Electrical Blast is bad, don't use it

[Rejolt]

27 minutes ago, Frostweaver said:

agreed. Electric needs to be better at killing, not playing a 3rd rate controller.

I agree with this, but full drain is the best use of the secondary effect. You are a 3rd rate controller.

 

my main on live was an Elec/nrg blaster and I mainly punched for damage and used the primary for groups and CCing. I haven’t remade it because an electric/nrg sentinel did that 2nd thing while surviving better.

 

what if electric had a chance for extra DoT damage like fire does?

Edited October 17, 2019 by Rejolt

[StratoNexus]

16 hours ago, Frostweaver said:

Sure. and the REST of us are trying to get electric buffed so that it's DPS output is not more than 20% below that of it's closest competitor. The fact that you don't mind sentinel-level damage and can 'work around it' in exchange for a secondary trick that only works on minions and luts is not really relevant, since sentinels can do it just fine as well. Sure, you love the mitigation, who doesn't? But mitigating damage after 10 seconds of a bunch of stuff you could KILL in half the time does not help you with an alpha strike, and it doesn't help you deal with threats at 'average' blaster speeds.

 

agreed. Electric needs to be better at killing, not playing a 3rd rate controller.

I am interested in seeing the math on how it deals 20% less DPS than "it's closest competitor." What is it's closest competitor, I am not sure what that means? 

 

I think it can be fine for different sets in the same archetype to perform somewhat differently. As long as the kill rate is not horrible, the set being a third rate controller on top of low end blaster damage could be a reasonable balance point. It has been a long time since I have played my Elec/Fire blaster, I have not yet played an Electric blaster with the I24 changes to blast sets (but my second 50 on Homecoming was my Kin/Elec defender, so I do have experience with the good snipe and the crashless nuke). Electric blast's end drain definitely pairs better with some secondaries and this is more important than just being able to stack stuns or holds. I know with my Elec/Fire, I did not bother with End Drain, unless I was playing against up levels and usually only when I nuked did it come in handy, to neuter surviving bosses/lts. Obviously on other secondaries you can drain end much faster; my SG mate uses his Elec/En with Power Boost-SC to neuter spawns quickly.

 

Electric Blast surely needs to have lower DPS than Fire Blast. But is it too low currently? Spawn to spawn, VS is pretty lackluster, but against a single hard target it is pretty good. Short Circuit's very large AoE is nice (although the animation time is, IMO, too long). Thunderous Blast can be cast without having to run into the middle of the spawn, which is why I think it has the longer recharge, if I remember correctly, but I agree its animation could be trimmed and/or maybe deal a bit more damage (not Inferno/Blizzard level, but a bit higher maybe).

 

Lacking the big hitter like Blaze was never an issue for me, because I just used melee attacks in my chain and VS was good DPS vs hard targets (unless those hard targets come with ambushes). Being able to reliably add Zapp into the attack chain can only be an improvement over my old experience, where Snipes were terrible. I am a fan of Electric blast and was not disappointed with my Elec/Fire back in the day, but I do know that Electric is not the best damage. I also am not convinced it needs more than it has (nor am I adamant that it is fine as is).

Edited October 18, 2019 by StratoNexus

[Shockacon]

[VV]

3 minutes ago, Shockacon said:

I do.

[Frostweaver]

Update!-

Ironically, the snipe changes actually have put electric blast in a better place than it was previously. After figuring out how to reliably build around the 22% to-hit bonus, and the new 'quick snipe' proc, it actually boosted Electric's damage in comparison to several other sets. Of course, the 'high performer' sets are now even HIGHER performers than previously, but Electric seems to have graduated from 'complete crap' to 'lowest performer'. this is a BIG step up, since every AT HAS to have a 'lowest performer'.

It's still rock bottom, but that rock bottom is no longer nearly as far to fall as it was.

[oedipus_tex]

Endurance drain could be made better with a small change to AI. If AI had a chance to use no power at all when it determined its endurance was low, even if it could technically afford the cost of the power, endurance drain would be a much better effect and scale properly.

 

FWIW a potential way to fake this without touching AI, assuming this works on enemies, is to give some electric powers a chance to increase power costs. Basically, a chance for reverse Conserve Power. That would increase the cost of their attacks for a period of time and make them unable to use the power sometimes even if they normally would have had enough endurance. 

Edited October 19, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Flitze]

Just set up a mission in AE with an Energy Melee / Regen elite boss to be defeated. Regen to make the end drain effect more obvious. I did it with an elec/kin corruptor.

 

The elite boss has the following powers:

Energy Punch (attack with lowest end cost: 7)

EnergyTransfer (attack with highest end cost)

 

Fast Healing

Fast Recovery

Moment of glory (end cost 3.5)

 

Interesting:

I opened with Transference (end drain from kinetics which drains all of his end) standing invisible next to the elite boss, he still got his Energy Transfer and his Energy Punch off.

Once all end is drained, Lightning Bolt and Zapp kept him drained.

The whole fight took 1 min 45 seconds. During the whole fight he used Energy Punch (4.8s recharge) 5 times and Energy Transfer (24 sec recharge) 2 times. By far not as often as he could. Recharge times were reduced by Siphon Speed, reduction included in the given timings.

