Weekly Discussion 68: Energy Melee

[Troo]

13 hours ago, Bopper said:

Well, the 2s hit time means the debuff is applied at 2s, giving you 10s worth of debuff starting with your next attack.

 

As for the 0.5s hit time, its debuff starts at 0.5s, but your next attack doesn't happen until you finish animating this attack. This results in you getting only 8.5s worth of debuff window for your next attacks.

As always. Thanks @Bopper!

 

This is an important aspect of how powers work.

 

For this discussion:

Power Name        Cast    Arcana    TimeHit    Rch    End
Energy Transfer    2.67    2.904    2.2    20    10.19
Total Focus    3.3    3.432    2.3    20    18.51

 

..the actual activation time and the actual hit time represent embarrassing over corrections from what they used to be.

[Bopper]

12 minutes ago, Troo said:

As always. Thanks @Bopper!

 

This is an important aspect of how powers work.

 

For this discussion:

Power Name        Cast    Arcana    TimeHit    Rch    End
Energy Transfer    2.67    2.904    2.2    20    10.19
Total Focus    3.3    3.432    2.3    20    18.51

 

..the actual activation time and the actual hit time represent embarrassing over corrections from what they used to be.

What did they used to be?

[Troo]

@Bopper I think Energy Transfer was 0.83 cast & 0.5 hittime

 

 

Edited September 18, 2020 by Troo

[Bopper]

7 minutes ago, Troo said:

@Bopper I think Energy Transfer was 0.83 cast & 0.5 hittime

 

 

I recall that being 1s cast, but I have no knowledge of what the hit times were back then. I don't think City of Data even reported that, and it wouldn't have been mentioned in-game. 

[Troo]

I'm just going from memory and might be conflating Energy Punch cast.

 

Still 1.0 and 0.5 would make sense. or it could have been 1.0 and 0.83..  even still, it was a massive change.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Troo

[siolfir]

17 minutes ago, Bopper said:

I recall that being 1s cast, but I have no knowledge of what the hit times were back then. I don't think City of Data even reported that, and it wouldn't have been mentioned in-game. 

1.0 cast and 0.5 hit are the numbers used by Power Thrust and Chain Induction, which are also melee attacks that share the old Energy Transfer animation.

[Bopper]

12 minutes ago, Troo said:

Yeah I'm just going from memory and might be conflating Energy Punch cast.

 

Still 1.0 and 0.5 would make sense.

There's not necessarily a rhyme or reason for the choice of the time hit. Powerhouse can probably tell you the reason why, but from my looking at it, my guess is lines up with the impact of the animation or some other sequencing. The game uses animation frames, which at 30 fps, is what calculates the cast time. Mind you, the cast time in the game is rounded to the nearest hundreth, so there are two cases where calculating Arcanatime is possibly wrong due to the cast time being rounded (one of those times is not used in the game, but the other is 3.17s, which is really 3.166667s and should have a 3.3s arcanatime, not 3.432s). But I'm going incredibly off topic (like this thread).

 

So the powers have AttackFrames and InitialFramesBeforeHit. Those frames are divided by 30 to get their cast time and "time hit" as I called it. Some powers have alternative animations that have their "time hit" altered. So again, there's no real rule of thumb on what the time hit will be for a given cast time. Generally, it's a little bit less than the cast time, but not necessarily. For example, I believe Shadow Maul, because it is a DoT, has its "time hit" really short, that way damage is started while you're flailing.

Edited September 18, 2020 by Bopper

[Brutal Justice]

I would also like to see barrage be to energy punch what hack is to slash.  It’s damage was increased at one point but not by enough.  It’s a dot single target attack with a longer animation.  It should be superior to energy punch.   

[Bopper]

13 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

I would also like to see barrage be to energy punch what hack is to slash.  It’s damage was increased at one point but not by enough.  It’s a dot single target attack with a longer animation.  It should be superior to energy punch.   

It technically is a DoT, but it's a 2 tick dot (it applies both ticks before the animation ends, too). Some powers do the same thing, but instead of a DoT, it's two separate damage effects, but one has a delay. You're right though, it used to do half the damage. Now it does 1.33 damage in 1.32s, while Energy Punch does 1.00 damage in 0.83s. Personally, I would love to see Energy Punch become the T1 and make Barrage the T2 so that Tankers can skip it like the other ATs.

[Mystic_Cross]

I’m late to the party, but I just saw this so I wanted to add my two cents. 
 

