EM is basically sub par to SS in every way (AoE, ST DPS, mitigation, etc) Even double stacked Rage KoB hits harder than BU ET if I remember correctly.
I have high end built Fire/SS and Fire/EM tanks and the EM is slower in every respect. The only thing it is better for is end use, since it doesn't have to deal with the rage crashes all the time.
It's hard to say for sure since I don't have one of each at level 50, and even then shield is a lot different from invul in a lot of ways. However, now that you mention it the double-stack of rage is a far larger damage bonus that what I'm getting from shield, it's just a force multiplier. I guess I'm still pissed about the EM nerf, but this gives me a pretty good reason to BE angry about it. Not that rage hasn't been the subject of un-ending nerfs (I also have a SS/Invul Brute at 50) but it chaps my *** that SS is the best of both worlds whereas energy has to suffer through absolutely zero AoE. Again, perhaps a shield/em would help mitigate that but it seems very likely to me that the numbers won't add up. I'll do a bit more investigation when I get home and have access to MiD's, but as it stands I'm leaning towards the EM nerf was simply because of PvP issues. However, breaking a set for PvE to make it 'balanced' in the current broken-as-hell PvP arena makes me reroll yet another level 50. I just want to play the set I rolled, and I didn't roll it for PvP.
EM being nerfed because of PvP is about as likely as the devs rolling back the i13 changes next week. Melee was an overall weak link in PvP and EM was no exception. ET just happened to be that broken of a power. However, putting it in line doesn't fix the design flaws with the rest of the set.
"the reason there are so many sarcastic pvpers is we already had a better version of pvp taken away from us to appease bad players. Back then we chuckled at how bad players came here and whined. If we knew that was the actual voice devs would listen to instead of informed, educated players we probably would have been bigger dicks back then." -ConFlict
Having a Stone/EM tanker at 50 I'll say that there's very little upside to the /EM set anymore, I consider it the worst choice in tanker secondaries now. Everything else either offers more damage, more AOE or better secondary effects... in several cases all three at once. Prior to the ET nerf /EM was a borderline performer, with the animation change to an extremely slow activating attack I find it more often than not hitting something the team's already killed. Having both of the good damage attacks in the set being so slow really cripples the build.
COH has just been murdered by NCSoft. http://www.change.org/petitions/ncso...city-of-heroes
This thread:
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...75#post3644575
Good debate on the effectiveness of Energy Melee as things currently stand.
So, all the nerf's to the energy set were to bring it to parity with the other assault sets for tankers right? Wasn't the 'brusing' effect sold as a way to keep energy's single target damage at roughly what it was at?
I'm just curious because I've got a level 50 invul/em tank, and I'm now leveling up a shield/ss tank and the damage on SS with the shield seems fairly uber. Of course, I'm sure this is mostly because of the AoE damage increase ability from shield, so it's very possible that a shield/em tank would pump out even more damage single target than I'd think. However, with rage it's not hard to keep my damage boost at roughly 160% and more commonly on large teams I travel at damage cap 300% almost constantly. This translates into knockout blow doing ~500 damage and shield charge doing ~300 damage with one acc and two dmg SO's at level 30. I'm curious if someone can compare and tell me how much damage your ET and TF do on average while surrounded. The reason I ask is because energy transfer on my 50 Invul/em tank, with damage cap in place, does ~1300-1500 damage total. However, that's at level 50 vs. level 30 and with complete sets 5 slotted into EM and TF.
It just doesn't seem worth doing EM anymore if knockout blow can seriously compete with it as a single-target damage machine when SS also has a big AoE that makes whirling hands look girly in damage output.