One hit with Energy Transfer would defeat my corrupter, luckily the defense was sufficient. But less attacks also mean a lower probability to be hit at all (5% chance is always there).

Due to its low end cost the elite boss could still use Moment of Glory.

 

A second time I opened with Siphon Speed and without using Transference. It took some attacks to drain all of his endurance but this happened before he could reach me.

 

Summary:

Once a foe is out of endurance, Electrical Blast can reduce the damage output of the foe way more than a recharge debuff.

Enough endurance drain (e.g. done by 2 players constantly attacking with electricity) will keep the foe from using his most powerful attacks.

In Homecoming, the endurance of AVs/Heroes cannot be drained (quick enough) anymore to prevent their most powerful attacks.

 

Practically the end drain effect is only viable against foes which are not quickly defeated, like elite bosses. But since it takes some time to drain the endurance with attacks either the foe will be defeated by the blaster or vice versa before the end drain effect can be exploited. Ranged enemies are still deadly, of course.

The end drain effect of Electrical Blast is no defense. But together with e.g. the Kinetics pool it can take and keep a foe out of the fight.

 

An effect of Electrical Blast which is often neglected is the short hold after hitting a foe with an attack. This effect often enables Controllers and Dominators to hold a boss with only one applicication of their hold power.

Edited October 19, 2019 by Flitze

[Galaxy Brain]

@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.

 

 

Edited October 19, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[Blastit]

What if Voltaic Sentinel was just a real pet? Give it an electric damage aura, good resistances and let it plink away with some charged bolts. Not enough of a pet that it could fit in a control set but enough of a pet that it could make electric blast a decent set. Barring an elegant replacement of endurance drain and/or a redesign of game systems such that endurance drain becomes good, it's a brute force style improvement.

 

It's a weird thing to put in a blast set, certainly, but so's regularly existing Voltaic Sentinel. Give it a 4-minute duration like Dark Servant if that's an issue.

[atletikus]

On 10/16/2019 at 5:41 PM, Frostweaver said:

Sure. and the REST of us are trying to get electric buffed so that it's DPS output is not more than 20% below that of it's closest competitor. 

A bit hyperbolic I think. I believe Sonic is significantly worse off than Electricity now, both for ST and AoE...and definitely for sound effects! 

Instead of focusing on a single set as done here, I really hope most of blasterdom can get behind a larger rebalancing patch touching on all the sets as a whole similarly to the re-balancing done recently on Dominator secondaries. The same disparity between the Dominator assault sets that was the reason for that patch is arguably considerably worse for Blasters (who for the most part only have their damage and third rate control to contribute). The old style mez powers should all be given a significant damage compartment (without going overboard with it as done for Freeze Ray) and the animation timers of trimmed down. And this should include the secondaries as well as much of the work is already done. 

[atletikus]

On 10/18/2019 at 5:33 PM, StratoNexus said:

Electric Blast surely needs to have lower DPS than Fire Blast. But is it too low currently?

It is significantly too low, and not only for Electricity and Sonic which is in arguably a worse spot. The Blaster sets were designed for a vastly different meta than is today. Secondary effects are very overrated as a counterbalance to pure damage in the world of great IO-sets, Epic/Ancillary sets and Incarnate powers. 

[Galaxy Brain]

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.

[Frostweaver]

if endurance modification sets did not suck, it would not be so much of an issue.

[StratoNexus]

1 hour ago, atletikus said:

It is significantly too low, and not only for Electricity and Sonic which is in arguably a worse spot. The Blaster sets were designed for a vastly different meta than is today. Secondary effects are very overrated as a counterbalance to pure damage in the world of great IO-sets, Epic/Ancillary sets and Incarnate powers. 

I do not agree with your premise. It sounds like you think all Blaster primaries should deal almost exactly the same damage. I think that significantly undervalues the control and secondary effects of many sets. Sure, on a steamroll team with plenty of buff/debuff, where the team stays mostly together, those effects are devalued. But I play on teams that frequently split up and sometimes on teams with "too little" buff/debuff. I play on teams that even when together-ish, pull the next three spawns.

 

Even with Judgements and nukes, I frequently see enough tough enemies surviving and relatively long engagements due to the multiple spawn aggro that allow blaster controls to be useful often enough that I value them much higher than you seem to.

 

I also play a lot to level up from 1-50 where I see many people running without sets and obviously without Epic and Incarnate powers. My Sonic/Fire blaster back in the day was much safer to level solo and small team than my Fire/Fire, despite the lower damage, thanks to the controls.

 

I am not sure what the "meta" of CoH really is at the moment. In my experience, there seems to be a lot of folks at all levels, with a large variety of build completion levels. Even at level 50 I see a lot of variance in how well slotted and how well Incarnated folks have their characters.

[atletikus]

1 hour ago, Frostweaver said:

if endurance modification sets did not suck, it would not be so much of an issue.

No. The game is casual-friendly and making OP IOs as a balancing factor is a bad idea.

[Frostweaver]

10 minutes ago, atletikus said:

No. The game is casual-friendly and making OP IOs as a balancing factor is a bad idea.

