Are Energy Melee Brutes a dying breed?

I currently have a 42 EM/WP brute for something out of the ordinary. You can't swing a dead cat without hitting a stoner and other pwr sets seem to more popular than energy.

Although it's AOE capability is slim to none I like the damage output. I like the WP secondary set combined with tough and weave...improves survivability a great deal.

I have a 50 ele/ele brute and although I like the AOE of elec attacks... the electric armor sucks. I've seen a few /ele brutes in AE farms and they fall quicker than a dom. Shield Defense wasn't out yet when I rolled out the ele/ele. I wish it had been...seems like a interesting combo.

I rarely see any em/? brutes in game or guides in the forums regarding em/wp. I was just wondering if I was the only one that didn't get the "Whatever you do don't make a EM brute!" memo.

If anyone has a link to em/wp guide or tips I would appreciate it.

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In before the EM hate.

Most of the hate comes from current vets that played EM before the nerfs. EM/ELA was THE FOTM before IOs, so there are quite a few vets upset still.

From what I've seen, EM is liked by most newbies and I still see it fairly often. I will add I see more tanks and stalkers with EM then I do brutes.

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If you're enjoying it, more power to you. The "don't make an EM Brute" memo was the patch note that said "Increased animation time for Energy Transfer from 1.0 seconds to 2.67 seconds", followed closely by the one that read "Reduced the stun in Total Focus from mag 4 to mag 3".

The long animation for ET killed the feel of the set for me (I liked the fast attacks and having Bone Smasher at 1.5 being the "long attack" in the chain) and that's why I stopped playing it, and while you can still do decent damage with it against a single target, it's not exactly a contender for best single target damage and has poor AoE - both damage and mitigation - to pair that with, which is why the number crunchers stopped.

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I am a relatively new person, yet I find EM is far from enjoyable. It is slow and clunky and just terrible in my eyes. No aoe is just the icing on the cake. (which tastes awful, mind you). It may work for stalkers and tanks, like Clouded said- but I think that Brutes are more in line with faster animating sets with more AoE.

With my DB and FM brutes, I am used to killing stuff before other people. With EM I am used to watching my team-mates kill everything while I watch and waste animations.

I never played it before the changes, but I know it is much different now than it once was. I have a few brutes at high lvls, and I can honestly say the EM is my least favorite.

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Words to the wise aren't necessary- it's the stupid ones that need them.

"You're right...I forgot...being constantly at or the near the damage cap is a big turn off. Definitely not worth it."
- Vitality

... and to answer the question posed in the title of the thread, I plan to stip my EM/ and roll a DM or WM instead.

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Words to the wise aren't necessary- it's the stupid ones that need them.

"You're right...I forgot...being constantly at or the near the damage cap is a big turn off. Definitely not worth it."
- Vitality

Siolfir hit the proverbial nail on the head. Energy Melee used to be the highest dmg single target attack set in the game but that was about all it could do, whirling hands is a waste of a power (IMHO) and as such isn't taken by many people wiht access to the set.

Then they changed it by increaeing the activiation time of Energy Transfer, changing the mag stun of Total Focus, and then the change to barrage (it was either activation time or recharge time) and that killed the set for many a veteran who felt like they just had their toon gutted and hung out to decay in the sun.

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Relatively new player here, as well, but I've been enjoying my EM/WP brute; got her up to level 43 so far. However - the bigger the team gets, the worse she plays. Get five or more people on a team, and the combination of slow attacks and weak AoE means that I really don't feel like I'm contributing much.

On a small team, though - say, three or fewer - she's just grand fun; walk into a pile of enemies, pick them off one at a time, walk out with full health, endurance, and fury. Walk up to a boss or elite boss, stack up the random stun procs 'till it's staggering around, take it down. (Ok, so there are a few elite bosses that gave me trouble here and there. But that's what Strength of Will is for.)

Of course, "does well in very small teams / solo" is not a good niche to be in, but at least it's better than "doesn't do well at all".

My personal opinion is that ET is fine as is - it's an exceptionally strong attack, counterbalanced mostly by the long animation time. For me, the health cost is negligible, and I actually end up using ET to finish off targets (if said target is the last thing in a group) just because it's so cheap in terms of endurance. (Ok, it'd be nice if ET didn't cost me health if the target dies before the attack lands - but I don't care that much about the health cost, so this is a minor quibble.)

