The unaddressed problem with new Electric powers

[Vanden]

4 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

Except as keeps getting said whatever change occurs should be for both player and mob elec powers. Do you really want a direct dmg debuff equal to whatever amount down your end bar is?

Why? Isn't the reason a change is even up for discussion that end drain is not nearly as debilitating for NPCs as it is for players?

[Llewellyn Blackwell]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

Why? Isn't the reason a change is even up for discussion that end drain is not nearly as debilitating for NPCs as it is for players?

That is just a myth though. Even in this very thread its explained how a sapper build works. And just like when we players get sapped, if your a strong end recovery build its a minor issue. My regen and will powers, my drain psyche blaster etc, do not even bat an eye at malta sappers, super stunners etc. Plenty of builds players can make do not consider sapping foes so much as a blip on the map of possible threats.

 

To make a sapper build, it takes synergy and investment just like any powerful build. And Ive seen single handed sapper builds flatline GMs long before they can be burned down by the team. Now yes the issue with elecs 2ndary aspect is that it demands that synergy to really do well. But since the pay off for that synergy is being able to render the biggest and baddest mobs impotent at a speed well beyond any teams kill speed, I say its justified.

 

Now it might be nice if other sets had a power in the box to help make the 2ndary less of a need for the build, maybe in a epic/patron pool to really open up diversity. But in general sapping builds are not worthless, nor too slow, to bring value to a party even one able to just burn down missions. People really need to have created a fully decked out sapper and played it at high end play to understand what it is and can do. Its not one of those builds you can take to 32 or 38 and say ok I understand this builds potential.

[Leogunner]

11 minutes ago, Vanden said:

Why? Isn't the reason a change is even up for discussion that end drain is not nearly as debilitating for NPCs as it is for players?

It is as debilitating, it's just players have different priorities than NPCs.  NPCs simply want to slow players down while players want NPCs dead NAO!  One is indicative of controlling the pace of combat while the other is effectively eliminating combat itself.

 

 

[Vanden]

7 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

It is as debilitating, it's just players have different priorities than NPCs.

NPCs rarely have toggles to run, and if testing is to be believed, they don't actually need to have enough endurance to cover the cost of a power to use it, only more than 0 endurance.

[Leogunner]

1 minute ago, Vanden said:

NPCs rarely have toggles to run, and if testing is to be believed, they don't actually need to have enough endurance to cover the cost of a power to use it, only more than 0 endurance.

They also don't tend to have +recovery powers to offset those toggles.

 

I do advocate for giving NPCs more powers though, not to justify sapping builds but as a means of diversifying combat.

[Galaxy Brain]

30 minutes ago, Bentley Berkeley said:

To make a sapper build, it takes synergy and investment just like any powerful build. And Ive seen single handed sapper builds flatline GMs long before they can be burned down by the team. Now yes the issue with elecs 2ndary aspect is that it demands that synergy to really do well. But since the pay off for that synergy is being able to render the biggest and baddest mobs impotent at a speed well beyond any teams kill speed, I say its justified.

As somebody who's live main was an elec3 blaster, I agree that it can be very powerful when you stack them all up! That said it is likewise incredibly lackluster unless you synergize.  Elec Blast by itself for example really doesn't do much in the way of quickly sapping unless you pair it with Power Sink to get the sacred sapper combo.

 

Having it truly only be effective if paired with another drain ability I feel goes against CoH's theme of having things able to mix and match freely. Like with my prior Ice and Psy comment, yes they work better when paired thematically but their effects are still immediately useful + stack with other effects that aren't -Recharge. -End and -Rec really only pair well with more -End/Rec to sap targets which makes pairing up elec sets (well... honestly just elec blast) kinda dubious for effectiveness.

[Smitten Mittens]

Main'd a Kin/Elec Def 50 on live, and an Elec/Kin Corr to 50 here.  I have some experience with this.

 

The dirty secret to endurance drain is you only really *need* one or two powers to make it be effective, and only one of them needs -recovery.  Short Circuit can do this all on its own, and with two End Mod IOs can drain almost all enemies in one shot.  90% reliable full end drain and nothing can attack.  Throw two in Ball Lightning, and you cover bosses.

 

Granted, my experience is with Kinetics, which has its own slew of endurance drain.  Between the two power sets I can drain an elite boss after their 2nd attack.  Keeping them drained is not a problem when every attack you have drains it.

