Why is Kinetic Melee still bad?

[KingCeddd03]

12 minutes ago, Ruin Mage said:

And you are wrong, but its okay to be wrong.

It is about them because it's about what they want to do when they have the time. They can try to take our ideas/suggestions and try to implement them. It happened with PVP stuff over the years. It's happened with the RP community here and there. But they aren't going to do everything we suggest. It isn't our server to dictate things and it never has been. If you want a server like that? You can certainly try looking elsewhere. But no one that is developing content of any form is beholden to the community - this much is true across any rogue/private server since the inception of them.

I'm pretty sure that no one asked for Seismic Blast, Symphony Control, Hard Modes, Electrical Affinity, Energy Melee Revamp, or plenty of other keystone changes. Now, they HAVE done some highly requested things at times. Such as the Sybil robes for females. They've also taken community members costume patterns before if I remember right. These things can happen, but they are by no means any under obligation to forgo their interests just because the server exists. This does not change just because donations are a thing. Donation is not a buy-in as I said before. Running the server/making content for the server does not come at the cost of their interests. Believing otherwise is a delusion plain and simple.

Want to have a say in development? Go apply to be developer.

Being a developer is not my thing, but I will continue to voice my opinion.

[Luminara]

26 minutes ago, KingCeddd03 said:

If you're trying to continue a well-beloved game, there should be only the interest of the player base if you disregard what the PLAYERS including you are saying or asking for

The HC team can't cater to everyone's specific wants and interests, nor should they.  If they did, this game wouldn't be anything like what we're playing now, it'd be an unbalanced mess or so thoroughly homogenized that the only differences between any sets would be the colors players selected.  They have to look at the big picture, do what's best for the game, for game balance, for the most players at any given time.

 

46 minutes ago, KingCeddd03 said:

that means you never cared in the first place

 

If they didn't care, they never would've started these servers, invited people to play on them, dedicated their free time to fixing bugs/creating new things/evening out the performance gaps between sets, spent five years pursuing a licensing agreement with NC, etc.  If they didn't care, they would've thrown the gates open to suggestions and turned this game into a parody of what it was in the old days.  If they didn't care, they wouldn't be here for you to insult and whine about.

 

1 hour ago, KingCeddd03 said:

this is a way to get money and fame

 

If they wanted either, they wouldn't be here.

 

1 hour ago, KingCeddd03 said:

donations is a form of payment. 

 

Not a single one of them has made one penny off of the players.  You can check that for yourself, there's a forum for Finances & Donations and they're 100% up front about how the donations are spent.  The money donated keeps the game online, and it's exactly that, donated.  They've never asked for nor accepted money for the work or time they've invested in the game.  Payments are compensation for goods or services rendered.  Donations are charitable contributions without goods or services required as compensation.

[Sovera]

11 hours ago, KingCeddd03 said:

If you're trying to continue a well-beloved game, there should be only the interest of the player base if you disregard what the PLAYERS including you are saying or asking for that means you never cared in the first place and this is a way to get money and fame @Luminara and excepting donations is a form of payment. 

 

Without making a big fuss (you have some good points in there) but as we don't pay them we are not customers, we are guests in their house. We can come in, we can appreciate their decoration and furniture, we can appreciate their garden and choice in flowers and trees. But it's their house and their garden and we are guests admiring it.

 

Paying game or what we have here we can/should still make suggestions because sometimes things that the devs are not aware of are discovered in such.

Edited March 24 by Sovera

[Haijinx]

Can I have that Terminix guy's stuff?

[Seed22]

On 3/24/2024 at 5:59 AM, Sovera said:

 

Without making a big fuss (you have some good points in there) but as we don't pay them we are not customers, we are guests in their house. We can come in, we can appreciate their decoration and furniture, we can appreciate their garden and choice in flowers and trees. But it's their house and their garden and we are guests admiring it.

 

Paying game or what we have here we can/should still make suggestions because sometimes things that the devs are not aware of are discovered in such.

Thats very true.

 

To me, when it comes to the devs, the only thing I care about is that sets feel fun and aren’t anemic in numbers. A lot of sets thusly have felt mediocre(new sets) but existing ones have been revamped to feel fun! I provide my feedback as currently im unemployed and have time to do so. I soon won’t be, and thusly will probably scale back significantly my feedback. 
 

I used to wig out about the devs not really addressing what I felt was good feedback from others or me at times, but now I kind of don’t care for this reason you listed. If i feel its a trainwreck, it’s their train wreck to deal with. I’ll just pop some popcorn and watch the fireworks. 
 

