Sonic Melee - First impressions

[BasiliskXVIII]

Just to set expectations: I didn’t want to “race” this character to 50. I’m deliberately taking it slowly, mostly soloing through story arcs, and I didn’t touch Sonic Melee on Beta at all. The concept didn’t initially grab me, but then the name Treblemaker came to mind and that was that. This isn’t a full guide, just first impressions of the set so far. I’ll update as I level if people are interested.

 

I’m level 21 at the moment, so we’re not talking 4 Star ITFs yet. I only a handful of low-level IOs that have dropped or which I had in storage, I'm mostly running SOs. This is my experience as a Sonic/Dark stalker.

 

Attune

This is clearly the most contentious power in the set, and I understand why. It doesn’t completely ruin the experience for me, but it has both real strengths and real friction, so YMMV. Attune is a single-target toggle that does a slow but significant DoT and amplifies your other Sonic attacks against that target. It suppresses while you’re hidden, so you can put it on an unaware enemy without breaking stealth; the damage only starts once you’re revealed.

 

What’s good about it?
It’s surprisingly effective at disrupting enemies who have interruptible abilities. Sky Raider Engineers are the easiest example: you can drop Attune on one, AS the boss, and the Engineer won’t get their FFG up because the trickle damage keeps interrupting them. It feels very proactive in a way that the game doesn't often encourage, so this stands out.

 

What’s less good?
It’s still a toggle. You want it up constantly, which means dragging it from target to target as things die or scatter. Without Attune running, your ST damage feels slightly below average; with it, slightly above average. I don’t know the exact numbers, but the lack of it is noticeable. I don't usually enhance until level 12, because it normally goes so fast, but because I held off on grabbing Attune immediately, my damage felt lackluster in a way that was unpleasant.  So you’re encouraged, pressured even, to get it early and keep it rolling nonstop.

 

The sound effect is also loud. Very loud. If anyone knows the internal name so I can silence it, you’ll have my eternal gratitude.

 

There’s also a build-pressure angle. Stalkers already want early AS, Placate, Build Up, status protection, and their main defensive tools. Needing to wedge Attune in early too makes the low-level power curve feel even more crowded. Playing without it feels anemic; playing with it feels like one more spinning plate.

 

There’s another issue with Attune that becomes obvious once you play around with it for a bit: it demands animation time without paying that time back in immediate impact. In most melee sets, your T3 power is either a heavy single-target attack or a cone; something that justifies a bit of animation with a meaningful chunk of damage delivered as ST or AoE. Attune does neither. It’s a setup move, and setup moves only feel good when the set rewards you for using them. The damage it offers accumulates to be significant. But that's very much outside of the Stalker philosophy.

 

The rest of the set

The yellow “-res(debuff)” visuals still look strange to me, but the mechanic is interesting. Stalkers get a baked-in -ToHit in Assassin’s Strike, so technically you’re getting at least one boosted effect, but at only 5–6% extra effect per stack, the benefit isn’t huge, to say nothing of the unlikeliness of performing a slow AS after having hit them with other attacks. Generally, this will be more of an incidental team play bonus than something you'll benefit from solo, except with a few specific armour sets, and even then the debuff is small enough to make it mostly irrelevant. It feels like it's mostly just there because Sonic's thing is -res(damage), and the devs didn't want lots of that in a melee set, you do still get to apply that with your AS, though. 

 

What’s more notable is the status effects sprinkled through the set.
• T1 has a chance for knockdown.
• T2 has a chance for hold.
• Assassin’s Whisper is a Mag 5 sleep, so anything you AS and don’t kill will most likely be asleep unless it has purple triangles.

 

Unfortunately, Assassin’s Whisper does not allow sleep sets, so you can’t slot Fortunata’s Hypnosis: Chance for Placate, which would have been probably the best possible use for it. The proc chances for the status effectsare low, so you’re not turning into a miniature Stalktroller (Stalminator?), but slotting a Lockdown +2 Mag proc in one of the early attacks might be an interesting experiment later.

 

In closing

That’s where things stand at level 21. The rest of the set has charm, but Attune is the piece that isn’t landing. It’s an “attention tax,” it doesn’t move with your target, and it eats animation time without giving you the kind of immediate impact every other melee T3 offers. The delayed payoff is real, but it doesn’t feel good in the rhythm of a Stalker’s chain, and the damage bump doesn’t quite justify the micromanagement. If it behaved more like a PBAoE buff, or simply auto-shifted to your current target, the whole set would breathe better.

 

Even so, the kit has enough texture (status effects, utility moments, and a distinct identity) that I’m curious to see how it develops with a full chain and proper slotting. I’ll keep levelling Treblemaker and update once I can see how the set performs in the 30–40 range, where melee sets usually reveal their real shape.

 

Edit: I decided to test the volume of attune with a dB meter on my phone at about 1' from the speaker. Not the most accurate thing, but good enough for my needs. I was getting a baseline of 53-55dB when just getting ambient noises. Most of the other powers - Sonic Thrust, Strident Echo, and Assassin's Whisper took me to between 60-63db. Attune? Maxed out at 72dB. So, from your ear's perspective that's about twice as loud. Very disruptive when you are expected to reapply it 2-3 times per fight.

Edited 2 hours ago by BasiliskXVIII
Added some info.

[Thraxen]

I tried on open beta and live on a scrap. It’s it weird. The toggle will likely be good on avs later on. But anything else does too fast to matter. Well, EBs on ITFs it’s probably good.  
 

But to lock sooooo many secondary effects behind a toggle is just bad 

 

it’s storm blast for melee and please prove me wrong.
 

and one power does - resist?

 

I love my sonic /sonic blaster.  And he feels much more like a scrapper than a Sonic scrap does. Just neeed a break free or two.