Save our KINETIC MELEE !

[VULCAN]

Hello mighty Devs,
I would like to drag your attention on Kinetic Melee.
Personally on all my melee toons it is one of the weakiest and even if I really like this set for its originality, I must admit it is hard to decide "ok I am going to take my KM" …
If this was an isolated behavior you could say its because of me, but I look around every day among melee characters and KM set is really rare, under represented.

 

To be more precise about this, is it possible for you to have a statistic on the % of HOURS played by KM characters on the server ? I mean a measure of the amount of time. Because having created a KM character is one thing (X% of the players do have a KM character in their roaster), but playing it on a regular basis is another one (Melee players play KM Y % of the time spent in game). If this show that KM is really played a few as I think, then  this is an additional argument to really look at this set and make it more attractive.

 

For me the main weakness of kinetic melee is : it is really slow, too slow for the advantages you earn for that casting cost.

What to do ?  my suggestions :
1- improve "Power Siphon" , adding a cumulative reducer of casting time every time you attack while power syphon is active. That could be a nice mechanic illustrating the kinetic drain ?

2- improve the damage of some attacks in the set (the cone or AOE and the biggest single target attack should be boosted) ?

 

Hope you'll get a look at it and the community will follow.
I know that maybe some players will find the exception to my statement, proving that KM is strong and do not need any improvement, but once again be reasonable and just look at the statistics of how many players do play KM regularly and how many KM melee toons you encounter in a daily bases compared to other set that we all see everytime. I think on this we can agree and this is the most evident proof than this set is far away to be top ranked (otherwise people would choose it, period.)

 

You have done a solid job to improve Energy melee, thats fine, using this experience please have a look on our Kinetic Melee :)
Thank you !

 

 

[Razor Cure]

I enjoyed KM (back on Live) but I found the Siphon to be..clunky. EVERY other build up/aim power (even follow up and soul drain), you just dive into a mob, hit it, then unload your biggest attacks/aoes first. But with PS..doing that (big attack first up) just means it hits without 'max' damage stacks, and that long animation also eats into the buff time. Sorta counter intuitive to every other set, where you use the big attacks asap to bash something down.

Also the fact ConcStrike can not crit..which seems like a total rip, especially now with the EM changes (both TF and ET can crit, just for less than normal).

 

Comparing KM to EM now..well, I know which I prefer. Similar AoE, but EM does not almost require a kb to kd IO to 'fix' the cone, and two huge hitting attacks..AND a proper, less weird build up!

[nihilii]

15 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

and that long animation also eats into the buff time.

This, a billion time.

I'm willing to bet decreasing Power Siphon's cast to 0.83s and making it not root your character, just like regular Build Up, would boost KM's performance and fun factor significantly on its own.

We can also address the glaring issues, like Quick Strike having 0.70 magnitude KB which knockbacks blue stuff where every other melee attack in the game does 0.67 magnitude KB = knockdown everywhere. Concentrated Strike not benefitting from +crit procs whereas Energy Transfer gets a higher chance to heal from +crit procs.

 

Then there's all the balance stuff. Focused Burst as a 8s recharge power probably should animate faster than 2 seconds. Concentrated Strike could get the Total Focus treatment, half a second shaved off its lengthy animation.

 

Finally, perhaps throw a bone to Brutes, because +dam disproportionately favors Scrappers and to a lesser extent Tankers. A set heavily balanced around constant stacks of +dam leaves Brutes in the cold, as their relative increase is less due to Fury. I'd love to see Brutes get the Claws treatment: when Claws was ported from Scrappers to Brutes, recharge on all powers was increased with damage to match.

Edited December 2, 2020 by nihilii

[Razor Cure]

All the normal attack powers only debuff target damage when PS is active, right? I always thought that was pretty stupid too. Almost every other attack in the game, even 'gimmick' ones, still do the normal effects all the time, maybe with just a bit of extra POW from combos/build up/etc. If KM debuffed damage the entire time, then MORE under power siphon, it would be an improvement.

[nihilii]

I want to say they debuff all the time but that would require me to log in a KM character and check. Who wants to do that when there's more EM to play? ... 🙂

[Razor Cure]

lol, right? Looknig at Mids, it says PS 'modifies your attacks so that they drain damage.' Which seems to suggest that normal they do not. However..it also shows the -dam in WHITE, which means (in mids) that an effect is always happening..as opposed to the blue text which is a chance.

