Electrical Blast is bad, don't use it

[DarknessEternal]

Electrical Blast is objectively the worst of the blast sets.

 

1. Endurance drain is pointless.  NPCs don't have costs to their powers.  They have drain.  The "cost" is deducted from their endurance.  The only check which is made is if they have any endurance.  So if they have 1 endurance, they can use a power that "costs" 100, at which point they'll have 100 removed from their total endurance, 99 of which was meaningless.  So for endurance drain to be a meaningful mechanic, you have to get them to 0 endurance and keep them from recovering any.  If you think that's what Short Circuit does, see the next point.

 

2. -100% Recovery doesn't zero out endurance recovery on NPCs.  It halves it, just like 100% deductions on recharge, or endurance reduction.  On this point, I'm not actually sure.  It's just the most likely explanation given that you can demonstrably prove NPCs get endurance back while being chain Short Circuited.  Eventually they get endurance.

 

3. Voltaic Sentinel is much worse than the high damage single target attacks other sets get.  Just simple math on this one.  It does 1/4 to 1/3 the damage of the heavy single target attacks.  It also does this less often given practical levels of recharge, as its rate of fire never changes.  And you don't even get to decide who it shoots.

 

4. Thunderous Blast has 25 second longer cooldown than other T9 nukes.  It does the same damage as them, but takes longer.  It also has a longer animation time. 

[Flat Line]

I don't think anything above is wrong...

 

EXCEPT: Use it if you want.

It's still good enough, and contributes well to a team.

 

I've seen first hand back on live (before Devices buff, well before Blaster buffs).

A Electric/Devices blaster played well can be very devastating. 

 

Play whatever you want, I can't think of a set that is so bad you can't play the game well.

[Microcosm]

I think the thing to really glean out of your point, is the end drain being pointless part. End drain is an offensive "mitigation" tool in more sets than just electric blast, and it realistically doesn't do anything in pve. Would be a good thing for the devs to take a pass at.

[Coyote]

I think that -Recovery has a 25% floor, which means that it takes 4x as long between ticks of gaining Endurance as normal. So if a tick is every 4 seconds, a mob with its Recovery floored would get a tick every 16 seconds.

[subbacultchas]

So having played elec blasters, controllers, and others I think some of these points are very valid. However, you can get enemies to zero endurance and you can keep them there, although it's not always easy with a single elec. So I would not say people should not play it, I would instead say people should not play elec sets expecting to keep all enemies end drained very quickly and permanently by themselves. 

Voltaic is definitely trash though 🙂

Edited September 26, 2019 by subbacultchas

[Ravenprince]

I would have to agree that solo, it is weaker than some other blaster primaries.  However, if you get another sapper on to team up with, it's pretty amazing.  Especially if the other sapper is a tank like Ice or Elec.

[Veloice]

Sounds like a challenge to me!

[Hopeling]

To my knowledge, points 1 and 2 are not correct. Do you have a source?

 

I mean, endurance drain really does offer very little benefit, but only for regular boring reasons as far as I know, rather than because NPCs have fundamentally different endurance mechanics from players.

[Murcielago]

[DarknessEternal]

52 minutes ago, Hopeling said:

To my knowledge, points 1 and 2 are not correct. Do you have a source?

Yes, the server is the source.  It can be verified by anyone in actual play.

[TheAdjustor]

Probably the second worst special effect of any blast set.

 

Archery still wins though with .15 extra accuracy and nothing for its nuke.

[Hopeling]

4 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:

Yes, the server is the source.  It can be verified by anyone in actual play.

This is what I see in-game. Recovery debuffs can indeed take NPCs to zero:

As to point 1, I tested it by making a custom enemy in AE whose only attack is Spine Burst (costs 20.44 end). I sat next to him with Conductive Aura on, which drains enduranc but does not debuff recovery; his endurance was visibly ticking upward before getting drained. But he never used Spine Burst no matter how long I waited, because one tick isn't enough endurance to afford it; as soon as I turned off the aura and let him get two ticks, he used his attack.

