Starsman

This is true. There will always be some one upset with something. The thing is not about avoiding to upset anyone. The goal is to avoid taking anything away from anyone.

Balance wise, Energy Transfer is a great power with it's only true fault being the self damage if used on dead enemies.

Taking away from players can be a bad thing, especially if it's to address edge cases on specific situations.

Adding a new mechanic to address issues may be disliked, but it's not taking away just adding on top. Some one that does not like a new mechanic can ignore it, just like a blaster can entirely ignore the new buffs being added to to their secondaries.

Also to keep in mind, it's not me that you have to convince about adding a shorter animation, it would be the devs that follow strict rules on certain things. Due to EM already having excelent single target damage output, it's very unlikely they will do anything that will boost this damage further.

Now, that aside, this is something that just crossed my mind:

With Water Blast, they added a new mechanic to the game, the ability for one power to entirely reset the recharge timer of another power. It crosses my mind it would be useful if a power like energy transfer or total focus reset their own recharge timers if they did not manage to land any damage on the enemy because it was dead before they finished casting (in adition to ET not doing self damage.) Perhaps, in such a case, i can see also using Titan Weapon's redirect mechanic to compound this. Example:

You start Energy Transfer on target.
Target Dies before you are done.
You suffer no self damage.
Energy Transfer recharge resets.
Now you have 10 seconds to use Energy Transfer with it's old animation.

The idea here is simply that you "charged up" the energy in the first animation but ended up not needing it because the target died. You retain that energy in your body for 10 seconds, allowing you to cast a much faster energy transfer in another target.

Actually.... I can also see this being acceptable for missing, although not for overkills. If you miss the target after such an animation, you should be able to follow up with a fast attack to recover that lost DPS. Note, the follow up can also still miss and end up going wasted, but that aliviates the huge DPS hole missing can cause on such a heavy hitting set (something I find funny has not been brought up in the thread yet.)

This does not actually boost DPS, since it only works in situations where failure would had caved a big hole in your damage output, it also does not take anything away from players today.

Similar mechanic may also work for Total Focus, and that power may be in a more dire need for it.

I want to clarify two things here:

1. One is that it's not me that you need to convince of a change, it's Synapse and Hawk. They respect the Cottage rule and are very unlikely to break it without a strong reason. EM does not have a strong reason, it would if it's DPS was as low as Ice, but not in it's current state.
2. I am also not Synapse nor do I know him so I cant tell you if he really will be willing to break rules beyond what I know. My attempt here is to set a mindset for proposals that have a higher chance to be looked at. Animation changes don't have a zero % chance of happening, but for EM, the odds are not in favor of such change.

I am sure the old animation will just never return, not to this power. Any shorter animation would be an all new animation (for the power.) What are the odds people won't still think it's too slow, or that now the power hits for too little?

The "gimmick" I would propose is much more than a gimmick. Lots of players love that sort of gimmick, it makes sets feel more dynamic and it's the reason basically every new set created has some such gimmick. Also, the bonuses the gimmick would bring would be in line with what the set needs.

We can't take one single individual as representative of the whole. He may be able to give you a bit of the point of view, but he can't talk for others on what he would find acceptable. I like his point about a DoT-fication of Energy Transfer actually having an impact. His reasoning is very sound and the kind of thing people that just play for fun will be more likely to see fade away.

You can be sure there are players that love the power as is, animation and all. I need no evidence to prove this. The fact that there are players that may like things the way they are is one of the reason the cottage rule exists. Just look at the blast nuke threads. Despite the proposed changes being a buff, we are seeing a lot of noise from people that were not complaining before, people that liked the power being random and potentially killing X or Y, even if it also meant potentially NOT doing it.

Again, that's why the cottage rule exists. It was, in some ways, broken to nerd ET those years ago, but thats how strong they felt it was OP.

As I said: internal set rules. If there are any, they are likely set wide and not applied to powers at will. Another example of what I mean by "following the rules".

Not too unlike claws. I have not looked at the sets carefully enough, hopefully I'll have a chance to check all the post GR sets during this week.... once I'm done with my move.

I must look closer at Titan Weapons (have not yet) but the set has a few set of internal rulesets like bonus range and (if i recall correctly) bonus damage in some attacks, my guess to compensate for the low DPA.

