I'm not sure what the best way to improve EM would be; I do know that I simply can't stand playing it anymore... pre-nerf it was borderline acceptable in my Stone/EM tank, now I find it very lackluster even on that level 50 tank.
Leveling up it was the carrot of ET waiting at 35 that kept you playing the set despite it's low damage and high end use; the new animation means that on a team you're usually firing it off on something that dies before the anim finishes... remember that lots of Blasters tend to target thru the tanker and their attacks fire off faster.
I tried the set post-nerf... I brought it out for a couple of ITF's and other missions. Frankly, based on that experience I'd rather have had any other secondary other than EM. After those trials the character got shelved and probably won't be played again until the set changes. One thing playing since issue 3 has taught me is that things go in cycles of nerf/buff/nerf/buff; so I have some hope of future changes making the set fun again.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
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But then you could kind of say the samething about Stone and Super Strength too no?
I don't disagree that EM would be more attractive with more AOE btw.
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Say what about Stone or Super Strength? Whirling Hands vs. Fault and Tremor vs. Footstomp? Unless they upped Whirling Hands to Dominator radius, it's not even close to those other powers.
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It was not balanced. ET was hella broken, get over it.
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It wasn't before, but now it is.
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I'm not sure what the best way to improve EM would be; I do know that I simply can't stand playing it anymore... pre-nerf it was borderline acceptable in my Stone/EM tank, now I find it very lackluster even on that level 50 tank.
Leveling up it was the carrot of ET waiting at 35 that kept you playing the set despite it's low damage and high end use; the new animation means that on a team you're usually firing it off on something that dies before the anim finishes... remember that lots of Blasters tend to target thru the tanker and their attacks fire off faster.
I tried the set post-nerf... I brought it out for a couple of ITF's and other missions. Frankly, based on that experience I'd rather have had any other secondary other than EM. After those trials the character got shelved and probably won't be played again until the set changes. One thing playing since issue 3 has taught me is that things go in cycles of nerf/buff/nerf/buff; so I have some hope of future changes making the set fun again.
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QFT. I respec'd mine out of all his IOs and he hasn't been seen since.
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Would giving Stun the "Clobber Treatment" really help, though? It helped Mace because Mace didn't have hard enough ST damage. The same cannot be said for EM at all, I would say. If you up Stun's damage, you lose the utility of the power (remember how much the stun in Clobber was scaled back when it was given damage), and you're simply given yet another ST power to choose from.
If anything is done to EM, it would make a lot more sense to adjust one of the other attacks. Making ET more like Thunderstrike is interesting, upping Whirling Hand's damage a tad, etc. would make more sense. Or just tweaking the damage up a little bit for ST damage in the set (by adjusting one of the current damage powers) is the way to go, I would say.
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Stun is barely taken. Total Focus makes it redundant, same recharge and actually does damage even if it's slower cast.
Giving Stun the clobber treatment would actually boost damage in many builds that take it even if they use ET and/or TF.
Benefits from giving it the clobber treatment:
<ul type="square">[*]EM gains a great dps attack that has no extreme cast time, allowing for more fluid attack chains.[*]EM gains access to what the set is all about since earlier: heavy hitting attacks. Else the set is forced to wait to the Tier 8 and 9. [*]It allows players to entirely ignore EM and ET without gimping themselves dps wise. Slow as they may be, those two attacks are still needed for the best DPS the set can dish and not taking them is a self-nerf. Stun would allow the set to remain as competitive as now without them, and raise above the rest with them in high recharge situations.[*]Even if the stun is made shorter, it would still be 100% chance and it would allow for reliable Stun>TotalFocus chains that quickly hold bosses without sacrificing damage.[/list]
Given the few players that actually take Stun, I think these are all great tradoffs for a bit of stunning in a set with so many stuns.
Now, as far as other attacks go, I would buff the Whirling Hands somehow. Given the damage formula, its underperforming. It should do 1.18 ds of damage instead of 1.0 It also costs more end than it should, 1.56 too much. Note that increasing it's radius to 10ft would also bring it into balance according to the formula, but I personally rather it did more damage than making it reach further away.
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It was not balanced. ET was hella broken, get over it.
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It wasn't before, but now it is.
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As the only attack in the game that could actually kill the user who's to say what is and what isn't correct for it.
