Thinking about deleting my energy^2

It seems like everyone on teams hates her. They don't say as much, but they also tend to stay really quiet so I think that some are talking using PMs.

I realize my toon's kb is annoying, and she's not powerful enough to kill what she knocks back...

Has anyone ever had an energy^2 they used in teams and didn't just abandon?

I never see this AT around [though she's fun, but not when I'm focused on what I pain I'm being to the team]

As long as you keep the enemies in the corner or on the wall people don't complain unless worrying about aoe's or tanks wanting to keep the aggro centered on them. My advice, if it's fun to play, just stick with teams that don't mind. When I'm on teams with people that use knockback, whether they keep the enemies in nice piles, or knock them around haphazardly, I adjust my playing accordingly. I'm not going to complain about it, or kick the person off the team, but find a way to use it to our advantage. Certainly not everyone is like that, but that's the joy of freewill and different personalities. Don't give up on alts you enjoy, just make sure you don't purposefully grief the team.

I have an energy/energy that I soloed the game with through level 20. Danged powerful alone. i took an alternate version of him into AE to see what would happen on teams/at later levels. I would never do a TF with this guy lol. He is not team friendly. For that I started my Fire/Mental. But solo he is da bomb.

I pretty much abandoned my Energy Blaster. I rerolled him from Energy Manipulation to Mental Manipulation and still didn't like him.

I only play to PUG, and I found it very frustrating to deal with the knockback. I thought I was going to be able to just use hover and shoot down or shoot stuff into corners. The reality was rather different. I know exactly what you mean about people faking disconnects. I've never had a character I've struggled with so much (EDIT: Wrong. My Fire/Sonic troller is the most frustrating, because of the endurance use.)

Energy Blast DOES solo well, but on a PUG it's way too much hassle for very little return, at least for me. I don't want to tell you to delete the character, but I felt a lot better when I just mothballed mine and went with something that could damage things without irritating the heck out of people.

I hated my En/Fire, but that was a whole collection of issues (literally; started her in issue 2, didn't hit 50 until, like, issue 11 or something.) Back in the good old days, she did damage literally half as fast as my ice; there is no primary/secondary synch; and it's really, really hard to AOE kill a bunch of people before they kill you.

I love /Elec and /En for the same reason; you can hop in, open an amazing can of whup*** in about a second and a half on one guy, and hop back out again. Bonesmasher/Energy Punch, especially if you happen to have Build Up and Aim going, is pretty hard to argue with.

As far as Energy Blast, the "if I shoot it, it's mine" rule is a pretty good one. Singletarget, you've got a lot of ranged strength in Power Blast and Power Burst. With clever positioning, Energy Torrent can be singletarget. Pick, say, a lieutenant and just go bowling.

As far as AOE: nobody cares how where a corpse lands. A lot of this depends on how fast the team kills, but you can often find a good time to let fly with the Torrent where you'll drop three, four guys right off the injured list. If you're Explosive Blast-level there's a trick where you hit XB while Torrent is activating, and you hit the same guys with both attacks.

This is in addition to using your attacks to nudge people back into the tar patch or pile 'em up in a corner or whatever. Most Energy attacks have frustratingly inconsistent KB, so I didn't really play those games.

So if you want to give it another try, there's some tactics. If not... I rarely delete anything- especially while we've got free transfers- but it's perfectly acceptable to backburner someone for, oh, six to eighteen months.

With the use of a little bit of tactics and sensible gameplay I've never had a problem with an energy blast set wether it were a blaster, defender, corruptor or dom. Blasters are about the easiest AT to make nrg blast work because of the flying corpses rule is easier to put into effect.

Using walls or environment to control kb, hovering above your targets, knocking targets into an aoe kill zone are all helpful tools to making an nrg blaster enjoyable and a pretty decent damage mitigator. Focusing on single hard targets is also a big part of making an nrg/nrg work for you. Starting with a few melee attacks before dropping your aoe's can often be the difference between scattering living and dead targets. NRG blast and KB sets in general aren't for everyone personally I love them because of the added challenge/fun of using positional tactics.

And just to ease your worried mind..........I highly doubt all of your PuG teammates are talking about you through PM's..... they may set up a private channel to talk about you though

My Energy/Energy/Force was created as a blapper in issue 4 and is my main and has been since new defiance was rolled out.

Knockback is an extremely powerful mitigation tool. Most people don't realize how powerful it is and instead focus on the "annoyance" of the KB. I only run about 7% defense from set bonuses yet I typically out survive most of the scrappers I team with due almost exclusively to the KB. I have Energy Torrent, Explosive Blast, and Power Thrust slotted with Kinetic Crash sets and most of my mitigation comes from using them in combat.

What you should do to assist your team:

-Increase your damage slotting.
-Pick up assault.
-Slot sets that give global damage set bonuses.
-Slot Aim and Build up for ED capped recharge and use them whenever they are up.
-Use red inspirations every time they drop.
-Develop an effective attack chain that suits your play style and let's you maximize your defiance buffs.

This will solve your low damage/power problems.

Your team needs to adapt to you to get the most out of your powers. Things they should do include:

-Bringing a controller along that has an AoE immob power that provides -KB.
-Tanks and Scrappers should fight near walls and other objects instead of in the middle of a huge room that way when you do KB something it flys into the object/wall and doesn't go far.
-Skip melee toons on the team and invite stormies, illusion controllers, forcefielders, and other energy using toons.
-Team with people that realize the value of KB.
-Don't team with whiners.

My first lvl 50 is an Eneregy/Electric/Electric Blaster.

