Energy Melee - will I regret it?

I've recently come up with a character concept that I'm excited about. After 5+ years in the game I spend most of my time playing my 50s so I jump at the chance to really work on a new character when a good concept comes to me.

My original idea included using War Mace as the secondary...but none of the weapon options worked very well with the whole concept and costume idea. I really wish we had more "bulky" and "modern" options...the tech mace is a joke and none of the other ones fit.

So, I decided to modify the concept a bit and roll with Energy Melee. I tried this set once back in I3 and could never get past level 12 or so...the damage was/is so pitiful on those early attacks. However, with more resources and experience now, I'm confident that the levelling won't be such a drag. But for those who have experienced Energy Melee...how does it compare to, say, Super Strength? That is my favorite Tanker secondary and I play it all the time. Is the single target damage comparable? Is it better/worse? Will I be really disappointed with Whirling Hands?

Ages ago I did a workup of DPS and DPE values comparing SS and EM, and found that without Rage, they are pretty equal over time. EM gets much better up front burst damage, while SS gets much better AoE damage.

Unfortunately, on tanks EM is really slow. Every other AT that gets EM gets one heavy hitter early and the other late, for a nice steady upsurge in damage. For tanks, however, the heavy hitters are the last two power picks of a secondary, so they don't become available till 35 and 38, which is pretty much near the halfway mark of your career. So you'll spend the first half of your career plinking away at enemies solo, waiting for Bonesmasher to recharge, or playing meat shield for teams, never putting out nearly the damage everyone else can do.

The stuns are handy, but not really reliable. With SS, I know that if I need to make something not hit me so fast, I can run in and KO it and it'll go flying in the air, and possibly even be held for a short time. EM is more of casual mitigation, nice when it happens, but don't rely on it to survive.

That said, I've always enjoyed EM. The "pom-poms" are a very good looking effect, and are really nice now that they can be colored to match a concept/costume. Heck, been thinking of making a character that draws on the power of rainbows, lol.

Really, it's up to you though. It's slow, but can pump out decent damage in the late game, with pretty high burst damage. Just don't expect to mow down large mobs like SS can.

Edit to add: Whirling Hands isn't anywhere near as good at damage or mitigation as Foot Stomp, so on EM toons I usually skip it. On tanks, however, who take good advantage of AoEs for aggro drawing, it can come in handy. I wouldn't kill myself to get it in ASAP, but if you have room for it, why not?

Hmmm..sounds like I may not enjoy it so much. I didn't mention that Shield is my primary, and I do plan a soft cap and high recharge build, so having a big AoE to use once or twice in each encounter will come with that (Shield Charge). Will the presence of that (plus the +damage of AAO) soften the blow?

There's a lot of takeaways here regarding EM and from a practical point, all valid. Its really up to you to determine how important that concept build is to you.

I can say that I made my Inv/EM tank at release and still enjoy pulling her out to run tfs with. I won't ever delete the toon but have no interest in making another EM toon. Its clear the nerfs to the set has taken the lustre off of EM. In the early days, EM was so good that folks paired it with any of the original primaries.

Its interesting that nowadays, Shield Defense is such a darling (for good reasons) that it will function at all grades of 'fine' paired with any secondary with IO investment.

If you can stand the pacing of solo and have the patience to get your heavy hitters at 35 & 38 give it a shot. If you plan on teaming to help get to the latter levels quicker, focus on being the meatshield (taunt early is a good idea) and rely on your team to drop stuff quickly.

Probably.

Concept is king, at least in my book. I have an Ice/EM tanker, and an Inv/EM tanker, and they both still kick ***. Screw all the whining and ******** that people do about EM. If you want to use it, then use it.

Energy Melee is a bad Tanker Secondary?When did this happen?!

I recently saw a Ivln/EM Tanker, and he hit like a Mack Truck!(recently being roughly 2 weeks ago)

He charged up, and BLAM! Dead +2 Minion!Jumped up in the air with some hang time, comes down, and BLAP!Dead Lt.!Triggered his Hasten, then started spinning away!

From what I can tell, he capitalized on recharge for his Whirling Hands, and it went off rather often.He killed things moderatly quick.Then when it came to Bosses, well, I sat back and watched him obliterate them with his higher up ST attacks.

I want to roll a /EM tanker my self, but I have 2 projects im already working on.It is on my next build list though.

Id say go for it!