 

I feel like the -damage on the new set is an excellent direction for Elec powers in general.  As long as the powerset has that *one* ability that applies -recharge and drains more endurance than the rest, it will be on par with other builds that focus on this.  When this goes live, I'll be dropping Kinetics in a heartbeat.  The chain skills all drain endurance?  They don't rely on accuracy to be effective?  They get stronger the more you use them?

 

This will be a set that breaks late.  Very ineffective at lower levels, but once you pass that level 30 hump you'll be rolling over mobs.  By the time you get your T9 in your secondary, you'll be able to solo large groups of hazard sized mobs with no issue.  I could easily see an elec/elec Defender soloing AVs with the right load-out.

 

 

[Draeth Darkstar]

On 2/28/2020 at 9:16 AM, Steampunkette said:

Does it work great on a big team of steamrollers? No. But not every powerset needs to make steamrolling easier or faster. Some stuff is just flatly better in small groups or solo play. Electric is one of those things.

The problem with this argument is that, while yes, Electric solo is better than Electric in groups, everything else is still better than Electric solo. It takes longer to drain all those mobs to 0 END than it takes most things to kill them, which is only even more true compared to Electric Assault's (and Electric Blast's) underwhelming damage output.

Edited March 1, 2020 by Draeth Darkstar

[Steampunkette]

An Electric Blaster with 3 SOs in Thunderous Blast can instantly zero out an entire spawn's Endurance in a singe slot. Bosses, Lieutenants, Minions, everyone. Or she can use Short Circuit to take out 70% in one shot. With Agility, that takes 2 Endmod Slots for Short Circuit.

 

Ball Lightning? 15% slotted.

 

And like most sets: It stacks with teammates.

 

Get two Electric Characters on a team and everyone on the enemy team races to 0. I once did a trio, Elec Dom, Scrapper, and Blaster. Safest ever. 

 

There's not a single other secondary effect you can say that about. Not -one-. This is the only secondary you can:

A) Reliably Slot For

B) Stacks with Teammates

C) Leaves the enemy Defenseless in Seconds

 

"Lolol I can stack fire's DoT and slot for MOAR DAMAGE!" Sure. But the DoT isn't gonna render the enemy defenseless by aiming at their blue bar on a PERCENTAGE BASIS, ignoring the enemy's relative pool of End. Elec is fine the way it is.

Edited March 2, 2020 by Steampunkette

[oedipus_tex]

So I have mixed feelings about this.

 

First of all, I feel like if you roll a -Endurance set on a Dominator, Controller, Defender, or Corruptor, there's plenty of ways to build on it and make the endurance drain merciless, through either Power Sink or Power Boost. When you pick any set, if you choose to ignore the available tools in the APPs, then that's really on you. Power Sink on SOs can drain mobs of 80% of their endurance. Power Boost makes drain super charged.

 

Blasters and Melees have an excuse in that Power Sink is in Elec Manipulation and Elec Armor and they can't grab it easily. Also Power Boost is similarly locked away. I don't like having to roll a specific secondary to get access to decent endurance drain. Then again I'm not sure how good the drain is really supposed to be on these archetypes.

Masterminds have never really had an endurance drain set, til now, so we will see how that goes.

 

There are some oddball trash situations, like Electric Assault in the Dominator archetype that is searching for a reason to exist outside of being paired with Electric Control. 

 

 

I main a Elec/Psi/Mu Dominator, so I'm surrounded by drained mobs all the time. Endurance drain can work, but you do have to devote yourself to it.  

Edited March 2, 2020 by oedipus_tex

[Galaxy Brain]

11 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

An Electric Blaster with 3 SOs in Thunderous Blast can instantly zero out an entire spawn's Endurance in a singe slot. Bosses, Lieutenants, Minions, everyone. Or she can use Short Circuit to take out 70% in one shot. With Agility, that takes 2 Endmod Slots for Short Circuit.

 

Ball Lightning? 15% slotted.

 

And like most sets: It stacks with teammates.

 

Get two Electric Characters on a team and everyone on the enemy team races to 0. I once did a trio, Elec Dom, Scrapper, and Blaster. Safest ever. 

 

There's not a single other secondary effect you can say that about. Not -one-.