It’s their train wreck, or house or garden or whatever. Give feedback but just enjoy the show. Either it’ll flourish or crash and burn and you’ll get a few good laughs either way

[Erratic1]

Running DFB and Posi 1 on my newly created WP/KM Tanker last night and already it sucks to repeatedly have the third attack's wind up be so long that foes with 40% health when I initiated the attack are dead before the attack lands. Radiation Melee has a slow pace but at least its attacks land like a hammer dropped from space. By comparison, with KM it's a long wait for love tap.

 

At level 19 now. Will see how I feel once I get him to his 30s.

[ZemX]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

Running DFB and Posi 1 on my newly created WP/KM Tanker last night and already it sucks to repeatedly have the third attack's wind up be so long that foes with 40% health when I initiated the attack are dead before the attack lands. Radiation Melee has a slow pace but at least its attacks land like a hammer dropped from space. By comparison, with KM it's a long wait for love tap.

 

At first I was confused by this because Rad's T2 and KM's T3 are almost identical in cast, recharge, and damage dealt.  Then I noticed this total weirdness about Smashing Blow:

 

The "Animation Time Before Effect" is actually slightly LONGER than the animation time of the power.  Not longer than the ArcanaTime, that is, but ArcanaTime just governs when the next attack can begin.  The actual animation you SEE ends after 1.2 seconds.  Then the attack effects are applied which is when the target actually takes the damage.

 

I looked around at a few different sets looking for a power that did the same sort of thing and didn't find any.  They might exist, but this seems particularly weird.  Several other KM attacks have similarly late effect landing times compared to the animation window but none actually land AFTER the animation like this one.

[Marshal_General]

15 hours ago, ZemX said:

 

At first I was confused by this because Rad's T2 and KM's T3 are almost identical in cast, recharge, and damage dealt.  Then I noticed this total weirdness about Smashing Blow:

 

The "Animation Time Before Effect" is actually slightly LONGER than the animation time of the power.  Not longer than the ArcanaTime, that is, but ArcanaTime just governs when the next attack can begin.  The actual animation you SEE ends after 1.2 seconds.  Then the attack effects are applied which is when the target actually takes the damage.

 

I looked around at a few different sets looking for a power that did the same sort of thing and didn't find any.  They might exist, but this seems particularly weird.  Several other KM attacks have similarly late effect landing times compared to the animation window but none actually land AFTER the animation like this one.

I think the late effect is so that everyone watching you play jazz hands can wake up to notice if you actually hit and did damage.

[Erratic1]

Have not had a lot of time to play, so character is only at 27. Playing solo is mostly fine, but there is a bit of humor from pre-activating an attack then using [F] to run up to a target so in theory you arrive and make the attack--he runs up, starts waving his hands about, and not infrequently gets hit before he deals damage. To be fair, I could beat mobs to the (literal) punch by using either of the T1 or T2 attacks, but I love the thought of the bad guys confronted with a hero taking so long to make an attack they just pull out their weapons and whack the hero.

 

In groups I am more focused on AoE attacks to try to keep foes focused on me (need to slot a KB->KD converter in Repelling Torrent), so slow solo attacks are less of a concern.

[UltraAlt]

On 3/20/2024 at 3:39 PM, Hover said:

Anyone have any insights/opinions?

 

I can't say that I find it especially fun when I have played it on Homecoming, but I don't have a scrapper.

 

I have a stalker and a brute with kinetic meleel.

 

I'm not a super fan of stalkers. They seem to be more for solo play to me, so it's hard for me to gauge. I only have 10 of them, and that's my 2nd fewest number of the normal ATs.

 

And, well that brings up to Brutes, I only have 2 of them so that is the fewest of any AT characters that I have. (I wouldn't have thought it, but my highest is a tie between blasters and masterminds as 22 each) ...pssst ... put the spreadsheet away ... where was I? So one of those 2 Brutes is a kinetic/radiation melee (the other is savage/electric), so I don't have a lot of experience on brutes. However, I happened to be playing one last night ... completely randomly. Someone else actually randomly picked for me not even knowing the archetype. ... yeah ... back to the ... so I didn't notice any the particularly bad bout the set. It was low level team in the Hollows. It was hit and run tactics. I didn't notice anything especially good or bad about it.

 

I think I really need to make a scrapper to make a good call on it as I really don't play stalkers or brutes very often.