My first character on live was an Inv/Em tank and at sunset it was one of my favorite and most played alts. This had much more to do with Invulnerability than it did Energy Melee. Not that /Em was completely horrible, but between the super long animations and sub-par damage (mostly due to the looong animations) along with no real AoE capability, Invuln’s durability carried it in most cases.

 

I’ve thought a lot about how how I’d change EM to make it more fun and interesting to play, but never really fleshed out any of those ideas... so I’ll just throw some of them out there. 
 

Disclaimer: any numbers or percentages in this post are simply based off estimates of what I “feel” would be appropriate approximations. As such, they should not be taken at face value.

 

Okay then, let’s get down to it.

 

Barrage - Increase damage approx. 20%. 
 

Energy Punch - No changes

 

Bone Smasher - Increase damage approx. 20%

 

Taunt - No changes (duh!)

 

Whirling Hands - 50% damage increase. Swap position with Stun. Cut animation time by .5s, modify recharge time if necessary.

 

Stun - Swap position with Whirling Hands. Apply 100% damage increase. Copy AoE aspect and a slightly faster animation of Rad Melee’s Atom Smasher.

 

Build Up - Replace with Power Boost. 
 

Energy Transfer - Reduce animation time to 1.8s and make it so that the self-damage component also applies as bonus damage when hitting a live target, or applies as an AoE effect when hitting a corpse (may not be possible but it would be cool)

 

Total Focus - reduce animation time by .5-1s. perhaps also add an AoE component when hitting a corpse.

 

This is more or less similar to how I’d like to see the set. A tad better AoE but also an Improved ST attack chain, and I think power boost replacing build up would make it more unique and interesting than just being a ST “king” set. 

 

 

[siolfir]

Just as a note, there's been some more discussion in the "Energy Melee does not need" thread I linked to above for anyone who as only looking at this thread for feedback. Mostly it's been back and forth over people wanting a new mechanic added to the set (I'm against that personally) but if you want to see the full discussion you can check it out there also.

 

Now, I'll address the post I wanted to reply to:

2 hours ago, Mystic_Cross said:

I’m late to the party, but I just saw this so I wanted to add my two cents. 
 

My first character on live was an Inv/Em tank and at sunset it was one of my favorite and most played alts. This had much more to do with Invulnerability than it did Energy Melee. Not that /Em was completely horrible, but between the super long animations and sub-par damage (mostly due to the looong animations) along with no real AoE capability, Invuln’s durability carried it in most cases.

 

I’ve thought a lot about how how I’d change EM to make it more fun and interesting to play, but never really fleshed out any of those ideas... so I’ll just throw some of them out there. 
 

Disclaimer: any numbers or percentages in this post are simply based off estimates of what I “feel” would be appropriate approximations. As such, they should not be taken at face value.

 

Okay then, let’s get down to it.

 

Barrage - Increase damage approx. 20%. 
 

Energy Punch - No changes

 

Bone Smasher - Increase damage approx. 20%

 

Taunt - No changes (duh!)

 

Whirling Hands - 50% damage increase. Swap position with Stun. Cut animation time by .5s, modify recharge time if necessary.

 

Stun - Swap position with Whirling Hands. Apply 100% damage increase. Copy AoE aspect and a slightly faster animation of Rad Melee’s Atom Smasher.

 

Build Up - Replace with Power Boost. 
 

Energy Transfer - Reduce animation time to 1.8s and make it so that the self-damage component also applies as bonus damage when hitting a live target, or applies as an AoE effect when hitting a corpse (may not be possible but it would be cool)

 

Total Focus - reduce animation time by .5-1s. perhaps also add an AoE component when hitting a corpse.

 

This is more or less similar to how I’d like to see the set. A tad better AoE but also an Improved ST attack chain, and I think power boost replacing build up would make it more unique and interesting than just being a ST “king” set. 

Since you're talking about the long animations, I assume you made the character after the nerf: prior to that, Energy Transfer's animation was very quick (faster than your proposed time, even).

 

Going through power by power on your suggestions:

 

Barrage: the power has a 6 second recharge (scale 1.33); a 20% increase in damage would put you at just under scale 1.6 damage (1.596), and if you were following the damage formulas put the recharge at 7.725 seconds. At that point just make it 8 seconds (scale 1.64), which means it's the same as what Bone Smasher currently is, just with a faster animation time (1.33 vs 1.5). Since you also wanted to boost Bone Smasher, this wouldn't create duplicates, but an 8 second recharge tier 1 wouldn't be all that great for Tankers, who have to take it. If this happened, I'd swap the tiers with Energy Punch. At this point it's the same damage and animation time as Chop from Battle Axe, but tier 1 instead of tier 2.

