How to fix Electric blast

[HelenCarnate]

I am ignoring secondary effects and only focusing on damage but lets face it, the secondary effect is not the greatest for Electric but that is another thread. 

 

The first thing that needs to be fixed to bring Electric up to par is the nuke.  Lets look at other nukes that are similar to electric.  Using Blaster damage for reference, the base damage is 250.2 just like Dark, Fire, Energy, Psy, Rad, and Sonic.  Yes I know Fire does more damage but that is its secondary effect.  Take away the DoT damage and the base is the same.  They all have the same 25' radius and all cost the same endurance.  Electric however is on a 170 second timer while all the others are 145.  Either the damage needs to increase to compensate or the recharge needs to come down.  Electric also has the honor of having the single longest cast time of all of those nukes.  The others are 3.168 seconds (Arcanatime) or less but Electric is 3.96 seconds.  I would suggest dropping it to 3.168 seconds and upping the damage to match the recharge but I understand that could be a bit too popular and turn the set into the new FTOM, so dropping the recharge and animation time is probably the best way to go.

 

Next is Tesla Cage.  I would love to see this have more damage but can understand keeping it low.  However, it also only has an 8 second hold when all the other stuns and holds in every other blaster primary are 9.5 seconds or longer in addition to most of them doing far more damage and almost all of them being cast faster.  If I had my way the stats would be the same as Freeze Ray which would up the damage to 125.1 (or even 132.6 to match Rads Cosmic Burst stun) and hold time 9.5 seconds.  The cast time would still be longer meaning the DPA would keep it out of the rotation for normal attacks but it would make the attack actually do decent damage so people could decide to slot for damage instead of just for holds. Right now the only reason I would take it would be as a set mule and would really only get used on LGTF during the Hami mission.

 

The last change I would suggest is for Short Circuit to get the animation for Irradiate dropping the cast time from an eternal 3.168 seconds to a quick 1.32 seconds.  

 

These changes combined would certainly help to bring the set to be a bit more competitive in the damage department. 

[Razor Cure]

Tesla really should do more damage. Dark (on blasters) has Absyal Gaze that is one of your best attacks and a hold.

A few other AoEs need animation tweaking too. Neurton Bomb is just SO slow, and shitty damage (compared to fire, teh best ranged aoe), o9n top of which the power info describes it a being a 'devastating bomb of energy.'

As for teh end drain effect..its good, but baddies attack even with zero end, and the effects mean jack shit vs AVs, who have so much recover, and even if you DO drain them, they keep attacking. The effect just makes zero difference in a tough fight, whereas all other debuffs with at least produce SOME obvious aid.

[Crysta Clear]

I dunno. I have drained out an AV before on my Electric Blaster, with a combination of Thunderous Blast, Short-Circuit, and Ion Judgment in quick succession, and then watched them stand there for a good few seconds waiting for the endurance to attack with, all while having to recover through the constantly-reapplied recovery debuffs of all my faster blasts.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[Bossk_Hogg]

2 minutes ago, Crysta Clear said:

I dunno. I have drained out an AV before on my Electric Blaster, with a combination of Thunderous Blast, Short-Circuit, and Ion Judgment in quick succession, and then watched them stand there for a good few seconds waiting for the endurance to attack with, all while having to recover through the constantly-reapplied recovery debuffs of all my faster blasts.

I don't see how that is remotely possible, given how AV's resist end drain 60-87%% and have huge endurance pools. What you likely saw was the jolting animation while it was idle. Regardless the set isn/t balanced. Other sets offer more damage and more safety. 

 

My suggestion is to have all elec attacks give a stacking 6% endurance reduction and recharge buff. At 5 stacks, the next short circuit is instant case, and with power boosted end drain.

 

Voltaic Sentinel needs to also not be garbage. Bare minimum is giving it faster fly speed and ideally a second attack. 

[Crysta Clear]

The size of the pool isn't relevant, because endurance drain is a percentage in PvE. All I know is, I have repeatedly seen AVs' endurance bars run out long before their health bars, within the early stages of a battle, and enemies do have to wait for enough recovery to happen that they have the endurance to attack with. Misinformation such as "enemies attack with no endurance" is not helping anyone. That is not how the rules of the game work. If that were the case, then enemies wouldn't even have endurance bars in the UI.

 

Edited October 22, 2019 by Crysta Clear

[Razor Cure]

2 hours ago, Crysta Clear said:

I have repeatedly seen AVs' endurance bars run out long

I have seen that maybe,,5 times. That's 5 times in how ever many years of play. It is not common. At all.

