Kinetic Melee: judged and found wanting (Willpower)

I have updated my guide, The Untamed Shrew: Holding Aggro with a Willpower Tanker, by adding the new melee attack set, Kinetic Melee.

That guide is about overcoming Willpower's weak taunt aura, and discusses how the various tanker secondaries help or hinder overcoming that weakness. My verdict is not particularly favorable, and within the context of that guide, I'd have to say it fares only slightly better than Energy Melee:

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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

...but, if you stun them and they wander away, you have a handy ranged damage power to tag them with and keep them taunted.

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Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.

-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade!

Gauntlet, Taunt, Gauntlet till the cows come home should be what a WP tanker does for it be rare that a team might allow for mobs to be tightly wound into the aura of RTTC and kept there. So with that in mind I would count 2 of Kinetic Melees AoEs as must haves regardless and 2 high end costing powers that are STs for their gauntlet aoe sizes. Accuracy is going to have to be a good thing to increase with Willpower anyway.

It's a bit like Claws, I got a Claws/SR and keeping aggro with it (SR has no taunt aura) can be a trifle bit difficult. Swanning off ahead to spend extra time with mobs before a team finishes up the last group might be the way of things.

I can do that as I chose KM on my Brute.

Too early to judge I think, I would play hours upon hours with a set, adapting my playstyle to get the most of it before simply saying "bummer, it's not for me".

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He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

Kinetic Melee is made up almost entirely of KnockDOWN. Repulsing Torrent is the only power in the set that has a high enough mag to actually produce Knockback against even conning foes. Unless you're playing with the difficulty at -1 your description of Kinetic Melee's mitigation is incorrectly skewed.

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I have to agree with the title of the thread, although I didn't get much time to fully test the set, the experience I did have with it left me thinking "why not just go EM?", or anything else for that matter.

I will say that recent teaming with Rangle (he's using it on his Scrapper) makes me think he has the right idea. The set looks good for Scrapping, for Tanking...I'm not so sure...

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Tanker Tuesdays: Meet in King's Row by IP Gate 6pm PT9pm ET.
1st Tuesday on Champion, 2nd Tuesday on Justice
3rd Tuesdays (Odd months) Freedom, (Even months) Virtue, 4th Tuesday, Tour, Server TBA
Brutal Thrashing Thursdays: Justice (ask Papa Slade when),meet in RWZ 6pm PT9pm ET.

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Issue 16 made me feel like this.
Warning: This poster likes to play Devil's Advocate.

The brute version of Evasion has a taunt the scrapper version (which I assume Dawn was referring to) does not.

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Taking It On the Chin I-16 Tanker Guide
Repeat Offenders

I believe it has been repeatedly refuted that KM is slow. Those who do numbers (not me) came to the conclusion that it is infact a quicker set than it appears and lands on the slightly above average part of the speed scale.

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Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory

The whole gathering energy animation KM has takes about as long as other powersets take to throw a punch.

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Culex's resistance guide

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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

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Guide: Tanking, Wall of Fire Style (Updated for I19!), and the Four Rules of Tanking
Story Arc: Belated Justice, #88003
Synopsis: Explore the fine line between justice and vengeance as you help a hero of Talos Island bring his friend's murderer to justice.
Grey Pilgrim: Fire/Fire Tanker (50), Victory

Hera: I have to disagree with you categorically, on every single point. Kinetic Melee has been judged by me to be frigging awesome for tanks.

Coupled with the new gauntlet target resistance debuff, Kinetic Melee on tanks delivers a powerful single target punch, a benefit that extends to Energy Melee. Kinetic Melee also features decent mitigation through knockdown, as well as excellent mitigation through the native damage debuff. Resistance based armors, such as Fire, Dark, and Electrical Armors, benefit the most from Kinetic Melee as the damage debuff component has the equivalent effect of increasing resistance values.

The damage debuff doesn't work as well for the entirely defense based Ice Armor set, since Ice Armor doesn't get any meaningful resistance values to begin with. Knocking 7% damage off an attack isn't going to mean much in the long run. Nor does the kinetic melee set really work with Stone Armor, but that's more down to the speed penalty in using granite, and the set's basis as a defensive set outside of granite.

Mixed resist / defense tanks, such as Shield, Invuln, and Willpower, don't see as great a benefit either from the set's damage debuff components, although that is more due to these sets generally being the strongest against SO and light IO usage-builds.

One of the perception problems with Kinetic Melee is that it is a slow activating set. It's got a long-wind up and then a sudden quick slam for most of the animations. Players who get hung up on the visual presentation, and can't separate the mechanics and timings of the power from the visual presentation, probably will find Kinetic Melee to be more annoying than Energy Melee's animations.

Should somebody whose making a tank for the first time check out Kinetic Melee?

Oh yes. It's a good solid choice for non defense-based tanks, again largely due to the damage debuff, and works well with SO's.

High-usage IO builds probably want to focus on driving recharge times and accuracy, since Power Siphon is crucial to pulling the most out of the set's damage capabilities.

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Culex's resistance guide

edit: jinx...

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Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.

-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade!