The only other power I can think of that hurts the user is oppressive gloom, which is a ridiculously powerful aura that costs next to no endurance.
At any rate, I'll I can say is that I deleted my two EM toons after ET was gutted. Both of them were sets that required the ability to quickly change gears from attacking to defense (EM/fire brute, EM/regen stalker) by clicking self heals.
It was one thing to joust with TF, but it is another thing to joust with TF AND ET 
I can state with absolute certainty that getting locked out of other powers/insp for 2.9 and 3.56 seconds can be a death sentence for some armor sets. And no, just because you would have died but healed doesn't NOT mean you would still die a few seconds later. Not on a set like fire armor where it survives by overwhelming offense and your hp yo yo's the whole time (I do have a 50 fire/ss so I know how tough fire is for tanks).
Anyway, the changes sucked all the "fun" out of EM for me. I won't touch it. You can get similar st performance out of other sets without sacrificing aoe output or having to wait until super late game to feel powerful.
My point was more about power picks and attack powers. If Stun is made into an attack like Clobber, it will have a longish recharge, which means I probably would still want to keep those first three powers (if you dropped one of them, you'd feel even more like this was a slow set). I guess you could just dump Whirling Hands from my build (though I like having at least a little AOE, even if it is underpowered), but it still seems like any ST problems Energy Melee has would be better fixed by looking at the powers that are already attacks.
Maybe changing it in the end is easier than monkeying with one of the other ST attacks, but it doesn't seem like it would be.
At any rate, it's pretty clear that most of the annoyance with EM is those that ran with it before not liking what it was changed into. People keep bringing up longish animations like other Tankers don't have long animations to deal with at times, either. Complaining about a target dying before ET goes off is no different than a Blaster complaining they didn't get Rain of Arrows off before the team killed most of the mob. It's all in the timing.
Long animation complaints might have more pertinence to the whole "target dying while animating" discussion if an EM tank on a team didn't have other short animating ST attacks to use when a long animation isn't useful. Or like the Tank doesn't have other responsibilities than just straight damage on a team.
I think EM does need a little loving, but there's way too much unwarranted doom over it. Such behavior is the norm for any forums, though.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory
Here is the thing about EMs ST issues: they can only be fixes by:
Altering animations
Increasing recharge time of attacks.
Adding a new power
Altering Animations wont happen for many reasons, from people complaining from their feel changing (again) to Posi not giving time for BaBs to do another animation just to fix a balance issue.
Increasing recharge time will just mess up things further for fluidity. I was not much in favor of the Barrage "buff" as it was.
Adding a new power, off course, can't happen but we can turn Stun into one. It would end with a 16s recharge timer. DPS wise, it would even be better than ET and TF, those would be good due to their bursting nature. I got to say I sort of like the idea of an ET with splash damage.
I can see many high level builds just removing ET in favor of the improved Stun, while others will still prefer the increased ET burst.
(QR)
Corrected an issue with my charts, I was overstating Stone Melee's performance (rounded that set to whole numbers instead of 1 decimal place.)
It now ties up with Energy and Fire in ST damage, no longer that high up.
The problem was only in the 50% charts.
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But then you could kind of say the samething about Stone and Super Strength too no?
I don't disagree that EM would be more attractive with more AOE btw.
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Say what about Stone or Super Strength? Whirling Hands vs. Fault and Tremor vs. Footstomp? Unless they upped Whirling Hands to Dominator radius, it's not even close to those other powers.
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Fault doesn't do damage and while Footstomp outperforms Whirling Hands on a practical level it still leaves SS with one damaging AOE (same as EM and SM).
The problem with EM isn't that it doesn't do enough damage ... it's that its damage is all back loaded and now (as of the ET change) clunky.
So I think if anything were to be changed it would be to revert ET's animation back to the original and bleed off some damage to add to Energy Punch and Whirling Hands (either/or).
If we're keeping the sets in line, Stun should be changed to an AOE (ala Fault and Handclap) and its damage removed.
But I agree with the other posters who say that EM is underwhelming to play currently. My EM Tanker and EM Stalker both have been collecting dust for awhile now.
Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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Fault doesn't do damage and while Footstomp outperforms Whirling Hands on a practical level it still leaves SS with one damaging AOE (same as EM and SM).
