Why is Kinetic Melee still bad?

[Hover]

Hi! It seems to be a long-standing, well known fact that THE coolest melee powerset, Kinetic Melee, is underpowered. With such a wonderful and active balancing team on HC, I'm curious as to why KM has been left underpowered for so long. Anyone have any insights/opinions? What changes would you like to see?

 

 

 

(P.S.I haven't played my KM scrapper in about a year, so perhaps I missed a balance update that addressed this-- if so, HURRAY!)

 

 

[Ruin Mage]

because development from volunteers is based on personal interest, time available, and (guessing here) making sure the idea works in execution.

[Scarlet Shocker]

I fundamentally disagree with your question, therefore I have no response you would accept.

[biostem]

1 hour ago, Hover said:

It seems to be a long-standing, well known fact that THE coolest melee powerset, Kinetic Melee, is underpowered.

When you say "well known fact", could you elaborate upon what you mean?  I believe others have checked and the animation times are roughly on par with other sets, and they just feel longer...

[Snarky]

Someone should try to clean it up.  But...

[Hover]

7 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I fundamentally disagree with your question, therefore I have no response you would accept.

Oh, ok! Maybe it is in a better place than I thought!

[Hover]

7 hours ago, biostem said:

When you say "well known fact", could you elaborate upon what you mean?  I believe others have checked and the animation times are roughly on par with other sets, and they just feel longer...

Sure! I meant that every reddit/forum post I've found discussing Kinetic Melee as a choice for tankers/scrappers/brutes said that it is not very good DPA, and is only good on stalkers. Personally, when I played KM scrapper up to the 40s or so, I found it performed quite a bit worse than my claws scrapper, who had less IO support. I think it was the PBAoE attack on KM not properly benefitting from the scrapper critical strikes passive, or something.

[Sunsette]

KM is still generally agreed by a lot of the builders I see to be on the weaker side, though Stalkers have a stronger version of it. There's a fairly popular recent thread giving detailed suggestions for an overhaul in the suggestions forum. 

 

However there are a lot of weaker outlier powersets and only so much time and resources. Most of the underperformers have yet to be touched at all.

[Faelia]

It's not a ranged powerset of course /s

[Scarlet Shocker]

4 hours ago, Hover said:

Oh, ok! Maybe it is in a better place than I thought!

 

I don't have huge experience of melee but I built a /KM tank and that was delightful to play.

 

I think there's a small, but vocal clique in game and on the forums, that demand moar power from everything and they will rarely be satisfied until you can punch the lights out of Emperor Cole with six slotted brawl. To that small cadre, the fun and quality of the AT, power sets and combinations thereof is if no importance.

 

Combine that with the fact that in any collection of sets only a couple can be outliers, so only one or two out of all the available options, can be great (or perceived to be bad) then you have plenty of space for powers that perform well, without being necessarily outstanding.

 

The real question is, how enjoyable is it to play? If you're enjoying it, then it's perfectly acceptable. If not, what would increase your enjoyment? I doubt that "better performance" is the answer because that simply shifts the power play elsewhere

[Sunsette]

3 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I think there's a small, but vocal clique in game and on the forums, that demand moar power from everything and they will rarely be satisfied until you can punch the lights out of Emperor Cole with six slotted brawl. To that small cadre, the fun and quality of the AT, power sets and combinations thereof is if no importance.

 

This is a pretty dismissive and uncharitable take. 

 

Most of the people I know who are extremely good at building in this game -- and I don't include myself, I'm pretty reasonable in some particular areas but I'm no master -- have their mechanical appraisals entirely separate from what they actually enjoy playing. I have been privy to discussions a few times about how rarely any builders actually play fire blasters, for example. It is widely agreed to be the best blaster for most things due to the sheer damage differential. It's also agreed to be boring to many of those same people. 

 

You don't see many complaints about Dual Pistols either despite it being one of the worst performing blast sets by the numbers. A lot of acknowledgements that it is weaker, sure, but it is mechanically and immersively a lot of fun to many people -- most blaster builders I know have at least one that they enjoy playing -- and it still does enough of what it needs to do to feel good to play. "Feel good to play" can have a lot of variables for a lot of reasons! 
 

Balancing is very hard for so many options and up to this point, most of the game's content is sufficiently easy that it doesn't deeply impinge upon its quality for attempts at fixes to be higher priority than they are. On that much, we can agree. But we don't need to impugn anyone for being dissatisfied with a particular set's performance. Lumping everyone who is dissatisfied with the performance of a set as powermongers simply isn't reflective of reality. You might not care about it, and that's great for you, but that's only one style of play.

 

I don't have a particular opinion on kinetic melee; it's not a set I've ever played, I don't know how it "feels" to me -- but I'm sympathetic to the general concept. I've been in the position of dearly loving everything about a set except its performance and being bitterly disappointed a few times. Sometimes the devs agree, sometimes they don't seem to.

Edited March 21 by Sunsette

[nihilii]

I think there's a small, but vocal clique on the forums who loves virtuesignaling they don't care about power in power threads.

