Weekly Discussion 84: Kinetic Melee

[GM ColdSpark]

Happy Sunday everyone! Last week you discussed Task/Strike Force Revamps (in detail!) - Writeup is here. 

 

This week it's a discussion on Kinetic Melee, where physics meets justice!

 

Weekly discussion 84 10th January till 16th January 2021

Let's talk about - Kinetic Melee

 

Things to think about:

• Powers that you like / don't like
• Animations/FX/timings
• Mechanics

 

If you have suggestions you'd like to throw into the mix for future weeks and you'd like to win an in-game title for one of your characters (if your topic is chosen in a vote), then please send me a message and I'll add it to the list.

 

Standard reminder - keep it respectful folks.  😇

[CrudeVileTerror]

I know there are other players who have a LOT to say about the mechanics of Kinetic Melee, and I don't know enough about that topic because of my primary hand-up for Kinetic Melee; it has a VERY distinct visual style.

It's not bad.  

It's just not terribly appealing to me.

 

If there could be some alternate animations for the Set, I think I would be able to feel more inclined to playing it.   I do have one Kinetic/Energy Stalker who is pretty nifty and works within the loose concept, but generally I eschew the flashier stuff.  A more subdued set of optional animations for Kinetic Melee would definitely give me interest in trying it more frequently.

 

But that's also probably a rather narrow point of view, and one I imagine won't be shared by many.  I just wanted to get it out there before the tidal wave of discussion hits regarding the mechanical issues with the Set.

[Take One]

It would be an entirely new powerset but I think it would be funny if kinetic melee actually teleported you to your target instead of having long range attacks. You'd basically have a powerset entirely made of Martial Combat's Burst of Speed. It would be the ultimate melee speedster. 

[Myrmidon]

Might as well begin with reference points.

 

 

[gameboy1234]

I only have one (or two?) lower level characters with Kinetic Melee.  I kind of like it.  It has style and that's somewhat rare in this game.  I don't think every powerset has to be a top performer, it's ok if some have a little less performance than others.  I'm curious why this ends up on people's dislike list so much.  There's lots to play out there if you want raw damage numbers, including some set that I think are underrated for their damage output (War Mace).

[Greycat]

Ah, yes. Nascar Melee...

 

Mechanics wise, I don't know. Animations/look and feel wise, it's just ... eh, not been that appealing with the random waving about. Plus, well... thanks to the sound, I can't help but call it Nascar Melee.

[Sakura Tenshi]

my own thoughts on kinetics melee from my experiences back on live (and some dabblings on beta as well)

1. Kinetic melee's animations are painfully slow with anything beyond the first two attacks, this runs directly against it's own version of build up (which I like) and means you can never get enough maximum uptime where it actually is able to be worth it versus a normal build up power. I would suggest that reducing the animation/animation lock times by as little as 15% (though preferably cutting it down by a third to make it actually feel like a 'fast melee' set) would do wonders
2. in addition to this, I would like to suggest the idea that kinetic melee's -damage debuff be a constant effect than one only active during siphon power. This will increase it's utility function and help tanks.
3. Siphon power, both the stacks gained from it as well as the power itself should last longer. This is meant to be a selling point of the whole powerset and the fact that it feels like it has oppressively low uptime and requires not one, but multiple tohit checks to be equal to a regular build up (nevermind be better) leads to some frustration.
4. Concentrated strike just plain sucks for scrappers, especially because concentrated strike's 'crit' effect chance is not altered by ATOs nor does it seem to have a higher chance on Lt.s and stronger. Perhaps if Siphon power's duration won't be buffed, Concentrated strike's crit effect chance should be increased substantially.

[Take One]

1 hour ago, Greycat said:

Plus, well... thanks to the sound, I can't help but call it Nascar Melee.

 

That's the reason I made a stalker who is the ghost of a dead racecar driver trapped in a robotic body made up of his junked car!

[Coyotedancer]

My main is a Kin/Bio Stalker...

