page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] New Melee Set - Sonic Melee

[Kai Moon]

On 11/12/2025 at 2:14 PM, Kai Moon said:

Hold Duration Enhancements and Sets in Attune

These don't seem to do anything, unless I'm missing something? Currently, the brute, stalker, and tanker versions stalker version of Attune accepts hold enhancements and sets. The other versions don't. This shouldn't accept hold enhancements and sets if there's no hold duration to enhance.

 

Update on this, currently the stalker version of Attune still accepts hold enhancements, but they don't seem to do anything. (Brute scrapper and tanker versions seem ok.)

[Lockpick]

Any thoughts on how to slot Attune to get the best benefit?  I just slotted a melee set (ToD)...

 

Edit:

 

I did a few minutes of testing and thought I would provide some brief feedback.

 

• I am currently a lvl 30 stalker SM/PA
• I solo'ed the Posi TF in 19:40, which is about the time I would expect to do it for most characters I would solo (Stalkers, Scrappers, Blasters, Corruptors)
• Attune is better than when I first tried the set.  I appreciate the indicator that lets me know when it is applied and active.  
• As a stalker it is not clear to me what my attack chain should be.  I have been opening with Attune, which is counter to how I normally play stalkers.  I usually open with my Assassin power solo and my highest non-Assassin power when teamed.  Maybe I should be doing that and then selecting Attune.
• I went to Bricks and tried some hard targets and I was able to defeat them.  I beat a lvl 35 Lt with 2 Minions, so the set can deal out the damage.
• I'm not a numbers guy, so tend to go by feel and the set definitely feels better than when I first played it.  I am on the fence on whether I will play it when it goes Live, although Sonic Clap and Deafening Wave seems to provide good AoE damage, so it might be something to try.
• I took Strident Echo and not Sonic Thrust and am wondering if I am gimping myself by not taking both.  It looks like you get 10% extra damage to Earsplitter per power if you have both applied, but if you have to take both you basically take 8 of the 9 primary powers, which is more than I would normally take (I usually skip the 1st power in Stalker primaries and Placate).
  • Speaking of these 2 powers I was not aware the indicator was showing that the power had worn off, but I just assumed it meant I needed to use it for more damage, so I guess it worked out.
• I'm reasonably okay with the animations though some of them look like they are ranged attacks when they are melee.
• I have not taken Aura of Madness yet, so will be interested to see how it works with Deafening Wave

 

 

 

Edited yesterday at 12:26 AM by Lockpick
Added feedback

[BrandX]

9 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

Any thoughts on how to slot Attune to get the best benefit?  I just slotted a melee set (ToD)...

 

I've been testing the ST potential of the set and 3 Damage Procs 2 ACC/DMG HOs and 1 DMG/END D-Sync was giving better numbers than 5 piece Purple set (no damage proc) and 1 ToD damage proc.

 

 

[Sovera]

32 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

I've been testing the ST potential of the set and 3 Damage Procs 2 ACC/DMG HOs and 1 DMG/END D-Sync was giving better numbers than 5 piece Purple set (no damage proc) and 1 ToD damage proc.

 

 

 

There have been several iterations of the power so far. Do these procs activate on anything but the initial application? Or a chance per DoT? If it's just the initial application and considering it's only used once per enemy it looked like a good place to mule an unimportant ATO.

[Psi-bolt]

1 hour ago, Sovera said:

 

There have been several iterations of the power so far. Do these procs activate on anything but the initial application? Or a chance per DoT? If it's just the initial application and considering it's only used once per enemy it looked like a good place to mule an unimportant ATO.

 

No, it can proc periodically while Attune is active on an enemy.  Considering it's very low recharge, I think you either use three procs and a combination of Acc/Dam/End for the remaining slots or just the Acc/Dam/End.  I'm just not sure that most enemies will survive long enough to make the procs worth it.  It's worked fine for pylons and stuff like that, but I think it might wind up a waste in live play.    I'm not the best at building for extreme DPS, so take that for what you will.

[bAss_ackwards]

Thoughts on making Attunement a toggle you can cause sonic explosions from?

 

Each of your Sonic Melee attacks on the attuned enemy causes extra single target damage, plus an explosion of 50% damage goes out to other targets near the attuned. Would have application for both single and aoe situations.

[Thraxen]

Feels like storm blast for melee.  Have to keep doing a toggle to get most out rest.  Don't have to wait on it to catch up, but guess you have to put it on every target again?  I really don't get this toggle mechanic.  