[Safehouse]

I will say that my first (and currently only, despite numerous alts that I have listed in my sig) level 50 toon is my Kinetic/Energy/Mu Scrapper. Conceptually, I love Astellus. I love the mix of melee and ranged attacks I have available in my kit. It's the closest I've been able to create to a true representation of my "aether manipulation" style character that's always been in my head. It's such an original and funky (in a good way) set, that I can't stay away from it. KM has a big thing that EM does not have - a mix of melee and ranged attacks. It's one of the draws for me, even if I LOVE new energy melee and am quickly building up Safehouse (Energy/Invuln scrapper) as my secondary main, and the mix of skills is part of what has me going back to Astellus time and again.

 

That said, I won't deny that there are issues with Kinetic Melee. I know in the "emergency buff" thread, KM did come up as one of the powersets that could do with a boost. Its damage is anemic, as seen in the thread about melee set performance where it came in last place (F tier, sob). Perhaps the live devs felt that, because it has so many ranged skills at its disposal, they needed to balance out its versatility by making it do less damage. I don't know, though. It could just have been accidentally undertuned.

 

I've never been completely enamored with the animations and have advocated in the past for having alternate animations available. I also feel like something about the animation/sound effects detracts from the sense of "impact" that I'd love to get from KM. It doesn't FEEL like an impactful set. That's purely aesthetic, though.

 

Mechanically, many of the later tier attacks suffer from languid, laborious animation times that add up to a pretty heavy impact on damage-dealing capabilities. Burst and Repulsing Torrent could both, IMO, do with a bit of a speed up. Focused Burst I definitely think could do with a reduction in animation time.

 

I actually like the idea of Concentrated Strike, but I do wish it had the TF/ET treatment regarding crits. Moreover, it's become something of a "corpse blaster" skill - specifically when teaming. I noticed it a LOT during a teamup for the Winter Event yesterday (I don't team up that often so I just haven't noticed it). I would ready my "MASSIVE STRIKE OF DEATH" but by the time it actually went off, the mob I was aiming for was already dead. I WANT CS to be worth it.

 

Also in agreement with the ongoing conversations about Power Siphon.

Edited December 2, 2020 by Safehouse
Forgot a few thoughts

[Coyotedancer]

I'd say try it out on a Stalker, and see what you think of the set with a regular Build-Up instead of that weirdness the other melee ATs got stuck with. I've been more impressed with how the set handles without that. 

[Safehouse]

10 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I'd say try it out on a Stalker, and see what you think of the set with a regular Build-Up instead of that weirdness the other melee ATs got stuck with. I've been more impressed with how the set handles without that. 

But-but-but my repulsing torrent!! 😭

 

Just kidding - any excuse to satiate my altitis! I'll give it a shot and see what comes of it.

 

That said... I do feel it's problematic if the set is working really well on only one of the ATs for which it is intended 😞

Edited December 2, 2020 by Safehouse

[Coyotedancer]

2 minutes ago, Safehouse said:

But-but-but my repulsing torrent!! 😭

 

Just kidding - any excuse to satiate my altitis! I'll give it a shot and see what comes of it.

 

That said... I do feel it's problematic if the set is working really well on only one of the ATs for which it is intended 😞

The animations are still slower than proverbial Christmas, so that doesn't change.... and definitely get the two Stalker ATO procs, if nothing else. They're game-changers on any flavor of Stalker. 

 

I think the combination of somewhat more controllable crits (Burst straight out of Hide in the middle of a mob of goons is good fun. 🤣 ) and having a regular build-up is what makes the difference. I ended up absolutely hating the KM Scrap I had back-in-the-day... mostly because of how poorly he handled in comparison to the KM Stalker I'd made at the same time. (Shade became a favorite. Poor Solace got exiled to a server I never played on.)  They were both KM/WP.

 

My main here, Kaikara, is KM/Bio... which gives her the added option of running in Offensive Adaptation mode. She hits like a sack of bricks. 

[Parabola]

7 hours ago, nihilii said:

Finally, perhaps throw a bone to Brutes, because +dam disproportionately favors Scrappers and to a lesser extent Tankers. A set heavily balanced around constant stacks of +dam leaves Brutes in the cold, as their relative increase is less due to Fury. I'd love to see Brutes get the Claws treatment: when Claws was ported from Scrappers to Brutes, recharge on all powers was increased with damage to match.

I'm rolling the idea around in my head that all melee sets should have a fast and slow version split between scrappers/stalkers and tanks/brutes. Thematically it would certainly make sense and it might help differentiate the AT's a bit more?

[Safehouse]

1 hour ago, Coyotedancer said:

The animations are still slower than proverbial Christmas, so that doesn't change.... and definitely get the two Stalker ATO procs, if nothing else. They're game-changers on any flavor of Stalker. 