 

I *like* the set on Stalkers...

But, I pretty much give it a huge "meh" on anything ELSE.

 

That's mostly due to Stalkers getting an actual, straight-forward build-up rather than being stuck with the annoying gimmick power that the other ATs have to deal with. When I leveled my old KM scrap, tank and brute having to juggle that ridiculous mess just made me face-palm. It added absolutely zero fun. 

 

I don't mind it being slow. I actually like the animations and don't mind the "race car" sound effects. 

[gameboy1234]

31 minutes ago, Coyotedancer said:

I don't mind it being slow. I actually like the animations and don't mind the "race car" sound effects. 

Yes!

1 hour ago, Sakura Tenshi said:

Kinetic melee's animations are painfully slow with anything beyond the first two attacks, this runs directly against it's own version of build up (which I like)

[...]

Siphon power, both the stacks gained from it as well as the power itself should last longer.

Right, this is pretty reasonable.  To make Power Siphon work better with the existing animations, making its effect last longer so that it works well with the existing animation times seems like an excellent suggestion.  I do like the existing animations.  Not everything needs to animate with the speed of Claws or Spines or whatever.  But the powers in a set should be tuned to work well with the whole set, and that includes animation times and not just sticking to arbitrary formulas.  (The original devs seem to have had a blind spot in this regard.)

 

I'd even go as far as to remove the animation from Power Siphon altogether.  Just have a VFX on the player's fists or something.  Zero cast time and zero interrupt time.  Make its effect last a skoosh longer and that might be it.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by gameboy1234

[Yomo Kimyata]

I need to get a KM to incarnate to really judge, but from my experience so far:

 

I play with the sound off, because listening to the same sound thousands of times get old.  Unless it's the first few notes of Queen's "Fat Bottomed Girls" which is pure gold for eternity.  I'd love it if *every* sound had a bunch of variants and got randomly assigned each time, but that's a nutso wish.

 

I understand that the slow animations are to compensate for the higher damage, but the animations are so *needlessly* long.  Take any of the spin animations for staff, for example.  They take a long time, but they are justifiable because, well, you are spinning and that needfully takes time.  Sky Splitter, in contrast, has no real purpose to be so long except to dampen down the DPA.  I feel like the entire KM set has needlessly long animations.  I personally would prefer shorter animations and lower damage for the same DPA.

 

Maybe more later this week as I level some alts higher.

[Erratic1]

Back on live I found it highly annoying when other people's attacks would go off and kill things while I was still animating on my KM/Shield scrapper.

 

Been a bit happier with my KM/Bio scrapper this time around but I also solo more.

[johnnysc]

I leveled a KM/Shield scrapper up to 50, hated the experience so much I haven't touched it since. 

 

Agree with poor mechanics of its build up power.

 

One key issue with the slow animations is that it makes a KM character feel like a dead weight on teams.   Other team members will kill your targets before you contribute.  One shouldn't have to run off on their own during team activity.

[siolfir]

1. The animations don't bother me, although I think I'd speed a couple up, but I don't like the sound effects - yes, this can be fixed client-side if I knew what they were, but they don't really sound like a melee set (hence the "Nascar melee" comments).
2. Concentrated Strike is a garbage, "noob trap" power.
   1. It has always hit later than Total Focus, even before Total Focus was sped up, despite having a shorter animation. This leads to frequent corpse blasting, wasting both the endurance and animation time that could be used on chipping away with the lower tier attacks that are actually decent DPA (but bad for burst and procs).
   2. It does no extra damage on a critical, and the "critical" effect is either unaffected by things which alter critical rates (for Scrappers) or superfluous because an ATO provides it to every attack in every primary (for Stalkers). Even when it goes off for Scrappers, Power Siphon has its own issues. This means that the inherent is ignored for half of the ATs with the power.
3. Power Siphon either doesn't last long enough, or has too small of an effect while it's active, to make it worth while. Especially with the wasted animation time as it takes longer to animate than other damage boost powers.