 

And does only one power do - resistance?  I can't be reading that right.

[Lockpick]

3 hours ago, Thraxen said:

Feels like storm blast for melee.  Have to keep doing a toggle to get most out rest.  Don't have to wait on it to catch up, but guess you have to put it on every target again?  I really don't get this toggle mechanic.  

 

I think this is a great point and one I was trying to figure out how to articulate.  This set pretty much requires you to take Attune.  I guess I'm just not a great fan of most sets that require certain powers and/or certain processes (Example - Combos) that pigeonhole you into a certain play style.

 

 

[BrandX]

3 hours ago, Thraxen said:

Feels like storm blast for melee.  Have to keep doing a toggle to get most out rest.  Don't have to wait on it to catch up, but guess you have to put it on every target again?  I really don't get this toggle mechanic.  

 

And does only one power do - resistance?  I can't be reading that right.

 

The toggle's mechanic is not to use it every enemy.  I wouldn't use it on low rank enemies, it's animation is long.

 

This is a hard target power.  Place it on a boss and if it's a boss you can crush quickly, then it's not worth the time to use Attune.

 

 

[BrandX]

14 hours ago, Sovera said:

 

There have been several iterations of the power so far. Do these procs activate on anything but the initial application? Or a chance per DoT? If it's just the initial application and considering it's only used once per enemy it looked like a good place to mule an unimportant ATO.

 

No idea.  I figured the toggle checked every 10 seconds like all other toggles, but figured that it being a single target toggle, it might proc better.  However, I only started testing it that way after someone suggested it to me, as I was discussing my testing of the sets ST DPS.

 

I kept hearing the set is bad.  It's ST DPS isn't the best, but I was thinking they likely weren't really testing to see what it can do.  I thought the regular play was fine in my play through.  I feel the set should be closer to the top in terms of ST DPS because of Attune tho.  The power has a long cast and didn't seem worth casting every group, especially at the lighter levels some people would play.

[ScarySai]

7 hours ago, Thraxen said:

Feels like storm blast for melee.  Have to keep doing a toggle to get most out rest.  Don't have to wait on it to catch up, but guess you have to put it on every target again?  I really don't get this toggle mechanic.  

 

And does only one power do - resistance?  I can't be reading that right.

 

Storm blast is at least fixable if they buffed the hell out of cell. Attune is just annoying.

 

EDIT: I made a second sonic melee character to give this thing the most charitable showing possible, since somebody insinuated I'm talking out of my ass, and I'll never pass on the chance to make someone look like a fool.

 

Full amps, full procs, shameless inspiration chugging, going out of my way to get attune value on bosses, bio's offensive for the slight DPS benefit and additional -res, gaming the ATO proc, stacking holds to shut off council shields.

 

End result? Very slow, and a very poor showing.

 

My suggestions?

 

1: Attune should be applicable from range.

 

2: Attune should be a radiating aoe from your target that follows standard anchor logic, and not a purely single target DoT. Alternatively, it should radiate from YOU and not your target with the aforementioned changes applied.

 

3: Higher base damage values across the board, without procs, this set's dps strings are terrible.

 

4: The build up should auto-apply attune effects to whatever you hit for it's duration.

 

___________

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIirJw7nqo

 

No sound because I didn't realize an obs update removed the source, but there ya go. 

 

If one sees this and goes "this looks fine to me" with the set parameters in mind, you can be assured it isn't. KM outperforms it.

 

Edited 13 hours ago by ScarySai

[Midnight Mystique]

I have been playing both a stalker and brute on and off as all the changes went through (Sonic Melee/Regen on both, mostly cause regen is a nice, nuetral easy to play secondary). I played both up to L12 just to get a feel for low-level play, then bumped them to 31 which is about where I have a fairly solid build with all my main melee powers slotted up and enough defenses in the secondary to make play decent. It also allows me to slot up medium range IO sets (crushing impact, etc), then I mostly ran paper missions as I feel those give me a good estimate of how the characters play in general. I have found that if a character doesn't play well in the low 30's I am going to be disappointed in the 40's and 50's. 

 

I can't really comment on the early game now, to many changes to the set. I found the 1-12 trip no harder than usual, but no easier either. The 31+ play was not bad, but not really memorable either.  As many folks have already said, the animations are all over the place, preventing me from feeling like the set has a common theme. The damage, while not sucky is lack luster. 

