How terrible is Energy Melee?

[BlueOne]

Back in the day, I played an Invulnerable / Energy Melee Tank.  I really like it.  I liked that I could face off against the toughest enemy present, and usually Stun them so they weren't hurting me or anyone else.  I liked the AOE of Whirling Hands.  And I liked that it was a weaponless attack set.

 

People now talk about Energy Melee being terrible.  How much of that is fashion, and how much backed up by real numbers?  I gather Energy Transfer has been nerfed to now have a 2.7 second activation time, which does sound painful.  How much of the complaining about EM is that it USED to be so much better, rather than it's actual qualities now?

 

And, if it's not great, what attack powerset would you recommend with Invulnerablity?  For flavor reasons, I want one that doesn't use weapons.

 

Thanks!

[Call Me Awesome]

Back in the day, I played an Invulnerable / Energy Melee Tank.  I really like it.  I liked that I could face off against the toughest enemy present, and usually Stun them so they weren't hurting me or anyone else.  I liked the AOE of Whirling Hands.  And I liked that it was a weaponless attack set.

 

People now talk about Energy Melee being terrible.  How much of that is fashion, and how much backed up by real numbers?  I gather Energy Transfer has been nerfed to now have a 2.7 second activation time, which does sound painful.  How much of the complaining about EM is that it USED to be so much better, rather than it's actual qualities now?

 

And, if it's not great, what attack powerset would you recommend with Invulnerablity?  For flavor reasons, I want one that doesn't use weapons.

 

Thanks!

 

Energy Melee was nerfed on Live several years before shutdown by taking it's main power, Energy Transfer, which used to be a fast animation hard hitting attack and turning the 1 second animation into a 3 second one.  This had a massive effect on the damage potential of an, admittedly, not very effective set to begin with.  Now you hit ET, stare at your hands for 3 seconds while your teammates kill your target, then unload on the corpse.  When the changes went live I abandoned a level 50 tanker and never played her again.

 

The issue is that EM was a fairly lackluster set that was redeemed by one power, when that one power got nerfed it didn't have anything to really fall back on.  Terrible AOE, single target damage was it's only benefit.

 

If you want an unarmed set you could look at Street Justice, the set has decent stats and the animations are fun.  After all, who doesn't want to punch and kick the bad guy in the nuts?  Other options are Electric Melee, Martial Arts (although I haven't played it myself) and the ever popular Dark Melee (includes a self heal attack that's always useful).

 

Currently I'm leveling an Inv/Electric tanker as an experiment and at level 20 it's doing decently although it's still a ways to go to really come into it's own.  On Live my namesake was Inv/Stone Melee and the combination is highly capable although it will take a bit to really mature and it's lacking in AOE damage.  It has a lot of soft control with knockdowns and a short duration AOE stun that's a great attention getter that recharges decently quickly and knocks them on their butts.

[perrond]

Energy is good in PvP

[Rylas]

Now you hit ET, stare at your hands for 3 seconds while your teammates kill your target, then unload on the corpse while still taking damage.

 

Made a slight correction to your overall very accurate post.

[Heraclea]

And, of course, while you sit and watch the animations play, your insps tray and your other click powers are likewise out of reach.

 

If you want to mess with it, use it with set and forget armors like Willpower or Reflexes.  Do not try to use it with armors that depend on click powers for survival like Bio or Fire.  I had a level 50 Fire/EM tanker, made pre-nerf; the combination was chosen in the days before power customization, just because I liked the look of them together.  After the nerf the character became unplayable.  I eventually stripped her of valuable enhancements and exiled her to a seldom visited server. 

 

For Invulnerability, if you don't want weapons I would go with Street Justice, Dark Melee, or Kinetic Melee.  SJ is quite attractive for a punching set.  Dark and Kinetic play to your strengths; Dark improves the effectiveness of your defense, Kinetic your resistance. 

[marcussmythe]

Kinetic - try it out.  Youll love the animations or hate them.  Mathmatically the set is kinda middle of the road.  Suffers from a 1 week animation time on its best attack, witb all the attendant problems.  Poor AOE.

 

StJ - Very good damage, Single target with some AOE, very pretty animations.  If you want your hands to glow, get an aura for it.

 

Dark - Very high utility - the heal is attractive espc. for an invuln.  Weak AOE.