Replacement

So interesting to me! It's the best Endurance drain (relative to recharge) in the set at 2% sap per second of base recharge, which means 2.5% for Defender. It's even better for -recovery, being nearly guaranteed to perpetuate -175% Recovery before enhancements. I don't mind that you disagree, I just find it interesting that the rest of your builds have found plenty elsewhere. Chain Lightning does bring weirdness into play on the enhancing front though. It's split pretty wide as it is between EndMod and Hold sets, but buffing those means tossing out Chain damage (This is what I've been doing. When I've slotted damage, it was via Synapse). If you go the other way and slot damage, you're turning your back on those utility/mez benefits. it's enough to make me think Chain Lightning damage should be unenhanceable for non-sentinel... Except I like my Synapse set.

It's never been true that AVs (or mobs in general) "cheat" and use powers regardless of endurance, but I'm quickly realizing their endurance costs are rampant amounts of bull shit. Powerhouse, plz!

I wouldn't go so far. Under this system, you can keep an AV at 10 endurance for up to 16 seconds. I'm sure there are opportunities for continued refinement, but I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water on this approach. For context, no regular controller or dominator - especially on SOs - can reduce an AV down to attacking only once every 16 seconds. Without the End floor, that's what a Blast set can do, completely eating the Control ATs' lunch. On this current build, it's best to think of it as a delayed, but very strong Slow vs AVs. This is more inline with blast sets and support characters. I just wish it could be used - even theoretically - to detoggle special enemies.

The logical follow-up plan is to find and adjust these outliers. If we accept this is the future, we would then pivot to reporting mobs on both sides of the 10/15 line (and your list above becomes a fantastic starting point). And it follows that more specific tuning could occur and probably be good for the game anyway - like Mother's Will Domination? That's a lot of rare love for only 7 End. I know a lot of folks hold disdain for changes that require more changes, but if it's what it takes to shift us towards strong, fast-acting saps, I'm all for it. Can't help but think it will really make it difficult to introduce endurance cost penalty debuffs down the road though.

I would love if Voltaic had its attack range reduced a bit but move speed increased. Heck I would say give it combat teleport but I don't imagine the AI system could handle it.

Not that I disagree with your overall take, but I think your text book definition is leading you astray there: "cantrip" typically just means "novice spell" or similar. Low-level, weak, etc. @LightningDrone your post reads as a summary of the live experience, across multiple elec sets - I strongly recommend trying the beta version, but be aware there isn't anything direct coming to Electric Manipulation this patch. If nothing else, I think Voltaic Sentinel may be a surprise to you.

I'm not sure I understand your point on Pacify working against the other powers... I have a scrapper who taunts and pacifies (part of a concept party with a lot of hate sharing and then promptly trying not to die). And I definitely don't see the problem with terrorizing one enemy and pacifying a 2nd. Definitely really agree with your overall take on the Presence pool though - people act like Relentless is trash and invoke panic not worth talking about, but I've found both to be incredibly good... ... Or they would be if the rest of the pool wasn't set up to ensure you always regret at least one power spent to get there, and probably both! I understand the campaign to expand the Placate benefits since it's basically "hey copy/paste what's already on deck," but I think it's more likely to get a different set of buffs in a future patch. Example: simply having its recharge cut in half, and maybe gaining a secondary effect like -Confuse resist debuff... Things that would make it appealing even to a Stalker, and/or allowing it to open up new game interplay. Either way though, thank you for shining a light on the fact that even this power can take Threat enhancements.

Ctrl-f "gravity control" on the full patch notes page 🙂 Don't you dare try to get that fixed! I am so amused and just imagine how it struggles against the weight of the stone. Not pictured: the fantastically large splash when Granite activates the innertube.

Or just drop the "SSA2" nonsense from official nomenclature. "Last mission of Pandora's Box" or "Final mission of The Pandora's Box SSA" aren't much longer and don't require me to decode content release order.

Situations I've been thinking about in regards to Seismic's Bold: - The ASF is littered with EBs who will live long enough to Smash a few times. - Earth/ninjutsu can start a fight with something absurd like 85% chance for crit hold on target. - I don't even like to talk about it, but the ATO is real, and could be used to leverage Seismic Smash. Hmm, I'm going to add ATO play to my list - I bet I can use it on this set to construct some "decision point" gameplay. --- Also just worth mentioning, it's still a mag 3 hold the rest of the time.

I won't do this... probably ever again if I can help it, but I'm just going to ping you both, @Captain Powerhouse and @Player-1. You know why I agree with this direction of change and why I find it necessary already. But I want to point out some implications I realized while sapping late last night (probably this morning, technically). Binary Saps - As a nice little touch on the way to getting an enemy to zero endurance, the new Shocked! procs are awesome to make sapping less binary. But, with the AV/GM changes, it's instead more of a mechanic hijack (Perfectly sapping GMs and AVs can have little effect - probably none on some - which leaves Shock as the only realistic benefit vs these targets unless you're running multiple sappers). To be perfectly clear, what I'm saying is the AV/GM changes force you guys into a promise implicitly: that other Electric sets need similar scaling effects because the initial goal of sapping is shifting. These special enemies cannot be detoggled - I'm honestly not aware of who this would affect, but even if it's zero, it's still a design consideration. The End floor means the statement "Sap to detoggle" now becomes "Sap to detoggle, unless they are AV+".

