Let's play with Tesla Coils (Revamping Electric Melee)

[SeraphimKensai]

I think since our volunteer dev team just revamped electric blast, we should carry over some revamping to it's melee brother, Electric Melee. The general consensus would have you that Electric Melee lacks some solid single target damage, and is pretty good with aoe damage. A lot of people really dislike Jacob's Ladder as well so without further ado....(also note that I copy pasted the language of the new changes to electric blast and followed the format for electric melee, so a good portion of the language is derived from the post regarding electric blast, didn't want to sound like I'm trying to plagiarize their language)...

 

Electrical Melee "attacks now have a chance to Shock enemies for 20% bonus damage depending on their current Endurance! This damage scales with buffs and enhancements. In addition, Shocking enemies will return a portion of Endurance back to you and inflict -40% Recovery Debuff on your target for 5 seconds each application. Starting at 80% endurance, your chance to Shock will scale from 10% up towards 100% when an enemy is fully drained.

 

This change not only shores up Elec's single target damage conditionally, but also allows players to more easily keep targets drained as their basic attacks will proc Shock and inflict -Recovery the more endurance they drain."

 

AT Specific Endurance Drain Scales

Tankers, Brutes, Scrappers, and Stalkers have a 1.0 endurance drain scale.

 

 

In addition, the following powers had their base End Drain values changed for each AT:

Jacob's Ladder- 7% -> 20%

Lightning Clap- 0% -> 30%

Assassin's Shock- 0% -> 20%

Lightning Rod- 0% -> 10%

 

These changes will help the AT's fulfill their roles with Electrical Melee with better Endurance Modification prowess, and easier usage of Shock.

 

Power Changes

• Jacob's Ladder
  • Jacob's Ladder has been revamped! Taking this power allows you to build Static Charges with each activation of other electrical melee attacks. As Static builds, you can unleash it with Jacob's Ladder where the cone's arc will widen and and range will expand in stages from 50°/7ft -> 60°/8ft -> 70°/9ft -> 80°/10ft -> 90°/11ft -> 100°/12ft.
  • Charged Brawl and Havoc Punch will build Static charges as long as you own Jacob's Ladder. Each Static charge will allow Jacob's Ladder to expand a Stage. For each expansion, you will spend 1 Static. If you expand up to the Maximum Stage, you will expend all Static charges. The power will gain a Blue ring indicating you have reached your Maximum Stage cap.
• Power Up (Build Up)
• • Build Up has been renamed Power Up
  • Added a scale 2.5 End Mod Str Boost that boosts your endurance drain
    • (Tanker/Brute/Scrapper/Stalker = 25%).

 

This suggestion would bring Electric Melee to a similar design functionality of Electric Blast, ties into the End Drain to boost single target damage. Modifies several powers to do additional end drain to help propagate the Shocked mechanic, and addresses reported issues with the size of Jacob's Ladder, allowing it to be a more useful ability.

 

As usual, I appreciate any feedback. Thanks and Happy New Years.

 

 

 

Edited January 3, 2022 by SeraphimKensai
Minor spelling/grammar

[Wetlands]

I really like this idea. My first toon when I started in i6 was an elec/kin corruptor and really like what they did with electric blast. I have an electric/electric brute that could really use this idea, I might even respec jacobs ladder back into the build if it could expand the cone like this as it's always tough to hit more than 1 target with it.

[A Cat]

Stalker electric melee probably doesn't need a buff (although I won't say no...) As it is probably one of the top stalker sets as is. Otherwise I'm down for a buff to the other electric melees. They definitely seem lackluster outside of lightning rod. I play electric melee a decent amount on a brute and tanker so I'm definitely personally enthusiastic for a buff. 

[SeraphimKensai]

56 minutes ago, A Cat said:

Stalker electric melee probably doesn't need a buff (although I won't say no...) As it is probably one of the top stalker sets as is. Otherwise I'm down for a buff to the other electric melees. They definitely seem lackluster outside of lightning rod. I play electric melee a decent amount on a brute and tanker so I'm definitely personally enthusiastic for a buff. 

I was wondering about Stalker's version of Elec Melee as it's unique compared to the other three sets in that because of assassin's Shock it can be built to do pretty reasonable single target damage, but still suffers from Jacob's Ladder issues.

 

Perhaps lowering the end drain scale for stalkers to 0.9 and changing the proposed base end drain of Assassin's Shock from 20% to 15% might be a reasonable compromise as it takes more effort then to drain an opponent before procing the Shocked mechanic and thus more effort to get the extra damage.

 

Does that sound reasonable or logical by any means? I'm kinda just spit balling ideas here to tie in Electric Melee to follow a reasonable path to the revamp that Elec Blast did.

