So, Energy Melee

I see people complain about it here and there: What changed to cause such unrest?

Energy transfer had the activation time increased by about 1.5s and the animation was changed with it.

Barrage had its damage, endurance, and recharge cost increased to be equivalent with attacks like smite, ice sword, and ablating strike.

Total focus is now mag 3 instead of mag 4.

So...is it really that bad, or is it no longer such an outlier in terms of single-target output? I've been pondering a something/EM tank and I need to know!

Oh, and thank you for listing the changes.

It's no longer the best single target damage, but it's still very good ST damage. Part of the complaint is that the AE damage and AE mitigation tools, or lackthereof, in the set aren't enough to justify having as good ST damage as several other sets.

Oh, and then there's the people that complain using ET and TF gets them killed because of the long animation times, but I equate that to attributing the death caused by jumping off of a 100' cliff to the trash that littered the bottom rather than the jump itself.

General lack of AoE is my big issue with the set. I like AoE, and Energy Melee has none. Okay, Whirling Hands, but that's more of a PBAoE taunt. I've currently got an Inv/EM I'm working on, and certainly more enjoyable now that I can colour the pom-poms.

That said, maybe throw some splash damage in TF or something. Not much, but anything to help the abysmal aoe capability of EM.

Well, now that Heraclea's convinced me to make an EM tanker, I need to decide on a primary set.

I was thinking of Willpower or Dark Armor. Probably Dark Armor.

Just to be clear, 6 seconds is a bit much for barrage, I agree.

Well, because of the long animations of Energy Melee now, you can get into trouble during the attacks, as pointed out above. During the animations, you can't activate things like Dark Regeneration. However, toggle powers, like Rise to the Challenge, will continue to work just fine during the animations, adding to your survivability. Since Willpower has no real click-based mitigation, it will allow you to live longer during the long-animating attacks, where if you go Dark Armor, you might find yourself dead because you couldn't activate Dark Regen in time.

I'm not saying that Dark/EM is bad, just that I think Willpower/EM would be better.

Ah, okay.

I use sands of mu and shadow maul on my dark/dark scrapper, and I don't seem to run into trouble using dark regen. This being in solo missions set to 6-8 people*.

Still a good point, though.

* My sad sands of mu anecdote above was my dark/sd scrapper.

From experience I can say that DA goes well with EM. The reduced stun magnitude on Total Focus produced protests because it was no longer a one shot boss mez - but for DA with OG, it still is! And so is Stun, and BS and TF both have 60% chances for the same.

The real problem with Barrage, IMO, is not the recharge time, but the animation, and the fact that it's the tier 1. If neither of these change, Barrage is going to continue to be a problem for Tankers - because they have to take it, and because it will either be the worst DPA in the set or way too slow for a tier 1 attack. Brutes and Stalkers dodge that bullet.*

That said, EM does have some decent attacks. EP, BS, and WH are not timewasters.** EP has good DPA, BS has standard DPA and a 60% stun chance, and WH may be one of the weaker PBAoEs but it's still multitarget damage on a tank, which is always a win.

* Then again, /Elec brutes and stalkers get Energize at 28. So yeah, no sympathy.
** I'm a little annoyed that this needs to be said more than once. The numbers are there for everyone to see, and yet this canard gets trotted out any time anyone asks about EM. Never mind that EP = Stone Fists and BS = Haymaker/Pulverize...

Using dark armor would also allow further stacking of stuns. Going off of CoD, Oppressive Gloom's Mag 2 Stun stacking on Whirling Hand's 30% chance of Mag 2 Stun means that even bosses will be knocked silly a third of the time.

Coupled with all the other stuns flying off of EM, you'd probably be quite safe.

Death Shroud will help a little against EM's woeful lack of AoE damage.

Seems like it would be functional and probably hold aggro really well.

I wouldn't touch the combo myself, but for tanking, sure why not?

Nope. Dark Regen is far too much of an end sucker for me to deal with as a heal. Yes, it's an awesome heal, no doubt about it, but for me the cost is too high.

As for EM, as far as I'm concerned, Castle and BAB broke the set beyond playability. There's nothing fun about it for me. It's why I deleted my first and main villain and recreated him from scratch as a DM/WP from the EM/FA brute he used to be. He had all the accolades and was partly IOed out when he got the axe.

I would find EM/Dark excruciatingly painful to play.

But I solo. For someone that actually wants to tank for a team, I can easily see the positives.

Huh, my experience with Dark Regen is not like that at all - I've been able to use it effectively from 17 onwards on brutes and a scrapper.

I can't say anything wrt energy melee, though. I find soloing on my ice/stone tanker excruciating enough, and find it hard to believe that em could be more annoying than that.