Something I feel is important from my AV Drain tests: Voltaic Sentinel Activation Time - During my AV Drain tests, I noticed a huge benefit to VS being a toggle is not losing 3 seconds of sapping time to refresh it (particularly noticeable running double elec Defender, so I can compare the experiences of Galvanic and Voltaic). There's a subtle (and likely accidental) interplay there - Sapping vs special targets is not at all like other debuffs. It stops being there (aside from Shock % chance) the moment you let up. Meanwhile, VS is must-have to maintain a sap on a hardened target because they apply a new Recovery debuff on every hit vs a sapped target (via their guaranteed Shocked! proc, which will stack with your procs). Put these 2 ideas together and what you get is that recasting VS is seriously damaging to continued sapping, which has won me over to the toggle.

You get mezzed more often than once/minute? That's the only way for it to induce more clicks than the Live version. Personally, I just want a better tell when it drops. Can we get a feedback emp effect on ourselves when it drops?

Hahaha I think we generated 15 pages of Rage-rage at the mere mention of non-stacking. I would love it, but the village will burn us.

Depends on enemy level. My testing: Level 50 Defender SOs only No Incarnates vs Level 50 AV: I can sap to their 10 endurance floor in under 30 seconds. vs Level 54 AV: a perfect opening salvo and some assistance from primary/epic can get their Endurance down to about 60-70% for a bit. But then Thunderous Blast and all the Charged Up recovery debuffs start wearing off and they bounce up to the 90s. I can do better with better sap choices and slotting, but this is the purple patch at work, double-to-triple over. I think you'll need Incarnates (the level shift moreso than the +EndMod opportunities) to sap things of this caliber. Really though, if you have a build on Live that can sap AVs, copy it to Brainstorm and give it a try. For me, 100% of my eBlast attempts have been far far better at sapping in beta than on live.

Just want to clarify - "Notify" and waking up targets from sleep are two separate things. I don't understand Sleeps, but they are disrupted by knocks and repels - regardless of Notify status. They can set up targets to just not be affected by the Shockwaves if they're asleep though - I think Ice Manipulation or Assault does this. Meanwhile, I don't know of any Slow effects that are set to Notify (e.g. all the ones I know about) waking up targets, so yeah that would be weird.

I can't speak to Blaster/Sentinel on the Voltaic front (it was there. Hopefully more data to come), but I really feel a Defender would be making a mistake if they skipped Voltaic. They tend to backline more than blasters, often have mez protection, and VS really helps to maintain a good sap. Lets you take a moment to play Support without bosses+ regaining too much juice.

For my blaster build, I ran it with Stealth to leap into a pack and open with Short Circuit. It's better long-term DPS to open with Ball Lighting, but I prefer to burst kill and then CC survivors (because I'm bad and don't usually have soft-capped defenses on Blasters). So a Blaster opening of Short Circuit > Point blank Ball Lighting = field of "Shocked!" procs. I'm gonna port over a diff toon now with combat teleport, which I think will be a more dynamic experience, but the outcome is the same: even a Blaster can push out massive saps and then lay on the hurt. It's enough that I don't feel bad slotting SC with Power Transfer, and I think "interesting slotting" is good for the game. As for Tough/Weave vs TC? I mean that's build and playstyle dependent, right? If you feel you bring more value standing back and throwing out casual Holds (that also have very strong ST saps!) then cool, but if you have better things for your build that's also good. tl;dr: I like sapping even on blaster. Tesla Cage feels worth the buy to me, but I also think it should not hit the point of "must buy." I think the only Musts in the set are Ball Lightning and Thunderous, and the rest is up to you, which I also classify as a good place to be.

I think that's intentional. It's pretty common in fiction for a ~ thing to be used to indicate a vocal warble, such as a syllable being stretched into a music note. It conveys (to me) the word "luck" probably endures through 2, if not 3, separate tones. E: there's an argument to be had that "lu~uck [note]" would work better, but I think authors avoid that for readability. Perhaps that would be better in a comic book which {checks title of the game} might work here.

Compromise: add a crosshair to the tombstone. I was going to suggest behind the tombstone but on the tombstone - like where the name would go - is cracking me up. For Meteor, are the borders correct? Because if so, I think it's better to keep the current art. It's a t9 nuke and deserves to break the rules to be special. We all get it deals damage, it's a rare attack, so why generic it?

Source? /Looks at poster's name. As you were! (Arcane is super right. I just wanted to make a dumb joke) Almost all buffs. It looks like only one power lost an extra instance of DoT - and even then, only in pvp. Everything else is FE buffs, crit damage buffs, base scale buffs. @Galaxy BrainBrainBrainBrainBrainBrainBrainBrainBrainBr If you get time, you really might want to run Savage again. I'm concerned.

Would love to see both masteries contribute static! But I do want to say: running triple-elec Sentinel is shockingly fun on Brainstorm. A lot of mez working well together (holds, aoe immobs, oh and now everything is sapped), and the whole playstyle keeps pushing you towards sources of additional damage (Shocks, Tesla chains). Highly recommended.

Sleeps are not typically intended to be strong mez. You won't get any argument from me that they should be less terrible, but they are intentionally weaker than, say, a Stun or a Terror. The biggest benefit here is that you can use Sleeps to shut down enemy toggles like Hurricane despite their massive tohit debuffs. Now if only we could get that mag 100 sleep protection removed from robots... And this is the exception. Static Field is designed from the ground up to compete with Dark's fear cone, Ice Slick, and Flash Fire. These powers don't need anything else to justify them, so they hit the qualifier of "sleep over time" (see OP).

Now.

Jingle All The Crey