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In regard to practical usefulness to their sets, Whirling Hands still ends up at the bottom of the heap. It's not necessarily about damage or the number of AoEs, but how enticing it is as part of the set.
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Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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I struggled with dark/em as well as dark/mace, Whirling and OG stack pretty well, though disappointment abounds when the stun doesn't stack on the people you wanted it too.
I'd say EM is only really applicable to dark for that reason though.
I kind of always liked the idea of making Barrage a cone, but I think I read that Castle put the big NO on that idea. Giving Total Focus (or ET or Stun) some AoE effect (8 foot radius, hits up to ten targets) could be cool, whether its KD, splash damage, stun, -Damage, -Defense, or something.
Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.
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Not to beat an already-nerfed horse, but it was always strange to me from a game-theory perspective that the EM heavy-hitters were so fast-animating in the first place. I mean, here is the biggest pair of melee attacks in any set, including the single highest-damage melee attack in the game, AND they're a poorly-resisted damage type...AND they're both fast as hell? It just seemed like not giving much incentive for picking other sets (aside from the lack of AoE). Especially for PVP and certain sorts of power-gamers.
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When you say both heavy hitters, are you talking about ET &... EP? BS? Cuz TF was never a fast activating power. However, its DPA is higher than EP or BS in the current version of EM, so TF is really no longer a "skippable power" (that's directed at Clouded, btw), esp considering the mag 3 stun.
Anyway, we seem to be headed a bit towards a consensus so I don't feel bad about jumping back in. Basically, hyperbole about how EM is worthless or broken isn't going to get us anywhere. It's a perfectly playable set, but it's underpowered by several, measurable metrics. It certainly can use some help. My suggestions would be increasing WH's damage by about 50%, which would still put its DPA below FSC, Foot Stomp & Frozen Aura, but at least would make it competitive, and get rid of ET's self-damage.
ET's self-damage was balanced against the fact that it was a ridiculous attack, both for DPA and DPE. It's still a bit ridiculous for DPE, but its DPA is very pedestrian now (still good for tanks, just not anything eyepopping), and I wouldn't even mind a bit of an end cost hike if it meant no damage. I mention this, because w/my Fire/EM, I started to drop ET as part of my attack chain during particularly tough AV fights, i.e. Reichman and the like. My last attempt at it, I was the lead tank on a PUG (and please don't scoff at the fact that I was Fire/* since that build has capped S/L def and does most duties just as well as anyone), and I was finding my regen-to-damage rate just about even when I wasn't using ET, but I'd start falling behind just a bit when ET was spammed. W/better support, of course, ET can be used, but then w/better support, anything can be shown to work.
Oh, and I'll continue to remind everyone that Barrage is a crap power, just like almost every other T1 tanker attack. Even the new & improved Barrage has a terrible DPA, and its longer recharge time is forcing ppl to build better attack chains, so I consider it a good thing. It's better than it used to be (it used to be worse than Brawl), and it's better than a lot of other tank T1s, but if you have any other options, you really should skip it in your chains. On that note, switching up Barrage & EP as the T1 & 2 would also improve the set quite a bit by freeing up a power slot. While that applies to just about every other powerset, it'd really help out EM.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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Dark/stone. Fault+OG = aoe boss stuns. Perma. Tanktroller to the extreme.
Dark/em does make a neat vampire-ish build or something where your life is constantly draining (ET+OG) and you need to feed off of people with dark regen.
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ET's self-damage was balanced against the fact that it was a ridiculous attack, both for DPA and DPE.
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dave_p: Actually, the self damage was for the extra damage and end discount, not the DPA (which wasn't originally a balance factor). TF has a 20s rech and deals 3.56 scale damage; ET also has a 20s rech and deals 4.56 scale damage. Without the self damage component, ET should have a recharge of 26.25s and an end cost of 23.712.
--
re: Thunder Strike-like TF/ET
I fiddled around with the power forumlas a bit to try and figure out how Castle balanced Thunder Strike, since it is only partially an AoE (just the eneergy component). Nothing I've tried has been able to replicate it right, but it is quite apparant that it pays for the AoE.
If Thunder Strike was st, it would deal 3.24 scale damage.
If Thunder Strike was a true aoe, it would deal 1.59 scale damage.