2 hours ago, Crysta Clear said:

Misinformation such as "enemies attack with no endurance" is not helping anyone.

Yeah ok. Cause when I play my kin, flat out drain a Boss to zero end, with Transference, THEN have him attack me (as in, as attack not brawl), apparently I didn't see that? And it is misinformation.

[nihilii]

Sentinels have a damaging Tesla Cage and their nuke on the standard Sentinel 90s recharge (while retaining its awesome end drain).

It still doesn't make the set crazy good, so I'd see no problem with "porting" these buffs to blasters/corrs/defs (that is, a damaging Tesla Cage and a nuke on the standard timer).

 

I'd love for Tesla Cage to be slightly sped up, 1.848s would be great.

But most of all... The best buff elec blast could get would be for Voltaic Sentinel to be permanent.

Having to recast it every minute is balance by annoyance. It doesn't really affect objective performance as you can recast it between groups, but it's so tedious to do for such a subtle effect. Because of that, if we pick the power at all, we end up using it situationally.

Not only a permanent VS would be a nice boost, it would emphasize some uniqueness in elec blast.

 

 

[Trickshooter]

8 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

They all have the same 25' radius and all cost the same endurance.  Electric however is on a 170 second timer while all the others are 145. 

Because it can be used from 60 ft away, unlike the others that are PBAoE.

[SmalltalkJava]

just tossing ideas out.  what if they gave electric a -damage component.  So far i think there is just 1 damage set that does this and it is melee.

[Vanden]

Boosting the damage on Tesla Cage is a pretty good idea. It's one of the only single-target controls in a DPS set that still does only minor damage. Most other such powers have been buffed into real attacks.

[HelenCarnate]

46 minutes ago, Trickshooter said:

Because it can be used from 60 ft away, unlike the others that are PBAoE.

By that logic, Rain of Arrows and Geyser should be doing a lot less damage.  Also see Sentinels, the sets I listed all have the same damage and recharge.  There is no reason to have the longer recharge on the nuke for Electric. 

Edited October 22, 2019 by HelenCarnate

[HelenCarnate]

4 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

I have seen that maybe,,5 times. That's 5 times in how ever many years of play. It is not common. At all.

Yeah ok. Cause when I play my kin, flat out drain a Boss to zero end, with Transference, THEN have him attack me (as in, as attack not brawl), apparently I didn't see that? And it is misinformation.

That is just -end.  They still can recover and attack once they have endurance. 

[SmalltalkJava]

9 minutes ago, HelenCarnate said:

That is just -end.  They still can recover and attack once they have endurance. 

Yeah,   I think elec should probably do -end and also a -end recovery.  that way it cover that recovery hole.

[Bossk_Hogg]

1 hour ago, Trickshooter said:

Because it can be used from 60 ft away, unlike the others that are PBAoE.

Geyser and Overcharge are both ranged and on a 125 second recharge, compared to Elec's 170. They also have a secondary effect that is actually useful in most situations (stun). Elec also deals it's damage in tics, allowing retaliation, unlike the other sets which just kill stuff instantly. Thunderous Blast also has a longer cast time than any other, save Full Auto.

 

[Demon Shell]

Regarding the secondary effect, give more/all of Electric Blast's attacks a chance to restore some endurance. In this way the focus of the set moves away from damaging enemy endurance and toward mitigating the cost of your own powers.

 

And speed up the animation on Short Circuit, as OP suggested. It's the main -rec in the set and it lasts 10 seconds, but nearly a third of that time is spent in the animation.

 

Edit: The nuke should also have a -rec component to it.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Demon Shell
Clarificaiton, Addendum

[Trickshooter]

2 hours ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Geyser and Overcharge are both ranged and on a 125 second recharge, compared to Elec's 170. They also have a secondary effect that is actually useful in most situations (stun). Elec also deals it's damage in tics, allowing retaliation, unlike the other sets which just kill stuff instantly. Thunderous Blast also has a longer cast time than any other, save Full Auto.

 

They do less damage. Is that 0.5 scale extra damage worth the extra 45 second recharge? I don't know, I'm just saying there was a reason why it's recharge is longer. Also, I don't think Thunderous Blast's damage is done in tics? It splits the damage type, but it does it all at once last I checked.

[BrandX]

7 hours ago, Razor Cure said:

I have seen that maybe,,5 times. That's 5 times in how ever many years of play. It is not common. At all.