 

Esthetics wise the set is lacking. Between the mix of arm strikes and what looks like screams/mind blasts its hard to fit it to a theme, which reduces my interest in the set. The animations don't excite me, nor do the sounds. All of that reduces my enjoyment in playing the characters. I design and play characters both for effectiveness in play and fun in play style, so this is one strike against the set for me.

 

After some thought about the damage I realized that the sonic melee set is very comparable to another set already on the main servers - Ice melee. Its a good set to compare against, Ice melee is probably in the top half of effectiveness (at least I feel that way), its damage it neither resisted heavily nor are there a ton of mobs vulnerable to it. It has the same number of single target melee attacks, a cone and a pbaoe just like sonic melee. Note that I did the comparasin without factoring in attune - mostly because it is extremely difficult to factor it in.  Even the stalker version is a nice match - sonic melee gives up Sandman's Whisper just like ice gives up greater ice sword for AS. 

 

Ran a bunch of numbers on paper, not feeling like repeating them but the result is that sonic melee comes off short or at best even in all cases. Frozen fists, ice sword, Greater Ice Sword and Freezing touch do better damage and have better DPA' s than their sonic melee counterparts, although earsplitter and freezing tough are very close. Having attune active MIGHT balance things but attune adds an additional 1.67s (plus arcanatime) to the attack chain, potentially reducing the overall DPA. Sonic clap FEELS like it should be better than frost, but frost does twice the damage and even with a much longer cast time still has a higher DPA  - I am not factoring in the larger target cap here, frost is a smaller enough cone that both powers are likely to only hit 5 targets - in which case frost wins with more damage. Deafening wave at 15' radius might actually be reasonably balanced against Frozen Aura's 10'r, but FA still has a higher DPA. Then you get into secondary effects - the Sonic Melee secondary effects are all over the place, which makes it hard to just how useful they are, where the slows in all ice attacks and the hold in freezing touch are very reliable. 

 

As it stand I will be unlikely to play any sonic melee characters until the set is cleaned up, either to make it more effective or more pleasing to the eye/ear. Some things that might help the set (mostly echoing things other folks have said):

 

Sonic Thrust - bump this up to a 3 or 4 second recharge with the appropriate damage boost. Fast recharge, low damage attacks just don't cut it in a world of 80%-100% global recharge

Strident Echo - same deal as sonic thrust - 7 or 8 second recharge with the app. dam boost would make both these early powers possible worth keeping.

Sonic Clap - its a cool attack, with one of the few decent animations but does to little damage and hits to few targets for its area. Needs to be improved

Sandman's Whisper - bump up to a 10 second recharge to make it a true tier 3 attack. The sleep is crap but since it has a decent damage resist debuff I can live with it.

 

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by Midnight Mystique
typos

[JayboH]

9 hours ago, Thraxen said:

And does only one power do - resistance?  I can't be reading that right.

The melee attacks are like the melee attacks in Sonic Assault, which produce the migraine effects.  That set also has 1 power for -resist and has been around for over 3 years.

[Lockpick]

5 hours ago, ScarySai said:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjIirJw7nqo

 

No sound because I didn't realize an obs update removed the source, but there ya go. 

 

If one sees this and goes "this looks fine to me" with the set parameters in mind, you can be assured it isn't. KM outperforms it.

 

 

Video is set to private, so can't watch it.

[ScarySai]

26 minutes ago, Lockpick said:

 

Video is set to private, so can't watch it.

 

Was supposed to be unlisted, Try this.

 

Good catch.

 

 

Edited 9 hours ago by ScarySai

[naraganeun]

On 11/12/2025 at 8:45 AM, naraganeun said:

Played a sonic/SR stalker for a couple hours testing pylon runtimes and Council and Arachnos at  50+4/x8 

a few notes:

• Single target is strong, averaged 1m35s on pylons. 
• I would imagine this set surpasses energy melee in single target with a full team because of the -regen resistance debuff and -9% res + full crit scalability 
• I liked that the t9 only has a 14s cooldown, makes it easier to achieve a gapless rotation.
• This set has some serious detoggling ability, which is extremely fun and thematic for the stalker AT(find dangerous targets and disable/eliminate them).
• Mag 5 sleep on slow-AS is powerful, mob with nasty toggle + mag5 sleep/AoE Terrorize = perfect opener!
• There's a weird delay before Earsplitter's 75% chance at mag 1 hold, I had to run intuition alpha so that the initial 75% mag 3 could last long enough to reach mag 4.
• I really enjoyed sonic clap's 15ft 180-degree cone. While hovering, it was reliably hitting 5 targets which is good for proccing the stalker build up ATO.
• Although suboptimal, it was fun to tag a boss with attune+t1+t2 and watching it slowly die while spamming a large group with wave+clap. It was particularly satisfying that the constant build up procs from the ATO were boosting attune's damage in realtime. The optimal AoE rotation would be AS>wave>clap>BU but it's not as fun if attune is left out 😛

Main suggestion(s):

• Let Wave and Clap contribute to the Attune cap. Relating to my notes above, it would be fun to apply attune to a beefy target to whittle down their HP over time without interrupting the AoE rotation with a t1/t2. I would accept an AoE dmg nerf just for this functionality! 