Right now it deals 1 smashing and 0.96 energy (1.96 total) with only the energy being AoE. If you wanted either TF or ET to get splash damage, it would take a damage for it. Considering those are the highest DPA powers in the set, adding AoE would reduce its single target prowess even further.
[edit: Oh, there is another option and just asking for the splash as a rule breaking 'extra,' but that would be pretty hard to sell Castle.]
Meh. Don't care. I've got 2 EM tankers. Enjoy playing both of them. If my survivability is down to whether or not an attack takes me 1 second or 2.65 seconds, I've got bigger problems.
�Life's hard. It's even harder when you're stupid.� ― John Wayne
�Just think of how stupid the average person is, and then realize half of them are even stupider!� - George Carlin
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Meh. Don't care. I've got 2 EM tankers. Enjoy playing both of them ...
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Ultimately this is the most important goal with any of the sets within the framework of the game.
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Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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Yes, I've stated many times I run a Dark/EM Tank.
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Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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Yes, I've stated many times I run a Dark/EM Tank.
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And how do you like it?
leave out stun, stick with damage, the disorient from the other attacks will stack nicely without that weak move
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Meh. Don't care. I've got 2 EM tankers. Enjoy playing both of them ...
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Ultimately this is the most important goal with any of the sets within the framework of the game.
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I think we had a few Ice Melee tanks who enjoyed the old, damage-less Frozen Aura style of play too. Thank goodness they got overruled. 
The whole, "as long as you're having fun," argument doesn't hold a lot of water unless everyone, or at least a decent % of the players are "enjoying" playing a set. If there are enough voices of dissension, I think the least the devs can do is take a look at the set and how it's balanced with the other sets. Right now, I see a lot of ppl not being totally satisfied playing EM.
To Sarrate: I think it took like, what, I4-ish, for the devs to even get a clue about DPA? So of course you're right, ET was never balanced around DPA in concept, but in reality, it may as well have been. The normalized numbers seem harsh though--I knew it enjoyed a good 50% or better DPE discount, but I'd hate to pay full price for the damage. Maybe just cut down on the incoming damage by 1/2?
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
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Incidentally anyone try a Dark/EM Tanker? I would think that combo would actually work fairly well (OG + Whirling Hands).
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Yes, I've stated many times I run a Dark/EM Tank.
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And how do you like it?
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I think it's ok. Crowd control is excellent, minion, LTS and even bosses are usually stunned until dead.
Here's a quick run down of how I enter a spawn(s).
No OG toggled and I use Taunt and DS to gain aggro. Sometimes corner pulling or combining groups, whatever the situation calls for.
After a second, I toggle OG and hit WH. I then target the nearest boss and drop ET on him to stun him as well. If there's another boss I try and get his attention. Usually I fire off Dark Regen during this time since my health is low from alpha, OG and ET.
Rinse/Repeat.
Against AVs, DArk is pretty weak without some major buffage compared to other tanks. Dark Regen healing off one target is pretty lame and none of the stuns, fears, etc really matter against a big ole bag of HP and PToD.
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To Sarrate: I think it took like, what, I4-ish, for the devs to even get a clue about DPA? So of course you're right, ET was never balanced around DPA in concept, but in reality, it may as well have been. The normalized numbers seem harsh though--I knew it enjoyed a good 50% or better DPE discount, but I'd hate to pay full price for the damage. Maybe just cut down on the incoming damage by 1/2?
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I would say it was not until perhaps Issue 8 and im guessing. The sets created during CoV were definitively not balanced around DPA. Actually, I think the first set to ever be balanced with DPA in mind was Dual Blades.
The players may had started to think about actual DPA around I4, though. Perhaps select players earlier.
Would giving Stun the "Clobber Treatment" really help, though? It helped Mace because Mace didn't have hard enough ST damage. The same cannot be said for EM at all, I would say. If you up Stun's damage, you lose the utility of the power (remember how much the stun in Clobber was scaled back when it was given damage), and you're simply given yet another ST power to choose from.
If anything is done to EM, it would make a lot more sense to adjust one of the other attacks. Making ET more like Thunderstrike is interesting, upping Whirling Hand's damage a tad, etc. would make more sense. Or just tweaking the damage up a little bit for ST damage in the set (by adjusting one of the current damage powers) is the way to go, I would say.
Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory