Reduce the nerf on energy transfer.
By
Aura_Familia,
Posted on: 2010-04-05 20:41 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Sounds great. Won't happen. They've nerfed EM right where they want it. You've a better chance of getting WH buffed.
Be well, people of CoH.
I don't mind the mechanics changes of Energy Transfer, but I miss the DETHPOKE animation 
http://www.fimfiction.net/story/36641/My-Little-Exalt
Eh, the old /EM was borderline as a set in my opinion based on leveling a Stone/EM to 50 back in issue 7-8; it really was pretty bad damage until ET & TF. ET was what made the set, and once it got that horrendously long animation the set as a whole suffered.
I pulled out that Stone/EM shortly after the nerf and ran several missions and a couple of ITF's... I found it highly frustrating to play thanks to either poor damage or being stuck in animation for extended periods. For now BlarneyStone is semi-permanently retired awaiting a possible future game change that might make the set viable again. I'm not holding my breath on any changes but I'm not going to delete a 50 either. For now I've abandoned the character and am playing other, more functional toons.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
The thing is, EM is still one of the best ST damage sets out there, particularly with SOs and low end-IO builds (ie what the game is balanced for). Based on Bill's work here, only Fire exceeds it for Brutes (and were it ported to scrappers, it would be top). It probably feels weak because it was brokenly good before.
Whirling Hands needs looking at though IMO, really poor compared to other sets' AoEs.
People keep saying the self damage component was the tradeoff for a quick super damaging atack. Granted, I never got to 50 on my Energy Melee toon, but for the while I used it pre-nerf, I always thought that I got a bargain, the -hp was barely a problem.
For curiosity's sake: How much is it now? What % of your lifebar goes away? Is it the same in PvP?
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Have you played an EM Brute/Tanker/Stalker since the I13 changes? Between free base resists for just about everyone and DR on damage buffs and slotted enhancements, ET might get to around 400 damage (more on melee characters without significant resistance, like Regens or SRs). Prior to I13 (even after the animation change, but before all the PvP crap) you could take off at least twice that and sometimes even more. While I have no doubts that the change was prompted at least in part by PvP, I don't think it was necessary to change the Tanker or Brute versions as those weren't a serious threat in PvP (Stalkers could AS + ET for a quick two-shot kill, or ET + ranged followup if they had enough +dam). The problem was that EM was far and away the best single-target set for PvE, which came at the expense of being an absolutely horrid AoE set. Now EM is only slightly better than other sets at single-target damage, and still has terrible AoE. In other words, you can find sets that have better or comparable (maybe slightly worse) single-target damage that can also crank out better AoE, making EM a bad choice.|
Originally Posted by Fear_of_Hell
Why? Because i personally think it was a pvp motivated change. You could drop anything in about 2 seconds with it back in the day. But the tradeoff is that it does damage to the user. Now with the new(ish) PVP changes, it actually does MORE DAMAGE than it did before.
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Originally Posted by PhroX
The thing is, EM is still one of the best ST damage sets out there, particularly with SOs and low end-IO builds (ie what the game is balanced for). Based on Bill's work here, only Fire exceeds it for Brutes (and were it ported to scrappers, it would be top). It probably feels weak because it was brokenly good before.
Whirling Hands needs looking at though IMO, really poor compared to other sets' AoEs. |
Did ET need to be changed? Yeah. Did it need to be nerfed as badly as it was? Not really.
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The thing is, the devs have always said they balance for SOs. And energy isn't the only set that falls behind when it comes to stupid levels of recharge the game wasn't designed for.|
Originally Posted by macskull
Problem here is when you start getting into the higher-end builds, where you start becoming limited by animation/activation time more than the recharge time of powers. Once you get enough recharge, EM just doesn't have a fluid attack chain, and the long animations hinder Fury building on a Brute.
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Also, EM isn't bad at ST damage high levels of recharge. Here's the thread for 250% rech.
I'm not saying there's no issue, but the problem with boosting ET - or other ST attacks - to make them better at high recharge is that they'll make Energy more powerful at "normal" recharge, which is not only where the game is balanced about, but it's also where Energy is far from needing a boost.
Hence why I feel that a boost to Whirling Hands is most likely, as EM is lacking in AoE damage at all levels of recharge. Give it a damage scalar of, say, 1.4-1.5 and it'd be much more useful (~FS damage, but in a smaller area and with no Rage).
Though I'll admit I've not personally taken an EM character to high levels, so I'm only going off the numbers here, thus perhaps I'm missing something.
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That included throwing Gloom into the EM attack chain, and that's 250% recharge. Getting 250% recharge into a build tends to sacrifice alot of the survivability of the toon.
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Originally Posted by PhroX
The thing is, the devs have always said they balance for SOs. And energy isn't the only set that falls behind when it comes to stupid levels of recharge the game wasn't designed for.