 

I think the combination of somewhat more controllable crits (Burst straight out of Hide in the middle of a mob of goons is good fun. 🤣 ) and having a regular build-up is what makes the difference. I ended up absolutely hating the KM Scrap I had back-in-the-day... mostly because of how poorly he handled in comparison to the KM Stalker I'd made at the same time. (Shade became a favorite. Poor Solace got exiled to a server I never played on.)  They were both KM/WP.

 

My main here, Kaikara, is KM/Bio... which gives her the added option of running in Offensive Adaptation mode. She hits like a sack of bricks. 

Well I created a test build turning my KM/EA scrapper into a KM/EA stalker in mids and, although the proof of the pudding is really only in the eating, I will say the numbers (defenses, recharge, etc) actually look better - possibly virtue of some of the different IO sets I used with it - so that's a promising start. Now it'll just be a matter of rolling it out and seeing how I feel about how it plays.

 

Yeah, having control over the crits I think is a big deal. I wish scrapper as an AT overall had better crit management. For its passive being all about crits, it struggles a surprising amount to pump out regular critical hits.

[captainstar]

I really like the animations of this power. It could be used in very ninjas/animes characters.

But when I see other people in my team doing better attacks than me, it kind of kill my motivation to play a char with this power again.

[aethereal]

Power Siphon could clearly be tweaked into being a little better without much difficulty.  Just increase its duration a little and/or reduce its animation time.  It being differentiated in how it plays compared to normal Build Up is, in my opinion, positive.  We want sets to be different!

 

I think a bigger issue with KM in the current meta is that part of its appeal is supposed to be fairly good quick hits in the lower-tier attacks with short animation times.  But in today's proc-oriented meta for melee sets, we're all looking for high-recharge attacks, and in KM all the high-recharge attacks have long animation times.

[Solarverse]

I play Kinetic Melee on a Stalker and although it doesn't seem like it hits quite as hard as other sets, I can chain the attacks together much faster to equal more damage in quick successions. Now, granted, a Stalker uses Build Up, so that helps quite a bit. I have not played the set on any other class, so I can't really comment there.

[Vanden]

The standard damage formula makes it pretty easy to categorize single-target attacks based on their recharge. Attacks with a recharge of 8s or less are basically filler attacks; they're not that strong, but you use them when stronger attacks are on cooldown. Attacks with a recharge of 10-15s or so (I don't think there's any powers in the game with a 9s recharge) are the meat-and-potatoes powers, attack chain staples; these are powers like Freezing Touch or Golden Dragonfly. And powers with recharges longer than 15s are the heavy-hitters, powers like Total Focus and Knockout Blow. The best sets have at least 2 powers falling into the latter two categories (or they have several good AoE powers). Kinetic Melee's main problem is that it has four powers in the Filler range and only one Heavy Hitter, and its AoE isn't good enough to make up for that. Increasing the recharge on Focused Burst to 10-12s, with the corresponding increase in damage scale, would fix this.

 

Another problem is Concentrated Strike. It's basically Total Focus, but worse. The damage is the same, but Total Focus is 100% chance for scale 10 Stun, while Concentrated Strike is only 60% chance. Also, TF does more damage on a crit, while CS only recharges Build Up/Power Siphon, which isn't necessarily helpful. TF is also faster than it now, and of course is also in the same set as Energy Transfer; really I'm not sure why they decided to make the capstone power of KM an inferior clone of a power that isn't even its own set's capstone, that's just weird. So some kind of buff for CS is also in order.

 

Lastly, Power Siphon is just too slow. I've only played KM on Stalkers, but I know I would hate spending 2s casting PS multiple times a minute.

[Razor Cure]

46 minutes ago, Vanden said:

The damage is the same

Mids shows it (on stalkers) at 5 less. Sure..only 5, but its still sad that a big whampow power is LESS than the second best attack in another set! And like you said..TF is faster now as well!

I still cant quite decide (based on thinking, not actually making) if the stalker procs on KM would be 'as' amazing as for other stalkers. Sure, they are great, no doubt, but the chance for BU goes off SO much, that simply having a 2nd chance for that, from your best attack seems a bit overkill.

Like others have said, being able to control crits (hide proc in AS, 100% crit on CS, pop BU again, repeat) would be awesome, but even on my non KM stalkers, I can stack BU quite often. I would assume that 3 stacks or more of BU, by the time you activated the 3rd, the first would be about gone, meaning you would stuggle to land a ConcStrike with 3xBU.

I personally do love the animations, but yeah, they could stand to be sped up.

[Vanden]

2 minutes ago, Razor Cure said:

Mids shows it (on stalkers) at 5 less.

Mids is wrong, both powers are scale 3.56 damage. Even the split is the same, 1 Smashing, 2.56 Energy.