If you think you can convince Synapse the entire Energy Melee set deserves a whole new exceptional rule that applies accross the set, no one stops you. I would love to hear the argument that may convince anyone of that extreme.

As i noted in a previous post, this formula was not adhered to religiously at first but has been much more enforced in recent years. You will have a hard time convincing Synapse to just break it.

Mind you, as I corrected in a previous post: Whirling Hands actually does less damage than it should. The same was true for Martial Arts at one point and it got buffed to the right damage value thanks to a lot of effort from Arcanaville poking Castle over the issue. Whirling Hands, as it exists today, should do as much damage as Dragon's Tail.

I meant the group of people that are happy with things as they are and are not aware some one wants them to compromise on lower damage.


I think its more likely. Just look what the devs have done so far.
Gravity didnt get just tweaked, it got new mechanics.
Stalkers didnt just get tweaked. They got new mechanics.
Snipes are not just tweaked, they get new mechanics.

I think it's clear now: Synpase and Hawk love new mechanics. Perhaps because they also have a side effect of "modernizing" the feel of things the same time they are improved.

It's not a good justification, but it's the reason.

I don't know the full details of the claws damage formula, but I think there was some buzz from Stupid_Fanboy or Arcanaville about it either being used wrong or it just being flawed for AoE.


It's not a "bonus", I think it's just an unintended bug. My guess: the aoe formula got finalized after these powers were already created and considered finished. Mind you, as noted above, at the end of the day it does not matter much but... well, we cant use bugs to demand equal treatment.

Now, going back into the power and looking at numbers, the power (Whirling Hands) is actually doing less damage than it should for it radius. It should either have a 10ft radius or inflict 1.18 scale damage. I knew there was an issue there but intentionally avoided it because I thought it was the other way and it was doing too much damage, dont want to encourage any nerfs

Yes and no. Set composition is balanced in the totality of the set. But they must play with certain rules and have very strong reasons to break those rules.
A good reason to break a rule: "this power is special and does conditional damage based off this or that".
A bad reason to break the rules: "I just want this set to do more damage"

Right now, the best the rules allow is for 18.18% more damage for Whirling Hands. It's not about breaking the set, it's about following the rules. If we give the power conditional damage... well then the sky is the limit.

It's hard to reach a compromise with individuals that are not even aware the conversation is being held on their behalf. The best compromise I can think is one that would not affect those players but address the issues.

That's because we never got to see the reaction to the power having it's damage lowered to 1.7 dmage.

We have various sets with slow animations. Super Strength shows twice in that list above (15 slowest single target attacks in the game.)

Actually... this may be an interesting reconceptualization of the power. I am not too fond of the self damage bit of the attack, but the concept of the attack... well is that.

Think this concept:

Energy Transfer steals energy from your target, hurting them. You then channel that energy into your fists, landing a heavy blow.

The attack costs 10.192 endurance, that is what a 1.96 ds attack would cost, leaving 2.6 damage for "free".

Visually, the attack should do the same animation, however, now during the stage where your arms are charging up in power, an FX is also running in your target an a very fast DOT is draining a total of 1.96 ds worth of health from your foe. Once you are charged up, you finish the animation releasing the "end free" 2.6 endurance.

If it was mechanically possible, Energy Transfer should interrupt the animation and not finish charging should the attack miss (if the enemy is hit but dies you still execute the entire thing.)

It still would be the same attack, but may lead to make people feel they are executing 2 attacks with one click instead of feeling they wasted one big attack.

Balance wise, its the same as now (other than the removal of self-damage.)

I still would add the enegy load changes I listed above.



Due to game balance rules, unless there are special mechanics in place (like I sugested above) this cant happen. In fact, increasing the radius will result in lower damage.

Claws has a different balancing formula used that is more based around cast tiem than recharge.


Mechanically, I don't think we can increase the radius of a PBAoE attack.

Animated Stone has resistances to:

Smash 40%
Lethal 50%
Fire/Cold/Negative/Energy 60%
Toxic 80%
Psi 100%

Jack Frost has Resist/Defense:

Smash/Lethal/Energy/Negative: 0/25
Fire: 10%/35
Cold: 60%/35
Toxic/Psi: Nada.