So, my suggestions:

• (apparently controversial, as some crazy people have said they actually like them) replace the sound effects - at the very least get rid of the doppler effect windup before the impact
• Quick Strike/Body Blow: flip the secondary effects, moving the knockback to Body Blow (the harder hitting attack) at scale 0.67 (instead of 0.7) at 25% chance, and the 20% chance to stun to Quick Strike (the standard "brawl" punch).
• Smashing Blow: increase recharge from 7 to 8 seconds with corresponding endurance cost and damage increases (scale 1.48 to 1.64, end 7.696 to 8.528); provides a slight DPA increase
• Power Siphon: reduce animation time from 1.93 to 1.17 seconds (matches Build Up); increase +tohit from 7.5% to 20% to match Build Up; add +20% dam (+25% for Scrappers) for duration (20 seconds) in addition to whatever is built up by stacks.
• Burst: this power actually does slightly under what it should for the damage formula, but only slightly: it does scale 1.250000 and should be 1.254545. That said, if I were requesting a change it would be to boost the radius to 10' and recharge to 20 sec to provide a significantly larger AoE, causing the damage scale to go from 1.25 to 1.424 and endurance cost to go from 14.352 to 18.512.
• Repulsing Torrent: reduce knockback from scale 7.789 to scale 0.67 or change from 80% chance of KB to 100% chance so that it can be counted on to always move what it hits in order to reduce scatter. For what it is, the power isn't bad but it's not Shockwave by any stretch of the imagination and ranged cones that push enemies away aren't overly useful for a melee character.
• Focused Burst: reduce the animation time by speeding it up slightly, recommended reduction from 2.0 to 1.6 seconds (1.25x speed); increase recharge to 10 seconds with corresponding endurance cost and damage increases (scale 1.64 to 1.96, end 8.528 to 10.192) to differentiate it from just a ranged Smashing Blow.
• Concentrated Strike: since the damage happens at the end of the animation, to reduce the corpse blasting you have to reduce the animation time - remove the first arm-waving loop, I think that will knock around a second off (I haven't done frame counting on it). Add 28% critical damage for Scrappers and Stalkers to match Total Focus, correct Power Siphon recharge percentage for Scrappers to respect changes to critical rate.

In that long laundry list of suggestions, the most important ones I feel are the changes to Power Siphon and Concentrated Strike; the others are just ideas to boost the relative performance further so that it's not as much of an outlier in the negative direction.

 

Edited January 10, 2021 by siolfir

[Galaxy Brain]

I had planned on making a thread similar to my Ice Armor one, but hey here we go. 

 

Experience with the set:

Played approximately 100 missions at lvl 50 with and without certain IOs slotted as a Scrapper in my melee testing both in Live and Closed Beta with the goal of out-competing all the other melee primaries. It was dead last every single time by a wide margin...

 

 

Goal:

KM has weirdly the fastest and slowest avg animation times of any melee set depending on which half of the set you look at, but that doesn't make up for how weird it's build-up is. The crux of the set is that it takes far too much time to use Power Siphon effectively with arguably less payoff than other similar powers and their Build Up's. If you were to compare Power Siphon to a normal build up power:

1. PS takes nearly a whole second longer to kick-in, and with less  +ToHit (minor but its a thing)
2. Normal build up you can not only act out of faster, but you get ~3.5 stacks of PS worth of buff immediately that lasts for 10 seconds
3. During those 10 seconds you are hitting with max potential from the boost with each attack, which you can argue is MUCH more damage potential than having to click -> build up power -> unleash in an underwhelming "heavy hitter"
4. Speaking of, you need to successfully hit multiple times in order to take advantage of the boost in a reasonable way which can lead to frustration, especially when several powers may animate long enough for you to lose stacks by the time they finish animating!
5. The other set with a big "gimmick" Build Up is Dark Melee's Soul drain which is spectacular, and on the newly renovated set it works wonders! 😉 