From what iv seen, /EM isnt bad at all.You just have to learn how to use it.Unfortunatly, those who had it before the change give it a bad name, simply because they wont go back and re-learn and re-slot it.

Make up your own mind.

I had a great comparison post going for this last night, and lost it. Grrrr.

So in short. EM has a lot of hate for it right now because of some changes that were made to it. I do agree that it needs some tweaking still, but it's not that bad of a set. Just go into it knowing you're going to be doing mostly ST damage, and you'll be okay (Shield Charge will be nice to have, though, as someone pointed out). No Tank set is really doing that badly right now. There are just some sets that obviously need some tweaking still. EM is one of them.

Soilent, you noted in your first post that you didn't like the first attacks. Well, Barrage now does more damage, and is actually worth using now. Yes, it has a 6 sec. recharge to go with it, but this is hardly uncommon for the first three ST powers that Tankers get. It works best if you think of Energy Punch as your Tier 1 (even though it's still set as a Tier 2), as it recharges faster. I felt a lot more satisfied with the attack chain I had for those first three attacks when I used Energy Punch--Barrage--Bone Smasher. Energy Punch is almost back up by the end of that without too much of a wait at low levels. With some recharge later, you can have a chain with those if you want.

The stuns in EM are also great. War Mace has some, but they're scattered all over between a few powers, and the only one I see regularly fire is Whirling Mace on a minion, and that's because I have so many on me. EM, however, has a chance for stun in most of its attacks, so you'll see it pop up quite frequently, which is nice (should be nice on Shields, which is defense based, too).

Your higher tier attacks do have longer animations, but you can roll with them and use them when needed. Your first three ST attacks aren't bad... use them when your target has low health, rather than firing off ET or Total Focus on a quarter health boss.

My only 50 Tanker is Dark/Energy, and I've played a couple of Superstrength tanks to the mid 30s.

SS is better, and that's before the awesomeness (so I hear) of Footstomp.
But it's not twice as good - Energy Melee is probably 75% as effective at worse. If you enjoy the look and feel of the set (and I do) you're not going to spend every moment of your playtime wishing you'd chosen differently, and rueing the day you picked Energy Melee.
Its probably one of the worse underperforming sets in the game, but its not unplayable by any means.

SS gives you good AoE and a permanent damage and To Hit boost.
EM trades all that for three attacks that deliver guaranteed stun and some ok-ish front-loaded damage. But it looks great doing so.

Mobs don't wander that much while stunned, Hera. They've fixed that annoying tricky where they could move away at sprint speeds (and leap buildings, heh), so they're not moving much. Probably the biggest issue for the stuns (on a team... they're great solo as is) is you only have it happen so much in an AOE. Whirling Hands has too weak of damage anyway, but upping its stun ability would actually be fairly nice. Other sets get aoe KD or KB, so that would go a long way toward helping on that angle.

Awesome, I've heard the "long animation" complaint far too much. 2-3 second animations are all over the place in this game, and they are usable by any set. If you or your team are screwed in the few seconds it takes to do an Energy Transfer or Total Focus, you shouldn't have been activating it in the first place (or you would have been screwed anyway).

The whole "my target is dead before the activation goes off" is overdone as well. Just plan your targeting and attacks better. I have my targets picked off from me on all my characters... my blaster was wasting attacks at range tonight. It happens. Target as best you can, and know that it's going to happen no matter what.

That isn't to say that Total Focus couldn't use some love for its animation, though. I do think that shortening it to KO Blow's length (2.3 seconds or so?) would be a great help. That said, people do tend to overdo the "it's a long animation and screws everything up" angle. Just wanting a little balance in the viewpoint on that.

EM was overpowered in the upfront ST burst department, especially noticeably so in PvP. Castle then balanced it more inline with the other sets. Now people compare it to how it was and think it is overly gimped. Overall I basically don't find my EM any worse off to my SS etc. There are many different attributes and across the different powersets, cost per attributes vary, so you will/can be well/better off in some area, at times. People tend to only notice ST damage output over a small amount of time rather than other attributes.

I am not saying there couldn't be tweaks, I thought with the last changes perhaps Whirling Hands could recharge sooner to balance out the whole of the set with other sets better but apparently that is fine.

I have a decent sized stable of EM's. Since the nerf, I don't play any of them anymore. They just aren't fun now.

...but that's me. just sayin'