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<《 New Colchis / Guides / Mission Architect 》>
"At what point do we say, 'You're mucking with our myths'?" - Harlan Ellison

I've been planning on making a WP/Kin tank on live since the news of the Kin Melee set was announced. So when I got the opportunity to try it out on C/Beta I jumped at the chance.

With the tank lvl bumped to 41 I tried it out and went...... damn... this really doesn't work for a tank, at least not for a WP one. I wanted to like it, really I did. But it just didn't grab me in any significant way that made me want to make a WP/Kin tank on live.

I like the animations. The audio, for me, leaves something to be desired. The damage doesn't feel like it's all that great compared to other sets available to tanks. I know the number crunchers will say differently, but that's how it feels. As someone who has a lot of fun playing an nrg/nrg blaster, the kb on Repulsing Torrent is just too inconcistent to provide the mitigation I'd want it for.

In the end I changed the plan from a WP/Kin tank to a Kin/WP scrapper and I'm happier with that choice so far. I think Heraclea's explanation covers it pretty well for why it doesn't work with a WP tank. Yes you can throw all the numbers out you want, but for me it just didn't work either. I may try it on a different Primary at some point and see if I change my mind or not. As always YMMV.

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Throwing darts at the board to see if something sticks.....

Come show your resolve and fight my brute!
Tanks: Gauntlet, the streak breaker and you!

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Culex's resistance guide

Quick Strike
Body Blow
Smashing Blow
Concentrated Strike

• Pounding Slugfest - Accuracy/Damage
• Pounding Slugfest - Damage/Recharge
• Kinetic Combat - Accuracy/Damage
• Kinetic Combat - Damage/Endurance
• Kinetic Combat - Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• Kinetic Combat - Knockdown Bonus

Pounding Slugfest
(Quick Strike) (Body Blow) (Smashing Blow) (Concentrated Strike)

• 8% (0.63 HP/sec) Regeneration

Kinetic Combat
(Quick Strike) (Body Blow) (Smashing Blow) (Concentrated Strike)

• MezResist(Immobilize) 2.75%
• 28.1 HP (1.5%) HitPoints
• 3.75% Defense(Smashing,Lethal), 1.88% Defense(Melee)

Total Set Bonuses:

• 32% (2.52 HP/sec) Regeneration
• MezResist(Immobilize) 11%
• 112.4 HP (6%) HitPoints
• 15% Defense(Smashing,Lethal), 7.52% Defense(Melee)

Maybe it's just me, but ... I'm not really seeing a whole lot of downside here for Kinetic Melee being able to stack an extra 20% chance to Knockdown on every single target attack in the powerset ... along with those set bonuses ... for a Willpower Tanker. The combination looks like it gives some pretty strong mitigation against the target you're beating on, effectively taking them out of the fight (unless AV/EB and PToD).

If you want to go a different route, you could do something like 5 slot Crushing Blow (all except Dam/Rech?) and add the Razzle Dazzle proc which Immobilizes (20% chance, Mag 2 for 8 sec vs critters) ... which given a fast enough attack chain cycle, if you've got the same slotting in all four single target attacks, stands a chance of Immobilizing even Bosses through their Stuns ... which effectively gives you Ghetto Holds(!). Also note that Crushing Blow enhancements are "dirt cheap" to buy with Merits (50 each!), making for a very easy to slot combination (1000 merits for 4 powers 5 slotted).

If the benchmark for Heraclea's comparison is WP/KM using SOs only, then it's probably a pretty fair comparison. The thing is, SOs only built characters are (effectively) gimped by their lack of IOs and set bonuses. Speaking as an MA/SR scrapper, I *know* first hand that Super Reflexes is "leaky like a sieve" when slotting SOs only ... but becomes very powerful (in PvE) when you can start stacking up enough set bonuses (and procs and stuff) to carry SR the rest of the way to the Defense Softcap. I strongly suspect that the combo of WP/KM will have "many builds" which do not leverage the strengths of Willpower, or Kinetic Melee, to the synergistic benefit of both ... but that doesn't mean there will be NO BUILDS which cannot synergize the two powersets to complement each other to the advantage and benefit of both.

As far as holding aggro is concerned ... you've got two choices. Rise to the Challenge slotted with 2 common 50 Taunt IOs (strongly recommended!) ... and Gauntlet. Remarkably enough, the Gauntlet radius on everything in Kinetic Melee is, other than Quick Strike's paltry 3 ft, actually pretty decent.