So, who is better:

Smash: Ice takes 26% less damage in average.
Lethal: Ice takes 11% less damage in average.
Fire: Ice takes 50% less damage in average.
Cold: Ice takes 78% less damage in average.
Energy/Negative: Stone takes 10% less damage in average.
Toxic: Stone takes 80% less damage in average.
Psionic: Stone takes 100% less damage.

... Do pets have a resist damage cap or can they actually reach 100% resist? Thats something I actually have no data at hand for...

Note thats averages there. Jack being relliant on defense means sometimes he may get lucky, sometimes he may get unlucky. But in average, he takes less damage than Stoney.

[Insert to-hit disclaimers about defense here]

Edit to add: Jack also has a version of Chilling Embrace. This means he can debuff enemies to attack less often, therefore slow down incoming damage by up to 50%.

We all know they only listen to Arcanaville. For everything else, they just roll dice.

OK, just looked at it again, I was not aware of it being different accross sets. I didnt select one to pick the longest cast, I simply picked the first one I saw in City of Data.

Not ignoring as much as not been playing the game at the time so I was not aware of that statement. The case still stands about it being tied up to a lot of conditions and in the hands of the most frail mele AT in the game.

The reference will never work to sell the increased single target DPS that would come from reversing the ET change, especially if the AT that has that tool happens also to have the set. Energy Transfer for stalkers even has a 100% chance to grant Assassin's Focus. An EM Stalker would be able to land in 2 seconds 1093 points of damage. 1541.5 if they hit Build Up.

That alone would block the change and I doubt the devs will only change the power for Tankers and Brutes (if you were able to convince them they deserve un-conditional assassination)


Not to that extent.

If you are talking about removing -resist from Deffensive, I would expect it to go away and would not attribute it to any specific poster's feedback. It just makes sense with Synapse's post that offensive gets offensive tools, deffensive gets deffensive tools, and efficient gets some in-betweens and endurance management.

With Arcanatime, the cast time of Focussed Assasin's Slash is 1.848 and damage scale 5.52 for a DPA of 2.987. 77.8% of the old Energy Transfer DPA.

Perhaps you are thinking both versions of Assasinations do the same damage? That would not be the case, though.

Mind you, 2.987 is still high, but it is tied to conditions. You must start stacking Assassin Focus and once you have it, if what you are fighting is not dead by your own solo hand you can execute this attack (or switch targets.)

Old Energy Transfer, though, was able to achieve much more DPA, without conditions, just jumping in and attacking.


On top of what I stated above about conditions, there is also the fact that you are looking at AT design, not power set design. AoE damage is not the only issue with the AT, they also have the lowest survivability of all Melee ATs.


Yes and no.

We like to think that recharge dictates the damage of an attack. Truth is, the original leaked spreadsheets show the recharge of a power is based off damae. They would decide how much the attack would hit for, and the recharge was based off that.

My point is, the recharge staying higher than it should be was no accident. Even if DPA was not fully understood at the time, it was clear to the dev at the time (Geko) that the power should not be hitting for so much damage as regularly as the recharge formula dictated. Not on a set that had Rage in it, at least. If I recall correctly, before KoB was turned into an actual attack, it had only a 20s recharge (just like Energy Melee's Stun.)

The origins of that are irrelevant, though. At the end of the day, we are "lucky" that it actually balances out quite nicely. The mixture of rather low DPA attacks plus high recharge in KoB keep SS in check.

The origin of the range for KoB is a bit of a mistery to me, but it likely had some to do with beta and feedback on the animation giving the impression of longer reach.

Crushing Uppercut simply happened to be a copy and paste of KoB with some later modifications and the range never considered an important thing to change.

I think that line is as likely to be true as telling some one he likes to put pins in his eyes.

Synapse wanted, from the start, for defensive adaptation to lose in the offensive side, and offensive to lose in the defensive side. The initial patch attemtped to do this by disabling traits of powers while in certain adaptations and little else. He toyed with -recharge and +recharge among other things, but that didnt work out as he desired.

At the end, -damage and resistable -res were picked as the ways to achieve the goal. Those penalties are not going away, they are required to fullfill Synapses goal for the set.

As I stated on that thread, though: I did not have any data at time to be certain that was accurate. I have been moving all weekend so I have had no time to check, and to be fair, once I get time, I have a lot of other stuff I want to get into.

If you have time and can check in game, see if it's flagged as no-stack there.

