Kinetic Melee

[battlewraith]

57 minutes ago, lemming said:

It's why I rarely answer Ultima's posts because it's little point.

 

 

Human beings are social animals. Some people are just looking to have a conversation. 

The consensus seems to be that KM sucks, so this seems like a good topic to have a chat about and not encounter hostility.

But alas, twas not to be. 

[kelika2]

just go stalker

scrap/tank/brute was not meant to be.  the "siphon" effect is not suitable for city of heroes, the game is too fast

the stacks dont last long

the stacks are not a 100% chance

the stacks dont build from aoes

and their base damages are balanced around perfect RNG on siphon stacking

 

just go stalker.  i think i told you this before but just go stalker

[Jacke]

On 8/7/2025 at 5:10 PM, Psyonico said:

Concentrated Strike is hot poo.  Either the animation time needs to be lowered or its base damage needs to be raised.

 

Well, damn.  It's worse than Eagles Claw which I skip on all ATs.  Even having a flat 20% chance to recharge Power Siphon is likely not enough.

 

I find the early Powers work well with Power Siphon if all 3 of the T1, T2, and T3 are taken.  Then Power Siphon is great, fire it, pump up the +Damage Buff with those low Tier Powers, then use the...damn, Concentrated Strike.

 

Wow.  Drop it off my Kinetic Melee/Ninjitsu and add on Cross Punch--which has a better ST DPA and is a 50° melee cone.

 

I was taking another look at this topic as I was doing a new build and wanted to make sure I'd not missed anything.  Good thing too.

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

I love KM

 

I know it's imperfect and clunky and there are big problems with it - it is slow but I love the look and feel of it.

 

I rarely ever play melee and KM is the only tank I've ever felt worth keeping. Not only do I keep it but I play it often. So is it really that  bad? It might suck in comparison to other melee sets but if it's fun to play is it really dreadful?

 

Performance is not everything.

[Yomo Kimyata]

On 8/7/2025 at 6:14 PM, Luminara said:

"What if Kinetic Melee did what Kinetic Melee does?"

 

And people why I'm bitey.

 

I had assumed it had something to do with the rabies.

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm going to try to address the issue again, foolish me!

 

Kinetic Melee has three basic things that categorize it as a distinct set, to me.  

 

1.  Many/most of its attacks provide damage mitigation in terms of -damage for a short period of time.  I believe that when the set was designed, there was a conscious effort to reduce damage inflicted when compared to similar sets that do not also provide damage mitigation.  Fair enough, makes sense to me.

 

2.  Many/most of its attacks are back loaded.  This isn't just that they are long animations (like Radiation Melee, Kinetic Melee has some slow attacks and some fast attacks) but that the animation time before effect tends to be close to total animation time.  As a result, you queue up a three second attack, and two and a half seconds later your attack takes effect.  Some of this is psychological (people seem to really want to have effects after half a second rather than after two and a half seconds, even if they are rooted for three seconds regardless) and some of this is having your target defeated between the time you activated the attack but before it takes effect.  This was an interesting style choice that I find truly annoying.

 

3.  Concentrate has different mechanics than Build Up, and I'll leave that to you to figure out if that's better or worse than Build Up.  (Stalker/Scrapper only) Getting a critical strike on Concentrated Strike doesn't do extra damage, but instantly recharges Concentrate.  This only works on Scrappers and Stalkers because Brutes and Tankers don't get critical hits.  Annoyingly, the scrapper ATO procs have no effect on the critical rates of Concentrated Strike, which is a crying shame since otherwise you could make an interesting critical monster.

 

Most of the complaints are about point 1, which is that the set doesn't do enough damage in comparison to others, but I suspect that a lot of people who have really played the set are pretty bummed out by the second point as well.

[Luminara]

3 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

I had assumed it had something to do with the rabies.

 

[UltraAlt]

On 8/7/2025 at 5:16 PM, Ultimo said:

My thinking was that kinetic melee is based around kinetic energy.  What if the power set gained a stacking buff to kinetic energy with each usage of the powers, possibly while stealing that energy from enemies that get hit?  This could take several forms.

1. Damage could be increased/reduced, as the energy of the blows would be reduced.

2. Recharge rate could be increased/reduced, as increased energy would allow for more speed.

3. Endurance cost could be reduced/increased, as the energy to use the powers is provided by the movements of DOING them.

 

Any of these, or some combination, might make the set a little more effective.

 

Thematically, what I think tht kinetic melee is supposed to mimic on the Wuxia level is to absorb incoming energy and redirect it back toward the attacker. Take The Dragon Subduing Palm (降龍十八掌) for an example. In that framework, maybe shifting https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Power_Siphon (which tries to work the melee in line with the defender primary set) to an auto power that increases damage with minor + to hit that gains levels as the character take damage by enemy attacks (damage-in equates to the bonus versus the percentage of deletion of the hit point bar so that the damage increases over levels as characters are able to take more HP of damage.) This would build stack charges that would be released with the +damage and + to hit with certain powers used; I'm assuming https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Smashing_Blow, https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Repulsing_Torrent, https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Repulsing_Torrent, https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Burst, https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Focused_Burst, and https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Kinetic_Melee#Concentrated_Strike. 

So those in battle with multiple foes, would be constantly getting levels of the power and depleting them frequently throughout combat.

Once the character is no longer in combat or the leveled of siphoned power would time-out over time (I would say in a matter of seconds)

Of course, being a knockback-fan, I would also like the siphon power have an increased knockback effect, so I'm adding it last as I think many would be against it ... though it fits well with the Wuxia genre.

 

The calculation for a cap on how much damage would be added would have to be calculated backwards from highest level damage potential and possibly ramp up a bit based on the lowest level that a character can have the power so that there is a benefit to have the power at the lowest possible level obtainable but balancing it out so that it does not become OP at highest level with the possible combination of other effects. 

 

ack out of time.letting my team down ... have to run.