Seriously fix EM (and TA)

This is bugging the heck out of me.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

I agree and I add acc/stun to the smaller damage hits just to keep on stunning my enemies. Even bosses eventually succumb to the stacked stuns.

In what way?

So it was done at +0/+1, just SOs and no Hasten?


Fault obliterates EM's stuns.

Trying to figure out why you factor Dark Servant into the equation. There is no Servant in any of the DM sets.

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

I just don't get statements like that. The change hurt some situations for ET, but... "Unplayable?"

I like EM, in some situations. My EM/EA brute was my first Villainside 50, and was often one of the last ones standing when a situation went south. Plus, pre-I13 PVP, that character often got cussed out as a "(*&$##$ Stalker" - as well as being warned about in broadcast, because "her stuns are brutal." (Slotted a stun duration in most attacks.) Of course, I also *played* that character like a "heavy Stalker," too. It shines with fewer, tougher enemies.

On the flipside, one variant of my namesake character is a Fire/EM tank. On a tank, currently? No, I don't like EM on a fire tank. (This character hit 50 fairly recently.) That's where the ST focus doesn't help. Also, this character didn't really PVP pre-I13, and doesn't all that much after. I don't think EM works as well as a normal "tanking" set and doesn't have all that much synergy with Fire/. It feels somewhat disjointed.

Pair it with a set that doesn't want a bunch of enemies around to "feed" something or that has some other drawback or AOE focus and you'll probably have a better experience with it.

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In this context, DM = dark miasma, not dark melee. It's probably a mistake to use the same abbreviation for both, though. Usually you can get it from context or which AT board you're on, but it can cause problems in situations like these.

ah. I was stuck on Dark Melee

D'oh

"Sorry bucko, but CoH and CoV are the same game." -BackAlleyBrawler
"Silly villain, CoX is for Heroes!" -Saicho

The only sets that have worse mitigation in my book are fire and I guess DB (havent rolled one so I dont know, but they look to be lacking in that depot.) Ide put it on the same level with war mace and battle axe, and battle axe has pretty high percentages on its chance-to effects. Every other set has better mitigation hands down. Claws has shockwave, SS FS and hand clap, SM fault and tremor, DM heals (not really mitigating, but similar effect,) ElM lightning clap, and ice melee has slows and sleeps and KD and stuff.

Stone Melee is the suck compared to EM's ST damage per SOs. True story.

Yeah, sorry about that - the post I was quoting from specified Dark Miasma, but I wasn't paying attention to the fact that the part I actually quoted only said DM.

I have a SM/WP brute and a EM/WP brute. The EM has purple sets and better survivability numbers (def, res, regen, hp, etc) than the SM.
And there's not a single thing that the EM can do that the SM can't.
However, there's a lot that the SM can do that the EM can't.

I don't understand the context of your comment.

Nonsense. Teaming was and is absolutely considered by the devs - the very at descriptions display that, and it's a good thing, considering the fact this game is an mmo, lol.

Secondly, even if you solo, you're fighting more than one enemy at a time, and with the new difficulty settings, you can fight a lot more than that.

So again, overall, em is a massive underperformer vs competing sets. The only thing it is competitive at, is sustained single target damage vs hard targets like av's or gms. On teams, the big time single target damage is nearly useless thanks to ridiculously slow attacks. The mitigation of the set is pitiful because it's single target, while most competing sets have aoe mitigation - the more enemies you are fighting the more painfully obvious this becomes. And the set has pitiful aoe damage as well, in a league all of its own in aoe futility, yet there are several competing sets that are in the same league as em in terms of single target damage (that are also more capable of effectively delivering it, in in-game situations thanks to faster animating attacks), that blow em out of the water in terms of aoe ability. That's not balance, that's a massive disparity.

But if you think that's balanced and 'ok', that's fine. You can think the sky is filled with cotton candy too, but you'd be wrong about that as well.

And the argument of 'if you don't like it, roll something else' doesn't negate the fact that em is an underpowered set. So many players are noting this hoping the devs listen and take a look at the set, and perhaps improve it. If you don't like hearing us talk about it, then don't come into these threads, or complain about it, whatever floats your boat. But telling people to just go play another set sure sounds like the last resort to a failed argument to me.

Or, just improve em's aoe abilities a bit so it's more competitive. You'll never have perfect balance, but em is far and away underperforming vs. competing sets.

LOL, yeah, you'll lock down one minion or lt with your stuns while the guy with SM locks down the entire spawn. Single target mitigation is a joke compared to aoe mitigation.

