Electricity, END drain and END recovery.

[Jotun]

This power is a mess. We all know it. The damage is lower and its secondary effect is a joke due to how NPC endurance functions. It can be powerful against players as evident when fighting praetorian clockwork or the clockwork army but for players this power feels terrible and I have an idea that might make both use cases less insane.

 

First thing we need to do is recognize the basics of what electricity *CAN* do and I'll be using electrical blast (as its the most common and doesn't change bonus effects across ATs)

 

1. Endurance Drain: This is always a % of the target's total and regardless of archetype you picked the % drain will always be the same. The %'s  are 7, 10, 7, 15, 7, 6, 35, 55.

 

2. -Recovery: Every electrical power has a -recovery effect. It is always set at a base to -100%.

 

3. Refund Endurance: This is where this powerset starts getting inconsistent. Charged bolts, Lightning bolt and Zapping bolt all have a 30% chance to refund endurance. Charged bolts will refund 2.6 end with a 5.2 cost and 30% chance, lightning bolt will refund 4.27 with a 8.53 cost and a 30% chance and Zapping bolt will refund 7.2 END with a 10.19 cost and another 30% chance. 

 

________________

 

Now I'll be honest, I don't think END drain is ever going to be amazing as there are a ton of AVs straight up Immune to it. The chance to get a refund on your endurance is barely even felt and the -recovery is only there for necessity otherwise it would be impossible to fully drain a target's END as it would just keep recovering as you tried. I believe if each power had its own purpose electrical blast's Endurance manipulation could be a fun mechanic but some of these powers are trying to do too much while trying to not be too beneficial.

 

Taking the Endurance drain off of lightning bolt and charged bolts I feel would benefit them much more allowing the endurance refunding effect to be increased on these powers. The refund is bit of a tricky situation, you don't want to make it refund everything but I would prefer if the effect were more reliable. Instead of a flat refund let them increase your END recovery. Something like +100% recovery and 150% recovery for 2 seconds (with the ability to stack)  would allow to run out of endurance with careless casting but reward players for careful management of the buff. 

 

Zapping bolt and Ball lightning. These two are... interesting.... Zapping bolt will carry you though most of the game with its higher than standard damage for the set (241), its high refund (7.20  on a 10 cost), respectable end drain amount (15%) and 90% accuracy. Unfortunately ball lightning is a very sore loser. On my fully built sentinel this ability deals only 120 damage (including the 4 ticks of a 5 damage DoT for 3 seconds) it only lowers Endurance by 7% and it has a 16 second cooldown with 75% accuracy. 

 

The only thing I would change on zapping bolt is removing the Endurance refund as you easily have the ability to cast that for a total of 6 endurance, meaning a 30% chance of a free cast on one of your best abilities and then increase the drain to be something like 40%

 

Ball lightning I would increase the -recovery duration to something like 10 seconds in the set so that it prevents the enemies from gaining *any* endurance, invalidating your efforts and lowering the cooldown to something like 13 or 14. The other change would be to just remove the DoT and allow all the damage on ball lightning to be loaded on at once. 

 

Aim; Aim is the one I really think has a lot of potential in electricity set. It doesn't have to be just a damage and accuracy buff with a weird range increase. Instead i'd remove the range increase and add an increased END drain/recovery effect on the other abilities. 

 

Tesla cage: I personally want to like this ability but its a 75% accuracy, 2 second channel, commonly resisted held with a tiny refund of 3.43 and an END drain of 7%... this is really terrible on electrical blast and i'd rather have anything else here tbh. Maybe a snipe?

 

As for END drain across the board... It needs to be increased. We already have the issue that most AVs are immune to it anyway and with Elec's damage being subpar and its AoE being semi limited it really shouldn't be an issue if elec is draining a bunch of mobs since thats the point of the power and mobs are usually killed in a few seconds anyway. I would much rather see End drain numbers higher with less options that drain endurance as opposed a ton of small numbers that don't do anything. 

 

The last two powers are mostly fine, i would probably just change the END drain to be 50 and 75 rather than 35 55.  these changes would mean you would have only 5 powers that drained END but it would be a meaningful amount rather than the bizarre 7% here and there. If elec can't drain an enemy with one rotation then there is no point in having a second effect. 

 

 

TL;DR: Electricity's END drain should be stronger but on less powers with the others preforming a unique job of disabling recovery or increasing your own recovery.

But perhaps I am just crazy. 

Edited April 1, 2020 by Jotun
added a TL;DR

[Coyote]

Eh. The real solution, IMO, is to lower the base drain of all End Drain powers by about 50%... and then give them a %chance to drain about 50 Endurance. The chance should be based on how much their normal End Drain is, so that the average amount drained remains the same.

 

This way, the average End Drain isn't affected, but each power has a chance to almost drain the target, or can drain the target with slotting. That has a mitigation effect similar to a "chance to stun", where the mob is unable to attack you for a few seconds until it regains some Endurance. But because it's not guaranteed, it's not a "shut down the spawn" like combining two end drain powers like Thunderous Blast + Short Circuit.

[Jotun]

Just now, Coyote said:

Eh. The real solution, IMO, is to lower the base drain of all End Drain powers by about 50%... and then give them a %chance to drain about 50 Endurance. The chance should be based on how much their normal End Drain is, so that the average amount drained remains the same.