That's not to say the set doesn't need help, though. In particular, Barrage, Total Focus, and Whirling Hands could all use a little boost.

I'm not quite sure what I'd do about Barrage - it's the weakest attack in the set (in terms of damage per activation time); maybe if you bumped up the stun chance? I don't know. I skipped this power, and have never regretted doing so.

Total Focus is, oddly enough, the second weakest attack in the set, though this is possibly justified by its 100% chance of mag 3 stun. I used it as a heavy hitter at low levels when I didn't have a full attack chain; now I only use it if I want the stun, or if I have enough fury that it'll one shot a minion, and I'm considering respeccing to get rid of it entirely. Were I changing this power, I'd add a bit of AoE splash damage; perhaps something akin to Thunderstrike.

Whirling hands... could probably use a bit more damage, but the first thing I'd buff is its range. I've had it simply fail to hit enemies that I was busily trading melee hits with; even if this was just increased to a 10' AoE with no other changes, I'd be much happier with it. Alternatively, do two checks to see what's in range: one when the power is activated (for the standard "make melee powers actually usable on something that's running away" effect), and a second time when the activation actually finishes (so I don't completely wiff enemies that happen to have walked up during the last two and a half seconds).

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Though I just recently started an EM/ brute (lvl 36 so far), I'm finding the set to have little to no flow.

But what I find the most frustrating about em/ is lining up a potential victim, only to have the kill stolen by a much more capable villan on my team. It seems that you have to pick and choose who you're going to go after when on a team - and hopefully any bosses aren't dead yet .

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There are three types of people in this world: Those who can count and those who can't.

ha! the funny part is last night I was finding an EM Brute killing things faster than my Elec/Inv.. then again I was still in Dos and they had SO's and more levels on me..(I was lackied to mid 20s from 18)

I like the look of EM but on my Tank damage is crap; I was considering making an EM/Invul but instead rolled a Elec/Invul

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I can see why people dont like EM/ but on paper it looks good. Once i can change the pink look of it i start one ill just skip TF and i think can live with a 2.67 cast ET. And WH is bad for aoe but it is aoe in a ST set.

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I can see why people dont like EM/ but on paper it looks good. Once i can change the pink look of it i start one ill just skip TF and i think can live with a 2.67 cast ET. And WH is bad for aoe but it is aoe in a ST set.

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Play EM on decent sized team and let us know what you think. Any set works when you play solo, when you're on a team competing against other sets, a sets flaws can become very painfully apparent. EM was never a good team set because its very single-target oriented, but when et was a quick hitting attack, you'd still get lots of kills because you'd hit targets after selecting them. Now, you select a target, and then while you're waiting for the attack to go through it's petrified animation, 2 or 3 of your teamates attack your target and kill it. But lucky for you, the animation completes, you hit the corpse, and still take ET's self damage. That sucks on paper and in game. Or you can use your other top-notch power, but that one takes even longer to animate, lol.

Interesting that several newer players noticed the problems despite clouded claiming it's only 'angry veterans' who dislike the set. I don't think the lack of play em has been getting since the nerfs is coincidence, it's just people using common sense.

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I have an em/fire. I just really like healing flames. Blazing aura rocks for ae damage. I use Whirling hands alot. Sure more Range would be nice but honestly I say that with every Pbae I have on my brutes with the single exception of FS so. Now Whirling hands is only an 8 range but thats the same as Blazing aura and that works great. It just depends on how you use it. Whirling hands works very will if you have good agro. I often use Consume with its 20 range to pull mobs in nice and close. Blazing aura keeps em there. You can still only hit 10 mobs with any of the pbae, so if you have good agro it should not be a problem.

Hmm maybe they could change Whirling hands to more of a shadow maul pbae. Make it a cone, limit to 5 mobs, up the damage a bit and lower the recharge and end cost. hmm

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My EM/EA is shelved for all the reasons previously mentioned.

I picked EM for its staggering burst capability, high sustained ST DPS, and for the ability to pretty much lock down a single target. It was a hoot to play. The attacks flowed, fury built quickly, and faces were punched in. By no stretch of the imagination was it a great set to play against hordes of mobs, but it was still FUN, whether solo or teamed.