 

Bone Smasher: going from scale 1.64 (current value) to 1.968 would give you a recharge of 10.05 seconds; call it 1.96 and 10 to make the numbers easier. Having that scale damage at that tier is not unheard of, either; Martial Arts does this with Cobra Strike. At this point it's the same damage and animation time as Gash from Battle Axe.

 

Whirling Hands: currently the power is too small of an area for the damage it does; it should be nearly 11' for a scale 1 attack or should be scale 1.1818 at an 8' radius, so the power could be considered bugged since it should have 18% more damage already. I'd just fix it at that point. 

 

Stun: A 100% damage increase would still leave this power as garbage for damage; it currently does scale 0.25 damage. For comparison, Brawl does scale 0.36, animates faster, recharges in 10% of the time, and doesn't have an endurance cost. Cottage rule aside rather than have it still a bad power, I'd rather copy Fault if we're making it an AoE, leave the damage alone or get rid of it entirely, and make it an AoE control with the center around the target. I also disagree with swapping the position with Whirling Hands, because I'd rather have the AoE damage power with chance of stun earlier than the AoE stun with almost no damage.

 

Build Up: Why Power Boost? Why not Power Build Up, which doesn't lose the other aspects of the power? Within the set, it would apply to the stun duration so I can see the utility either way, but PBU works better by not removing things that the power already does.

 

Energy Transfer: Which specific 1.8 second animation are you wanting to use? That's the animation time for Stun, but as I said before I dislike that as a punch because it doesn't look like one. It looks like a throw. I'd rather go with any of a number of other animations, not the least of which is the original, 1 second animation. One of the issues with animation changes is that unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, they can reuse existing animations but not make new ones. The self-damage component shouldn't apply when hitting a corpse IMO but the bonus damage is already there because of it: the power does scale 4.56 damage and should, at its recharge, do scale 3.56 and cost more endurance. I do like the idea of AoE splash damage from hitting a corpse, but with the other changes don't agree that it's really needed.

 

Total Focus: The Dominator animation is 2.53 seconds compared to the normal 3.3 second one for everyone else. Using that animation has been suggested a couple of times. See earlier comments about corpse-blasting AoE damage.

 

 

Edited September 19, 2020 by siolfir
comparisons with Battle Axe, correcting errors in Stun response

[Brutal Justice]

On 9/18/2020 at 1:46 PM, Bopper said:

Personally, I would love to see Energy Punch become the T1 and make Barrage the T2 so that Tankers can skip it like the other ATs.

I prefer the animation of barrage to energy punch.  Energy punch is pretty boring.   It would also be much easier to increase the damage of barrage then to swap tiers.  If barrage was a better power then tanks wouldn’t have to worry and it wouldn’t affect other archetypes because they still have the choice.  

[siolfir]

5 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

I prefer the animation of barrage to energy punch.  Energy punch is pretty boring.   It would also be much easier to increase the damage of barrage then to swap tiers.  If barrage was a better power then tanks wouldn’t have to worry and it wouldn’t affect other archetypes because they still have the choice.  

The problem with increasing the damage is you increase the recharge, and that means low levels have long pauses in their attack chains. It's already 6 seconds vs 4, and Barrage used to have a 2 second recharge before the damage was increased once, causing complaining about the delayed attack chain from Tankers when it happened.

 

Of course, that only matters for Tankers, since Brutes, Stalkers, and theoretically Scrappers could take either power. Honestly, Barrage would be a great power at an 8 second recharge, but if you're limited on picks for some reason you're going to be looking for filler.

[Bopper]

16 minutes ago, Brutal Justice said:

I prefer the animation of barrage to energy punch.  Energy punch is pretty boring.   It would also be much easier to increase the damage of barrage then to swap tiers.  If barrage was a better power then tanks wouldn’t have to worry and it wouldn’t affect other archetypes because they still have the choice.  

 

5 minutes ago, siolfir said:

The problem with increasing the damage is you increase the recharge, and that means low levels have long pauses in their attack chains. It's already 6 seconds vs 4, and Barrage used to have a 2 second recharge before the damage was increased once, causing complaining about the delayed attack chain from Tankers when it happened.