Yes there is: Damage 😛  Stacking damage from teammates will kill enemies and leave them unable to attack you back

 

The problem here is that all these examples require heavy investment of End Mod Enhancement in order to "work", which takes away from the ability to slot for damage. Thunderous Blast is a nuke that should be able to kill first and foremost (at least minions). Side note, enemy rank does not matter for end drain outside of AV's who resist end drain as IIRC all -End powers drain a % of their total and not a raw value. The AoE's can be potent for this purpose but they cannot do it by themselves even when slotted. The nuke of the set has to trade damage for the ability to drain, which is a questionable tradeoff but it could be valid since whatever is alive is now unable to attack you and is badly hurt, though you could also slot for damage and just kill them instead for similar effect. 

 

Yes, it is certainly a unique secondary effect (joke answer of damage aside), but that does not make it overall great if the way it stands out is that it needs heavy synergy or unique slotting to "Work" when every other secondary effect or comparable status (Holds / traditional Mez, and defeating enemies) doesn't need to synergize in order to have immediate safety, if not immediate effects.

 

 

 

Thinking on it more, there may be something we can do with -End to make it more user friendly...

 

On all except for AV's (cus resists), adding up 100% end drain will effect all ranks equally regardless of their total endurance pools. So, the same amount of draining powers will drain all ranks in the same time. When you look at the HP values though, they don't add up in the same way.

 

Looking at how each rank of enemy compares to the last, we see that LT's have x2 the HP of a minion, but 1.4x the endurance. Bosses have 3x the HP of a LT, but again 1.4x the endurance, and so on. The other way to look at this is that a Minion has 1/2 the HP of an LT, and so on....

 

Lets look at blaster Elec Blast.

 

 

The first two columns show the Damage and End Drain %'s per power. At a glance, its kind of hard to compare. Lets fix that!

 

 

 

Since we have the base HP values of (Even Con) enemies, we can apply the base damage of the powers to the HP the same way that the end drain applies to their End.  Broken down by rank in each column, a Green percentage means you deal more damage per hit on that rank than End Drain per rank, proportionally. Yellow means you are equal, and Red means you deal less damage than you drain. At base, it appears that most elec blast powers are better at dealing damage than draining on Minions and LT's, the two most common ranks you fight, which encourages going for damage rather than end mod. Against Bosses and above though, all the powers drain faster than they damage! 

 

Lets boost damage by 95%:

 

 

Same deal here, but now we see two Bright Green values. That means you 1-shot those ranks with said abilities, making the drain moot. More or less the same as before though. Lets say you use a single small Red Inspiration, and AIM: 

 

 

On a Blaster at least, the more damage you gain the more and more the end drain part gets pushed aside, except for on SC. Lets compare to 95% end mod enhancement to be fair:

 

 

A bit better, but still meh on minions. Lets compare 95% on both ends:

 

 

Same as the baseline, though the nuke just deletes most of a spawn now anyways, while also draining any survivors to 0! 

 

Come to think of it, lets check out the new IO Set values....  (link to values: here   )

 

Synapse's Shock

 

Power Transfer

 

In all of these examples, it is more often more effective to invest into damage than into drain it seems, outside of fighting tough targets. Well, at least on a blaster! Given this, it often appears that drain is not effective vs most enemies going by volume as you can often just wipe the mob out faster. Having 2 elec blasters on a team will have these same ratios too, where you deal double the damage and double the drain, leading to sort of the same dilemma. 

 

 

What may help here is actually adding in a flat amount of -End per power on top of the % Drain, at least to make them all equally useful. Seeing as minions are the ones that really are not affected, lets use them as a base. If we were to equalize the difference between the Damage % and the Drain %, we would need to add the following "Flat drain" to each power shown in the rightmost column:

 

 

 

Eyeballing it, it looks like we could probably just add the "Flat value" of the % to all these powers, maybe up to -15 at max, and it could even things out?

 

 

 

An overall boost for sure, but comparing to the base it is still similar for targets that you had a favorable drain to damage ratio anyways, while being much better for the reverse. Lets say that the +Flat End is unenhanceable: 

 

 

SC and Ball Lightning are now solid combos within the set itself to drain minions! It's also just shy for LT's, but lets check if the flat amount is enhanceable: 

 

 

Assuming you can enhance both, you can use those two powers at full enhancement to fully drain all but EB's. 

 

This requires a lot more enhancement juggling, so idk if it would be too OP. It could also just be a flat amount on each power and that'd work too. I won't bog down the thread with more pictures.... as upon typing this I realized I've sort of bombarded you all lol

 

I think this could be an interesting direction to take in PvE at the least to make end drain at least more effective while not being too much more potent compared to how it performs currently.

