Dark Melee SEEMS to be the most damaging, but...

[Story Archer]

...I don't think that's the general consensus. Looking at Mids, but admittedly not doing any sort of deep dive, I compared it to Dual Blades and Katana and it definitely seemed to be ahead of the curve. Am I missing something?

[Haijinx]

It's definitely the melee set with the most Dark Melee powers in it.

[Story Archer]

40 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

It's definitely the melee set with the most Dark Melee powers in it.

 

I don't get it.

[Triumphant]

I believe that was sarcasm, my frang.  Apart from that, no idea. 🤷‍♂️

[Story Archer]

6 minutes ago, Triumphant said:

I believe that was sarcasm, my frang.  Apart from that, no idea. 🤷‍♂️

 

Well, hopefully the other 4,600 or so posts made more sense...

[Caios]

You can definitely do a lot of damage with DM but it's not always straight forward as other sets which is why people often think of it as subpar. 

 

For example, Shadow Maul actually does huge damage, but it's spread over the whole animation, which takes a long time compared to some other attacks at that level, so it's not efficient to use on a single target. However it's really good when you hit multiple enemies with it, which is not always easy to do given the tight range compared to other aoes. Midnight Grasp hits like a truck, but a lot of its damage is also spread over a DoT so it affects the perception of it as well.

 

By contrast Shadow Punch and Smite do incredibly high damage relative to their animation times though as the lowest level abilities they are often overlooked in this regard. In the end they're pretty much comparable to other attacks of the same level in other sets. Personally I find them very useful for maximizing DPS, especially since you can fish for the crit proc from the ATO with them to follow up with Shadow Maul or Midnight Grasp for big damage.

I know many people have issue that the set's aoes are more like utilities; Dark Consumption for endurance and Soul Drain for damage/ToHit buff. Even though they do similar damage to other aoes of that level they're rarely used as such, particularly as they have long cooldowns, so the whole set feels like it's lacking in AoEs. But that said, the buff from Soul Drain is really nice since it lasts much longer then most "build up" abilities, and can be crazy good if you hit enough enemies with it. Plus with enough recharge you can keep the Soul Drain buff on all the time so long as you have enemies to fight.

 

Personally I'm a big fan of the set, I'm sure there are other sets that can dish out more damage on paper, but it's better then most people give it credit for, especially when matched with a defense secondary since the -tohit synergizes really well. 

[SomeGuy]

5 hours ago, Story Archer said:

...I don't think that's the general consensus. Looking at Mids, but admittedly not doing any sort of deep dive, I compared it to Dual Blades and Katana and it definitely seemed to be ahead of the curve. Am I missing something?

 

 

*reads thread title* It isn't. Not even close actually. And you aren't alone. I thought it should be a power house for DPS, but...it isn't. Even with fully saturated Soul Drain.

 

I frickin' LOVE Dark Melee, but the set definitely underperforms if you look at it numerically.

[Riverdusk]

Also depends on what you mean by most damaging.  Highest numbers?  Best DPA?  Single target? AoE?    

 

Regardless it may not be the best, I think it is more middle of road damage wise, but I think its utility makes up for it.  Its AoE is actually pretty good now too thanks to the touch of fear change. 

 

Also something that I definitely feel against quite a few foes when so many tend to be lethal or smashing resistant is its mostly negative damage type,   It also just has a nice punchy feel to it (at least to me as long as you take both shadow punch and smite even though the numbers probably say to skip shadow punch).

[kelika2]

mids is more like a guide on where to put slots and stuff

dont make a 5 hour youtube video on city of heroes tiers based on mids please

[SomeGuy]

21 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

 Its AoE is actually pretty good now too thanks to the touch of fear change.

 

 

Darn tootin'. Lot of people miss this part. Proc bomb ToF and have fun.

[bAss_ackwards]

It has some utility to it, the -ToHit, and namely the (up to) 20% heal you can get to happen every 3 seconds kind of balances the lack of damage. That's just how Dark sets are usually. Trade some of the main component for utility, and the melee variant here is no different.

Edited May 17 by bAss_ackwards

[Story Archer]

13 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

 

 

*reads thread title* It isn't. Not even close actually. And you aren't alone. I thought it should be a power house for DPS, but...it isn't. Even with fully saturated Soul Drain.