 

Overall, the min-maxxer in me has decided this will be my go-to stalker primary.

 

Thank you for listening to my suggestion about letting attune tick at full power without the t1/t2! 
(tested with stalker on 11/19)
a few more notes:

• Average Pylon time went from 1m35s to 1m44s even though I read the newer build changes as buffs.
• Looked into it and turns out Sonic Thrust is not applying its additional effect on attuned targets (bug?) not sure if this is the sole reason for the drop in single target DPS.
• Strident Echo is correctly applying its additional dot.
• Dropping attune on a chonky target and having it tick at full force without interrupting the AoE rotation felt great.
• The 10% additional damage with Clap and Wave on the attuned target did not feel impactful.
• Maybe in a future page we could let Clap or Wave spread Attune to more targets--kind of like Disintegration?
• Could raise the attuned bonus for the AoEs just to make targeting the attuned target with them feel more impactful in the meantime.

Edited 7 hours ago by naraganeun

[PoptartsNinja]

My thought's on Attune / Sonic Melee as a whole:

The Good

• Attune definitely speeds single target clear times. At low levels performance is about the same as most other builds at low levels--as long as you're hitting whatever's attuned.
• Attune always seems to be ready to go when I need it.
• It looks nice.

 

The Questionable

• If feels weird to use. That doesn't mean it's bad, but it's definitely an adjustment. I can't think of any other single-target anchor toggles, which makes me wonder if Attune was originally designed as an anchor AoE and then slimmed down to a single target power because the AoE version was too weak because the Homecoming team appears less willing to make exceptions to the power formulas the way the OG devs were.
• Attune punishes target cycling
  • If you want to avoid wasting a heavy hitter on a target that's almost dead, you're either stuck waiting for other powers to recharge or you're wasting that heavy hitter's potential hitting something that isn't attuned.
  • If you need to swap targets to try to grab agro with Punchvoke/Bruteslap, you're hurting your damage potential even further. This hurts brutes more than it hurts tanks, but it still hurts tanks. Tanks don't get to pick how the taunt splashes, so Attune is counter-productive for agro management.
    • Sonic is either going to 'leak' more agro than other sets or be forced to underperform

Suggestion: If Attune was a small (5' radius?) AoE for its non-damage portion that enhancements other powers, that would at least offer a tiny amount of flexibility in target selection while still being unlikely to hit more than maybe 2-3 things at a time.

 

 

 

The Unpleasant

• Attune's power is just shy of openly hostile to new or inexperienced players. This is a very newbie-unfriendly power.
  • Attune's damage isn't really visible outside the chat log, which could result in new players skipping it; but without Attune the set's damage is anemic (and it isn't stellar with Attune active).
    • It feels like the power is too core to the set's functionality to be skippable; like it should be baked into the set in some way rather than making it a power players can skip.
    • This isn't the only set that does this so on its own this is forgivable.
  • Because Attune needs to be activated frequently, it really needs to live on the 'main' bar with the rest of the attack rotation powers.
    • The same attack rotation powers that some players habitually double- or triple-press while waiting on the tail end of animation times.
    • It's simply too easy to accidentally Attune off  moments after activating it; or get stuck constantly watching your power bar to make sure you're not fat-fingering it and losing half your damage instead of paying attention to the actual mission / your teammates.
    • This is first time I've needed to write a powexec_toggle_on macro ( /macro ATN "powexec_toggle_on Attune" ) for a melee damage powerset. For anyone who isn't used to playing some Defender/Corruptor combos (like: Storm/Storm), a macro like that isn't going to be second nature.

Suggestion: Could Attune be split into a "toggle power on" toggle with an "off" button that pops up in the temporary power tray (like the travel powers / ITrial temp powers)? I feel like that would immediately alleviate this issue. I feel most players aren't going to be voluntarily turning Attune off before their target dies unless they accidentally tossed it on the wrong target when they were trying to attack an AV.

