Ice_Ember

Originally Posted by Tater Todd

Whoops. Sorry about that. I slipped a little.

Originally Posted by Arcanaville

Energy Aura should be higher than SR against endurance drain.

Originally Posted by Death_Adder

Single target, yes. But Ice Melee does have quite high aoe damage. Frost and frozen aura are really good aoe powers. Really the only change needed for ice melee is to fix the hideous DPA in GIS, which is currently the most skippable power in the set.

Originally Posted by May Flowers

Can't get enough of Stryker, look for his return....... in the new Star Wars game, you can get that same good time feeling? SOON

Originally Posted by UnicyclePeon

I have a character name camped just ready for the day I can make a Super Strength/Ice Armor brute.

I also want Ice Melee/Super Reflexes, tho for that I am not sure if I will be a brute or a scrapper.

The funny thing is that I can make the above as Tankers. I have tanker placeholders for them. But conceptually they need to be higher damage types.

And so the waiting continues ....

Lewis

Originally Posted by Test_Rat

Ice armor for brutes just isn't a thematic fit.

Originally Posted by Acemace

Stryker was a Republican?
I always took him for more of a Jim Jones & the Peoples Temple slant.

Originally Posted by the_larker

/ea because it is both pretty and strong.

Originally Posted by Dark_Impact

At the risk of sounding bitter...

MM's have the set for years and ask for attention and get zilch.

The set is proliferated and now all of a sudden there are rumors of attention.

Go figure. At any rate, hopefully there is change in the not too distant future now that archetypes that get attention have access to it.

Originally Posted by Infernal_Jester

Now I just need to remember how to play my toons . . . .

Originally Posted by Nihilii

Kinetic Melee on brutes is lacking. The problem is that it was balanced as a scrapper powerset first and foremost, with brutes getting it as an afterthought: it relies heavily on self damage buffing to deal optimal damage.

As brutes already get Fury, the bonus is proportionally lower than for scrappers and final damage ends much lower. Even worse still, brutes inherently get lower mods on damage buffs.

Is this to say the set is unplayable on brutes and will melt your computer the second you try it? No, of course not, you can get through the whole game just fine. To give you an actual figure on the difference I'm talking about, using an identical attack chain of CS SB BB QS SB BB, with identical procs and everything, the brute will do 175 DPS and the scrapper 200 DPS. So, 1/8 damage loss, or 12.5%.

If anything, the psychological effect is more noticeable. The scrapper is going to buff himself to +150-160% from time to time and throw 800 damage concentrated strikes all over the place. The brute is going to have a hard time reaching 700 damage.

So I'm kind of dodging the question here, but that is to say that if you don't care about ludicrous survivability, going KM/Inv scrapper can make sense - as Inv is very sturdy regardless of which AT you pick, and the damage increase you'd get from that specific swap would be significant.

How does KM compare to other damage powersets? Well, it has a hard-hitting T9, a slightly better than standard damage PBAoE with a long animation, a cone that KBs, a so-so ranged attack, and 3 decent ST attacks. It's fairly good while leveling for ST DPS, as you get your aforementioned 3 ST attacks by level 4 and that's all you need to have a decent chain going. It's poor on AoE as realistically, you only get Burst to play with, with its 3 second animation and 8' radius. Super Strength, Claws, Stone Melee, War Mace, Axe, Dual Blades, Fiery Melee, Elec Melee all have you beat on that front ; or, to put it another way, the only worse sets for AoE output are Dark Melee and Street Justice.

On the bright side, Kinetic Melee doesn't force redraw, and coupled with Power Siphon, even though it does less on a brute that it would on a scrapper, that means any potential epic AoE you might add will work a bit better than it would on most other brutes. If you're willing to lock yourself in the specific pools with a 15 feet radius TAoE (soul, pyre, mu), your AoE output can be fairly decent by the time you're level 41 or so.

For the same reason, it can make sense to tie KM to a secondary with damaging powers, as you get more out of it thanks to Power Siphon and it helps mitigate the lack of AoE output from the primary.

That said, there's nothing wrong with Invul and KM/Inv can work just fine if you enjoy the animations. Just don't expect to keep up with SS/Fire or something.

Originally Posted by Zyphoid

Mine were close to that. KM is a beast. What isn't taken into account (because it is a hard variable to account for) is a series of lucky numbers with Power Siphon. I did one run where it was up and active for most of the run because of CS crits. I didn't even do the math on mine, I just posted my run time, and others did it for me. Shoot, even after my initial run I changed my build a bit and got even more DPS.

Originally Posted by Myrmydon

And so it begins.

I bet we'll have a pretty good influx of old players that will at least take a look when its FtP. I can't wait.