Now, it's pretty much lost what drew me to the set. My BA/WP might do less ST damage, and may not build Fury exceptionally quickly, but once he gets rolling, the mobs look like they just got hit by a f**kbomb. Great AoE damage AND mitigation, along with a fun, crunchy, brutal feel.

For me, fun is the reason to pick certain powersets, and EM is no longer fun. Thus, I have no reason to play it anymore.

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My EM feels okay, but that's only because I've skipped half the set (from WH to Stun) and am using Air Superiority and Boxing in place of it. Yeah it's probably not a good attack chain, but it helps remove the clunkiness.

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Branching Paragon Police Department Epic Archetype, please!

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Total Focus is, oddly enough, the second weakest attack in the set, though this is possibly justified by its 100% chance of mag 3 stun.

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Just a minor nitpick on this point - once you account for server ticks not allowing you to start a new animation, Total Focus is the second best DPA in Energy Melee, and Bone Smasher slightly beats out Energy Punch.

The problem is that means your "best DPA in set" single target chain is a 2.67 second attack (Energy Transfer), then 1.5 seconds (Bone Smasher), then 3.3 seconds (Total Focus) and back to 1.5 for Bone Smasher again. This does not work well for Brutes (although they can use Gloom for a great DPA attack), but can work well for Stalkers and Tankers - which is why you'll see those ATs playing it more than Brutes.

The damage scale/second of animation for the attacks works out to the following:
Energy Transfer: 1.57
Total Focus: 1.04
Bone Smasher: 0.96
Energy Punch: 0.95
Barrage: 0.83
Whirling Hands: 0.38

For comparison, Seismic Smash is 2.07, Gloom is 1.33, and the pre-nerf ET was 3.84.

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Just a minor nitpick on this point - once you account for server ticks not allowing you to start a new animation, Total Focus is the second best DPA in Energy Melee, and Bone Smasher slightly beats out Energy Punch.

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Huh. I was not aware of this - could you point me at somewhere with an explanation of this effect?

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I got a bit distracted after my last post and haven't looked for a link yet; Arcanaville discovered it a while back when (iirc) she was trying to figure out why her numbers didn't match given the lag she was calculating.

Essentially, the game will only allow power activations on a 0.132 second clock, and one clock cycle is always wasted while it determines that you're not in another animation before it allows another.

The formula for "Arcanatime" on an animation then is (ROUNDUP(listed animation time/0.132)+1)*.132; Total Focus having a 3.3 second animation time works out the best the most efficient possible, given that the animation takes exactly 25 "ticks", meaning on the 26th tick you can activate another power.

I don't know if it's been stickied or not and was about to log off of the boards, maybe someone else can link it but if not I'll look tomorrow.

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Though I just recently started an EM/ brute (lvl 36 so far), I'm finding the set to have little to no flow.

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This is the reason I gave up on the set. I am a numbers person but the lowering of the performance of the set isn't what killed it for me. It's just too clunky now. Unfortunately a lot of "balancing" is done at the cost of the smooth flow some sets have.

Also for the person who asked: here's Arcanatime explained.

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Arcanatime

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...Gah. So all those fancy numbers we get in the game engine, all those built in calculations for damage per activation time... are all... wrong. That's truly evil.

Really, really, truly evil. And the sad part? It'd be trivial to fix. You just need to change what gets displayed to the user, after all, and computers are good at math.

I wonder what it says about me that this bothers me more than all the slow and clunky animations in EM?

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Arcanatime

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...Gah. So all those fancy numbers we get in the game engine, all those built in calculations for damage per activation time... are all... wrong. That's truly evil.

Really, really, truly evil. And the sad part? It'd be trivial to fix. You just need to change what gets displayed to the user, after all, and computers are good at math.

I wonder what it says about me that this bothers me more than all the slow and clunky animations in EM?

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Yay, looks like a couple of people got the link for you.

As for why the "real numbers" are wrong in the game... I honestly don't think that the people who worked on those systems were aware of the situation until it was brought to their attention. Sure, they could list it in the real powers information now, but where are they going to put the explanation for people who ask why the numbers don't match up or start screaming "nerf" when the animation time shows the actual value?

If you're really bored (like I get occasionally) you end up making your own spreadsheet. So far the highest DPA attack I've seen is Blizzard, which once you convert pet damage to AT modifiers works out best for Defenders at scale 5.87 per second.

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