Edited January 4, 2022 by SeraphimKensai

[Zeraphia]

Stalkers are an exception. However, I think not buffing a set because of one particular AT getting "too much" out of it is worse than just buffing the set as a whole to make it decent on others. Electric Melee I think is the least damaging single target set in the game besides possibly Spines (although I think Elec is still sadly at the bottom.) It could definitely use some revamping. I would also love to see it used more often than it currently is on other ATs besides Scrapper/Stalker EM/SD.

+1

[SeraphimKensai]

On 1/6/2022 at 9:28 AM, Zeraphia said:

I think not buffing a set because of one particular AT getting "too much" out of it is worse than just buffing the set as a whole to make it decent on others. 

I think you're exactly on point with this statement.

 

Otherwise I was thinking about this thread last night playing my Elec Melee Tanker and it got me thinking, what about Electric Control as well, so I played my Elec/Cold Troller in a few missions, then I thought about Electric Assault as well from Dominators, even Electric Armor. I think it would be logical to treat any electric set to utilize a shocked mechanic, and probably some degree or Static Charges so I'm going to give the rest of the Electric Powersets some more thought how they could be tied in to this within reason (I personally think Elec Armor is pretty strong overall, so I think it would be great to give it some flavor but without really proposing much to it).

 

 

[aethereal]

I feel like a revamp of Electrical Melee should spend some time on Thunder Strike.  It's a cornerstone power of the set, and one of two big reasons why the set is considered "good at AoE" (the other being Lightning Rod), but I think it's been kinda left behind.  It still has the 3.3 second animation time that Total Focus and other powers that share the "jump in the air, bring down two fists" animation have, despite Total Focus being reduced to 2.53 seconds.  Its single-target damage is fine (but not comparable to Total Focus), but its AoE damage is not great, especially for its animation time.  It has a nice 80% chance of KD, but that's really all it has going for it (especially for non-critting ATs (Total Focus benefits from now-obsolete limitations on crits, so its crit damage is all of its (good) ST damage applied to even the AoE recipients, so if you do crit, it's nice).

 

An animation time change would be great, but also I think that Electrical Melee could use some kind of relatively reliable AoE damage.  Lightning Rod is great, of course, but it's once-per-spawn if that.  Chain induction gives you a little bit of "bonus" AoE, but it's not a game changer.  But both Thunder Strike and Jacob's Ladder aren't great AoE, and I think the set could really use one of them being solidly good.  Maybe some kind of gimmick mechanic that let Thunder Strike do bonus AoE or wider AoE when certain conditions were met.

[SeraphimKensai]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

I feel like a revamp of Electrical Melee should spend some time on Thunder Strike.  It's a cornerstone power of the set, and one of two big reasons why the set is considered "good at AoE" (the other being Lightning Rod), but I think it's been kinda left behind.  It still has the 3.3 second animation time that Total Focus and other powers that share the "jump in the air, bring down two fists" animation have, despite Total Focus being reduced to 2.53 seconds.  Its single-target damage is fine (but not comparable to Total Focus), but its AoE damage is not great, especially for its animation time.  It has a nice 80% chance of KD, but that's really all it has going for it (especially for non-critting ATs (Total Focus benefits from now-obsolete limitations on crits, so its crit damage is all of its (good) ST damage applied to even the AoE recipients, so if you do crit, it's nice).

 

An animation time change would be great, but also I think that Electrical Melee could use some kind of relatively reliable AoE damage.  Lightning Rod is great, of course, but it's once-per-spawn if that.  Chain induction gives you a little bit of "bonus" AoE, but it's not a game changer.  But both Thunder Strike and Jacob's Ladder aren't great AoE, and I think the set could really use one of them being solidly good.  Maybe some kind of gimmick mechanic that let Thunder Strike do bonus AoE or wider AoE when certain conditions were met.

I could definitely get behind reducing the animation time of thunder strike myself. I had figured even with the the animation time it was still better than Jacob's Ladder so that's why I worked in the idea of using static charges to expand the size of the angle and depth of the cone so that it could more reliably hit more than 1-2 targets at a time.

[Lazarillo]

Given the general nerf to End drain due to Electric Blast getting Shock, it seems generally "right", yeah, that other Electric sets should get the same mechanic, if that's that path we're going.  I can generally get behind that.

 

Although really, the one yet-unspoken-of buff that Stalker Electric Melee really needs is to fix the animation on Assassin's Shock when unhidden.  Or at least give it an alternate if the current one is simply too janky to salvage.

[Solarverse]

Meh, My Elec/Elec Over Powered Stalker is power hungry...MOAR POWAH! He's my only Elec/Elec and he'll take all the power you want to give him. So why not.