9, 2008 Energy Melee changes. Just give that a try. Energy Melee really was that good.

 

July 9, 2008
We knew this one would be controversial. There's a new patch hitting the CoX live servers today..

 

The changes that have most players up in arms are the nerf to the stun dealt by Total Focus and an animation change to Energy Transfer, changes that hit the Tank, Brute and Stalker classes. The new animation, while more visually impressive than the old, is slower; an Energy Transfer used to take one second, and now takes 2.67 seconds. (For those that don't know, Energy Transfer is a damaging attack that also has a good chance to stun.)

 

Despite the usual high levels of communication from the developers, some players are unhappy and consider this a crippling nerf; however, nobody seems to be particularly surprised that some form of nerfing has taken place. Energy Melee really was that good.

 

 

Edited September 15, 2020 by Troo