[BadMinotaur]

I believe Mids is taking into account that Total Focus has a chance to crit and is adding the estimated average damage from that crit to TF. Concentrated Strike can't crit, so looks like it has less damage in Mids if you don't have the "Ignore Extra Damage" option ticked in Configuration.

[BrandX]

I got KIN up to 50 back on Paragon Studios.  We didn't have Energy Melee on Scrappers!  Tried it on HC.  I have to say, I don't care for CS not having any crit.  As a Scrapper, I want my Scrappers to Crit!  And CS not getting increased chance to Crit and do what it does on Crit, didn't make me happy either.

 

All my Scrapper looked to be in the D-F range on the one test, except for my TW/NIN (Ninja with a Huge Sword!  Come on!  That's just awesome!) so it's not like I was choosing top tier sets.  😛

 

So, CS and lastly Focused Burst disappointed me.  I want that range attack to be an awesome part of the attack chain!  Not a "Waste to use it" power 😕  Wasn't to worried about the Cone range power though.

[Safehouse]

12 hours ago, BrandX said:

I got KIN up to 50 back on Paragon Studios.  We didn't have Energy Melee on Scrappers!  Tried it on HC.  I have to say, I don't care for CS not having any crit.  As a Scrapper, I want my Scrappers to Crit!  And CS not getting increased chance to Crit and do what it does on Crit, didn't make me happy either.

 

All my Scrapper looked to be in the D-F range on the one test, except for my TW/NIN (Ninja with a Huge Sword!  Come on!  That's just awesome!) so it's not like I was choosing top tier sets.  😛

 

So, CS and lastly Focused Burst disappointed me.  I want that range attack to be an awesome part of the attack chain!  Not a "Waste to use it" power 😕  Wasn't to worried about the Cone range power though.

Agreed totally. Also, the focused burst point actually touches on what I think is a critical shortcoming of the set: the lack of synergy between the melee and ranged skills. I find my approach tends to be one of two things: either I Zapp from afar and then range mobs down, including focused burst/repulsing torrent in that rotation, or; I run up and melee enemies down, adding in ranged skills for spice and flavor when I'm feeling like it. On one hand, it's NICE that I feel like I have attacks available to me for all occasions, but on the other hand I would like to see the melee/ranged skills in the set synergize more.

[BrandX]

3 hours ago, Safehouse said:

Agreed totally. Also, the focused burst point actually touches on what I think is a critical shortcoming of the set: the lack of synergy between the melee and ranged skills. I find my approach tends to be one of two things: either I Zapp from afar and then range mobs down, including focused burst/repulsing torrent in that rotation, or; I run up and melee enemies down, adding in ranged skills for spice and flavor when I'm feeling like it. On one hand, it's NICE that I feel like I have attacks available to me for all occasions, but on the other hand I would like to see the melee/ranged skills in the set synergize more.

 

Exactly.  I'm melee.  Yes, that range skill will get used on a runner every now and again, but I'd like it to be a good attack to add to the attack chain, which means, I'm going to use it in melee range and I just like the idea of using it for the style, however if it's really meh, it won't get that. 😞

[ValiantBlu]

I agree that the set just doesn't get enough value per button. 

Something has to give, end cost, speed, or damage

 

Personally, I think the set has too much versatility to buff the damage, reducing end would help but it's not going to make the set more enjoyable to use.

I would say the best way to fix it is to fix the speed. Kinetic support is all about buffing your team by taking from the enemy, KM should follow that as well. For example, an attack could have a chance to grant +rech and proc -rech on your opponent, this would not only be a buff to the set, but would give KM some more identity as well. Maybe a +/- defense attack could be great as well, or +/- movement speed.

That's just what I'd like to see.

[Shadowsleuth]

5 hours ago, ValiantBlu said:

I would say the best way to fix it is to fix the speed. Kinetic support is all about buffing your team by taking from the enemy, KM should follow that as well. For example, an attack could have a chance to grant +rech and proc -rech on your opponent, this would not only be a buff to the set, but would give KM some more identity as well. Maybe a +/- defense attack could be great as well, or +/- movement speed.

 

I like it; a chance to proc Siphon speed (Foe -SPD, Self +Recharge, +SPD) like the Tsoo Ink Men power.

[Spitfire99]

I would love to love KM. I just rolled my second lvl 50 KM, but man it feels clunky compared to the other powersets. I seem to spend most of my time flailing my arms waiting to hit.

 

I thought there was supposed to be a damage increase to off set the long animation times, am I wrong about that?

 

I wonder why this set wasn't fixed on the last update? A boost to Power Siphon would be great! A reduction in animation times! Maybe one of the Devs can weigh in? 

 

Maybe I should just roll another fire scrapper...

 

Help!

 

Edited January 1, 2021 by Spitfire99