While these issues do not directly apply to Stalker KM (I do not have as much EXP there), for all other AT's the main point of taking Kinetic Melee is Power Siphon but it just is not up to snuff when you eyeball both it and the set it's attached to together. Its simply too slow to be competitive and given the effort of using it all together does not deliver the proper bang for it's buck. On top of this, the higher tier powers are all very slow to animate which is counter to the "frantic" build up of power you need to do (as mentioned, building up then unleashing can lose stacks)... and the elephant in the room of Concentrated Strike possibly being the worst melee T9 and kind of a noob trap power.

 

Goals for a fix to the set I feel should really focus on Power Siphon and by extension Concentrated Strike, but I also feel that some of the others need a pass too for cohesion!

 

 

Power Siphon:

The biggest issue is that the way PS builds and the way it is "spent" is just not efficient. At the absolute fastest, it takes around 5 seconds to gain maximum PS stacks *AFTER* the 2s animation time of activating the power, *AND THEN* another 1-3 seconds to actually use that boost on something... easily a time commitment of at least 8 seconds that other sets can get near instantly, and by the time you get max stacks you only get around 5 seconds to use it. Given the recharge and 20s duration, you really do not get as much use out of Power Siphon as it leads on....

 

A simple fix here would to increase the amount of time that stacks last from 10s up to 15s or even 20s. At 15 seconds, building up to max stacks will give you roughly the same 10s that normal build up powers enjoy to use the buffs at maximum potential, while of course the 20s would be even lengthier to award the effort of 5 separate ToHit checks coming together. Staying at 156.25% damage buff for an extended time would be awesome in of itself and this simple fix I think could go a long way.

 

Alt/Added Idea 1) Power Siphon, given its 1.93s activation is longer than the main builders of the set. Activating the power giving you one stack for free would be nice and shave off not only raw seconds but a whole attack needed to get rolling.

 

Alt/Added Idea 2) This one is a little more out there, but what if PS was always on for KM attacks, but limited to 1 stack at a time? This means as long as you're attacking, you can drain DMG from your target and boost yourself a little bit to make the set that much better when PS isn't active. When you activate PS, your stack limit then boosts to 5 instead of 1 (as well as +ToHit) and otherwise behaves as normal. Similar to the idea above but it just helps a little in between.

 

I think that bottom line a duration increase is appropriate here as you do need to work for the boost, and currently you gotta spam weak ST attacks to properly "enjoy" it for all of... 1 attack or so. Combine the duration increase with either idea 1 or 2 and I think we got something awesome.

 

 

Concentrated Strike:

The recharge gimmick is really not reliable, and the cast time is atrocious and not something you even want to use with Power Siphon given it eats away at buff time. Granted, longer lasting stacks will help here but it doesn't really address the core issues. The animation time leaves a LOT to be desired and iirc its probably one of the slowest powers to actually hit a target for a melee set? I had to double check and it's 2.83 activation time is mirrored only by Sky Splitter which does hit earlier in the animation, and surpassed by One Thousand cuts which hits throughout the animation and Thunder Strike.... of which both are AoEs! Even slow Energy Transfer is faster!!!

 

A simple boost to the animation speed to something like 2.5s would be fantastic alone, but I feel there needs to be some sort of perk to it given it cannot crit normally for one (Scrapper Stalker issue), and as the final power its very lackluster. Personally, I think this power alone should get a special perk per PS stack. After all, you build up your concentration by siphoning power from enemies, the ultimate strike using it just makes sense. I think the following should be looked into:

• The base damage of CS goes up per stack of PS. This synergizes very well with PS itself and it could be an incredibly hard hitting ST nuke if done properly. For reference, at base a Scrapper's CS does 222.7 damage without any buffs or enhancements. By boosting the base by even say, 5% per stack that could go to 278.38 damage. 
  • With 95% enhancement and full PS, this is currently around 782 damage
  • If each stack boosted base damage before other buffs, this would hit for 978 damage!
  • Why  this would be important in particular is that with the same values (enhancement + PS), the combo of the 1st 3 ST attacks actually out-damages CS 879 to 782, and it repeatable within a very similar timeframe (3.1s to 2.83s). CS *needs* to be able to beat this to be worthwhile!
• The instant recharge "crit" should scale with PS stacks! Plain and simple, why not literally carry your kinetic momentum by having the chance to crit go up per stack? Even something like 5% per stack would be huge as you'd end up at 35% total when you fire it off which isn't too shabby. I'd even say 10% per stack would be awesome.

I think some combination of these two would turn CS into a sort of "event" type of power that you whip out on a boss or LT to really delete them and get your ball rolling again. It would still be slow, to really emphasize the power behind it, but now it actually feels powerful both in damage and in effect when you use it. You could still corpse bomb at times sure, but if you build this up and open on a boss or a fresh mob it can really swing a fight your way instantly.

 

Those two make up the main, crucial areas of the set that need attention but I feel there are two more powers that could use a once over.

 

 

Repulsing Torrent:

The only real analogue to this power is Claws' Shockwave, which while yes it is a T9 it has near identical Rech and Damage, but has double the radius and half the cast time of KM's ranged KB cone. Torrent also has much, much stronger KB and that sort of defeats the purpose of how the set functions with wanting to be up close and rapidly building up Power Siphon. 

 

Given the smaller radius, knockback, and long animation, I would actually dig if this was a "big" power in terms of damage as well. Like a Kamehameha that gets launched through a crowd sending them flying and dealing massive damage, especially with your self damage buff. The theme I guess along with Concentrated Strike is that the slower moves should "feel" powerful both in animation and effect, so you flow between building up and unleashing constantly like you are letting the energies flow naturally. 

 

Torrent is also alone in that it does not grant a PS stack on hit, something that Burst does (which is why Im not altering that power, it can debuff damage in an AoE and with PS changes it's probably fine), and even CS grants you. This could be all the more reason to boost the base damage considerably at the expense of Recharge, giving Kinetic Melee a ST and AoE super-move to build up and unleash at will.

 

 

Focused Burst:

Lastly, this power is really nothing to write home about with it's 2ish sec cast time compared to the much faster trio of  starting ST melee attacks. Sure, the range is nice but its essentially a worse Smashing Blow simply due to the animation. I'd say either speed it up, or give it a base damage boost worthy of the animation and making it something sort of in between the "big" moves of your AoEs and CS and the quick ST attacks. As is it doesn't really "fit in" otherwise. Oddly, this is another place where KM mirrors claws with an odd ST attack.... and a BU variant that relies on hitting... weird.

 

 

 

So boiled down I think the set honestly needs minor changes to function properly as the "base" is there with some refinement. It has a coo l dichotomy with very fast, clear "builder" attacks and what seems to be intended "finisher" powers that take advantage of your huge damage buff... its just in practice you cannot really take advantage of this in a timely manner nor is the payoff really worth it. A boost to PS duration is a natural buff to the set and anything you pair it with off the bat, but the changes to the "big" powers in in Repulsing Torrent and Concentrated Strike are where KM would really shine. With slow recharges you'd still expect to see them only once per cycle (eyeballing 20s up from 12s for Torrent, matching CS) but when you do use them they should really represent all that built up power. 

 

I'd lean on making Focused Burst much faster of an attack (1.4s, each ST getting about .2s slower) and maybe recharge a bit slower (8s > 10s) for a light damage bump to make the set have a truly kinetic feel of fast attacks building up to a big, powerful burst every so often.

 

While my primary experience is on Scrappers, Brutes will likewise love the changes to base damages combined with Fury. Tankers will appreciate Torrent being much better with their AoE focus, and Stalkers... well this is weird given they don't get PS.... but hey maybe thats where the idea of them always getting 1 stack comes in?