 

Of course, that only matters for Tankers, since Brutes, Stalkers, and theoretically Scrappers could take either power. Honestly, Barrage would be a great power at an 8 second recharge, but if you're limited on picks for some reason you're going to be looking for filler.

Siolfir already hit it on the head. Due to the design formula, any increase in damage will be accompanied with an increase in recharge. Energy Punch, Barrage, and Bone Smasher already have recharges of 4, 6, and 8 seconds, respectively. I don't see Barrage getting buffed to Bone Smasher level of damage, which really only leaves it with the 7s recharge option for 1.48 scale damage, which would be a 12% increase from the 1.32 scale damage it does now. You could maybe do a global damage increase to all 3 of these attacks, make it a 5/7/10 second for a 1.16/1.48/1.96 scale damage, which certainly would be strong, but it would make for some big gaps in early level attack chains.

Edited September 19, 2020 by Bopper

[siolfir]

1 minute ago, Bopper said:

 

Siolfir already hit it on the head. Due to the design formula, any increase in damage will be accompanied with an increase in recharge. Energy Punch, Barrage, and Bone Smasher already have recharges of 4, 6, and 8 seconds, respectively. I don't see Barrage getting buffed to Bone Smasher level of damage, which really only leaves it with the 7s recharge option for 1.48 scale damage, which would be a 12% increase from the 1.32 scale damage it does now. You could maybe do a global damage increase to all 3 of these attacks, make it a 5/7/10 second for a 1.16/1.48/1.96 scale damage, which certainly would be strong, but it would make for some big gaps in early level attack chains.

Oh, you could do it - I edited in my response about increasing the damage earlier that Battle Axe has 4, 8, and 10 second recharges on its first three powers so there's already precedent. But Battle Axe has the 4 second recharge as the tier 1, so I think if it's done it would necessitate swapping Energy Punch and Barrage.

[Bopper]

5 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Oh, you could do it - I edited in my response about increasing the damage earlier that Battle Axe has 4, 8, and 10 second recharges on its first three powers so there's already precedent. But Battle Axe has the 4 second recharge as the tier 1, so I think if it's done it would necessitate swapping Energy Punch and Barrage.

Certainly, but it all would have to be factored into overall balance of a set. Make the T1-T3 too strong, you will have to take away from ET and TF. So I am thinking the devs won't go that route...atleast not fully, but who knows. This thread is for suggestions, so it's a perfectly valid one to make.

[Brutal Justice]

3 hours ago, Bopper said:

 

Siolfir already hit it on the head. Due to the design formula, any increase in damage will be accompanied with an increase in recharge. Energy Punch, Barrage, and Bone Smasher already have recharges of 4, 6, and 8 seconds, respectively. I don't see Barrage getting buffed to Bone Smasher level of damage, which really only leaves it with the 7s recharge option for 1.48 scale damage, which would be a 12% increase from the 1.32 scale damage it does now. You could maybe do a global damage increase to all 3 of these attacks, make it a 5/7/10 second for a 1.16/1.48/1.96 scale damage, which certainly would be strong, but it would make for some big gaps in early level attack chains.

I suggested making it like hack from broad sword.  Hack has a 1.722 damage scale, 1.33 activation, 8s recharge.  Hack is the tier 1.  Slash, the tier 2, has 1.05 damage scale, 1.33 cast, 4s recharge.  

 

Slice, the tier 3, has an 8s recharge as well.  That’s 8, 4, 8 for recharges.  (Scrapper numbers from Red Tomax)

 

Energy melee would have 8, 4 ,8.    The same attack cycle just with better single target.  Which is sort of what I would like to see from energy melee.

 - edited this paragraph due to incorrect numbers.  

 

If barrage was improved, there really is no reason energy punch or bone smasher would need anything done to them.  In fact, the point was to make barrage better than energy punch, and if you improved energy punch as well, then you defeat the purpose. 

Edited September 20, 2020 by Brutal Justice
Specified scrapper numbers and corrected recharge times

[siolfir]

37 minutes ago, Bopper said:

Certainly, but it all would have to be factored into overall balance of a set. Make the T1-T3 too strong, you will have to take away from ET and TF. So I am thinking the devs won't go that route...atleast not fully, but who knows. This thread is for suggestions, so it's a perfectly valid one to make.

If you're trying to keep Energy Melee at the performance level that it is currently, you would have to take away something.