[Draeth Darkstar]

1 hour ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Yes there is: Damage 😛  Stacking damage from teammates will kill enemies and leave them unable to attack you back...

This is an amazing proof comparison - and you even compared Electric's underpowered damage to its own drain speed to do the proof.

 

This is exactly what I'm talking about when I say that the other sets are clearing through mobs way faster than Electric is draining them, even solo. Electric is clearing through most mobs faster than draining them, and it's one of the worst blast sets for damage output.

[DrBasics]

My suggestion on how to fix electric (ranged, melee is kind of fine), is to have the attack have a chance to jump to other targets and do a % of damage of the power used. Just do away with the whole sapping thing and go with the idea of chain lightning.

[nihilii]

IMHO, Elec Blast endurance drain is fine. It's just not obvious enough for most people to take notice.

 

You don't think of the 4-5 seconds a mob with a zeroed end bar spent looking at you doing nothing with a dumb look on his face. What you recall is the next second he got a tick of end back and attacked you.

 

Endurance drains work like slows, with extra boons. Nothing like sapping War Walkers in Apex/TinM and preventing them from getting that 1300 HP heal off.

 

If you fight harder content, you will get more out of endurance drain too. Simply because harder foes have more powers. The Avatar of Hamidon archvillain in Number Six's arc has so many attacks you will be able to drain his end solo, despite his AV status.

I'd hate if sapping went away. It's unique and it works and frankly, it feels awesome to pay attention and watch mobs do *nothing*. I'd rather we see some special GFX effect (like "wheezing") to show an enemy is out of end. I'm willing to bet it'd do wonders to sway the perception end drain does junk.

[Steampunkette]

8 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Yes there is: Damage 😛  Stacking damage from teammates will kill enemies and leave them unable to attack you back

 

(Followed by lots of well reasoned math)

Allow me to point out a few things:

 

1) Damage isn't an enhanceable secondary effect that locks down enemies to keep them from attacking and stacks from multiple sources to do so.

2) Any powerset is going to wipe out minions regardless of their secondary benefits within the first volley or two, rendering -Dam or -Rech or -Acc or whatever completely irrelevant really early in their 10 second duration or whatever.

3) Sapping is a playstyle, like Blapping. It's not "More Efficient" than just doing more damage, that's not the point of sapping. The point is shutting enemies down because it's fun.

 

And the final point:

4) Having -Dam or -Acc or -Def or even -Res on an enemy "Doesn't Matter" unless it's a boss or something 'cause it'll die before that stuff -really- makes a difference by the logic you've put forward, here. So why bother to change it? Except MAYBE you could argue -Res 'cause it's just "Moar Damage" on the second shot, but if they were going to die on the second shot, anyway, it's just wasted spillover.

 

You're still going to 1-2 shot all the minions and kill the LTs with the next shot, and AVs will resist the heck out of it even when you try to stack it, so it only "matters" on bosses (and not much) and EBs.

 

Not every playstyle is "100% cutting edge break out the spreadsheets, boys, we're going in!" effective. And they shouldn't be.

[Coyote]

1: I like the spreadsheet and the heavy use of math to argue the strengths and weaknesses of a set. I think this is the right way to consider balance... sure, players don't have to PLAY that way. But this is the way that designers have to balance powers.

 

2: However, I do think that using Blaster stats may not be the right argument... they have higher damage but not higher End Drain, so it's clear that they would probably have a higher advantage when slotting for damage over End Drain, than Defenders or Controllers (for other draining sets).

 

3: I'm not sure if it's a good design or a bad design, but the draining powers aren't even across a set. You have some powers like Ball Lightning that do damage and little drain, and then Short Circuit that does comparable damage but far higher drain/-Recovery. Generally, even if you do slot for -End, you won't slot it in all of the powers.

 

4: Sapping builds very rarely function based only on the end drain of their primary. Usually you back it up with Power Sink, or Power Boost, or a secondary that also helps drain. While this is true with regards to damage also, there are some sets that help more with sapping than with adding to damage. So, again, sapping may not be a viable playstyle just because you have an Electric X set, but might become viable with the same set, if backed up by some specific sets.