 

You don't need to posit strange mechanics to explain the things you're seeing. NPCs can attack with one tick of endurance because lots of attacks cost less than one tick's worth of endurance, especially for bosses/EBs/AVs who have a larger endurance bar and thus larger ticks. Recovery debuffs don't always floor the target's recovery because, like everything else, they are subject to the Purple Patch; Short Circuit on a +4 target is -48%, not -100%.

[Frostweaver]

what electric needs is actual damage reduction to go with that end drain and -recovery. If every attack caused 7% -dam, (no stacking with itself) the 'weakness' secondary effect might have some real utility against something other than minions (which are easily wiped)

[Riverdusk]

Another point against it - lackluster proc/set opportunities.  Endurance mod sets are weak (for offensive purposes).  Although this hurts corrupters/defenders more.  Funny the set is actually pretty good overall for sentinels though.

 

Maybe they could give all ATs the damage boost they gave to sentinel's tesla cage.

 

 

[Heraclea]

I do enjoy my electric/electric blaster.  But Power Sink in the secondary is the number one endurance draining tool; the drains in Electric Blast are only a supplement. 

[Sovera]

I've managed to drain and keep mobs drained with my Elec/* Sentinel. I've also noticed that most of the time I have killed things before this has happened which made the draining useless.

[Jeneki]

On 9/26/2019 at 11:04 AM, DarknessEternal said:

3. Voltaic Sentinel is much worse than the high damage single target attacks other sets get.  Just simple math on this one.  It does 1/4 to 1/3 the damage of the heavy single target attacks.  It also does this less often given practical levels of recharge, as its rate of fire never changes.  And you don't even get to decide who it shoots.

Did you try comparing the rate of fire to when you use Hasten before Voltaic Sentinel?

 

[Galaxy Brain]

The problem with End Drain is that it's all or nothing 90% of the time, and unless you have some means of sapping an enemy / group of enemies near instantly it pales in comparison to other secondary effects.

 

Compare it to say, Ice or Psy's -rech. As you attack, enemies are able to hit you much like they are as you take away endurance. However, each attack from Ice or Psy builds up a -rech that makes subsequent attacks more infrequent as you continue to fight which adds up to a significant advantage. In order for end drain to have a similar effect on most enemies, you would need to attack them enough to where they are essentially dead anyways by the time you would get mitigation, in which point its just worse Fire. Short Circuit can get close to one shot if you slot it for End Mod, but then it is slow and you sacrifice AoE damage in the set and still do not get your whole effect unless you pair with Power Sink / Power Boost. If you just have SC, the other elec attacks are better off being used to kill rather than drain at that point.

 

Elec Control works because it is made to have multiple, strong -End tools that can efficiently sap blue bars and keep them down. Elec Blast/Melee however do not have that luxury outside of Short Circuit, and the melee set is far more focused on what Elec should be known for: AoE damage by chain attacks / jumping into the fray like a lightning bolt.

[synfoola]

Elec Blast, on its own, was always crap compared to other blasts...even before ED when we could make a 6-slotted Short Circuit worth a damn in the end drain department and it gave us bragging rights of being able to survive pre-nerf Peregrine Island along with the Fire/Fire tanks and the Fire/Dev Toe-bombers as a sorry consolation prize. Thank GAWD, I paired it up with /Energy Melee at the beginning or the ED change would've just killed her playability for me altogether.  The forum arguments we used to get into just over Voltaic Sentinel...LOL

So, ya...problems going back to basically Issue 1 that weren't resolved by sunset besides making Volty follow you around (and even that is just "Meh"). The Sniper change in Homecoming has pretty much helped Elec Blast more than all the issues from Live, but Elec blast is going to need a major rework...and I honestly can't blame the dev team here if they can't address it within the months HC has been live vs the years Cryptic/Paragon Studios didn't do much with it. *shrugs*

[Abraxus]

I played an Electric\Energy Blaster to L50, having popped that last level during this Halloween Event on a ToT league.  I have had a lot of fun with her, and I plan to keep going until she is at least T3 on all 6 Incarnate powers.  I don't pay a lot of attention to the stats.  Only the amount of fun that I have with a character in total.  I tend to play more with teams, so perhaps that mitigates the weaknesses that everyone else has pointed out.