 

If you were intending to buff it to at or near the top for single target damage, while leaving the AoE damage anemic, ignoring Stun like all the players do, and calling that balanced, then you would also buff ET and TF. Since the discussion is split into a couple of threads, I put the DPA numbers in the other thread, but even using Smashing Blow's animation (Kinetic Melee's t3, at 1.2 seconds with a 1.23 second hit time) would boost ET from scale 1.57 damage/sec to 3.14 (the old version was 3.84), and it's the only power that would even be in the top 5 for DPA: Freezing Touch is 2.45, Rend Armor with momentum is 2.21, Seismic Smash is 2.07, Follow Through is 2.04, and Clobber is 2.01. Total Focus would be 1.28 even with the Dominator (2.53 sec, 1.77 hit time) animation - it's 1.04 with no change - and using the 4/8/10 recharge numbers would have Energy Punch unchanged at 0.95 with Barrage at 1.04 and Bone Smasher at 1.14 - which is around where around Shin Breaker and Focus are.

Edited September 19, 2020 by siolfir
including unmodified TF DPA

[Reiraku]

ET's animation change really had nothing to do with PvP. It's just that PvP gets made the scapegoat for any unpopular power change that happened in the game. While it was live, only one power was changed because of PvP, and that was Hurricane due to how it could REALLY break base raids. The animation change to ET came from Castle reviewing the powers/damage formula and balancing it based on cast time rather than cast+recharge, since recharge was VERY easy to get now. ET was grossly outside of that formula, so he brought it in line, then tweaked the damage up in trade for the self damage.

 

The problem with EM is that it's a set with very few tools. It's just a big bag of hammers that's slightly different than each other, when other sets have different tools other than hammers.

[Mystic_Cross]

48 minutes ago, siolfir said:

Just as a note, there's been some more discussion in the "Energy Melee does not need" thread I linked to above for anyone who as only looking at this thread for feedback. Mostly it's been back and forth over people wanting a new mechanic added to the set (I'm against that personally) but if you want to see the full discussion you can check it out there also.

 

Now, I'll address the post I wanted to reply to:

Since you're talking about the long animations, I assume you made the character after the nerf: prior to that, Energy Transfer's animation was very quick (faster than your proposed time, even).

 

Going through power by power on your suggestions:

 

Barrage: the power has a 6 second recharge (scale 1.33); a 20% increase in damage would put you at just under scale 1.6 damage (1.596), and if you were following the damage formulas put the recharge at 7.725 seconds. At that point just make it 8 seconds (scale 1.64), which means it's the same as what Bone Smasher currently is, just with a faster animation time (1.33 vs 1.5). Since you also wanted to boost Bone Smasher, this wouldn't create duplicates, but an 8 second recharge tier 1 wouldn't be all that great for Tankers, who have to take it. If this happened, I'd swap the tiers with Energy Punch.

 

Bone Smasher: going from scale 1.64 (current value) to 1.968 would give you a recharge of 10.05 seconds; call it 1.96 and 10 to make the numbers easier. Having that scale damage at that tier is not unheard of, either; Martial Arts does this with Cobra Strike.

 

Whirling Hands: currently the power is too small of an area for the damage it does; it should be nearly 11' for a scale 1 attack or should be scale 1.1818 at an 8' radius, so the power could be considered bugged since it should have 18% more damage already. I'd just fix it at that point. 

 

Stun: A 100% damage increase would still leave this power as garbage for damage; it currently does scale 0.25 damage. For comparison, Brawl does scale 0.36, animates faster, recharges in 10% of the time, and doesn't have an endurance cost. Cottage rule aside in making it an AoE, only a 100% damage increase still makes it a bad power - if we were going to do that I'd rather copy Fault and get rid of the damage entirely to make it an AoE control. I also disagree with swapping the position with Whirling Hands, because I'd rather have the damage power with chance of AoE earlier than the AoE stun with almost no damage.

 

Build Up: Why Power Boost? Why not Power Build Up, which doesn't lose the other aspects of the power? Within the set, it would apply to the stun duration so I can see the utility either way, but PBU works better by not removing things that the power already does.