The set, as it existed, was broken. Or at least Energy Transfer was. With Arcanatime, Energy Transfer did 3.84 dpa. That's insane.

It had to change. Either the damage was lowered drastically (removing the one option for extremely heavy hitting melee set in the game), or slow it down retaining the heavy hitting nature.

A change today would not just be about changing a particular animation. It would be about forcing a different animation and way lower damage and (not or) a recharge penalty not unlike the one seen in Knockout Blow.

Lower the damage and I personally would delete my energy melee characters (a shield tank and an energy/energy brue). But I don't say this only based on personal preference, the set identity was always heavily focused around it's heavy hitting nature. To the point Castle decided changing the animation was less intrusive than nerfing the damage.

The numbers you see are Arcanaville's ArcanaTime and DPA, based off ArcanaTime.

Total Focus is indeed the slowest, single attack in the game, if you exclude Snipes and Assassinations, that is. Many consider these to be broken, and are now in the process of being revised, but it's important to note the reason they are being revised is not just cast time, but horrendous DPA.

The list above has a few interesting things to look at. For one: the best 2 attacks on that list are Energy Transfer and Knockout Blow. Knockout Blow is basically Total Focus with shorter animation, but it’s important to note that Knockout Blow suffers a penalty to its performance: its recharge is 25% higher than it should be, based on damage/recharge formulas.

There are certainly at least 2 sets with attacks slower than Energy Transfer. One tie-up in Sonic Attack, and quite a few contenders in Dual Pistols, Stone Melee, Super Strength, Ice Blast and Dual Blades that are not only slow but have very weak DPA.

Point being here? Total Focus and Energy Transfer are slow, yes. But they are not weak by any measure.

On the overkill bit... I face this all the time. With all my characters. This is more an issue with content than with the powers. Insane AoE capabilities of too many sets, plus extremely frail minion NPCs result in teams that just eat alive the targets. This is something that came up in a difficulty thread the other day. It would be nice if team content had higher HP.

Perhaps if the team multiplier (for actual teams) granted all enemies an HP buff for every team member past 2, at least past level 40.

But back on track, the point is, it's not an issue exclusive to EM, and I am hard pressed to think EM gets punished more for it. EM, even from the start, was never an extremely fast set. It had only two attacks that were considered fast: the old Energy Transfer and Energy Punch. The rest was always slow, relative to other sets.

It can be argued that Energy Transfer change was too disruptive, that a damage change would had been ideal, but we would still be complaining today about Total Focus.

I’m not dismissing entirely the set performance, though. It may be nice if something else happened. The set has anemic AoE capabilities (although it's not the only set that has this issue, any old set with just a PBAoE and no cones suffer the issue... Super Strength exempt due to Rage.)

There are various things that can be done for the set. One thing that may please some is to change the animation of Total Focus and Energy Transfer to shorter ones. Problem is, those powers would become too good and may skyrocket the set's performance too far. Damage decreases may be required and the set would lose it's hard hitting nature.

Many here are complaining about the animations, but we have to acknowledge people that love the slow/hard hitting nature of the set are not in the forums taking part of this discussion, and it's not a good idea to just change things on them to lure them into the forums to complain.

So I would avoid such a change. Another option would be to compensate. As I stated, the set suffers issues with AoE. What if these heavy hitting attacks also did splash damage? Now, there is a tad of an issue here: cottage rule. By changing the attacks into targeted AoE you force an IO change. There is one work around that: let’s keep them "officially" single target, but give them a conditional bonus that causes splash damage.

This is the idea that crosses my mind: let’s borrow from Street Fighting and Water Blast, add a new mechanic to the set called... Energy Overload.


Energy Punch, Bone Smasher and Barrage all generate an "energy load". You can have up to 3 "energy loads"

1. Medium Energy Load
2. High Energy Load
3. Energy Overload

Based on these load levels, the following powers may do different things:

• Whirling Hands: Inflicts extra damage.
• Total Focus: Splash AoE, higher splash damage with higher energy loads.
• Energy Transfer: Splash AoE and self-damage reduction. More overload, stronger splash and less self-damage, all the way to no self-damage at max Energy load.
• Stun: does extra damage (at medium load it will hit for standard ST attack damage, at Overload it hits for a tad extra.)
  