 

Now, what I take from these points as a conclusion is: sapping is viable, but not automatically so, depending on powerset combinations. Damage can be discussed for a blast set regardless of the secondary, usually... but sapping really cannot. The difference between a character build for sapping and not built for sapping is greater than having a high-damage secondary vs a low-damage secondary.

[Bartacus]

I think Electric Blast needs some love in the damage department regardless of secondary effects. It got better with snipe changes! But, still needs a bit of help.

 

That said, the secondary effect of -end needs to be equalized with other secondary effects. Like Steampunkette mentioned, these secondary effects are not normally very useful on minions anyway. It shouldn't be balanced around that. Honestly, I think the Sapper builds seem really valuable but they're only really valuable in extended fights (just like -Recharge). To me, this means that a great way to buff -End would be to reduce the resistance that AVs and GMs have to it and to -Recovery. Additionally, I think a cool buff to -End effects for other mobs could be that once a mob hits 0 endurance due to End Drain, it returns a small amount of endurance to the caster. 

Would this change be enough to make Electric Blasting on par with other sets? Probably not, because it still needs some love in the damage department. But, it would make the secondary effect more useful and open up some builds to focus less on endurance.

[Leogunner]

I still say, if combat were modified in some way to make fights last longer than 15sec, the utility of sapping becomes more apparent. This is actually why I enjoy the early 30 levels because it's more likely, when difficulty is appropriate, that fights can last and escalate for multiple minutes. Nerfing damage, buffing foes, limiting AoE, modifying mechanics...sapping isn't the only aspect of the game that is marginalized. 

[Hyperstrike]

The problem is, sapping NPCs isn't the same thing as sapping PCs.

Because NPCs are allowed to fire off ANY attack they have available the second they get a single blip of endurance.

[Steampunkette]

43 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

The problem is, sapping NPCs isn't the same thing as sapping PCs.

Because NPCs are allowed to fire off ANY attack they have available the second they get a single blip of endurance.

So we should add -rec to all -end effects?

 

Works for me! Problem solved!

[Erydanus]

On ‎2‎/‎27‎/‎2020 at 11:53 AM, Draeth Darkstar said:

They're also all widely considered to be the very bottom tier of power... except for Electric Melee.

Actually a lot of people do consider electric melee to be trash-level damage. I've always found it to be perfectly adequate myself but if you go through the brute, stalker, and scrapper forums here you WILL find people dismissing it like it's the worst thing ever and taking it is an act of self-injury. And most of the time they'll rail about "how it's damage is inadequate because too much of the powers effects were diverted to useless endurance drain" or the like. 

 

 

[Blackfeather]

57 minutes ago, Leogunner said:

I still say, if combat were modified in some way to make fights last longer than 15sec, the utility of sapping becomes more apparent. This is actually why I enjoy the early 30 levels because it's more likely, when difficulty is appropriate, that fights can last and escalate for multiple minutes. Nerfing damage, buffing foes, limiting AoE, modifying mechanics...sapping isn't the only aspect of the game that is marginalized. 

I definitely like how the lower levels play as well. Somewhere along the lines the game gets rather fast, which is a bit of a shame - while everything remains viable, it seems like damage at some point outstrips a lot of other mechanics.

[Coyote]

13 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

Actually a lot of people do consider electric melee to be trash-level damage. I've always found it to be perfectly adequate myself but if you go through the brute, stalker, and scrapper forums here you WILL find people dismissing it like it's the worst thing ever and taking it is an act of self-injury. And most of the time they'll rail about "how it's damage is inadequate because too much of the powers effects were diverted to useless endurance drain" or the like. 

 

 

 

I don't know about Brute/Scrapper forums, though I believe that Electric Melee is considered a fine AoE set with low ST damage. I am sure that the set on Stalkers is considered fine, balancing solid ST damage (weak for Stalkers, but that's still good ) with one of the best AoE sets for Stalkers. Stalkers generally kill things fast enough that they don't care about debuff effects from their attacks anyhow, so unless it's a Hold or Knockdown usable against Bosses, it's all about damage with them.

[Erydanus]

You don't understand Coyote. People still complain about it. I'm not saying EVERYONE complains about it, but I have seen people write things like "I won't take electric melee I'd be gimping myself!" even on stalkers. Some people just have that perception.

[WindDemon21]

29 minutes ago, Steampunkette said:

So we should add -rec to all -end effects?

 

Works for me! Problem solved!

Not - rech. - damage is what it needs.