Galaxy Brain

It's not useless, it's more that Elec Control is the one set that is designed to really do it well.

Dropping toggles is one thing, stopping actions is another. Either way, elec blast by itself wont drain quickly unless you heavily sacrifice damage which is an odd choice for an offense set.

All elec blast powers have -100% recovery for various amounts of time except Thunderous Blast.

Honestly, End Drain as a mechanic is fundamentally wacky and not worth rewriting enemies for. When it works, it works as I detailed in the sheet posted prior. Elec Blast on a blaster can drain most enemies dry in about 12ish seconds of continual fire with VS helping out, and even faster if you slot for end mod or lean on Short Circuit / Thunderous Blast. If anything, frankenslotting End Mod sets for End/Rech or such could be useful here or there to leverage the attacks better. End Drain is binary and non-immediate. Ice's Slow or Sonic's -Res is immediately useful and stacks up to become better as you fight. Elec's Sapping is only useful vs targets that can survive blasts long enough to be drained, and then it takes time to actually drain them down to a safe level. Even if they can fire off a high-power attack if they are allowed to tick end once in your assault, the net safety gain is pretty dang good. Its just that as an attacking set, having essentially just 1 power that excels at end drain in SC (Thunderous Blast is not consistent enough to rely on just for Sapping purposes... though it's really nice) makes the secondary effect just kinda.... odd. Elec Control is really the only Elec set in the game with great consistent end drain as it has multiple powers that can drain groups efficiently as opposed to just 1 power (usually Power Sink or Short Circuit) that does all the work. All the other elec sets are awesome due to powers not directly tied to end drain either, though it is a perk. Elec Melee has Lightning Rod and a Chain Attack. Elec Armor has great passives, energize and power sink. Elec Manip has amazing melee attacks, and Power Sink. Elec Blast has Voltaic Sentinel, a very slow PBAoE, and a Ranged Nuke. Thunderous Blast is awesome, especially with the overall changes to nukes which lets you actually leverage it's drain effects but as a nuke its on such a long timer to not be a staple like Rain of Arrows / etc. SC loses out on damage and animation time in exchange for radius (it is decent there) and end drain, which requires slotting + other powers to be effective. As we have all gone over, unless you have Boost Power or Power Sink on top of SC, the drain is sort of meaningless as even ~70% of an end bar gone is nothing to an NPC. Power Sink does not match the range of SC, and neither does Ball Lightning IIRC and the latter can only be boosted to about ~14% end drain via enhancements (Blaster Values), leaving enemies still with enough end to matter (Another 15% ish). You would need to then use a couple of ST attacks per enemy to fully drain their end, by which point the -Recovery on other targets probably would have worn off. Elec Blast by itself does not have the power to effectively use it's side effect. Other elec sets besides elec control focus on other electrical tropes, or if they do drain it uses Power Sink which Returns Endurance to emulate Electrical Power. I say if anything, pull away some of the -End from Short Circuit as it is not enough to focus on anyways. Add back damage and/or animation speed to it instead. The way it is animated + the massive graphic makes it look like it should be a massive, dangerous electrical discharge instead of an end drain. As mentioned before, Aim is a slot that has room to play with. Looking at /Time and how it's Build Up variant trades 20% damage for 20% Recharge, Aim in Elec Blast could probably pull the same thing. Take say, X% away from the massive +ToHit it gives (even if you axed like 25% it would still be overkill tohit for most content) and apply that to +End Mod and/or +Rech to boost up the set's natural end mod and/or electrical "Speed". Also make Tesla Cage deal real damage like Sentinels. Not the same scale sure, but enough to be worthwhile. Sparky could probably use a bit of love too with either a faster or harder hitting bolt. Those alone would make elec blast feel much more effective IMO. For more far fetched ideas, perhaps Zapp could have a chain component where it can jump to 2-3 additional targets (Damage adjusted of course). The attacks that have a 30% chance to return end could just have a 100% end return if you don't miss for less end returned than we have now, or at least the Aim replacement could make the powers have a 100% chance while active.

Honestly, if you could just use the sword slash animations and the fireball shoots out then cool.

Great write up @Sniktch! I guess it sort of puts it's toe over the line in that sense... but doesn't it also not have much DDR compared to SR and Nin?