Yeah ok. Cause when I play my kin, flat out drain a Boss to zero end, with Transference, THEN have him attack me (as in, as attack not brawl), apparently I didn't see that? And it is misinformation.

I've seen it with my Elec/Storm Troller.

[Bossk_Hogg]

1 minute ago, Trickshooter said:

They do less damage. Is that 0.5 scale extra damage worth the extra 45 second recharge? I don't know, I'm just saying there was a reason why it's recharge is longer. Also, I don't think Thunderous Blast's damage is done in tics? It splits the damage type, but it does it all at once last I checked.

Looks like Thunderous should still deal more based on the formulas. Can you double check vs Geyser and Overcharge?

[Vanden]

Nukes don’t adhere to the formula very well, if it all. I wouldn’t bother checking them.

[Bossk_Hogg]

12 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Nukes don’t adhere to the formula very well, if it all. I wouldn’t bother checking them.

So electric blasters should just suck it up that their nuke recharges almost 50% longer for 16% more damage? And has a crappier secondary effect? And 75% of the range of the other ranged nukes. And costs 50% more endurance? And has a glacial cast time?

 

Electric Blast seems to pay a 20%+ "Cuz @$#% you, that's why!" tax.

Edited October 22, 2019 by Bossk_Hogg

[Trickshooter]

3 hours ago, HelenCarnate said:

By that logic, Rain of Arrows and Geyser should be doing a lot less damage.  Also see Sentinels, the sets I listed all have the same damage and recharge.  There is no reason to have the longer recharge on the nuke for Electric. 

Well, really by my logic, Rain of Arrows and Geyser should just be doing less damage, and they already do. Rain of Arrows specifically has to make a tohit check with each tic and server timing typically makes it only hit twice, so usually only scale 2.4 damage. Geyser seems out of place maybe, but it lines up with the only other comparable nuke, which is Overcharge.

 

Thunderous Blast is basically the only nuke that functions the way it does, so it's hard to compare to another nuke and say "hey, this seems off." About 2/3s of the nukes fall in to two groups that are easier to compare (the PBAoEs, and then Overcharge+Geyser), but all the other ones are basically unique and it's hard to say specifically why certain values were picked for damage or recharge (because as Vanden said, the damage formula has never really applied to them, and even if it did, range is not included in the formulas), but we know the basic reason always comes down to trying to balance risk vs. reward.

 

So considering risk vs. reward: Thunderous Blast does the damage of the PBAoE nukes, but from 60 ft away. Yes, it does take longer to animate, but you can use Thunderous Blast before enemies even know you're there, so the animation time in that situation is only annoying, unlike for the PBAoEs where it could potentially lead to a faceplant before the damage actually occurs.

 

I can't really comment on Sentinels, because my opinion there would probably just be that they just weren't balanced correctly and need their damage/recharge times revisited.

[Burnt Toast]

I guess I failed to see the memo where all sets have to perform the exact same when it comes to damage and activation. I have an Electric Corruptor and have no issues with it's DPA etc. My Corruptor can end drain mobs and have them stand there looking stupid as I finish them off.. THAT is what makes Electric blast better than say.. Fire or Ice. I see a lot of these threads where people wanna make all sets do the same amount of damage etc... and frankly that is not how the game was designed or meant to be implemented. You are completely failing to take into account secondary effects...which are a big part of each powerset. Ice slows, Psi does -recharge, electric does -end, and fire... does more damage.... they are not meant to be equal when it comes to dps. 

[Trickshooter]

22 minutes ago, Bossk_Hogg said:

Looks like Thunderous should still deal more based on the formulas. Can you double check vs Geyser and Overcharge?

Off the top of my head, I would say if anything, Geyser and Overcharge are really the problem in the comparison to Thunderous Blast, but I wouldn't want to get them nerfed. 🤐

[Neogumbercules]

I like these suggestions. More damage on Tesla Cage, faster cast time on Short Circuit, and a slightly quicker recharge on TB would be great.

 

I'd like to see something done with Volty too. Maybe make it a toggle. Passive damage is fine but recasting is annoying and easy to forget. 

[Trickshooter]

I just want to add that I would love for Tesla Cage to do more damage and for Short Circuit to animate faster. I think those are solid suggestions, and while some people are going to be averse to change simply because they love a set/power just fine as it is, I think overall most people would (eventually lol) be very happy with those changes.