This strikes me as quite similar to bikini armor in RPG settings, in more ways than one. Sure, you can fanwank some explanation about magic protecting you or new players needing to be told powersets aren't *literally* unplayable. But we all know the real motive for these actions comes down to another kind of wanking.
 

OP, I recommend going to the Scrapper subforum for better discussions on this topic.

 

For a quick answer: KM has structural problems tied to its original design that were compounded with game changes over the years.

It's not so much it's broken in a big way, it's just that it falls off in many ways, relatively.

 

i.e.:

- Concentrated Strike now has the longest animation of all comparable attacks. It used to be it was one of the most powerful Scrapper attacks too, but many powerful Tanker sets were proliferated since

- Power Siphon was great back in the day, but Musculature Alpha + Assault Hybrid + damage bonuses + Gaussian BU have taken a lot of wind out of builds that rely on constant +damage buffing

- likewise, the existence of epic snipes also hurt KM relatively, in two different ways. First it forces a tradeoff between using a snipe and maintaining max PS buffs, a choice other Scrappers don't have to make. Second it lessens the value of your native ranged attack in Focused Burst

- Burst was a very slow animation and poor AoE to start with, and as a couple of other laggard sets got buffs, KM is now firmly last spot for AOE power

- no real "tier3" attack option without proc abuse, Focused Burst animates a smidge too slow

So that's the situation.

As for the buffs I'd like to see, they follow from my above list:

- shave off half a second in CS, bring it in line with the buffs to Total Focus-tier powers

- shave off half a second in Focused Burst. Turn it into a legitimate T3

- shave off a full second in Burst. Increase radius from 8ft to 10ft

- shave off more than a full second in Power Siphon, from 2.1s to 1s. This would make it more flexible to use

- increase Power Siphon stack duration from 10s to 15s. Same top performance, less constraint on sticking to the same attacks

To be honest, I don't think these buffs would be near enough for Brutes who have it even worse due to their own AT nature (low base damage, high self damage buffing = gets even less out of KM +dam). But for Scrappers this could be a solid step forward.

Incidentally, KM is indeed the verified factually coolest powerset, and I know that for me personally "better performance" in the fashion I described above would increase my enjoyment to the point I might main KM again.

[Luminara]

15 hours ago, Hover said:

Anyone have any insights/opinions?

 

The first half of the general dislike of KM is Power Siphon.  The +Damage has to be built up with attacks, and the attacks have to hit.  If you miss, no +Damage.  There's no benefit if you use your highest damage attack(s) immediately (if you use Concentrated Strike right away after popping Power Siphon, it hits for exactly the same damage it would have dealt if you hadn't used Power Siphon first).  Stacking +Damage buffs works well as a Follow Up power because it can be used frequently to rack up a large buff and maintain it, but Power Siphon's base 120s recharge time and the necessity of using all of the lowest damage, shortest animation time attacks makes it feel restrictive.

 

Which leads to the second part: critting with Concentrated Strike doesn't deal crit damage, it recharges Power Siphon instantly.  You invest time into charging up, and there's no big whammy, just a 20% chance to keep the +Damage buffs rolling.  Since players are using the lowest damage attacks to rack up the +Damage, an overall lower performance feeling has developed.  A fully empowered Crushing Uppercut (Street Justice) can deal over 1300 damage when it crits (combo level 3, and the player can do that just by activating Combat Readiness.  In contrast, Concentrated Strike requires at least 6.2s to fully empower and only deals ~850 damage.

 

 

KM isn't bad.  Giving KM a stacking +Damage buff wasn't a new or unique design, other sets have stacking +Damage buffs (Claws and Dual Blades) and they're quite well liked.  Power Siphon is bad.  The only problem with KM is that Power Siphon gates the set's potential behind a 120s recharge time and steals Concentrated Strike's crit potential as a balance measure.  If Power Siphon granted 3 stacks when it was activated, or didn't replace the T9's crit, it would be up to par for most players, as evidenced by the common remark that the stalker version is better.

 

I like my KM/Willpower scrapper, but I don't like Power Siphon.

 

[Sunsette]

I'll say that I think a lot of the strays that optimizers catch here, while unfair, are mostly rooted in unpleasant experiences with specific individuals, especially in other games, and "rat race" communities. I've had my fair share of those negative experiences too.

 

In general, we're all best served, I think, by respecting that everyone has different things they take from the game and that while all these things are valid, balancing their service is quite difficult! 🙂

 

It's okay to not care about performance, and it's okay for performance to be a dimension that matters to you, and it's even okay for performance to be the only metric you care about -- though this game is a solved equation in that regards and I don't think it's very interesting to most such people. 

Edited March 21 by Sunsette

[Hardboiled Hero]

This sounds to me much like I consider the Sentinel AT.  They're cool and I enjoy playing them.. they aren't "balanced" but honestly, who cares about balance until we're facing off against each other, and PvP doesn't seem so popular right now that balancing should be a huge worry.

 

  As the game stands, I think the bigger issue is just trying to get more concepts available.  The lack of "natural" origin control powers is one glaring problem in this regard, although Arsenal control and Symphony control do a little to help mitigate that now.