 

I frickin' LOVE Dark Melee, but the set definitely underperforms if you look at it numerically.

 

Okay, then Mids must be WAY off, because, comparing it to DB, for instance, the attack chains I'm putting together have almost double the dps... not sure why it's coming up that way. FWIW, I've got Feint triggered once and Soul Drain cued to 1 with basically the same enhancements in the relevant powers and the same Secondary power set selections (SR).

 

Edited May 17 by Story Archer

[Sovera]

Even with fully saturated Drain Soul it's middle of the pack. Which isn't bad since it's a middle of the pack that packs (heh) a heal AND an endurance recovery which is otherwise unheard of in any melee set (Radiation Melee has a heal but that's it).

 

So it's pretty useful and it can make smooth the edges of sets that are difficult, like Shield, by providing the heals and endurance they lack.

 

But it is a pre-incarnate set. Nowadays once at 50 the incarnates fix all heal and endurance problems so that utility-in-exchange-for-damage becomes simply a damage loss. Still brutally good for the ones who like exemplaring and soloing.

 

Especially solo. In teams we don't have the time to pull off a glacial Drain Soul before all minions are dead (same problem that any Kin has with FS). But it can be said if the team is bulldozing then does it matter if SD was saturated or not? If we bulldozin' we bulldozin'.

 

Which is why it shines more when solo. No one kills the minions before SD goes off, no buffers in the team means the healing and endurance are appreciated ,etc.

 

 

Obviously we can't have that kind of utility on top of top damage because then what's the point of playing anything other than the set that heals, has endurance recovery covered, AND does top damage?

[Doomguide2005]

Not mentioned near as I could see ... it's also Negative Energy damage.  Not as sure these days but I believe that is not a generally a heavily resisted damage type for most foes.

[Doomguide2005]

23 hours ago, Story Archer said:

 

Okay, then Mids must be WAY off, because, comparing it to DB, for instance, the attack chains I'm putting together have almost double the dps... not sure why it's coming up that way. FWIW, I've got Feint triggered once and Soul Drain cued to 1 with basically the same enhancements in the relevant powers and the same Secondary power set selections (SR).

 

Keep in mind you've only got 10 seconds of buff with Feint (and is that enough to get through your whole attack chain?).  Versus Soul Drain's 30 seconds of buff.  Don't believe Mids accounts for the duration of those buffs

[Sancerre]

On 5/16/2024 at 7:38 PM, Story Archer said:

 

I don't get it.

 

there is a stigma in this forum against spelling out the realities of powersets.  so let me go ahead and get the PR statement out of the way --  play how you want and if it is fun to you then nobody can tell you that you shouldn't be having fun.

 

Reality -- Dark Melee is functional but low tier for damage.  dark melee offers a ton of utility that other sets do not in the form of healing, endurance management, and hit chance reduction (inverted defense).  it is very crucially missing knockdowns (fuels the absolutely busted force feedback recharge proc), -defense (that can fuel resistance reduction procs), and reliable AoE damage (shadow maul is fun but is objectively bad, touch of fear is 'good' but lacking in comparison to other sets).  positive to note that smashing and negative energy damage are much better than lethal damage (that _MANY_ other powersets are stuck with), but that doesnt help the damage output enough.

[Haijinx]

It wasn't Stigma.  I just couldn't remember if it's the 3rd worst or the 4th worst, and at that point it wasn't worth looking it up.

 

It's better than Kin and Broadsword at least. 

[Erratic1]

12 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

It wasn't Stigma.  I just couldn't remember if it's the 3rd worst or the 4th worst, and at that point it wasn't worth looking it up.

 

It's better than Kin and Broadsword at least. 

 

7th apparently, at least according to Ston.

 

4 hours ago, Sancerre said:

Reality -- Dark Melee is functional but low tier for damage.  dark melee offers a ton of utility that other sets do not in the form of healing, endurance management, and hit chance reduction (inverted defense). 

 

Where it shines, at least relatively, is when those utilities would keep you up and going where substituting in some other set would not--mostly solo situations and nowadays a fairly rare thing. It is also mostly going to be confined to the pre-Incarnate/pre-IO realm.

