KelvinKole

It's commonly used as the modifier for boosting the secondary effects of powers like -tohit, slow, - endurance, - Def ect., but it also boost healing output, endurance modification dependent powers, and powers that provide +Def, as well as lengthening CC durations. It's sort of a catch all for everything that isn't +dam, +tohit, +resistance

This is a great idea and starts to provide some really interesting synergy with pairing sets. More - Def from Radiation blast, more - tohit from dark blast, more -end from elec blast, more slow from ice blast, longer CC from holds, immobilize, stuns etc. All of a sudden Electric Affinity has unique and real value

You're comparing the ally buffs from every single set to four powers in the same set. It's not apples to apples. Take Cold Domination, for example. There's only three powers in that set that can't benefit the caster in some way and you mentioned them. Compared to Electrical Affinity, which has 7 powers that can't benefit the caster if the silly pet wasn't there - Shock and Faraday cage. can provide a benefit. This was an initial complaint about the set and that's how we ended up with the pet. I'm not disagreeing that the pet solves it, but I stand by my opinion that it's super awkward to use in game. I haven't even been able to ramp up to any kind of difficult content yet, but my assumption is the pet is just going to die anyway and I'll hit the floor shortly after. I'd feel sturdier as an Empathy defender who can at least give myself RAs and PbAoE heals, allowing me to focus on blasting/controlling rather than maintaining buffs in a strange way. If these skills are to benefit the caster, just make them originate on the caster or turn them into siphons and then give us something more useful than the pet.

Most sets don't need that option. Even true "support" sets like Thermal, Pain, and Empathy have PBAoE heals and useful PBAoE buffs or debuffs. Other sets serve the user a lot better. With Electric Affinity, if you don't take the pet, and right now there isn't much reason to IMO, the only self serving power is Faraday cage. Everything else has no way to benefit the user.

Agree on a lot of the above. Adding a few notes. Shock: Still needs something to me. I'd like a high magnitude knockdown just to buy some breathing room when solo and add some additional IO options. Galvanic Sentinel: I just don't like it. I'm sure there's keybinds and stuff, but targeting it while solo just to be able to use the majority of the set feels awkward. My ingenious idea tonight is to make this a ground targeted totem that pull foes close to it. Kind of like using Wormhole to group up mobs, but pulls foes in a surrounding radius towards it. From there it could pulse a -dmg and -regen debuff. Still targetable and killable. It won't make the set less awakard when solo, but will add tremendous utility on a team. I'm imagining like a reverse telekinesis so it looks like mobs are falling into it. It will be awesome. Static: Just get rid of it now. It's only purpose seems to be to allow the set to do what it should be able to do anyway. That, or add passive buffs as I mentioned before: +recharge and reduce endurance cost per stack.

Hopefully this is just bug fixes and not an indication that the dev team thinks the set is in a good place right now. Seems like a lot of feedback has not been considered or incorporated yet. I'm not sure that there's really much new to test in this build.

@Draeth Darkstar We 100% agree the set is too weak and needs to be buffed. I'll have take a break on whether the target cap is an issue. Unfortunately it's hard for me to test without a team on Brainstorm. Maybe a team test event can be organized.

I agree with your analysis of the machanoc, but think you might be placing too much value in the heal. I think of this set more like Nature Affinity, which also has an awkward heal (cone heal over time), but offers other forms of support. Here too you get a very strong resistance buff and status effect protection in Faraday Cage (im not ware of this has a target cap) and an absorb chain with Insulating Circuit that can be uses proactively or reactively. Meanwhile you're bebuffing enemy damage. I think the whole is meant to be greater than the sum of its parts. By the way, they do have logic to prioritize where the chain goes. So that's something other chains don't have.

I'm not sure I'm all in on the "well every other support set can do it" argument. Other sets have limitations of their own; PBAoE heals are around the caster, Transfusion is around the the target, some have accuracy checks, etc. The chain mechanic requires no enemy target/accuracy check, can be cast from anywhere, and can bounce into and out of melee. The values, at least earlier on in the chain, seem to be higher that other Aoe heals too. I'm not saying it's perfect, I'm just saying it's different and we may need to be open to different things. Maybe the heal value shouldn't diminish after each jump? But that may require a rebalance of the numbers.

I agree regarding Amp up. While I couldn't test it that feature, it's very unique and should be very cool when you can get it active on 2 players.

This was my thinking. If this were ever a Mastermind Set, it would be infuriating to not be able to reliably heal your pets. Or even as a Defender set, I'd hate to waste 12 chains on someone's Gang War. Hopefully there's a way to limit the cap to players only. Good point.

