Why the hate for melee Incarnates?

Tyrant's 'crackle' isn't really a patch of death in the same style as the Battle Maiden blue and MoM pink. Those two last a good bit, the latter actually growing. Tyrant pulses for a few seconds and then it's done until the next crackle. Yes, you have to run out. But you don't have to STAY out of the area. It's so brief that I really question the usefulness of taunting him out of it.

Devs hate.

I play both ranged and melee characters, so I don't have any axe to grind either way. The main reason the patches of death exist is that most melee incarnates are pretty much invincible. The AVs stand there clobbering us with massive attacks, yet we suffer almost no damage.

Most melee characters can punch out Tyrant's face for 20 minutes and are never damaged by his direct attacks. Only the crackling air does any serious damage, and only if you neglect to skip out of it.

This is the tradeoff: the devs would have to either make the AVs' direct attacks powerful enough to threaten us, or add attacks that will cut through our ridiculously high defenses but which we can avoid in some way.

They've chosen the latter, giving us fair warning with Marauder's attack, the rings with BAF and the patches most every other trial. Since the patches do DoT and we can generally flee them, it's a much more benign mechanic than constantly getting one-shot by the AV.

However, I agree that they've greatly overdone the patches of death thing. It's annoying that the action we're required to take in nearly all these cases is to just run away. That's very unimaginative.

But they've already used consumable inspirations that protect us from massive attacks (with Hamidon), and they have half a zillion temp powers that we need for a variety of gimmicks (like Reichsman, and Marauder, and the pillars of light, etc.).

Running away is the least onerous of these options, because it doesn't require any extra knowledge or monkeying with inspirations or temp powers.

Re: Why the hate for melee incarnates?

The reason is easy enough to see in this very thread: public perception.

Look at how many answers are saying melee characters can steamroll the game without a thought - as if, at least that's what I assume is implied, buff/debuff characters couldn't do the same thing with even more ease, and save for some melee outliers, more efficiently.

At the same time, that superior performance isn't as passive so there's much disparity between a good player and a bad player playing a buff/debuff AT, whereas melee tends to be more even; which means at the lower end of the scale, which is, let's face it, most people, you're going to have melee outperforming ranged, and hence that perception.

Bottomline... It's not going to change. Just alt some ranged stuff and enjoy the uberness, in both itrials and normal content.

Using a melee quite often, I haven't found my melee not fighting in melee. Fight in melee, get a few chains off, back off, then back into melee, repeat.

Personally, I'm not a fan of the patch(es) (accumulated into one so large that even ranged toons have to move back for at least five seconds) but as long as you start moving before it actually animates, it's not always instant death (even though its pretty dang close). Plus there's gaps in the patch that you can weave through to get back to attacking faster than just waiting the patches out.

I've had toons (2 Controllers and a Crab) only take approx 2100 points of damage (plus AoE based DoTs) before scrambling out into fresh air.

This is where having an organized team and/or the proper Destinies comes in handy.

Personally, I won't take a squishy within 60 feet of Tyrant, but it's not because of his lightning flow. His Hammer of Justice is absolutely brutal. Why there is a warning for his wimpy eye beams and not this is a mystery to me.

Returning to the Lightning Flows, on two trials now I've avoided all but a single tick from it by hovering high above the ground. It seems that it's only spawning on the ground.