 

Energy Transfer: Which specific 1.8 second animation are you wanting to use? That's the animation time for Stun, but as I said before I dislike that as a punch because it doesn't look like one. It looks like a throw. I'd rather go with any of a number of other animations, not the least of which is the original, 1 second animation. One of the issues with animation changes is that unless something has changed that I'm unaware of, they can reuse existing animations but not make new ones. The self-damage component shouldn't apply when hitting a corpse IMO but the bonus damage is already there because of it: the power does scale 4.56 damage and should, at its recharge, do scale 3.56 and cost more endurance. I do like the idea of AoE splash damage from hitting a corpse, but with the other changes don't agree that it's really needed.

 

Total Focus: The Dominator animation is 2.53 seconds compared to the normal 3.3 second one for everyone else. Using that animation has been suggested a couple of times. See earlier comments about corpse-blasting AoE damage.

 

 

 

Thank you for the feedback. I was in my car with my 5 year old when I made that post, and it was kind of a quick and dirty rundown of some thoughts that have been bouncing around in my head lately. I posted hastily because I saw this thread is near the end of its life, however I will check in on those other threads you linked. Regarding the above, I did actually make the character before the EM nerf, but it sat at level 4 until some time afterwards so I didn't actually have powers like ET until after. That said, EM never really bothered me at that time. It's only after having to re-level the character on Homecoming that I've noticed how extremely slow the entire set feels in comparison with nearly everything else.

 

Regarding Barrage and Bone Smasher... those were last minute thoughts that I figured might be acceptable without changes to the recharge or end cost, partially due to removing build-up and replacing it with Power Boost. You're right though, and Power Build Up would be a better solution. I knew there was another power like that, but I couldn't remember the exact name or effects. Ultimately though, the suggestion was born of my desire to have Barrage be more equal in damage output over time to Energy Punch, not Bone Smasher. Perhaps that could instead be achieved by shaving 1s off of Barrage's recharge time to make it 5s and/or reducing the cast time to 1.2s instead of 1.33s while maintaining the same damage it currently has? Bone Smasher would be fine to remain as-is.

 

Between Whirling hands and Stun, the idea was to make Stun a 10' AoE like Atom Smasher, with approximately the same or slightly less damage than the current Whirling hands and maintaining its mag 3 stun, or possibly even reducing it to mag 2 if necessary for balance. Meanwhile moving Whirling Hands into Stun's position and giving it a damage buff would allow it to maintain its position as the premier AoE power in the set. Fact is, this would improve EM's exemplar down to Posi 1 by having two AoE's and better mob control via stun available for Tanks and actually giving Stalkers a single AoE and a bit of control just like if they finally got (the current) Whirling Hands. With Stalkers crit and the slightly larger radius it would be a boon to have a power similar to WH. Brutes would still have only one AoE at posi 1 exemp level, but if Stun were similar enough in damage to current WH then they really wouldn't be losing anything and would still gain a 2nd higher damage AoE a little later on at 26. 

 

I hadn't considered the weak radius, which I guess could still be a detriment on non-tankers... WH actually has a decent radius of 12' on tanks due to their inherent but anything larger than 8' default for a tank would make it a Foot Stomp clone, especially so with a damage buff. I suppose if anything I'd agree to make WH a 10' radius for Brutes only, simply to alleviate the "anemic" radius a little without really stepping on any toes. Scrappers don't get EM and Stalkers don't get WH so the point is moot in those regards. If Scrappers did eventually get EM, I don't think it would be a big deal to also allow a 10' version for them as well.

 

Correcting WH to where it should be according to the formula may be all well and good too, but that would still maintain the weak radius on anything but a tank. Personally it doesn't matter that much to me either way but the damage or the end cost/recharge and cast time need to be adjusted to a proper ratio. Currently it's not enough of one and way too much of the other three. Shaving the animation down a few hairs would go a long way in making it feel better with the rest of the set. Also, it would be really nice to have an AoE on Stalker EM if Stun were to change to an AoE. In all though, Stun would be worth taking if it just became a PBAoE stun with the same damage it has now... possibly even with no damage and without swapping places with WH. At the very least I'd be more inclined to consider taking it. As an ST control with meaningless damage it's even more situational and useless than an Armor set t9, if that's possible.

 

As for the "cottage rule" there is already precedent for an AoE stun with Hand Clap in the Super Strength set. SS is a near carbon copy of EM, or vice versa, depending on how you look at it. More than likely EM was only given the ST stun to differentiate the two more, and because EM already has the stun effect in it's other powers. Some speculation on my part, sure... but it makes sense and I don't personally feel like it would necessarily be breaking the cottage rule to make Stun an AoE... bending perhaps, but not breaking. Ultimately that would come down to whether or not the devs feel the same I guess. 