 

  I think the people who like KM will play it, even if it isn't powerful, so the bigger goal needs to be finding things to draw people to the game and various AT's in the first place.

[MrAxe]

They have tons to do with limited time and resources.

[Marshal_General]

Maybe KM should be built with a mechanic of conclusive force where repeated hits increase it's damage by adding a +damage stack up to a cap. A miss would remove a stack. They would get aim instead of build up.

 

Of course the problem would be at the end game where everyone has so much acc and to hit, that they rarely miss.

[Luminara]

8 minutes ago, Marshal_General said:

everyone has so much acc and to hit, that they rarely miss.

[Greycat]

Main reason I have so few has nothing to do with numbers but instead all the handwaving swirly silliness Nascar Melee has. Gets to be kind of like Dual Pistols... "Just hit/shoot him already!"

[Ukase]

I made a kinetic melee character back on live. I wasn't impressed - but back then, as ignorant and obtuse as I can be about things now, I'm light years ahead as far as knowledge of game mechanics go. 

If it is true that KM has about the same activation times as other sets, then I should revisit it. Lord knows I've made a ton of everything else. 

 

[Hardboiled Hero]

7 minutes ago, Greycat said:

Main reason I have so few has nothing to do with numbers but instead all the handwaving swirly silliness Nascar Melee has. Gets to be kind of like Dual Pistols... "Just hit/shoot him already!"

  But how else are we supposed to RP the power-rangers?

[Marshal_General]

1 hour ago, Luminara said:

Never go up against the random number generator when death is on the line!

[Nemu]

Kinetic melee is probably the best set to build a ranged scrapper. That alone makes it pretty not bad in my book.

[Frozen Burn]

KM/SR scrapper was one of my last toons I made on live and I loved the character so much, it was the first scrapper I made when HC brough the game back to us.  Yes, the build looks great in Mids, the activation times seem on par with other sets... but yet compared to all my other scrappers, the DPS is slow and it takes forever to kill anything.  

 

Concentrated Strike (T9) is still one of the longest animations of all T9s.  It is tied for 2nd place in long animations with Skysplitter from Staff (2.83s) with THE longest being 1000 Cuts from Dual Blades (3.3s).  However...  Skysplitter does 2 hits of damage:  one in the middle and one at the end, and 1000 Cuts does a lot of DOT over the course of the animation - so the long animations don't feel long or as bad since you're at least affecting the foes.  Concentrated Strike from KM doesn't do any damage until the full animation is done... THIS is why it seems so slow.  

 

Burst from KM is very similar.  While it is on par with other PBAOE attacks at 2.67s activation... you don't get the damage until the very end whereas most other PBAOES from other sets do their damage part way through the animation.  Again, waiting to the very end to get your damage, is what makes it seem so slow.  And unfortunately, this is just the way it is with KM because you build up that energy and then release it at the end.  So, I see no way to resolve this other than bumping up the animations times, which I think no one will do.  However, there are other sets with faster PBAOEs, so it's not like it is unprecedented or a game-breaking ask to help the set play better.  

 

My other problem with Burst is its radius.  It's supposedly 8ft, but for some reason, it rarely hits anyone around me when I know Lotus Drops, Whirling Hands, Whirling Mace, or etc would have hit all those foes.  I honestly think it's a bug, because foes will be on top of me and they just don't get hit - no "miss" notification letting me know they were affected but rolled a better number than me - it's as if they were out of range, but yet, they are on top of me.  I am sure on a tank, there isn't this issue.  But on a scrapper, i feel it bad.  

 

And lastly, I also have issue with Power Siphon - it seems to do nothing or very little.  I never see any stacks like it's supposed to do.  

 

If I need to burn down a tough foe quickly with KM, I have to use my T1-T3 powers as they have the fastest DPS for the set.  With other scrappers, I can work in a T9 or other upper tier powers that hit harder and yet still maintain good DPS.  But with KM... nope.  

 

I know this seems like all negativity, but I do love the set and my scrapper is fun to play for those lazy times I just want to relax while fighting and I'm not in a hurry doing any speed run or difficult content.  For faster and tougher content - I will choose a melee toon with any other melee attack set other than KM.  ....and that's not right.

 

[Snarky]

Kinetic Melee, in all seriousness, is not horrid.  
 

To illustrate my main complaint about KM I will turn to my latest project, a Fire Fire Blaster.  This particular Blaster needs all of its damage NOW.  No wait, everything up front.  So when I hot to Hybrid Incarnate power i chose one if the +damage powers.  Of those you get a choice of having a strange “each time you hit you increase damage” or… “when you hit the attack strikes again for significant portion of its damage as energy damage”.  No brainer.  I need damage NOW. 
 

Kinetic Melee is one of the only sets in the game to use this odd build up power.  I am sure the HC Devs are loath to change it.  There are 3 players that would be emotionally crippled.  All the rest of us look at it and are like @are you kidding?” A cascading buildup?  I have no idea which does more damage in the end, but I know most of us want damage “now” when we buildup.