Is it just me

Is it just me or is KM an under performing set? Its animations are slow, and its damage seems anemic at best. Can anyone else confirm this?

Just you.

The animations are relatively fast. IIRC the three first attacks have comparable animation times to Claws attacks and only Concentrated Strike and Focused Burst have really long animation times, and CS does enough damage to warrant the animation time. The damage of KM is also at the high end of the scale especially for single target damage. If you properly leverage Power Siphon you should be pumping out some very heavy ST. AoE seems mediocre.

Kinetic Melee seems pretty fast to me, and hits like a truck. No complaints.

I just got done playing the set to 50, and I'm with the OP. The set isn't as bad as I thought it was initially, but it is painfully mediocre, especially on teams.

You get a decent single target attack chain pretty early with the first three attacks. And while the numbers seem to indicate they aren't 'slow', they do feel slow in game. Not em slow, but a bit sluggish.

Repulsing torrent is a weaker shockwave. Once you get the hang of it though, you can get quite a few enemies in the cone, but every once in a while (or all the time if you're not experienced with the power), you'll only get one or two. The kb turns a lot of people off, but I liked it and it was more reliable than I had thought it would be. The power doesn't do much damage but it's a pretty useful mitigation tool.

Burst could be a great aoe, and if you just look at the numbers, it's similar in radius to most aoe's, but it feels smaller than the competition. I found it pretty tough to consistently hit a lot of enemies with it unless they were really tightly grouped.

Focused burst is kinda like focus, but it takes a while to get off. Concentrated strike hits like a truck, but you can time it with a calender, and while I like the look of this set overall, this power could use a new animation, imo.

The key to this set is power siphon. On paper it looks marvelous, but in actual game play, its just not that effective compared to other build up powers. Early on, it's just not up often enough to make up for the sets low to mediocre damage. And once you do start to get it recharged at a reasonable level, the mechanics of the power don't work well in play, again, imo. First of all, just using the power takes a couple of seconds. Then once its going, you need to hit several times just to build it up, that takes some more time. Then by the time you've got a pretty good build up going, everything is pretty much dead, and by the time you get to the next mob, the power is down and your stacked buffs are dropping or gone.

Now I'm not saying that KM is a horrible set, it's just bland. Anything KM does, there's another set that can do it better, if not several things better.

I believe the reason a lot of people perceive the animations as slow is because most of the damage is back loaded. Dark Melee comes to mind as a front loaded set. There is a little wind up, if any, the damage and then the drawback animation. Midnight Grasp is a superb example of how the damage happens, then the animation (It animates a lot longer than it actually feels, unless you need to heal during the animation). In Kinetic Melee's case, the animation happens first, then the damage, followed by a fairly short return to normal animation. This is why people perceive the animations as long. (I'm looking at you Body Blow)

Massive ST DMG. DMG Debuffs to enemies. Not bad at all.

Just you.

The animations are very quick, comparable to claws and dual blades.

If you think claws animates slow, then I don't know what sets you think are fast, because claws are the fastest.

I am still not on the bandwagon. I like what one of the posters said. Its mediocre at best. I should have went with MA, or claws. I have played dual blades and its a decent set.

By the time someone has activated Hack with broadsword, doing lets say 100 damage, my kinetic melee character has activated and pulled off 2 attacks, doing upwards of 150-200 damage, and has a 3rd halfway through animating.

To pull data from another thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Silas Just did a run on my KM/SD. Build could still be better, waiting on i19 to fit QS in again which should fill the small gaps in my attack chain as well as maintain a better PS buff. 5mins15 sec, which pegs him at 249.5 DPS. Still gotta actually work out an optimized attack chain and the rest of it, but I'm quite pleased with that. Notes: ******* I love CS somethin' fierce. Hits stupidly hard and my black little heart grows half a size bigger every time it crit-recharges PS.

If you need a reference point for this number, check the Max scrapper dps post not to far down the crapper boards.

It has to be you. I absolutely love the dmg output of my KM/SR. I've done nothing but played mine from 1-40 in the span of this past week and I couldn't be happier with its performance. CS hits like a freight train and can instantly recharge PS. I took just the ST attacks and even on large teams I still mow down enemies and set the pace. I love how PS operates seeing how a few of my 50's are brutes and I feel right at home with the stay moving punching stuff mechanic to keep up the buff.

I REALLY can't wait till I get him to 50 and start IO'ing him. He shall be a ST monster.

I have only played it to 21, but I had no complaints

Just my 2 cents but it seems middle of the road for some ATs. I played it into the mid 20's on a brute and scrapper. I decided to roll a KM stalker and that's where it's at for me! I'm at lvl 44 on my stalker and absolutely love it. KM didn't feel right for me until I did it with a stalker.

As for the animations, they're pretty decent but slow compared to others. It's much more exaggerated on teams because you notice your animation is still going off when say someone with a broadsword or fire melee has already hit and killed a target even when you started the attack first. It doesn't bother me at all though, a dead NPC is what I like no matter who does it.

KM is stylish, has incredible potential for IOing but still powerful on SOs, brings the most to any team out of the Scrapper primaries IMO and hits like a truck.

Plus its purdy.

KM is good.

I'm making the argument that IOed KM benefits little from +recharge because it doesn't require much recharge to reach its top attack chain. Other primaries can often enable better attack chains with additional recharge buffs.

I'll admit I didn't consider -dam stacking with -res, but again are AVs a big deal on a team ? Even in a TF skipping objectives, they don't make up most of the time spent fighting, and the few ones against which -damage (or -res ; point being, level 50 AVs just die in seconds to teams) will matter will most likely be +3 or +4, bringing down the effectiveness of -damage with the purple patch.

In example, take your level 54 LR, and say you only use the first three attacks to maximise -dam stacking. You're looking at 4 permanents stacks, or 5.63*4 = 22.52 . Now apply the purple patch, you're down to 22.52*0.48 = 10.8 . Now Recluse has 50% res to smash/energy and will resist damage debuffs, giving you a final 10.8*0.5 = 5.4% damage debuff. Even if it stacks with -res and other damage debuffs, it's so tiny it won't make a difference. Either you have tons of -res/-dam on the team and yours is a drop of the bucket, or you don't and the difference will be slim.

I don't choose primaries based on this or that, my only criteria is whatever I want to try at the moment ; but I play scrappers for killing stuff, not for utility, and as a side effect killing stuff is what brings exp/hour or faster completion, unlike a -5% damage debuff on Recluse. If my concern was bringing utility, I'd play a defender, corruptor, controller, dominator, any of which can do just that while still dishing out some damage. Thankfully KM still does top tier ST damage, looks good, is fun to play, and does just fine in teams ; still ranks firmly on the bottom spot for that purpose in my opinion though.

I didn't say AVs are a big deal on a team because I don't think they are. I don't think the KM -damage debuffs are a deciding factor when fighting an AV, but I do think they're much more helpful than DMs -tohit, Katana or BSs -defense, the slows from Spines etc.

The other secondary effect I'd give weight to would be the extra damage from Fire. Seeing as Scrappers are there to kill things, Fire is arguably the best at that.

I don't play my KM Scrapper when I want to bring utility to a team, I'd play one of my Corrs who would, as you say, bring much more utility. But the fact that KM does have that utility gives it the nod for me over other primaries for teams.

On a side note, what IS KM's ideal ST attack chain?