Kinetic Melee for a Scrapper, how does it look ?

So now that the NDA has been lifted, I'm curious to know how does Kinetic Melee look for scrappers ?

Are the animations a bit too long, or do they flow well together like DB does ? Is the DPA on par with other sets ? How does it perform on the AoE side ?

Thanks for sharing

I haven't looked at the numbers but it *feels* like it's the dual pistols of melee power sets: stylish but rather mediocre damage. This is a qualitative observation based on playing the set in beta a fair amount.

Mine is a serious lowbie, but it seems fine. Lowbie attacks are perfectly fast. I haven't run any numbers, and haven't looked at all the powers. Just playing. It's not jumping out at me as fun yet, but then, I suppose the lowbie attacks aren't usually the fun ones.

Power siphon is better than buildup for overall damage boosting if you have a saturated attack chain (always attacking, or close to it). It doesn't feel good until you have the first 3 attacks. With recharge slotting in attacks/some global recharge should be able to have a full chain without the first attack (haven't run the numbers though).

The animations can "feel" slow because of the whole gathering energy animation most have, but they're not really. Suppose the main issue is that even though the set technically has a cone damage power and a pbaoe, functionally it only really has one aoe power. Because the cone is an inconsistent high knockback power (80% chance of knockback, more knockback mag than shockwave, lower cone angle than shockwave).

The mitigation on the set helped in praetoria though. First attack has knockdown and second/third have chance to stun up to leuts. The damage debuffs attached to everything should help vs harder targets, but didn't fight any AVs with the set myself, and EBs were approached with def insps. Think should have something like 3/4+ debuffs stacked on a target that stays alive for a while, as long as attack chain is saturated.

I found my KM/Fire scrapper very fun. If you're making a KM toon make it a scrapper. Or a stalker I guess.

The set looks good. The set performs... well, seems average to me.

Despite the long feel to the attacks, the attacks actually fire off rather quickly, or at worse on the average... excepting the Tier 9, which takes as long as Eagle's Claw to fire off.

Quick Strike, Body Blow, and Smashing Blow all actually animate (and recharge) fast for melee sets. Focused Burst isn't bad in that respect, although I believe it is slower than the only comparable power - Focus from Claws. Burst has the same animation time as the 'whirling' powers, which is workable. It's also an acceptable PBAoE attack.

Concentrated Strike, as mentioned, takes 2.5 seconds to animate, and hits hard... but it will be up to you if it disrupts your attack chain too much. Repulsion Torrent is a gimmicky power - it's not really good damage, unreliable mitigation, and a knockback instead of a knockdown. It can be immensely FUN... but entirely skippable.

The real gimmick of the set, though, is Power Siphon. It provides a very minor to-hit boost, and a stacking damage boost for every attack that lands... a mini-defiance for melee toons. However, I think that it's like Rage, in that I suspect the set was balanced around Siphon being active - this is only enhanced by the quirk of CS instantly recharging Siphon on Scrappers.

This set, I think, will be best on Scrappers. I don't think it will ever be considered as a top performing set, but it isn't at the low end either. It is more designed for Back End damage, rather than Burst... which is going to throw some people off. On the other hand, comparing it to Dual Pistols is wrong - this set manages to look fancy AND be functional.

Now... whether those animations are good for you or a turn off... that's up to you.

I remember being in the beta, and coming out of the beta, that everybody was real down on Shields, and I was like "you guys are nuts, shields is gonna be fantastic" and... well, there we are.

So I take any word that KM is terrible with a grain of salt -- I hope it's every bit as terrible as shields was

Speaking of... can it be used with shields? It would be kind of strange for a "propless" set (no claws, no spines, no DB) to be restricted that way, but you never know.

I've found it more to be a combo of dual pistals and claws (flashy and effective) with powers similar to that of claws (albeit at different levels) and more single target skewed. Cant wait to role one up live. Prolly go /sr or /wp.

I had one KM Scrapper on test and she performed well in the early stages, quickly putting down PPD and other foes.

I never thought that the animations were slow but they are flashy and can be stringed together to look pretty awesome.

My initial thoughts were that 1) it was about average on DPS and 2) ST oriented. I love my Kat/DA so that #2 was no big deal to me.

Will I create one after GR releases? yes. Right away? No. I also created my first stalker (KM/Nin) and she was all kinds of fun on test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFQPqPwayfI
A little disappointing in that you never seem to actually hit people, and instead throw energy at melee range. The VFXs are awesome though, and the animations look very smooth and flashy.

The only thing I really dislike about KM is that shields interferes with its great animations. Wish there was a *really small shield*