Who said anything about OP? I said 'not suck'.

[atletikus]

1 hour ago, StratoNexus said:

I do not agree with your premise. It sounds like you think all Blaster primaries should deal almost exactly the same damage. I think that significantly undervalues the control and secondary effects of many sets. Sure, on a steamroll team with plenty of buff/debuff, where the team stays mostly together, those effects are devalued. But I play on teams that frequently split up and sometimes on teams with "too little" buff/debuff. I play on teams that even when together-ish, pull the next three spawns.

 

Even with Judgements and nukes, I frequently see enough tough enemies surviving and relatively long engagements due to the multiple spawn aggro that allow blaster controls to be useful often enough that I value them much higher than you seem to.

 

I also play a lot to level up from 1-50 where I see many people running without sets and obviously without Epic and Incarnate powers. My Sonic/Fire blaster back in the day was much safer to level solo and small team than my Fire/Fire, despite the lower damage, thanks to the controls.

 

I am not sure what the "meta" of CoH really is at the moment. In my experience, there seems to be a lot of folks at all levels, with a large variety of build completion levels. Even at level 50 I see a lot of variance in how well slotted and how well Incarnated folks have their characters.

Nice straw-man there! There is a wide chasm between the damage output of the top and bottom performing sets and consequently quite the room for adjustment without primaries dealing "almost exactly the same damage". That said, currently the defining feature of sets run more along the lines of good vs. bad that over uniqueness and this diminishes the real choice for players who wants to be competitive - so yeah, damage could and should be significantly closer in my mind. Sonic is indeed very safe to solo, and so was Devices. Devices was buffed because it pretty much sucked outside of solo-use and though the -res debuff of Sonic is pretty nifty in a team setting, the AoE damage is downright pathetic. 

[atletikus]

10 minutes ago, Frostweaver said:

Who said anything about OP? I said 'not suck'.

I think the consensus here is that the secondary effect of Electricity pretty much sucks outside of rare builds and occasions. Asking for IO sets to balance this shortcoming would necessitate rather OP sets. Sets that a significant proportion of the player-base rarely dabble in. 

[Frostweaver]

There are several sets that directly reward -defense, -to-hit, and 'accurate' healing, and these are NOT the most common effects found in sets. what is so out of line about being interested in an 'accurate' endurance modification set?

[Galaxy Brain]

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

Edited October 19, 2019 by Galaxy Brain

[Shockacon]

I admit I am by no means a numbers person in this game, so I've just gone by the feel of stuff when playing. My first 50 back in the day was an Elec/Eng blaster and at the time I enjoyed it (mostly for the theme). Then I played virtually every other alt I've had (except that one Corr i tried and hated) both then and now.

 

So I rerolled the toon on Homecoming and felt very sad. Didn't really get it til I rerolled it as Beam/Elec (for theme again... also, blast loudly and carry a big gun) also made a different blaster. Elec blast just FELT lacking as a blasting set. I tried a couple of different secondaries but they never seemed to help.  I would have loved for it to hit a bit harder, not saying like fire, but it feels like attacking mobs by sticking a 9volt battery on their tongues.

[oedipus_tex]

Electric Blast is an interesting place because when used by players endurance drain is not great but when used by enemies, even with lower damage output it is perhaps the most dangerous blast set. It's worth discussing why.

 

Most players go into fights assuming they will need to continue fighting to the end. Enemies on the other hand are on a suicide mission.

 

Players often also depend on a series of toggles. If they get detoggled they significantly lose power.

 

Moving some enemy resistance, defense, and mezz protection that is currently automatic to enemies into toggles would make Endurance Drain a much more attractive effect. 

Edited October 20, 2019 by oedipus_tex

[Paradox Fate]

Thing is, does a blaster even need something like Short Circuit and a pet?

Wouldn't it better to make that SC a Location AoE on surfaces, which then gets saturated by electric currents that perform the same endurance drain like SC, but also with the damage of like Fire Rain?

 

And for Voltaic Sentinel, maybe a Short Range attack that jumps over to others, like Chain Induction does on Elec Melee? 

[Galaxy Brain]

7 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Electric Blast is an interesting place because when used by players endurance drain is not great but when used by enemies, even with lower damage output it is perhaps the most dangerous blast set. It's worth discussing why.

 

Most players go into fights assuming they will need to continue fighting to the end. Enemies on the other hand are on a suicide mission.

 

Players often also depend on a series of toggles. If they get detoggled they significantly lose power.

 

Moving some enemy resistance, defense, and mezz protection that is currently automatic to enemies into toggles would make Endurance Drain a much more attractive effect. 

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.

 

 

[Bossk_Hogg]

Yeah, the binary nature of end drain is why I've been pushing for my idea, which basically makes the secondary a buff effect, so it at least does something even if you dont drain their end fully.

 

Put a stacking 6% recharge/end discount buff on each attack. At 5 stacks the next Short Circuit has an instant cast time and a power boosted end drain. 

 

Elec blast is a mediocre set on blasters, but at least they have a damage secondary to fall back on. Elec on defenders/corrupters is truly abysmal.