 

The Inherited

• Sonic's visuals are fine (in every set), but Sonic's audio is awful (in every set). This is not the fault of the Homecoming devs and we've all been living with it for a while, but...

Long-Term Wishlist Suggestion: Could we please get audio set options added to power customization, with Sonic getting the priority? Sonic could really use 3-4 options like:

• "Classic" - the current awful audio set
• Masculine - male-presenting yells
• Feminie - All female-presenting yells
• Dog - More howls because Beast Mastery (and demons) shouldn't hold the patent on being annoying (and if we get some more wolf howl variants maybe the beasts can get randomized so they'll be slightly less irritating?)
• Musical - Something like some short guitar riffs, or small clips from the CoH zone music files, or drums. (Or really just anything that isn't clearly human or the current mess of awooo / belch / yelling into a fan / mad about dropping that steak on the floor)

Edited 7 hours ago by PoptartsNinja

[High_Beam]

Hmmm.  @ScarySai, I am watching that video watching you put up of the solo character +4/8 content (based on the mob size I am seeing and level 55) and to be quite honest, it doesn't look like it sucks.  Looks like you are plowing through mobs at an amazing pace.  Is suck code for something else, becuase I would love to suck like that.

 

 

[FupDup]

3 hours ago, JayboH said:

The melee attacks are like the melee attacks in Sonic Assault, which produce the migraine effects.  That set also has 1 power for -resist and has been around for over 3 years.

Sonic Assault was another HC homebrew set, not an oldschool original set. It's pretty clear that HC is gradually retconning the intended niche/utility of sonic-based powersets over time as they add more. My guess is that they're very afraid of -res in general so they want to minimize its existence, even in sets where it makes sense to be. 

 

If Sonic Blast was created today by HC, it might not have -res in it at all, or only 1-2 powers with the effect. 

[Glacier Peak]

38 minutes ago, High_Beam said:

Hmmm.  @ScarySai, I am watching that video watching you put up of the solo character +4/8 content (based on the mob size I am seeing and level 55) and to be quite honest, it doesn't look like it sucks.  Looks like you are plowing through mobs at an amazing pace.  Is suck code for something else, becuase I would love to suck like that.

Absolutely melting Level 55 mobs. That's awesome. 

[Sovera]

43 minutes ago, High_Beam said:

Hmmm.  @ScarySai, I am watching that video watching you put up of the solo character +4/8 content (based on the mob size I am seeing and level 55) and to be quite honest, it doesn't look like it sucks.  Looks like you are plowing through mobs at an amazing pace.  Is suck code for something else, becuase I would love to suck like that.

 

 

 

I confess it didn't look bad to me either, but I saw a snipe so that must be a Scrapper. As someone who usually plods along with Tankers whittling mobs down it look good enough, but for a Scrapper I imagine not.

[ScarySai]

47 minutes ago, High_Beam said:

Hmmm.  @ScarySai, I am watching that video watching you put up of the solo character +4/8 content (based on the mob size I am seeing and level 55) and to be quite honest, it doesn't look like it sucks.  Looks like you are plowing through mobs at an amazing pace.  Is suck code for something else, becuase I would love to suck like that.

 

 

 

Procs, insps and bio make it look better than it is. Without procs it's worse than KM.

[Seed22]

2 minutes ago, ScarySai said:

 

Procs, insps and bio make it look better than it is. Without procs it's worse than KM.

This has been my experience as well. 

[Captain Powerhouse]

3 hours ago, naraganeun said:

• Looked into it and turns out Sonic Thrust is not applying its additional effect on attuned targets (bug?) not sure if this is the sole reason for the drop in single target DPS.

 

The fix for this did not go out until about 4 hours ago. Did you test after that? If so, you testing on stalkers, correct?

 

Edit: found the issue (entirely different error this time, not repeating errors is good... maybe...) so that should go out next build.

[Captain Powerhouse]

1 hour ago, PoptartsNinja said:

Suggestion: Could Attune be split into a "toggle power on" toggle with an "off" button that pops up in the temporary power tray (like the travel powers / ITrial temp powers)? I fee like that would immediately alleviate this issue. I feel most players aren't going to be voluntarily turning Attune off before their target dies unless they accidentally tossed it on the wrong target when they were trying to attack an AV.

 

If something like that was possible, it would already be in. There are some things I plan to play with in the coming months, some might need new code to work reliably, though. I also attempted using invisible pets but it's impossible to reliably control what they will target without running scripts, and I rather not be attaching scripts to a power that players will be activating rather regularly.