• Quick Strike has a 3 ft Gauntlet radius.
• Body Blow has a 5 ft Gauntlet radius.
• Smashing Blow has a 7 ft Gauntlet radius, which actually makes it a decent PBAoE(ish) Punchvoke, particularly with its fast recharge and 1.2 second animation speed. It should be VERY EASY to double stack the Gauntlet Taunt duration of Smashing Blow even without being a recharge intensive build. Perma Hasten recharge builds will be able to triple stack Smashing Blow's usefully large Gauntlet radius of effect.
• Burst has an 8 ft PBAoE radius, which exactly matches the aura radius of RttC.
• Focused Burst, the ranged single target Knockdown, has a huge 13 ft Gauntlet radius on it, making it an almost ideal for corner pulling tactics as well as a supplemental "melee" attack for gaining and maintaining aggro. Focused Burst is effectively a second Taunt attack in the hands of a Tanker (or a Brute) which also happens to do damage and Knockdown on the $Target. In fact, try actually slotting Focused Burst with 6 slot Mocking Beratement ... or Perfect Zinger (leverage that Gauntlet Radius for the Psi Damage Proc!) ... and it actually does become a second (shorter ranged, shorter duration, but faster recharging) Taunt power! In fact, I'd even go so far as to argue that for a WP/KM Tanker, slotting Focused Burst for a Taunt Set is making better use of the power ... enhancing its Targeted AoE aspect, rather than its Ranged Single Target aspect to the very important benefit of covering one of Willpower's weaker aspects ... that of being able to hold aggro. Furthermore ... the use of the single target Knockdown property in Focused Burst is going to be your best way to "discourage" stunned mobs from wandering away, which is VERY HELPFUL since the only mobs you're going to be stunning are the ones that you already had selected and were hitting with your melee attacks which produced the Stun in the first place. No $Target switching necessary. *AND* ... with Focused Burst slotted for Taunt (Set) rather than for Damage, you guarantee your $Target will run back to you when your stun on them wears off, because when enhanced, you can *easily* get a Gauntlet Taunt duration of over 20 seconds on Focused Burst.
• Concentrated Strike has a whopping huge 17 ft Gauntlet radius, which is actually larger than the radius on Taunt.
• And note that the Gauntlet duration of 13.5 sec (base) exceeds the base duration of your Stun powers (7.2 sec and 11.9 sec) unless they've been enhanced for stun duration.

Just about the only "stinker" of a power in the Kinetic Melee set is the Repulsing Torrent, and even that can be leveraged as a mass herding/mitigating tool in an alpha strike ... although, admittedly, the usefulness of a KnockBACK Cone diminishes dramatically once the battle is joined, since Willpower prefers not to move around too much once aggro is gained and established. There are still ways to use it though, such as the "Hop and Pop" tactic of simply jumping straight up and firing off Repulsing Torrent straight down at your $Target, so as to deploy your Cone attack as a PBAoE(ish) power which punches everyone into the ground around where you were standing. This "Hop and Pop" tactic helpfully does not surrender your position, and when you don't have Combat Jumping running can be performed in less than 2 seconds, maintaining RttC taunt continuity. This is not a "problem" per se, relative to other powersets, which often have one "stinker" power built into them (or at least one power that common conventional wisdom claims is a "stinker" of a power).

As an aside, I feel that Repulsing Torrent would be better for Tankers if the radius were reduced and the cone angle widened to put it more in line with the parameters for a power like Frost in Ice Melee. Doing so would actually improve the power's potential in "Hop and Pop" tactics over the long and narrow cone effect. But that's just my personal opinion.

The way I see it is ... it's VERY possible to build Kinetic Melee in ways which do NOT synergize well with Willpower. This is no real surprise, since this is actually a somewhat common occurence with other powerset combos too. That does not however eliminate the fact that there ARE useful tools within the Kinetic Melee which are perfectly capable of covering for the limitations of Willpower, particularly in the realm of aggro control and maintenance, which I would argue are actually somewhat stronger on the Gauntlet/Punchvoke side of the equation than the options found in other Tanker Secondaries. Focused Burst in particular seems to be ideally suited for investment and slotting for Taunt Set enhancement for a Tanker, which in and of itself is highly unusual. Combining both a 6 slotted Taunt and a 6 slotted Focused Burst ... with BOTH powers enhanced with either Mocking Beratement (superior taunting) or Perfect Zinger (taunts that do damage!) ... would seem to be perhaps one of the most powerful Taunt+Gauntlet combos that you could stack onto a Tanker ... and even more importantly, one of the most powerful combos you could stack onto a Willpower Tanker, provided you invest in it to achieve the (combo) effect.

Perhaps most importantly though is the fact that SOs will *NOT* tell you "the whole story" of what is possible with the combination of Willpower and Kinetic Melee. Like so many other combinations of powersets, it will be the Set Bonuses and the Procs which will "complete the circle" of the story to be told by WP/KM in the hands of Tankers. Do not despair, my bothers and sisters ... as with so much in the art of Kung Fu upon which the animations of Kinetic Melee are based ... there is more here than immediately meets the eye.

powexecname Hover

/em Lotus

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Comrade Smersh, KGB Special Section 8 50 Inv/Fire, Fire/Rad, BS/WP, SD/SS, AR/EM
Other 50s: Plant/Thorn, Bots/Traps, DB/SR, MA/Regen, Rad/Dark - All on Virtue.

-Don't just rebel, build a better world, comrade!

---

He will honor his words; he will definitely carry out his actions. What he promises he will fulfill. He does not care about his bodily self, putting his life and death aside to come forward for another's troubled besiegement. He does not boast about his ability, or shamelessly extol his own virtues. - Sima Qian.

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