Nonsense. Bare bones, it does above average damage compared to other melee sets with great aoe abilities and mitigation. With improved recharge and epic powers added in (with the same being available to em), it surpasses em, even in terms of long term single target dps. Then take into account stones attacks animate faster than em's big hitters, and in real game performance, stone cleans em's clock in just about every category, except corpse smashing.

Exactly, sm wipes its butt with em, but only when there is no other option because sm doesn't want something as lowly as em touching it's butt.

I trust Billz' stance on teaming as far as I trust a priest's stance on sex.

Some sets are going to be good at some things, worse at others. The hardcore soloist arguing a set that's great for soloists deserving a buff of some variety for non-solo scenarios makes my ears spin.

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And statements like that is why you have negative rep. As with everything else in this game, teaming isn't rocket surgery.

A set with its two biggest hitters taking nearly 6 seconds to use both sucks on a team due to the fact that you are constantly wasting them.

You have three choices:
1: Use them normally and watch as the enemy is killed before the animation finishes
2: Only use them on bosses thus wasting your damage potential
3: Tell your team to lay off your targets (which no one in their right mind would bother doing. I sure as hell would never ask a team to do it.)

Stating that EM is "great" for soloists is also stupid. It's good for hard targets and good for soloists that aren't bumping their difficulty up above "boring."

AoE is still king when running at x8 and it always will be.

EM is a ponderously slow, mediocre set with good single target damage, crap aoe and crap mitigation. It's still good for PvP and AV/Heroes. It sucks on teams and probably always will.

Oh, please, there are far more reasons why I have negative rep.

I know that slow animations are less desireable on steamroller teams. I also know that you play at a level of play and at a high end of performance where you can't even see normal players from the roof of your house with a telescope. I therefore take any statement you have to offer (like 90% fury is easily sustainable and anyone can do it) with a grain of salt.

You are very, very good at this game. So much so that you do not deal with the same concerns that other people deal with. High-end performance tinkerers complaining about sets performances rarely produces compelling evidence to me that there's a problem - after all, this same thread features people saying that EM has no mitigation.

Still, this thread's clearly going to be hilarious.

Heroes, Villains ♦ Reviews ♦ Retrospect

"The leg bone's connected to the hip bone, the hip bone's connected to the...red thing. The red thing's connected to my...wristwatch...uh oh."
No nearly about it:
3.564
2904
=6.47

The are so slow they are almost rounded up to 7 seconds.
It is stupid because you can make the same claim about any set.
Dark is good because it heals and debuffs
Ice is good because it keeps you very safe
Fire is good because it kills quickly
etc

It just depends what aspect of solo'ing someone wants to talk up and you can make any of the melee sets look good.

The fact that EM only performs decently on a single setting x1 out of 8 possible mob configurations (ignoring level settings) while solo says that it in fact, does not solo well because it provides no flexibility.

It solo's well under the old archaic rules of the game, but the game has changed. One may as well just state it's i4 performance for all the relativity citing a single difficulty setting has.

AoE is king at 3+ enemies. Almost all AoE's are balanced around 3 targets. You generally face 3 targets on x1 setting, but sometimes only 2. So AoE starts to dominate at x2 settings.

Everything you have said about EM is accurate, but you are being conservative with your assessment as it is even worse than you suggest.

What I do with the ONE character I have that's fully purpled out and has been sitting at 50 for years has absolutely NOTHING to do with what I do with every other character I build and run to 20 or 30 or 40 or 50.

My "skill" at pressing buttons means absolutely nothing when I'm using TOs until 12, DOs until 22 and SOs with a mix of basic IOs until 50.

You make it sound like I'm twinking every character with SetIOs from level 10 on.

I even slot every character the same. Attacks get 1acc/1end-red/1rec-red before adding anything else. Scrappers get damage after that, brutes get more end-red and rec-red.

The point of all this? Your statement is bunk and meaningless.

EM's mitigation is there and it sucks. You can keep a boss disoriented if you work at it. Whoopty freaking do. Two bosses if you take stun. Oh grand, now your damage output just tanked. Wheeeeeee.

With shockwave I can keep entire spawns bouncing around a battlefield. With foot stomp I can do the same without even knocking them back. With both I'm dishing out massive aoe damage. Stone melee? AoE mitigation and damage with tremor. Hell, even MACE has more AoE damage and mitigation than EM.

What's EM got? Whirling hands. Crap damage, crap mitigation, crap radius.