I guess I need to figure out a character conception for a kinetic scrapper.

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

I think I really need to make a scrapper to make a good call on it as I really don't play stalkers or brutes very often.

I guess I need to figure out a character conception for a kinetic scrapper.

My first go at KM was a KM/Shield scraper back on live. I kept hoping things would improve all the way to level 50.

 

It's why I have only attempted KM twice since (a Brute on Homecoming stuck on his low 40s and my current Tanker).

[LegionAlpha]

On 3/20/2024 at 1:53 PM, Snarky said:

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

And here I was going to ask if really dark, dark military style humor would be allowed on these forums and then someone answers it for me.  

Thank you.

[KITANYA]

On 3/24/2024 at 1:17 AM, KingCeddd03 said:

Being a developer is not my thing, but I will continue to voice my opinion.

 

Yes! 🙂

[Erratic1]

Just noticed that Brutes and Tankers get higher damage debuff from the various powers of the set than do Scrapper.

 

Pretty minor advantage, but I guess better than nothing.

[Ukase]

I commented earlier about revisiting the kinetic melee. 
I made a Kin melee/dark armor stalker. Partially because I had just come off of making a dark armor brute, and wanted to see how it compared. For me, the stalker was better, well...a lot better with single target damage, at least as far as dishing it out. And, as you might imagine, not so good at taking it. 

The problem as I see it is it would only appeal to folks who enjoy the wind-up before the pitch. The pitch is fine, but the wind-up is just not suited for some players. 

The following is just my opinion, and certainly not to be confused with a statement of fact. 

As I understand it, the folks that work on the game, the devs, are all volunteer, as we are all likely aware. As such, as we've seen mentioned in numerous places, it stands to reason a volunteer is going to spend time working on things they're interested in. So, it also stands to reason they are just not interested in working on kin melee. At least, not at this time. 

It's an interesting set, and in the early levels, it really wasn't bad. 
I put the Chance to Hide ATO in AS, and the very interesting Build-up recharge chance ATO in my next biggest attack. 
I'm not sure that was the smartest way to play it, but it seemed right to me. As I leveled, it became clear that despite having access to the pricier enhancements, it just didn't pop as far as kill speed goes. Some of that could be due to me and my slightly better than mediocre skills in playing any character. Still, when I look at Foot Stomp, and then look at the KM AoE, I find the KM AoE lacking. Some of that could be due to just the powerful look of foot stomp, not sure. But my perception was this power isn't doing as much damage as I would expect from Foot Stomp. And, given that SS has rage and KM doesn't, that's fair. So, perhaps KM could use some help in the same fashion. Not really sure, just thought I'd share that while it's playable, it's not that efficient, even at single target damage compared to other sets like Broad Sword or Mace. But, that's just my opinion. 

[Erratic1]

Dawns on me another strike against Power Siphon--it has to build its damage increase over time but only gets a 7.5% To-Hit bonus, unlike Build Up's 20%. So unless you have something else boosting your To-Hit, against higher level opponents you're likely to whiff, whiff, whiff and get little out of the power, which already was waiting to deliver big damage.

 

 

[Sovera]

Players are not dependant on Build-up to hit enemies barring when seriously debuffed or the enemy is under a T9. The To-Hit portion of BU/Power Siphon is just fluff outside of those situations.

 

 

BUT, they are important situations. I can say my resist based characters makes heavy use of BU to go through certain BS like Vampyr debuffs or CoT bubbles+debuffs. It's just that both are rather niche.

[Erratic1]

47 minutes ago, Sovera said:

Players are not dependant on Build-up to hit enemies barring when seriously debuffed or the enemy is under a T9. The To-Hit portion of BU/Power Siphon is just fluff outside of those situations.

 

I was fighting Tsoo and against Mr Cyclone was whiff, whiff whiffing. Someone using Build Up might just have gone ahead, popped it, used a big attack and been done with the matter.

 

Is there any upside whatsoever in building up a damage bonus over time? Particularly on ATs with no reset mechanism?

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

 

I was fighting Tsoo and against Mr Cyclone was whiff, whiff whiffing. Someone using Build Up might just have gone ahead, popped it, used a big attack and been done with the matter.

 

Is there any upside whatsoever in building up a damage bonus over time? Particularly on ATs with no reset mechanism?

 

That's me on Claws. Claws is great 90% of the time. And then the times a burst is needed, be it damage or ToHit, and I'm longing for BU.