DrMike2000

I played AR on a Corrupter and loved it. Lots of AoEs and Ignite more than making up for the lack of a third heavy hitter. My only gripe was that it has 5 Targetted AoE's, which is generally the worse type of power to IO for.

I reckon Devices needs a bit of help, though.

Its one of those weird sets with a niche thats hard to define. Its definitely not best-suited for the standard "charge and destroy" tactics that cover over 90% of PvE teaming. Soloing high level enemies with Trip Mine will get kind of old quickly, and probably doesn't provide stellar XP anyway due to setup times.

Its received a number of blows without changing at all over the years.
Traps has come along, and been more effective for a similar concept.
IOs have given everyone the potential to get free stealth if they save up for it, making Cloaking Device less attractive.
IOs with global accuracy bonuses make Targetting Drone even more redundant. Thunderstrikes and Posi's and Crushing Impacts mean most Blasters I make rack up a good +30% accuracy at least without even thinking.

I'd go for Energy Melee.

The glow around your fists isn't much different from the numbers that appear above your enemy's heads when you take damage, ie its easy to think of them as just an artefact of being in a game environment.
You can probably make them less visible now using power customisation.

Now this is the kind of glamourous exploit I signed up for when I started fighting crime!

I've got Crushing Field (the AoE immobilise in Gravity Control) 5-slotted with Gravitational Anchor including the hold proc, and love the way it uses the Gravity hold graphics as I spam it on giant crowds of bad guys.

It's now occurred to me that I could also slot the Targetted AoE purple Chance for Knockdown in there for extra mitigation and laughs. Spamming it on a group of 16+ means that 3 would get knocked over per application, but it would look pretty cool.
It would also work well with Gravity since Crushing Field doesn't apply -Knockback.
Its a smaller chance to proc than the hold (20% vs 33%) but it would work on bosses and lieuts.

Has anyone else tried this? Did you love it or regret it?

No kidding?

I was wondering the same thing this weekend. I too was assuming you had to be level 50 to get a purple drop. That's really good news.

This is the best thread title I've seen all week!

And yeah, DE in groups are absolutely hideous, since they neutralise Controllers, defence-based characters and burst damage as soon as you look at them pretty much.
It's kind of like fighting an all-Defender team.

The really wierd bit about them is how they only spawn Granites at level 45+, making them much easier and safer to fight, and they go from being dangerous to just a big grind every spawn.

Thats a great explanation, Tex.

I didn't realise how effective -Recharge was until I read this.

Obviousness is subjective.

What's moronically simple to you may not be immediately apparent to someone else and vice versa.

Awesome name! I love it!

And yeah, I'd go either a diamond-like Ice shield, or see if there's any type of round gold shield that looks anything like a giant coin.

A question for the old timers:

Did Energy Melee have the current damage for ET and TF at launch? I know KO Blow got an upgrade before I5 to make it a heavy hitter as well as a hold, and later on Clobber got the same treatment in War Mace.
Was Energy Melee once unique as the tank set with big single target burst damage? That was more or less the impression i had at I6 when I started playing, but I've no idea how accurate that is.

It also makes dual-boxing more difficult in PVP, which is a good thing.

eg You can't have a back-up Defender targetted on you on follow, buffing you and blasting your targets.

On the more general topic of AoE vs single target balance, is there any case where single target damage is a good enough payback for reduced AoE?

This applies not just to Energy Melee, but also to Stalkers and Blaster Snipes. Single Target heavy hitter attacks never seem to hit quite hard enough in CoX.

I was kind of dissapointed with my first snipe to discover I needed Aim and Build Up and snipe to one-shot an even-con minion. Similarly, with my Stalkers, I don't always take down a +1 or +2 boss with Aim-Assassin Strike. Energy Melee's quick ET-TF combo was deemed a bit too good and recently got nerfed. All these powers already have special drawbacks, interruption, long cast times or self damage.

It strikes me that the devs could be a bit more generous with extreme ST damage, especially now that the ability to up your teamsize easily makes AoE much more attractive. Is there a tipping point? Is being able to whack a +0 Boss from safety too much? Or a +3 Leiutenant? Would that make soloing invincible laughably easy?