Also, EM isn't bad at ST damage high levels of recharge. Here's the thread for 250% rech. I'm not saying there's no issue, but the problem with boosting ET - or other ST attacks - to make them better at high recharge is that they'll make Energy more powerful at "normal" recharge, which is not only where the game is balanced about, but it's also where Energy is far from needing a boost. Hence why I feel that a boost to Whirling Hands is most likely, as EM is lacking in AoE damage at all levels of recharge. Give it a damage scalar of, say, 1.4-1.5 and it'd be much more useful (~FS damage, but in a smaller area and with no Rage). Though I'll admit I've not personally taken an EM character to high levels, so I'm only going off the numbers here, thus perhaps I'm missing something. |
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Sadly I agree.
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Originally Posted by Bill Z Bubba
Sounds great. Won't happen.
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It may have been brokenly good before, but I think it's woeful now.|
Originally Posted by PhroX
The thing is, EM is still one of the best ST damage sets out there, particularly with SOs and low end-IO builds (ie what the game is balanced for). Based on Bill's work here, only Fire exceeds it for Brutes (and were it ported to scrappers, it would be top). It probably feels weak because it was brokenly good before.
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The powerset spends too much of its time in animation. Other powersets can achieve better AoE damage, or better single-target damage with sufficient recharge (which is available from far more than IOs - try playing with someone who can give you +recharge).
But there's a part of this outside the DPS statistics. Even if you assume the DPS stats are adequate, the problem is that, to sustain them, you spend a lot of time in animations. Time spent in animations is time you can't spend doing anything else. You can't move, or adjust movement if you're already in flight while attacking. You can't heal. You can't taunt a foe off to the side. If your teammates ream out your current target, your stuck completing the animation on your nice, long attack, even if it deals you self-damage at the end.
With sets that require more, smaller, faster attacks to achieve their DPS, you have the option on every attack to interrupt your chain in order to do something else you need to do other than damage. The inability to do that with EM is a pretty significant downside, IMO. The fact that it's DPS doesn't scale with +recharge like other powersets do is just part of what makes its new format so unattractive. This game isn't hard by default, but if you want to try to make it harder by cranking up your foe settings or trying to run through things fast, being able to react becomes increasingly important, especially if your Tanker primary or Stalker/Brute secondary is click-centric. One long animating attack is manageable, but bumping the set to two really hammers the set's all-around effectiveness.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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Actually, I think he posted the wrong link. Here is the same test, without Gloom into the mix.
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Originally Posted by BrandX
That included throwing Gloom into the EM attack chain, and that's 250% recharge. Getting 250% recharge into a build tends to sacrifice alot of the survivability of the toon.
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Yup. Please note brute and scrapper energy take the 2nd and 3rd spots respectively.|
Originally Posted by BubblegumBomb
Actually, I think he posted the wrong link. Here is the same test, without Gloom into the mix.
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EM's ST damage output is still solid. No one can deny that. It's aoe output still sucks. Also undeniable.
I still hate the new EM animation. I hated watching enemies die from teammate damage during the animation. I hated being rooted for over 3 seconds from two attacks. Two attacks that are necessary to attain that high ST damage output. That was part of the reason that my em/fa main villain was remade after hitting 50 and getting all the power buff accolades.
He just wasn't worth keeping with those two sets.
Be well, people of CoH.
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I've seen that said often. Do you think the reverse is also true? Elec and spines offers only slightly better aoe then SS and claws. (i think, SS and claws might be better) Yet have terrible ST. |
Originally Posted by macskull
Now EM is only slightly better than other sets at single-target damage, and still has terrible AoE. In other words, you can find sets that have better or comparable (maybe slightly worse) single-target damage that can also crank out better AoE, making EM a bad choice.
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I tried to stick with spines and elec, but never managed to keep them.
"It's a scrapper. If he can't handle it, no one can." -BrandX
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If ST was useful in CoH Stalkers would be more popular. Particularly with the ability to increase spawn sizes, specializing in ST is just another way to say underpowered.|
Originally Posted by PhroX
The thing is, EM is still one of the best ST damage sets out there
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ET is still better than the formulas dictate, or so I remember Castle saying, but its ridiculousness was the only reason EM was competitive. Nerfing it would have made sense if this was an open power system, but I have to wonder just how much consideration was given to EM as a whole.
Regardless, what you need is a buffed Whirling Hands, not more ST. It could also use less power in exchange for faster animations, because it has way too much rooting, and melees need to be able to react.
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
As others have said, Energy Melee could use a buff, but trying to get ET changed again is not likely to happen.
You'd probably have better luck, and improve the set much more, by trying to push for Whirling Hands to be buffed in some way.
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Castle said after the ET/TF changes that Whirling Hands would not be getting a buff to compensate, so I doubt this will happen.
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Originally Posted by PhroX
Hence why I feel that a boost to Whirling Hands is most likely
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@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."
I'm more fond of changing the self-damage portion to be affected by damage buffs, the same way the rest of the damage is, along with a corresponding reduction in base self-damage (No real balance or effective reason, I just like it). That, and changing the striking portion of the animation to flow better with the windup. Simply changing that portion to the old ET animation would be an improvement.
