Cottage rule aside, would this be a fun Energy Transfer?

I mentioned this in another thread and nobody murdered me there, so I thought I'd lower it into the wolf pit...

The major issues I have seen people state with Energy Transfer as it is now are:
1. It's a second long-animating heavy ST hit in a set that already has a long-animating heavy ST hit.
2. Because the damage lands at the end of the animation, it takes too long to deliver on fast-moving teams.

I have a wacky idea for a way to resolve the above problems and make ET a truly unique attack power: make it a toggle.

Activation animation: as the old palm-thrust ET, forming a continuous beam of energy between you and the target for as long as the toggle remains active.
Activation time: 1 second.
Activation period: 0.25 seconds.
Endurance cost: 1 end per activation period (4 end per second, about 10 end over the current ET's animation time).
Recharge time: 20 seconds
Range: 10 feet
Effect:
Scale 0.456 energy damage to target (per tick: damage over 2.5 seconds equal to current ET)
Scale 0.375 special damage to self (per tick: damage over 2.5 seconds equal to current ET)
9% chance for mag 3 stun for 9.5 seconds (per tick: cumulative chance to stun over 2.5 seconds is approximately 60%)

The obvious benefit here would be the ability to immediately begin damaging an enemy, and effectively continuously hit him with Energy Transfer for as long as you sustain the toggle, while still being able to use other attacks on the same or other targets. The obvious drawback would be to continuously pay ET's health and endurance costs! If activated in 2.5 second bursts, it would have approximately the same effect as current ET; if the target is killed within 2.5 seconds then naturally the cost is less. To avoid abuse, the toggle should probably suppress itself after a certain time limit, as an indefinite-duration auto-hit damage and control power, even with a steep HP and end cost, seems open to exploitation to put it mildly. But even with that limitation, something like this would put EM back on top of the heap in its specialty: horrendous levels of ST damage at a steep cost to the user.

Of course this violates the hell out of the cottage rule, the numbers would need a lot of tweaking to be anywhere near balanced, and it'd never have a chance of being implemented in any case - but wouldn't it be neato?

no. there is no need to make it a toggle. and there is no change that needs to be made at this point. it still does decent damage and i have no trouble using it when teamed. make sure it is the first attack you use on a baddie that is not being targeted by any one else. that should not be hard considering that there are always more baddies then team mates.

To be clear: this thread is not about whether ET needs to be changed, and I am not one of the people claiming that ET needs to be changed. ET was mentioned because this idea came to me in the context of potential redesigns for ET. Perhaps it would have been wiser of me to remove all mention of ET, because the point is not whether ET needs to be this but whether a power like this would be interesting. As far as I know there are no enemy-targeted damaging toggles in the game, and I would like to know what it'd take to balance one.

death shroud from DA.

lightning field from Electric armor.

those are the 2 i could find in 5 mins. both minor damage due to being a toggle.

Well, if I've already made myself look disingenuous, then this thread is dead in the water as anything I say can simply be looked at as a stealth tactic to get a handful of players to agree that an ET buff might be nice, and then go "Aha!" That's really not what I'm interested in doing here, but there you are.

But to give it the old college try: yes, I'm aware of damage auras. Their damage can be considered minor, but given the fact that they deal that damage to everything near you while consuming zero animation time, it can add up to quite a lot. I know this from experience: I play a FA tank, a DA brute, and an Elec brute.

In terms of examples to balance against, I think the more relevant powers would be Tornado, Bonfire, Caltrops, Thorntrops, and Telekinesis. The first four are the only powers I can think of that deal damage without a tohit check. The last is an enemy-targeting control toggle. Of the auto-damaging powers, Tornado and Bonfire have significant knockback, making them difficult to use as damage powers without some form of knockback prevention. Against enemies that can't be flung away, however, they can rack up some fairly impressive damage over time - and they can hit multiple enemies. Caltrops and Thorntrops deal minor damage, but their chief utility is as a Slow/Afraid power.

As for Telekinesis, its endurance cost is extremely high for a toggle, but it is also a guaranteed autohit mag 3 hold and repel that can affect up to 5 enemies at a time. The numbers I've given for, oh, since ET is a bad word, let's call it Damage Toggle or DT for short, put the endurance cost even higher than Telekinesis and throw continual self-damage on top of that. Being able to continuously deal high damage automatically to a single target is very powerful and no mistake: it slices right through any level of defense and -tohit, for one, making certain fights a great deal easier. On the other hand, I'd be hard pressed to come up with a build that can sustain burning 2 endurance (after slotting) and a significant chunk of health indefinitely while continuing to attack and be attacked.

The reason why this concept interests me is, once more, not because I think ET needs replacing, although if you were looking for a power to replace with this power, ET would be a reasonable candidate. What started me thinking about this was A) the fact that ET is the only power I can think of that deals significant self-damage as part of its cost (no, Oppresive Gloom does not count!), and B) the fact that there is no such thing as a damage-dealing enemy-targeted toggle, and having one opens up a lot of interesting tactical decisions. But, y'know, I've already lost all credibility, so whatever.

Well if it makes you feel any better, I think it's a neat idea.

Interesting idea.

At first I was imagining this like the Vision's attack where he sticks his hand inside the target and materialises, but, if you're using other attacks (and their animations) its going to be more like leaving an active energy barb or something behind in the target.

I'm not too sure if I'd be happy to see this on any of my Energy Melee-ers. Two are boxers, the other one is superstrong, so none have any special "energy" powers. They're just punching hard, with some gamey special FX flying around as they do so.

In game mechanics, its definitely unique. I really like it.

The enemy-targeted damage toggle is effectively a DoT attack without to-hit check. I think if an attack does damage, it is usually required to have a to-hit check. I guess that's reason why we don't really have enemy-targeted damage toggle, as the dev can just give us a DoT attack.

Although you stress that the suggestion has nothing to do with energy transfer, I think such auto-hit can be justified by having the large self damage as in energy transfer. And I think the toggle is quite thematic to energy transfer, as it sounds like a constant transfer of energy between your character and the mob.

I would imagine, similarly like Disruption Arrow has an Auto-hit debuff and liquify has a ToHit check for its mez, it is just as possible to make an enemy toggle attack require a ToHit check. It's just a variable in an equation built into the power, I'd figure.

Personally, I think if a ToHit check fails, it should cut off the toggle but I don't know if that's possible to code.

I'd be happy with the old animation with an added recoil period that makes it the same length as the current ET animation. Front loaded damage and a visual indicator of the self damage.