[SomeGuy]

On 5/17/2024 at 10:48 AM, Story Archer said:

 

Okay, then Mids must be WAY off, because, comparing it to DB, for instance, the attack chains I'm putting together have almost double the dps... not sure why it's coming up that way. FWIW, I've got Feint triggered once and Soul Drain cued to 1 with basically the same enhancements in the relevant powers and the same Secondary power set selections (SR).

 

 

It isn't a long list for melee sets that are numerically better then DB when it has a proper rotation. It's first on my data collection, actually.

 

1 hour ago, Haijinx said:

It wasn't Stigma.  I just couldn't remember if it's the 3rd worst or the 4th worst, and at that point it wasn't worth looking it up.

 

It's better than Kin and Broadsword at least. 

 

Better then Broadsword number wise? No. DM is dead last in DPS with 1x stack Soul Drain. Even with a 10x stack of SD it doesn't beat BS.

 

@Sancerre is dead on, IMO. Play what's fun.

[Haijinx]

I believe Sancere was making a disclaimer there.

 

The actual badness of DM is less important to my point than the fact that it's not anywhere near the best. 

 

How bad it is depends on how it is measured.

[Sancerre]

dark melee is bad for damage but it is still scrapper damage.

 

to the OP -- mids can sometimes be weird when comparing skills with critical strikes active... it may apply to the powerset you are building and NOT the ones you are comparing against.  that may be what you were running into.

[BrandX]

19 hours ago, SomeGuy said:

 

It isn't a long list for melee sets that are numerically better then DB when it has a proper rotation. It's first on my data collection, actually.

 

 

Better then Broadsword number wise? No. DM is dead last in DPS with 1x stack Soul Drain. Even with a 10x stack of SD it doesn't beat BS.

 

@Sancerre is dead on, IMO. Play what's fun.

 

10 stacks barely beats Kinetic Melee and 1 stack lost to Kinetic Melee.

[BrandX]

11 hours ago, Sancerre said:

dark melee is bad for damage but it is still scrapper damage.

 

to the OP -- mids can sometimes be weird when comparing skills with critical strikes active... it may apply to the powerset you are building and NOT the ones you are comparing against.  that may be what you were running into.

 

This should be remembered.  Bad scrapper damage is still generally good damage 😛

[SomeGuy]

8 hours ago, BrandX said:

 

10 stacks barely beats Kinetic Melee and 1 stack lost to Kinetic Melee.

 

Yup. KM can be good numerically, but holy crap it takes work and a pretty strong understanding how to manipulate the set. You've got to squeeze the hell out of it to get enough juice for it be on par with lower performance sets.

 

It's still a fun set to me. Conc Strike is very satisfying to me when it lines up right. God, does it feel good. And I enjoy the sound of punching people with sport bikes. Look, the visual of sneaking up on a Longbow Spec Ops then winding up a very LOUD Conc Strike to one shot delete them is always hilarious. Mechanically I personally believe the set to be pretty fun and interesting, it just needs some # adjustments to it so it isn't OP but balanced. Like, it doesn't need the full BA treatment IMO (BA is a whole new set now to me). I'd like to see something similar to the Fire Melee passover done to it.

 

Reduce animation time on Conc Strike for starters. It's arcana-time is OVER 3s. That's wild (and not in a good way). Power Siphon takes some understanding, but I personally feel like it works in a good way. Maybe change max stacks to 4x instead but with same total of DMG boost? Or modify one, or two, of the attacks to give 2x stack (or 1.5?)? Just throwing things out there.

[Story Archer]

On 5/19/2024 at 9:08 PM, Sancerre said:

dark melee is bad for damage but it is still scrapper damage.

 

to the OP -- mids can sometimes be weird when comparing skills with critical strikes active... it may apply to the powerset you are building and NOT the ones you are comparing against.  that may be what you were running into.

 

That's got to be it - I'll play around with it some more, because right now it's coming out way ahead.

 

Is there a download or spreadsheet somewhere that lists the relative damage of all of the attack powers (or Scrappers at least?), dps, attack chains, something?

 

Edited May 21 by Story Archer