 

For Energy Transfer, I'm aware of the call to change it back to pre-nerf status with a 1s animation. I don't exactly disagree with that... performance-wise it would be great for the set I'm sure. I'd just like to see something more unique that maintains the sets pretense of powerful, hard-hitting melee strikes, but is moderately faster all around... not just one power. I'm not sure how impactful of an animation can be accomplished in 1s. Energy Punch is the least impactful power in the set, with a .83s activation... and we're talking an extra .17s animation time between the weakest and the most powerful attack in the set? Meanwhile all the other far weaker attacks are also far slower than this uber-attack? It just doesn't seem like it would feel in-line with every other power in the set. If I can unleash this ultra-powerful strike in this ultra-short 1s time period... why am I jumping in the air for 2-3 seconds for my 2nd most powerful attack? dramatic effect?

 

It all makes perfect sense to the min-maxer in me, but the thematic purist in me is screaming "no, it wouldn't fit". Being a bit closer to the 2nd most powerful attack in animation time, yet slightly slower than the 3rd most powerful (Bone Smasher) fits... because you're using a portion of your own life to fuel the attack, making it stronger and faster while simultaneously costing less energy. I'm aware that the power has an already massive damage scale, but KO Blow with double-stacked Rage can still out-damage ET and do it with no -life cost. Obviously SS is an outlier case, but it still shouldn't be better in both ST and AoE, while also being able to AoE stun and costing less. But I digress, this isn't an EM vs SS debate... the point I'm trying to make is that an additional burst if hitting ST, and the small AoE burst when corpse blasting feels like it would be justifiable, to me. As far as I'm concerned EM should have the highest damage ST attack and the best stun capability with middling AoE, and SS can keep its almost-as-heavy rage-fueled ST and king-sized AoE with middling stun capability. Much like the recent tanker changes differentiated tanks and brutes.

 

Total Focus, I agree the Dominator TF animation would be more adequate than what we currently have. It would still run into the corpse blasting problem though as it's only a .14s difference from the current ET time, and ET can corpse blast all day in a group. ET's animation time is the bulk of complaints in all these threads, so why do we think giving TF a similar animation time to current ET is all it needs?

 

If that's the case and it would make TF ok... then what exactly is the problem with ET as it currently is? With only an animation change, TF will still end up remaining useful only when solo or against large targets. That would be unfortunate for both the devs and players if it ended up in basically the same place that it currently is, even after putting in the time and effort to make it better. If nothing else would be needed other than the animation change, then nothing else should really be needed for ET... it would have similar animation time to Dom TF and still have the higher damage. In that case, give TF the Dom animation and leave ET as it currently is. I'm sorry but no, I agree that it will be in a better place than current but I do not agree that it will be in an overall better place with just an animation change. Being able to corpse-blast an AoE is the best Idea I could come up with to keep Total Focus relevant even with the long animation time. That's not to say it's the only solution, but it would surely be unique to the set and thematically appropriate with discharging energy into a corpse. Rad Melee's Contamination works similarly, only with "contaminated" targets rather than "dead" ones, and that is also an energy based set.

 

If there's going to be work done on EM, I'd like to see each power at least become a viable choice where you have to decide "would it be worth it to skip this in-set power for this pool/app/patron" instead of having multiple powers that are just an automatic or easy skip and only a few powers that you must take while virtually ignoring everything else. 

[siolfir]

6 hours ago, Mystic_Cross said:

Between Whirling hands and Stun, the idea was to make Stun a 10' AoE like Atom Smasher, with approximately the same or slightly less damage than the current Whirling hands and maintaining its mag 3 stun, or possibly even reducing it to mag 2 if necessary for balance. Meanwhile moving Whirling Hands into Stun's position and giving it a damage buff would allow it to maintain its position as the premier AoE power in the set. Fact is, this would improve EM's exemplar down to Posi 1 by having two AoE's and better mob control via stun available for Tanks and actually giving Stalkers a single AoE and a bit of control just like if they finally got (the current) Whirling Hands. With Stalkers crit and the slightly larger radius it would be a boon to have a power similar to WH. Brutes would still have only one AoE at posi 1 exemp level, but if Stun were similar enough in damage to current WH then they really wouldn't be losing anything and would still gain a 2nd higher damage AoE a little later on at 26. 