On that note, even if it may look dumb allowing you to hold weapons in non-weapon sets would also be lit. Casting fireball through a sword? Yes pls

Great write up @StratoNexus. On the sheet I linked prior it goes into some more detail on how long it takes elec blast to drain for a blaster at a base level. It's really only relevant vs Bosses and Elite bosses, and laughable vs AVs. Elec Blast (along with most blasts sets) needs some love ala assault sets. Up above I tossed out some recommendations that alongside end return as a more focused side effect should make it more valuable. The end drain portion more or less works as intended and focusing too much on that front is missing the other design space that electricity can look into.

AE enemies are most likely coded differently than normal enemies. Try the same in an AE mish with troll LTs when they toggle on armors.

Elec manipulation attacks also have the sleep. Honestly, I'd rather the chance for +end be looked at in the elec attacks. The end drain is guarenteed on hit, but there is only a 30% chance to refund endurance back to you. Why not make the return 100% chance at a lower value assuming you hit? End mod would then effect both the drain and the return and give the elec attacks better results when you still have somebody drained. There is also design space within Aim imo. That could be made into some unique power up besides the generic version we have now... Call it "High Voltage" and reduce the +ToHit and +Dam some and add in +End Mod and +Rech. Tesla cage doing actual damage would be nice A chain lightning (Zapp??) Somewhere. Zapp on Elec Blast only would be a good candidate for "Zapping Chain" or the like, a unique snipe that can bounce to up to 3-4 additional targets. Tesla cage being boosted would help ST damage still as I assume the chain would deal less damage. And Voltaic Sentinel can stay, maybe just make his shock attack faster / better.

Yeah, end drain is not the same between players and NPCs, and even if we could drain to detoggle, it's still a waste compared to killing or a traditional hold.

It's not that it isnt a good effect, the problem is that it is black and white. End drain only works if you get, and keep, an opponent at 0 endurance. As I detailed in the numbers, this is essentially worthless on Minions and LTs where you will kill them faster than you drain them, making focusing on draining those targets unnecessary. For bosses+, you will drain faster than you kill on average. But, they also have 200 - 800 endurance or for AVs, massive endurance drain and -rec resistances. 1 tick of their recovery if you lapse is good enough for them to swing with a lot of their move pool since they still have normal end costs compared to their massive pool. This also limits how much drain effects them on the way to 0 as they can essentially be unaffected until that point. Once at 0, only -rec really matters as the end drain has no additional effects, and at that point you are fighting a statue. It's just a very weird design choice that is either not notable or OP.

Of all the secondaries, I dont see EA as over performing?