Edited January 11, 2021 by Galaxy Brain

[Snarky]

I have run a KM / Invul Brute at top level for a couple months.  It was designed to thematically be a "Tank Mage"  Lot of weird arm waving spell casting.  Lot of not right at Melee range.  It achieved those two things.  It was...meh.  just meh.

 

I have long advocated for generic set of animations for all power sets to get away from "artistic" choices a Dev has made that make looking at your toon pure torture.  KM is a set that really illustrates that.  Unless you really think Tai Chio practitioners are the scariest people on earth it is tough to look at the art here and find an intimidating super.  For the love of Spiderman give us a generic Energy Blast and/or basic punch swing animation options on EVERYTHING in the game.  Opens up a lot of creativity.  Instead of designing an entire look around "He stands around waving his arms a lot and then ...meh"

 

The Build Up.  What can you say.  It has a Build Up.  It does...something.  It does work.  Doesn't it?  Is this thing on?

[Hew]

I actually like the artistic flair of KM. But. It just kinda, sucks.

 

Maybe cut animation costs in half?!

 

Let me rephrase a bit I guess. I think it could be fine if it was dead last in the pool (SOMETHING has to be), but at least give it the opportunity to crank up to at least 8.215 on a scale of 10 +1 if it is heavily io'd out. Some sets excel on heavy io slotting, some it doesn't make too much of a difference.

 

What kind of unique things could be applied to the set (with some animation time cuts!!!) that would kick it up a big notch, like the energy melee mods did? I think the tools are already in the set, but definitely some sort of crazy synergy (set based? power set based? something) should exist to lessen the suck burden.

Edited January 11, 2021 by Hew

[Nemu]

I have a few ideas, not all of them on theme but here they are:

 

I can't help but think about those martial arts movies with the exploding palm strike or 5 finger death strike when I think about concentrated strike. It could be a different type of T9 where the initial damage is average, but half a second later it delivers a HUGE tick of damage to simulate internal organs rupturing/DEATH! I think we can change the animation to cobra strike so it's faster, and psychologically players will feel better about at least hitting something even if it's not a lot of damage (initially), than sit through 3 seconds of flailing arms only to hit a corpse.

 

Siphon power, the mini game of building stacks is nothing new but the 2 second animation and no immediate payoff makes this lag behind compared to blood thirst/combat readiness from savage melee and street justice, respectively. Just making it so that it grants 5 stacks of the buff upon activation would be a big improvement in the power. The gimmick with CS recharging SP is something that no one ever builds for because both powers take so long to animate and doing so often significantly lowers damage output. I'd get rid of that gimmick and introduce a new synergy between SP and CS where while SP is active, CS has a chance to do something like:

• instantly recharge after it's used with max stacks of the buff, like water jet
• crit , and the crit rate/damage increases with stacks of the buff, the upfront damage portion will receive the full benefit of the crit, the delayed damage portion will receive reduced benefit.
• Create a shockwave and do a mag 2 stun and splash damage to nearby enemies in a 20 degree cone that extends 7 feet (This effect doesn't care about stacks of the buff)
• Any other effect that doesn't care about the buff.

Whereas the live set places the incentive on using CS to recharge SP which no one really took the bait for, this revision places the incentive on using Siphon power to make CS and everything else better. You can take the synergy 2 ways, either make it still care about buff stacks or just make is a constant effect while SP is active.

 

I'd give the same treatment of the way CS and SP works to stalkers and how CS and Build up works. Under the effect of build up CS does something more.

[Safehouse]

So as of this post, my KM/EA scrapper is my first, and only, level 50. I have so much love for Kinetic Melee, and it comes this close (holds up thumb and forefinger) to actually achieving what I want that character to be, thematically. It does, however, fall short.

 

What I love:

• The "twisty" energy. If you look at the way the energy itself moves when you attack, it's like little spirals of power.
• The combination of melee and ranged attacks. It's exactly the combo I always wanted to create for my "battlemage" style character. It sometimes feels like I am playing on an assault/defense archetype, and that's so cool.
• Among the melee sets, this truly feels the most unique. It's super fun to play.