Okay, I see what you were going for there. It would probably be adjusted, though: Fault (from Stone Melee) also requires a target, has a 10' radius AoE stun and the same recharge, and deals no damage. It has a mag 2 stun (minon-level) with a 50% chance per target of an additional mag 1 stun (to total mag 3), but also includes knockdown (mag 0.67 KB). I bring up the cottage rule because someone may have taken it and loaded it with all of the melee damage procs to get some pathetic level of performance from it due to the high recharge, and removing the damage or changing it to an AoE would change the IO sets that it can slot.

 

6 hours ago, Mystic_Cross said:

Total Focus, I agree the Dominator TF animation would be more adequate than what we currently have. It would still run into the corpse blasting problem though as it's only a .14s difference from the current ET time, and ET can corpse blast all day in a group. ET's animation time is the bulk of complaints in all these threads, so why do we think giving TF a similar animation time to current ET is all it needs?

 

If that's the case and it would make TF ok... then what exactly is the problem with ET as it currently is?

In addition to the faster animation (as you say, 0.14 seconds difference) it has a much faster hit time - the damage hits in 1.77 seconds instead of Energy Transfer's 2.2 seconds or the existing animation's 2.3 seconds. That's still slower than most of the other powers out there (I made a list earlier), but when the damage hits is important for the discussion of corpse-blasting as much - or more - than how long the animation takes, and it would reduce that time by 0.53 seconds.

 

6 hours ago, Mystic_Cross said:

If there's going to be work done on EM, I'd like to see each power at least become a viable choice where you have to decide "would it be worth it to skip this in-set power for this pool/app/patron" instead of having multiple powers that are just an automatic or easy skip and only a few powers that you must take while virtually ignoring everything else.

I'm not arguing against that, but mostly the auto-skips were Barrage (for non-Tankers), Stun, and possibly Taunt. Even with the old Energy Transfer and slow Total Focus, the guaranteed at-the-time mag 4 stun was still useful for ensuring that some bosses weren't able to act (looking at you, MoG Paragon Protectors), and then you just ignored it afterwards when running your attack chain unless you were on an AV. You didn't worry about it for smaller mobs because Energy Transfer would kill minions in less time than Energy Punch can hit them, and if a lieutenant survived it had a 60% chance to stun them.

 

As for the old Energy Transfer animation, it looks like Power Thrust from Energy Manipulation, only instead of the target going flying they just usually fell over dead.

[tidge]

Circling back to Stun (from the perspective of a Tanker) before the week ends...

 

Swapping the placement of Stun (level 20) with Whirling Hands (level 16) may feel like not such a big deal for folks who Power-level to 22, but getting Whirling Hands' PBAoE at level 16 is one of the things that helps the Tanker feel like it is actively taking as much aggro as possible. I can't see why a Tanker would prefer to have a 'Control' power in its place, single-target or otherwise. It's around level 16 that most ATs start to feel like they are coming into their own, I wouldn't delay that feeling for EM Tankers.

 

Since my first AT a launch was an Invuln/EM Tanker, I can sort of remember what the idea was for Stun (at launch, pre-CoV AT), because Tankers weren't able to otherwise (quickly) handle certain enemies before those enemies debuffed/controlled/injured affected the (solo) Tanker. Stun was a decent power for the solo Tanker. IO sets (specifically the Global +Defense pieces), have gone a long way towards reducing the need for a Tanker to specifically worry about certain enemy mobs.

 

I'm all for making/replacing Stun with something to make it more useful, but since the power has become so skip-able I'd rather see the slot turned into some sort of passive power that supports the concept of 'Energy' (without adding new mechanics to the rest of the Energy Melee set).

 

TBH I felt like it was the port to Stalkers (and PVP) that led to the nerfing of Energy Melee, as even without the dedicated Stun it was possible for a lowly Tanker to seriously disrupt the flow of an opposing character in PVP by using Taunt and layering Melee attacks on opponents. Once Stalkers could sneak up and WHAM! I felt like the set got a disproportionate amount of hate.

 

 

[Troo]

Remember: Energy Melee was formerly an excellent power set and a top tier performer.

 

It's equally applicable here as in the 'Energy Melee - Does not need' thread. Energy Melee was not a weak under performer and as such it was popular.

 

It may be a bit of hubris to ignore those facts.

 

If the July 2008 nerf was undone then everything else is gravy. No one is gonna cry if there is then or also an improvement to the powers Whirling Hands or Stun.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2020 by Troo