I team with her quite a lot now, especially on a Saturday TF group. I follow the rule of "If I KB it, it's mine to kill" which means I use my ST blasts more often than my AoE.

I am rarely the only KB character on the team. I think that Energy gets a raw deal by being blamed for any and all KB when teamed, totally forgetting all the other powersets that have KB in them.

If you truly think a PuG is talking about you behind your back, then that's not a team I would want to be a part of. But perhaps you are being a bit oversensitive. What if it's just a bunch of players who don't like to type while mowing thru mobs?

I somewhat disagree with Claws - I think adjusting to playstyle is a two-way street. I would not say that I expect the 7 other members of a team to only adjust to my playstyle - but OTOH, I don't think it is fair to be the only one expected to make adjustments, especially if I am being effective on the team. But then, hopefully, I am one of the "good ones" and not the "retarded monkey".

In the couple of years I've been playing, I've noticed a distinct change in how tanks and teams operate. Tanks herding, or Blasters pulling, to a corner is almost a rarity these days, esp. blueside. However, in those circumstances KB offers a lot to team, keeping the mob in one place and on its back.

Moving the mob first doesn't happen much these days. The more typical modern technique is for the tank to jump right into the middle of the mob, grab aggro, and then everyone pounds on the mob until it's dead.

In many PuGs, the tank is lucky if a Scrapper isn't reaching the mob before they are, just to prove how tough they can take an Alpha. Heck, with softcap builds, half of my so-called squishies can separate from main group and solo mobs with a similar "charge right in" approach.

The AoE fiends like Fire/MM Blasters are going to be screaming (or planning to switch teams) if their mobs keep being scattered by KB.

There also seems to be a growing focus upon (or just appreciation of) AoE DPS, but there's less -KB immobs being cast than there used to be (it seems like 90% of the controllers I see now are Fire/*, Ill/* or Mind/*; I can't remember the last time I played with a Earth/* and they used to be all over the place).

Long story short, I think the game's typical play-style has moved away from a point where KB-heavy sets are more of an asset than a liability.

That changes totally if you're really good at handling the KB (I've seen a few skilled NRGs use the KB to keep mobs bunched up, aiding the AoE fiends), or if your team is prepared to herd/pull into corners or up against walls. If you're not that skilled and the team is typical, I'd expect your KB to be an unwelcome addition.

The point of the game is to have fun. If you enjoy the challenge of learning how to use your KB effectively, or you have regular friends/SG-mates to team with who will herd/pull, then I think you'll have fun. I think you'll have fun solo too.

However, if you're spending 95% of your time teaming with PuGs, you'd probably be better off rolling up a Fire/MM or some other AoE monster because the ******** will disappear, the teams will comment on how destructive you are, and that might be a lot more fun for you.

Does anyone have a video of brilliantly played knockback in a team? I hear about it on the boards a lot, but can't say I've ever seen it.

This:

Quote:

-Tanks and Scrappers should fight near walls and other objects instead of in the middle of a huge room that way when you do KB something it flys into the object/wall and doesn't go far.

Is what I was talking about when I said this:

Quote:

Minor adjustments are one thing

Fighting near a wall is a minor adjustment. My problem isn't with making minor adjustments to deal with a character's powers. My problem is with the implied "I'm going to play however I want, you 7 people need to just deal with it" attitude behind the statement. Am I accusing you of having that attitude? No. But you did imply it.

What if the team had seven members before the energy blaster is invited, and none of them is a controller? Do you kick someone in order to invite a controller, just to contain one character's knockback? That's an unreasonable thing to ask, since there is no guarantee anyone on that team has a controller to switch to, which would be the easiest solution.

Like I said, there is good knockback and bad knockback. Energy blast gets a bad rap because it is very commonly the first blaster a new player creates, and all the people (who are also new players a lot of the time) that they team with get a bad impression of what the set is. You can't tell me that a new player automatically knows how to use their knockback intelligently. Well, you could tell me, but I wouldn't believe it

Edit: Ad Astra: I have never gotten the impression from any of your posts that you are a retarded monkey

I've found NRG/NRG to be quite fun (particularly as it's my main toon), and the knockback is the best way of soloing in groups where your glassy cannon would quickly be overwhelmed, and sending mobs flying left, right and centre while you clean up is a much cooler feeling than just standing there and hitting one thing after another while they all club you over the head.

In a team, KB needs to be used far more deliberately as it can be very annoying for everyone else. I tend to use it only when going for 'my' target, or if someone's in need of a respite from being smacked in the face, or if a particular boss ability needs delaying. Otherwise running round like a headless chicken sending every mook flying and them all aggroing you is a good recipe for being ganked.

All in all, I play NRG/NRG because it looks cool and is pretty effective.

Wow, great discussion over the weekend.

As for herding to the tank, that's kind of lame. And while I personally love it when we pull around a corner, it just doesn't happen much. I run into more "fast tanks" than I do pull-to-corner teams.

I admit, she rocks at solo. But I don't really like solo.

I've not been kicked and I've not been told not to play. I've had that happen with a fire/ controller and an ill/ controller.

I"m not abandoning her...yet.

The only adapting of a team to me that I've ever done is announce to the team that I'm an ill/storm, a Lord of Chaos, when joining a team. Usually I get a person asking what that means.

And, after posting this and saying I never see and energy/ blaster, I teamed with one this weekend. Even though I'm katana/wp and depend on RttC and DA for surviability, everything was cool. He didn't operate like a master, but to me it's no biggie. I do have an F button on my keyboard.

If there was an enhancement you could slot that changed KB to KD how much would the popularity of Energy rise?