I finally got to spend some time with this set tonight and definitely felt what others have been saying: It's too weak. Here's a couple thoughts I have Static needs a rework or buff. My suggestion would be to have it provide a passive buff rather than be needed to create full chains. Have it provide a small reduction to endurance cost and increase to recharge (just like Blood Frenzy) and stack up to 5 times Rework all the chains so that they chain to 8 targets always Defibrillate consumes Static as currently designed Faraday cage becomes a new consumer, increasing the radius per attack Base radius reduced to 15ft, +3ft per Static Amp up no longer consumes static Change this to increase max endurance by 10-20% (unique!) and provide +recharge Swap the tiers of Amp Up and Empowering Circuit Buff Empowering Circuit to be roughly +60% dmg, +60% recharge, +60% Special Increase the recharge to 90s, maybe 120s Shock will need to become something more useful. I'm tempted to say make it Jolting Chain, but that could be too much. Maybe just add a high magnitude knockdown to it and keep it single target. Edit: Wanted to add that I actually really like the set design and think it will be extremely fun to play after some buffs. The concept is fresh and it feels different from anything else. This was a great start!

I'd like to suggest swapping the tiers of Amp Up and Empowering Circuit. Make Amp Up statistically similar to Temporal Selection (time gets this at tier 4) and significant buff Empowering Circuit to be a Heat loss and Fulcrum Shift level ability with moderate +dmg, moderate +recharge, and moderate +special.

Could we also get different sound effects? Is there already an option I'm missing? WHY DOES MY CYBORG SOUND LIKES HE'S HITTING THINGS WITH A BROOMSTICK??

It is a very good set. In full transparency, it's held together by Savage Leap and Rending Flurry and if these were not the MASSIVE AoEs that they are on a Tanker there would not be much else to draw you to it. The recent Tanker buffs put in top tier for Aoe damage. Admittedly, there's no inherent synergy with dark armor other than blood frenzy providing the endurance discount, but it will do that for any primary. Blood Thirst is a weaker than average source of +dmg, so I see sheild being a good pairing as to leverage AAO. Shield charge, Savage leap, Rending Flurry will make Blasters feel obsolete.

The focus of the discussion has been around the damage, but I don't think you can ignore that its also a utility power. This thing has TWO purposes and only takes up ONE tier in the power set and ONE power selection in your build to get you both. You get +end when you need it, AND a strong PBAoE attack when you need it, but didn't have to give up anything. If people only want the damage, then just drop the +end utility. Shockwave won't refill your endurance. Ever.

I can appreciate this. I think Captain was concerned with the safety provided by wiping out all the minions in a single burst though, and scaling it back far enough so it didn't wipe out minions would be met with a lot of resistance too. The DoT is a way to keep the damage high but remove the safety gained by just killing things outright.

I'm liking Bioelectricity, Electropotential, and Galvansim. The one word names carry a certain clout, like Kinetics and Empathy.

I have a friend that teaches music is currently dealing with retirement of classic children songs like Eeny Meeny Mini Moe, Johnny on the wood Pile, and Do Your Ears Hang Low. These songs seem innocent enough, but their historical context is quite the opposite. The problem isn't the song, or the name of a power set. It's choosing to teach it, or use that name, in spite of knowing the history of it. Have we discussed options based on manipulation of the electrical circuits inside the body? We could look at names like Neural Empowerment.

How about Dark Consumption? 😁

I tend to agree with this. But based on captains previous comment that the we would be going back to fully enhanceable damage then we'll be back at the level of damage we saw in version 1, and that's probably best applied as a long duration dot. 1. Keep half the damage enhanceable and the other half based on endurance upon activation. The portion based on damage would be the burst, follow by a DoT based on endurance. 2. Go back to fully enhanceable damage but spread it all out over a DoT.

Will it be isolated to the damage enhanceable portion of the attack or the endurance modified portion? Neither? I think it could be a good idea to leave the damage enhanceable portion of the attack as burst damage and the bonus portion, which is based on endurance, as the DoT. Or maybe vice-versa, have to think about it.

Thanks for doing this. As you said, given that Dark Melee has a lot of utility (a self heal, stacking -tohit, endurance refiller, fear, immobilize) this feels close to the right spot to me. Bumping the radius up to 10ft might finish this thing off.

I hear you. Just keep in mind that's it not just a PBAoE attack; it doubles as a utility power to refill your endurance so it's also different from other mini-nukes in that regard. Now that the ceiling has been limited though, returning the ability to crit might be all that's needed. In general, I'm just cautioning against emotional responses to the changes and trying to advocate for some data. We also still have buffs to shadow maul, so the sum of all parts should be considered.

Try not to look at DE in a vacuum and draw comparisons to other AoEs. It's in a set that provides a mix of damage, utility, and sustain and probably should do less damage than similar (I hesitate to even use that word) in other sets. What we saw in the last version was waaayyy too much. Relatively, this may seem like a large nerf but it might also be putting the set as a whole right where it should be. Relatively, it's also a nice buff over live. Calling on @Galaxy Brainto rerun the scrapper primary test.