Wind up above the shoulders and strike at the waist? How... ugly. As if a self-damaging attack with a relatively slow animation wasn't bad enough.
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Actually, I did post the right link - I put that one in my first post; the high recharge + gloom one was in response to EM supposedly being crap on high end builds |
Originally Posted by BubblegumBomb
Actually, I think he posted the wrong link. Here is the same test, without Gloom into the mix.
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I think ET is fine, I am sure on my old brute and tank it was still the best attack for DPA.
The problem is Barrage (Needs more damage), Total Focus (Needs speeding up), and Whirling Hands (Needs more damage).
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Originally Posted by Aggelakis
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I'd have no problems with the long ET if it weren't for Total Focus. Do we really need two super long ST attacks?
Had I done a nerf to the original ET, I would have given it a -DMG component to it as well. It is called "Energy Tranfer," let it keep the high damage/low animation at the expense of really draining you. You just passed your enegry unto one attack, you should be weak. I'm thinking something in the realm of Rage's massive damage crash, though maybe not as long. Would make for a good finisher, or when you really really want someone dead now. Not the one attack that saves the entire set by spamming it left and right.
Of course, too late for that now.
Also, as much as my Energy Melee tanks would love a buff to whirling hangs, it would make my stalker feel left out.
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My solution was to make it a -hp and -regen debuff that lasts for ~30 secs, as well as self damage. Sure, you can spam the crap out of it, but, if you continue to do so, you're going to turn yourself into a squishy little guy.
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Originally Posted by Tormentoso
Had I done a nerf to the original ET, I would have given it a -DMG component to it as well. It is called "Energy Tranfer," let it keep the high damage/low animation at the expense of really draining you. You just passed your enegry unto one attack, you should be weak. I'm thinking something in the realm of Rage's massive damage crash, though maybe not as long. Would make for a good finisher, or when you really really want someone dead now. Not the one attack that saves the entire set by spamming it left and right.
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I haven't really touched my 3000 hour, ~670 badge EM tank since the change. Rather miss playing it.
I lost a bit of DPS, but the set lost its fun factor more than anything. Queue up ET and TF by pushing all of two buttons and then you have 6+ seconds to twiddle your thumbs.
Run with a good team and maybe get two or three attacks off per group if you pick out bosses. Higher level stuff won't even land before its dead. Not a great contribution on top of the set being mostly waiting around.
As Uber mentioned, the waiting around means you can't do other things. Enough damage can occur in 3 seconds to make things a bit interesting, esp on defense based sets if you have a few bad rolls.
What really chaps my bits is that shield charge got buffed for several AT's after ET got 'adjusted'. ET was stupid high DPA, but the damage per recharge time is still way below anything AoE that hits multiple foes. As team size increases, EM got worse. In the time it took to ET twice and kill two minions, you could foot stomp twice or something and kill them all. 4 ET's and you could shield charge twice and kill all minions in two groups. Sure, it was nice for beating on AVs or something, but time v reward on that is a joke.
It was really good for pvp, for a melee set. Which meant it was the one only tank/brute set capable of potentially killing a good player in an open match at high level. It was a bit rough on unexperienced players, and the 1s follow up to AS was nuts, but that is moot with i13 rules pvp. ET could build a cottage in RV.
I would go for something like losing the stun, having the damage shaved down some, and the self damage increased to get it back to at least a 1.67ish activation time and the fist out animation.
and that is my 2 cents which is worth about that.
Totally with yea there. While on paper the nerf seems to be ok, my EM/WP was just no fun to use anymore after the nerf. On teams, sometimes it felt like I was doing more damage to myself than the mobs. You would wind up for TF or ET and either do very little damge because their health bar was so low due to your friends AoE or do no damage because the mob you were getting ready to hit was dead by the time you were done with your animation.
I could live with the longer cast time on ET if it was still the 1 second quick punch followed by a 1.67 second root time where you are recovering from the drain in HP.
Why? Because i personally think it was a pvp motivated change. You could drop anything in about 2 seconds with it back in the day. But the tradeoff is that it does damage to the user. Now with the new(ish) PVP changes, it actually does MORE DAMAGE than it did before.
To me, with the old energy transfer, you paid for it in health, I think thats a fair trade for the damage. Total focus you trade damage for a slow attack. See what im getting at?
It makes you extremely vulnerable to attack, and then it DOES DAMAGE to you, this reduces your survivabilty greatly. Yeah, you killed that one lieutenant, now you're dead.
Before it was hailed as one of the best sets period. Now it's got considerable weakness due to the fact that the animation is just TOO long. Also for brutes, it's not fury-efficent.
My suggestions:
Reduce the damage it does the player by half.
OR
Reduce the cast time to about...1.7-2.0 seconds Cast time, more than barrage and less than whirling hands, sound fair?