What I feel needs work. Lots of folks have already touched on this but:

• Animation times. Especially for Concentrated Strike and, to a lesser degree, Focused Burst and Burst. There could be other attacks that need the AT trimmed, but those are the big three that need some love. Nobody wanted to be a "corpse blaster."
• Animations themselves. I'm sure plenty of people like the animations just fine, but I strongly advocate for alternate animation options. An option for simpler punches, or maybe even a third animation option to have more of the street brawler look a la street justice, would be awesome. For me, personally, alternate animations to be less hand wavy/jazz hands, would actually, thematically, complete my character. I know that's really my unique scenario, but I imagine I'm not alone in feeling this way.
• Sound design: we've seen "Nascar melee" thrown around and I agree. BUT, more to the point, my main issue is the lack of impact that the sounds design has. When you strike an enemy, it really doesn't FEEL like you've hit them hard.
• On the less aesthetic side of things: damage. Maybe improving animation time could fix this, but I seriously feel like the set needs a damage pass, even if after seeing how animation time fixes affect damage.
• Power Siphon. I'd honestly be all for Power Siphon just being replaced with the stalker Build Up, but I could get behind changes that have been suggested elsewhere in this thread.

At the end of the day, I think lots of my biggest issues with the set (even though I love it!) are more aesthetic than anything else. But, aesthetics has value, and can be an important aspect of WHY people choose not to use the set (or why folks choose TO use the set). I'm a proponent of "more options," and I feel KM is one of those sets that would benefit from such.

[iBot]

I agree with most of the ideas so far and will just toss in my thoughts:

1. When I first saw Kinetic Melee my immediate thought was "Juggarnaut" and if that was the gimmick for this set I'd be happy.  I thought my attacks would get faster as I continue to attack.
2. Upon playing the set I really liked the animations in that they are unique in the game and give a nice zen feel as you calmly take your opponent apart.
3. Damage at least on Brute is ok.  Nothing spectacular but not terrible.  Decent middle set.
4. Siphon Power is not what I expected.  I wanted the buff that Tsoo get.  Instead I got a major disappointment.  Even if not the power the Tsoo use maybe borrow from the kinetic defender set and that siphon power.

[Replacement]

9 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Alt/Added Idea 2) This one is a little more out there, but what if PS was always on for KM attacks, but limited to 1 stack at a time? This means as long as you're attacking, you can drain DMG from your target and boost yourself a little bit to make the set that much better when PS isn't active. When you activate PS, your stack limit then boosts to 5 instead of 1 (as well as +ToHit) and otherwise behaves as normal. Similar to the idea above but it just helps a little in between.

Not the same, but this has me thinking about a similarly "bold" departure:

What happens if Power Siphon stacks set you to refresh duration of all current stacks? 

Probably with a nerf down to 3 stacks or so, probably some tuning to the +damage amounts.

 

So essentially, you start a fight with PS (even paying the full 2 second animation cost) and then you start landing attacks to keep your kinesis going until you're out of stuff to hit.

 

It's at least fun enough to imagine to post; not sure I like the "Brute incentive" though.

[Galaxy Brain]

21 minutes ago, Safehouse said:

Animation times. Especially for Concentrated Strike and, to a lesser degree, Focused Burst and Burst. There could be other attacks that need the AT trimmed, but those are the big three that need some love. Nobody wanted to be a "corpse blaster."