I'm inlcined to say that ST damage for all these extreme attacks could be upped a bit, and this would be my preferred fix for Energy melee. Am I missing something obvious?

You're dead right.

The ability to solo 8-person maps has been a big nerf to this set on top of the changes made to Energy Transfer. Its also lost its PvP appeal with the changes to most resistance powers PVP functionality in I13.

My only 50 tanker is Dark/Energy, but that worked purely because I dual-box. I'd have another character applying AoE damage while she applied aggro-control, big ST damage and easy boss-level control.

I agree with you on Stun being almost useless. Not least because it has a fairly big wind-up time. A quick jab <1 s would almost make it worth taking now, as a fast "I need to stun this Paragon Protector NOW!" move maybe. But the set really does need better AoE, or better ST damage to really lift it.

I've usually gone 2 Def/End IOs and one Def IO + 2 Res/End IOs and one Res IO.

That gets me about +52% Def and Res (+58% or so being the ED cap), and +90% End Reduction. You can even squeeze a couple of cheekey set bonuses in there, but nothing major, maybe the +recovery from Impervium Armour and +Regen from LotG.

The resists are quite nice as they often cover holes of other characters. ShadowFall provides Psi, nice for Invulnerables and a few other melee types. Steamy Mist is a perfect fit for any Dark Armour allies, especially ones who run Tough.

Since Supradyne gives you tough skin, often to the point of growing stony growths on it (Calibans), I imagine pills would be much more convenient than injections for the habitual user.

Yeah, I know. I agree that it is an ill-formed set in that way.

Force Fields has a niche, but it's a kind of small one.

It would be nice on Corrupters as a visually neutral (compared to Traps or VEATs) way of building an effectively protected (compared to Sonic Resonance) more solo-able (compared to Defenders) blast-defence character. You know, with Iron Man 2 coming out soon...

Force Fields suffers more than any other buff/debuff set in going from Defender to Corrupter/Controller values.

For a Defender, its pretty easy (Manouvres and SO's) to soft cap your entire team. For a Controller doing the same you get to around 33% Defence on everyone, which is letting in over 3 times the damage. So you could argue that instead of being 3/4 as effective, its 1/3 as effective. That's not entirely true, but sort of correct...

So maybe that's why FF hasn't been ported? Personally, I don't think that argument is a complete deal-breaker, I think they just haven't got around to it yet. A /FF Corrupter would still provide better team safety than any other existing Corrupter, at the expense of not bringing much else to the table with their secondary.

And yes, it would be easy to soft-cap yourself to a few positions and play tankmage. In a balanced way.

Trick Arrow already gets a second hold to allow it to quickly stack a hold on Bosses, so Petrifying Gaze isn't really an issue.

Fire/Storm, for example, can Stun a group of Bosses in two moves, so any arguments about Mind/Dark fearing a group of Bosses is kind of moot.

So I don't think its setting any new precedents for too much control.

I don't see many Energy Corrupters. Its one of my favourite sets, purely for look and feel. It's not a low damage set, its got the standard Tier 1-3 single targets and two standard AoEs.

The two problems it suffers from are the knockback (if you don't manage it) and the lack of a hard mez. You'll really wish you had a Cosmic Burst or Tesla Cage when that Paragon Protector is getting low on health.

Dark Armour might work. It gives you the camoflauge power.
Cloak of Darkness also simulates compound eye vision with the +Perception, although Tactics can do that on any set.
The other FX can probably be coloured to look more biological, like a pollen or toxin cloud or something along those line.

DA/Claws - the single blade claws can look pretty insect-y.

Beyond camoflauge, light armour and claws/blades, what else should someone with Mantis powers be able to do? Leaping?

Jump Kick used to take so long and root you, that the bad guy you knocked up would be on his feet before you were moving again.

These days, its a standard pool attack that really suits some characters.

I've used it on a double-jointed combat robot and a Tarzan look-a-like, and it looks great on both of them.