 

Bottom line.  I've had fun despite the statistical weakness of the set, so don't be afraid to give it a try.  You might like it too.

[Shoulung]

I can still kill things as electric, and it fits a lot of the themes I have for characters so I’ll happily keep on using it.

[atletikus]

On 9/27/2019 at 5:32 AM, Hopeling said:

This is what I see in-game. Recovery debuffs can indeed take NPCs to zero:

As to point 1, I tested it by making a custom enemy in AE whose only attack is Spine Burst (costs 20.44 end). I sat next to him with Conductive Aura on, which drains enduranc but does not debuff recovery; his endurance was visibly ticking upward before getting drained. But he never used Spine Burst no matter how long I waited, because one tick isn't enough endurance to afford it; as soon as I turned off the aura and let him get two ticks, he used his attack.

 

You don't need to posit strange mechanics to explain the things you're seeing. NPCs can attack with one tick of endurance because lots of attacks cost less than one tick's worth of endurance, especially for bosses/EBs/AVs who have a larger endurance bar and thus larger ticks. Recovery debuffs don't always floor the target's recovery because, like everything else, they are subject to the Purple Patch; Short Circuit on a +4 target is -48%, not -100%.

I think it's more a matter of usefulness/reliability rather than it potentially working or not. In 99.9% of gameplay, making mobs dead faster is preferable and to that regard all other sets are better than Electricity Blast. When IOs entered the scene, the usefulness of secondary blast effects/versatility was lessened, and lessened even further with the much needed buff to Blaster secondaries. Albeit Electrical was helped by the change to sniper blasts more than any other set, the set hasn't ever really been in the meta - less so now than ever.    

Edited October 7, 2019 by atletikus

[Radiaria]

I think this set really needs a rework. I think the sentinel pet should probably be improved (more damage, and also macro-able).

 

The Endurance drain was really cool for a time, but it's definitely lost its place.

 

In its current state, it just doesn't compete with other sets, it is lowest in damage, and very low for utility. The AOEs are decent, but this is not enough to compensate for the fact they're still lower damage and SC is a 3 second animation power that forces you into melee range and does relatively bad damage compared to "others" especially for its DPA (breath of fire, fistful of arrows, stream spray [by vast amounts], frost breath, energy torrent, empty clips, tentacles, cutting beam [not very good, but still better as it doesn't force you into melee range and is still better DPA], AR's numerous odd AOEs are better than this, irradiate [takes awhile but still better DPA], psychic scream) the only one worse than this one is probably Shockwave. Honestly, all of those are better than SC is by damage or better utility. Lots will even argue at least Shockwave knocks which is somewhat helpful whereas this does an end drain that won't do very much for you in the long haul, some enemies even being 100% resistant to it.

 

Electricity needs a revisit. I think that they need to change SC in some way (make it a cone targeted AOE! with less activation time!), improve the damage on it slightly, and make, again, the sentinel do more damage and be controllable.

 

IMO, this set is "aged," it has not been properly updated to reflect the changes of the current meta in the game, it is not damaging enough, too slow, and is not as good as other sets now are. It really could use some updating.

Edited October 7, 2019 by 3333053222

[TheAdjustor]

Just about all the blast sets are meh. You have fire, Ice, sonic if someone wants to gimp themselves for the team.

 

As an exercise to see how bad they are take the list of melee sets and their damage and secondary effects and then try to pair them with a blast set.

[Dark Current]

I think the simplest 'fix' for the set to boost its dmg and drain effects would be to add the 'jump' chance from Electric Control's jolting chain to all the ST attacks.