Just wanna talk about Burst real quick:

 

Name	Animation	Damage	Recharge	Radius
Fire Sword Circle	2.67	126.30	20	10
Typhoon's Edge	2.27	117.70	12	8
Spin	2.50	113.70	9.2	8
The Lotus Drops	1.83	94.47	14	8
Burst	2.67	89.93	15	8
Whirling Hands	2.50	81.33	14	8
Whirling Mace	2.67	80.58	14	8
Eye of the Storm	2.57	76.98	17	10

 

This is only a small sample of PBAoE's, but looking at some common ones it seems Burst is right in the middle-ish. It matches animation time with the slower ones, but I think the main issue is that say, Whirling Mace or Fire Sword circle's animations have:

 

Wind Up > Hit > End lag

 

While Burst has:

 

Wind Up > Wind Up > Hit

 

 

This makes it much "Slower" comparatively as the other attacks with the same cast time hit at least half way through and not at the end.

[Safehouse]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Just wanna talk about Burst real quick:

 

 

Name	Animation	Damage	Recharge	Radius
Fire Sword Circle	2.67	126.30	20	10
Typhoon's Edge	2.27	117.70	12	8
Spin	2.50	113.70	9.2	8
The Lotus Drops	1.83	94.47	14	8
Burst	2.67	89.93	15	8
Whirling Hands	2.50	81.33	14	8
Whirling Mace	2.67	80.58	14	8
Eye of the Storm	2.57	76.98	17	10

 

This is only a small sample of PBAoE's, but looking at some common ones it seems Burst is right in the middle-ish. It matches animation time with the slower ones, but I think the main issue is that say, Whirling Mace or Fire Sword circle's animations have:

 

Wind Up > Hit > End lag

 

While Burst has:

 

Wind Up > Wind Up > Hit

 

 

This makes it much "Slower" comparatively as the other attacks with the same cast time hit at least half way through and not at the end.

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow, do you think you could explain what you mean when you're talking about whirling mace/fire sword, vs Burst? Are you saying that the extra "wind up" for burst is making it lag more? Because basically you don't get "hit" until the end of the chain of events, as opposed to fire sword circle having the "hit" at step 2?

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, Safehouse said:

Sorry, I'm not sure I follow, do you think you could explain what you mean when you're talking about whirling mace/fire sword, vs Burst? Are you saying that the extra "wind up" for burst is making it lag more? Because basically you don't get "hit" until the end of the chain of events, as opposed to fire sword circle having the "hit" at step 2?

Sure, so for a visual lets look at it this way:

Fire Sword Circle

 

 

FSC has a wind-up animation before it "Hits" with the big flame burst, and THEN it has some time afterwards with End-Lag as you stand back up, before you are able to act.

 

 

 

 

Burst

 

Burst on the other hand is allllll Start-Up before unleashing the attack/hit, but then you can act nearly immediately once it unleashes. 

 

If I had to guess (there is a stat for this but I cannot find it at this sec), FSC actually "hits" around the ~1.6 second mark of it's 2.67s animation, while Burst hits well over 2 seconds into it's 2.67s animation. So while they are the same animation/activation, FSC is actually a second faster to strike.

 

 

 

 

[Safehouse]

32 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Sure, so for a visual lets look at it this way:

Fire Sword Circle

 

 

FSC has a wind-up animation before it "Hits" with the big flame burst, and THEN it has some time afterwards with End-Lag as you stand back up, before you are able to act.

 

 

 

 

Burst

 

Burst on the other hand is allllll Start-Up before unleashing the attack/hit, but then you can act nearly immediately once it unleashes. 

 

If I had to guess (there is a stat for this but I cannot find it at this sec), FSC actually "hits" around the ~1.6 second mark of it's 2.67s animation, while Burst hits well over 2 seconds into it's 2.67s animation. So while they are the same animation/activation, FSC is actually a second faster to strike.

 

 

 

 

Okay, cool, thanks for clarifying. The visuals and the numbers in your previous post help too! Always appreciate seeing the data 🙂 I just wasn't sure I had the right understanding of it. So from my persepctive, even if I'm able to perform my next action almost immediately after unleashing burst, that looong start-up before the hit just feels too much. Maybe making it function a little more like whirling mace and fire sword circle is all that would be needed, but right now it really does feel so slow and laggy.