  Using any of these also consumes the energy load, so you need to build it again if you want to do this once more.

Results of this change:

• Set gets a modernized feel.
• AoE issues get addressed.
• Set retains its slow/heavy hitting nature.
• Issues hitting foes in teams that are dead may be alleviated by having splash damage still be useful.

Additional note: I think Energy Transfer causing self damage if the target was dead by the time you hit him should be seen as a bug that should be fix even if the set never gets any other changes.

Been ages since I seen this argument, never held much water in my view.

You see, the overkill in teams will happen with every set out there, many sets have attacks that exceed Energy Transfer Cast time (Shadow Maul, Sky Splitter to name a couple.) Due to how teams work, chances are you will waste a lot of damage on enemies that will be dead before your animation ends, even with Energy Punch. It's just the nature of the beast, and it does not matter that much.

Solo, you have full control. There are more than just heavy hitting attacks in the set. If an enemy is about to die you have plenty of options, from lowering your DPS for an attack that will still likely do the job or simply ignore that target, focus on the next, and let that target die due to Whirling Hands or damage auras.

If the argument about overkill was valid, Titan Weapons would never had made it out of beta.

Mind you, I still agree with you at some level. Energy Melee does need something else. It's horribly weak AoE capabilities were only acceptable because of it's insane Single Target capabilities. Once that got toned down, AoE should had been addressed. It may be a good thing it didn't, though. Today it may be... more interesting to get some full revamp for the set. I would love to see some form of combo mechanic or similar cool system for the delivery of AoE.

With Arcanatime:

Bone Smasher 0.96
Energy Punch 0.95
Barrage 0.83

Under my model, that is an Arcanaville-style Peak DR system, they are literally tied.

Note I designed this variation to intentionally remove second decimal accuracy, mainly because during the entire process back then, a lot of people made too much fuzz and derail over a difference of 0.1% in damage output.

Note this is tankers, and old, but this is how it looked back then:

1.80 Energy Melee
1.80 Fiery Melee
1.80 Stone Melee
1.70 Battle Axe
1.70 Dark Melee
1.70 Super Strength
1.70 War Mace
1.50 Dual Blades
1.30 Ice Melee

This includes the last buff to Dark Melee.

Dual Blades does not account for combos. This is under 50% recharge for all attacks, 95% for buildup and Rage. I have another chart somewhere for higher recharge rates but I won't dig it up now because anyways it's a bit old.

Remember this is basically Arcana PeakDR, meaning it is not about attack chains.

This is almost correct.

I like to say 60%, for roundness sake, though.

Why I say almost correct? Scrapper has a 25% higher self-damage buff modifier. This means Buildup for Scrappers is +100% instead of +80%. Not only does Buildup for scrappers work of a higher base, but it is also stronger.

For a brute, inside BuildUp, to match a Scrapper, inside buildup, the brute will need 100% fury.

This may also be an interesting note: in it's current form, without any changes to Rage, a Super Strength scrapper would be as strong as a Super Strength Brute that always run at max fury.

Didn't factor Arcanaville as i was posting a bit of a rush. Energy Punch, from all my recollection is still a great power even with Arcanatime considered. My last analysis, with Arcanaville used, still had EM as the best single target set tied up with Stone Melee and Fiery Melee (ages ago) for tankers.

It is a slow set, though, other than energy punch, attacks tend to be on the slow and heavy hitting side. Not a bad thing, there should be such sets in the game. Some people like slow animations that feel as if they pack a punch.

As long as it's "balanced" it is acceptable.

What I find not acceptable is the inability to build for average AoE due to the set having just one PBAoE. This is also the reason why my Energy tanker is also Shield Defense.

The problem is: Energy Melee has no single target damage problems.

Look at the attacks and how good their DPA is:

Barrage: 0.99
Energy Punch: 1.2
Bone Smasher: 1.09
Total Focus: 1.08
Energy Transfer: 1.71

These are some great numbers.

However, there is a design flaw with many melee sets: At minumum, every set should have at least a cone and a PBAoE. You can rebalance and compensate (nothing wrong with having two PBAoEs if you want the set to excel in AoE potential) but no set should only have a single PBAoE.

Only exception I would grant is Super Strength, and the reason is Rage boosts it's only AoE (Plus any Ancillary one) to more than compensate.