 

This way, the average End Drain isn't affected, but each power has a chance to almost drain the target, or can drain the target with slotting. That has a mitigation effect similar to a "chance to stun", where the mob is unable to attack you for a few seconds until it regains some Endurance. But because it's not guaranteed, it's not a "shut down the spawn" like combining two end drain powers like Thunderous Blast + Short Circuit.

Personally I am going to always side with a more controllable effect than just relying on RNG. 

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Coyote said:

Eh. The real solution, IMO, is to lower the base drain of all End Drain powers by about 50%... and then give them a %chance to drain about 50 Endurance. The chance should be based on how much their normal End Drain is, so that the average amount drained remains the same.

 

This way, the average End Drain isn't affected, but each power has a chance to almost drain the target, or can drain the target with slotting. That has a mitigation effect similar to a "chance to stun", where the mob is unable to attack you for a few seconds until it regains some Endurance. But because it's not guaranteed, it's not a "shut down the spawn" like combining two end drain powers like Thunderous Blast + Short Circuit.

@oedipus_tex had a great idea to include critical end drain similar to that, but to keep it % based. Different enemies have different total endurance, with minions having 100, lts 140, bosses 200, etc. They have the same recovery rate, and end costs for powers but the larger pools diminish the effects of even % drains as they need less end per tick to get back in action. If the drain was a flat number it would not scale too well.

 

I think the consensus of having fewer, stronger drains is solid. Elec Blast is a legacy set that was clearly designed as both a player and npc powerset. As such, on NPCs having like 5 clockwork zap you adds up fast against players with only 100 end and much faster end consumption than the reverse. The best sapping abilities generally 1-2 shot end bars anyways (SC + PS, etc), so I do like the idea of consolidating sapping power even more than just with SC. 

 

Touching on elec blast specifically as a side note, every other elec set has a chain power now... where is theirs? 😛

 

 

 

 

[Coyote]

51 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

If the drain was a flat number it would not scale too well.

 

I actually prefer the idea of End Drain being more effective on Minions... after all, mezzes are usually more effective on Minions, especially the low-mag Stuns usually associated with secondary effects from damage-oriented sets. And it should be easier to shut down Minions, too, because otherwise they'll just get blasted by damage before they get shut down.

 

Oh, and I forgot to credit that OedipusT was the first to suggest this kind of randomized draining on these forums (that I've read).

Edited April 1, 2020 by Coyote

[Mansome]

I would rather it do more to effect AVs. Stuff dies too fast even at +4 to make end drain worth it as a mez. Because stuff dies so fast there mez as a whole needs to be looked at. While I am not saying return to city of statues, there needs to be a reason to mez. 

[nihilii]

Nitpick: very few AVs are actually immune to endurance drain. Most have high resistance to it, similar to their high resistance to a variety of other debuffs.

[Caulderone]

3 hours ago, nihilii said:

Nitpick: very few AVs are actually immune to endurance drain. Most have high resistance to it, similar to their high resistance to a variety of other debuffs.

Yes, but a level 50 +0 AV has 85% resistance to -end and -recov.  At +4, that's even worse due to purple patch.

At level 30 +0,  it's 75% resistance before the purple patch.

 

It is not, technically, immunity.  But, it might as well be.

[Coyote]

29 minutes ago, Caulderone said:

Yes, but a level 50 +0 AV has 85% resistance to -end and -recov.  At +4, that's even worse due to purple patch.

At level 30 +0,  it's 75% resistance before the purple patch.

 

It is not, technically, immunity.  But, it might as well be.

 

A character built to sap AVs can drain AVs, and can debuff Recovery enough so that the AV (or GM) only regains Endurance every 10-15 seconds or so. It's not easy and it requires specifically building for it, but it's doable.

 

Just as an example, getting -667% Recovery debuffing shuts down recovery... so against a +3 AV you need -1000% Recovery. Which sounds impossible, but Gremlins alone seem to put out about -200% Recovery. A character can manage another 200% or so from Electric Control. And Electric Affinity pretty easily manages over 400%. So you're over 800% without much difficulty, and if you fully slot for it and get an Alpha Incarnate with End Mod, you can get to -1000% and permanently sap 54 AVs.

 

It's not immunity, it's very high resistance that sets the bar pretty high for sapping. But there are builds that can do it. Leaving aside Poison, which I'm not sure about... it's supposed to have a power that by itself shuts down Recovery, but I don't know if that power actually works at all.

[Smitten Mittens]

Are we playing the same game?

 

2 End Mods in Short Circuit almost completely drains a group of enemies.  I think the powers are fine as a baseline, but the endurance you get back has always been lackluster.

Ball Lightning is in the same boat as Short Circuit tbh..  don't slot it for damage.  Any elec powerset is soft control, albiet that control it keeping end drained.  Its better than holds since the resist doesn't really stack against it, and if you slot properly you can keep anything perma-drained just about.  The few AVs you encounter that are "immune", you have other methods at your disposal (second power set, buffs, temp powers, etc.)

 

Im able to routinely solo hazard sized mobs +4 (with accuracy candy) by popping in, Short Circuit, Ball Lightning, then whatever else to boost my damage and drop a Thunderous Blast.  It works amazingly with Kinetics and Transference.  I'm looking forward to trying it with Elec Manip.