So, I wanted to run some numbers on the end drain of Elec Blast itself to see how it holds up, mainly looking at just the basic blasts. Short Circuit and Thunderous Blast are big outliers in the End Drain dept of course. SC ranges between 35% end drain base and 69.68% with 3 lvl 50 IO's. TB on the other hand has a base of 55% end drain with 2, 30% chances to drain an additional 25%, or averaged out about 70% end drain per blast. With 1 IO, the base drains become 78.32% and 35.6%, 99.68% average! With 2 IO's, the base drains become 100.83% and 45.83%, which is just overkill but relevant only on enemies with drain resist (128% ish on average) Tossing end drain onto TB with some frankenslotting seems worthwhile at least, but it does not carry any -Recovery by itself and you lose out on damage potential of the nuke by doing so.... Looking past these two though, we are left with the other powers: Charged Bolt - 7% Drain Lightning Bolt - 10% Drain Zapp - 15% Drain (significant with the new changes!) Voltaic Sentinel - 5% Drain (Sparky fires independently of you and does provide -Rec) Tesla Cage - 7% Drain Ball Lightning - 7% Drain Using these stats, and the base numbers at lvl 50 for a blaster with no enhancements we could see the following vs an Even-Con enemy: CB + LB + Zapp Combat + CB, +2 VS bolts = 459.33 damage (ignoring Defiance for now), and 49% End Drain. This is enough damage to kill 1 Minion in roughly 5 seconds. CB + LB + Zapp Combat + CB + Ball Lightning + Tesla Cage + Short Circuit, +4 VS bolts = 681.57 damage (ignoring Defiance for now), and 108% End Drain. Ending with SC was due to just otherwise waiting around and allowing recovery to kick back in, which allows counter-attacks. This chain took about 11.24 seconds total, and would: Kill a minion deal ~80% to a LT deal ~27% to a Boss deal ~13% to an EB With 95% Dam Enhancement via SO's, you would kill a Minion or LT by the time you hit 100% drain with the same attacks, and deal 51% to a Boss and 25% to an EB. With 95% End Enhancement you would kill a Minion before hitting 100% drain, but with just CB+LB+Zapp+CB+Ball, +2 VS you hit 100% drain in just 6.07 sec (sacrificing other slotting). So it looks like without the "Main Drains" you can drain non-resistant mobs from 100-0 in between 6.1-11.3 seconds and then keep them drained. Using SC and/or TB will vary this of course, but for best results you need to slot End Mod and sacrifice damage / use a dang nuke and pray to RNG or again sacrifice slots. In the document below I run some other numbers, but also show the values for Endurance that different classes of enemies have. Anything above a minion will have significantly more endurance than the 100 that players get, while retaining the same end cost with their powers. 1 tick of endurance off a boss' pool of 200 would be enough to launch a decent attack which is why we often see them use powers with "minimal end". The blue bar for them may be tiny but its more than you think! So as a secondary effect, without investment and use of very specific powers it takes about 10 sec to kick in per target and then needs to be maintained on enemies that would otherwise be dead faster than they'd be drained. But if it is not maintained even for a split second the endurance pools ensure they can fire off their big attacks worry free thanks to you happening to miss or just having a gap in your chain / Sparky being Sparky. Once drained, -Recovery is all that really matters since the -End can't go negative or apply any bonus effects.... though at the same time the enemy is rendered useless so buffs to the Drain or even nerfs to enemy END pools would be incredibly binary in every sense. All food for thought. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1AW5_KjMAykxJhSdMflR1uSfOsfknNvSyZDsLmoFohjw/edit?usp=sharing

I think part of the issue is that the a good chunk of sets are designed more for Corruptor or Defender use where the straight damage of blasters gets a bit odd when balanced around their comparatively bad secondary effects.

@Flitze, that is not a hold its simply an idle animation. Only elec melee has an effect with a sleep chance. Anyways, I had played an elec3 blaster for 7ish years on live. I know how powerful end drain can be. It still sucks. Yes, my blaster could jump in and short circuit + power sink + ball lightning and neutralize a group providing everything is hit. In that same timeframe most any other blaster would have simply killed the mob of enemies barring the bosses anyway while my targets are still alive, albeit useless without endurance. Vs single hard targets the nature of the best draining abilities being (slow) PBAoEs is also very risky, and overall the strat takes far too long to kick in with a single character and as mentioned is really only good in a window where it is efficient to drain end over just killing the guy ir applying other debuffs.

I'm surprised I haven't seen more talk of this combo, it looks potentially really fun! Does anyone have experience with running one?

It'd be neat to have a like... FAQ of Frequent Requests. But yes, @foxy236 this is a huge want from everyone 🙂

Went through and replayed 5 runs of Ice, Rad, Broadsword and Elec melee given my better experience with the map and the sets. These 4 were chosen due to being outside the normal range of the Standard Deviation when looking at all the sets (on my personal runs specifically). The new runs looked at the 5 slowest times per set and I gave myself only 5 mulligans to try and best those specific times. I have included the original runs in Blue on both the main sheet and my page on the doc for prosperity. All my runs are now within +/-6ish seconds of the "average" standard deviation (sort of a mouthful there lol). I feel more comfortable with myself going forward with the runs more tightly packed. Sets I observed to be finicky based on types of spawns still have a higher SD than others, just no longer as wild as before. In doing this, the averages of some sets changed. Personal: Overall:

That'd be neat 🙂

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ConservationOfNinjutsu

I mean, if they wanna boost end game builds specifically they could make IO procs / incarnate procs benefit from Containment

Thanks for the input everyone! Been juggling some ideas for another controller or dom and the breakdown is very helpful 🙂

Even on SO's Armor T9s are kinda booty 😕

I do think that they'd be slower.... SR especially as it'd be luck based with no HP recovery. Invuln would probably be safer and more consistent with +Acc from Invincibility... worth a shot 🙂 Also, anyone know the easiest way to load up IO's on Pineapple?