Maximizing Energizing Circuit

[oedipus_tex]

The Electric Affinity power Energizing Circuit has a peculiar attribute some people might initially overlook. In addition to being an endurance recovery power, it also provides a huge but very brief burst of +Recharge. Here are the stats for a Controller:

 

 

 

So, the thing is, this power degrades in strength with each leap, starting at 125 for the first target and degrading for each target hit.

 

If you happen to be precisely the second target hit, you get a 93.2% Recharge bonus. Needless to say, that's huge. The power has a base Recharge of 35 seconds, so the fastest possible Recharge for it is about 8 seconds. It animates in 1.67 seconds, neither particularly fast nor slow.

 

I have a build right now that, prior to adding in the +93% Recharge, has this power recharging in 10 seconds. With the Recharge buff, that would bring the power down to about 8 seconds to recharge (the cap). The buff lasts 5 seconds, so I can have near perpetual uptime. However, I'll be animation locked. However to the however, since this power happens to feed endurance back to me, I actually gain more endurance than I lost by casting it.

Now before anyone gets too excited about the possibility of perma Phantom Army, there's a catch: each entity hit by the chain degrades its strength. So to make sure you get a big bonus, you want to not have more than 1 pet. (I dont know if this power chains to Phantom Army or not).
 

So the question is: what to make of all this? Just a curiosity? Or is there some hidden scary capped Recharge potential here for a monster build? 

[Sir Myshkin]

2 hours ago, oedipus_tex said:

Just a curiosity? Or is there some hidden scary capped Recharge potential here for a monster build?

All it means is you get to skip Hasten because there' absolutely nothing in Electrical Affinity that otherwise truly benefits from insane recharge. For a Defender/Corruptor this is pretty straight forward, but for Controllers there's a few powers out there that crave some Global Recharge: Phantom Army, Carrion Creepers, Haunt, the AoE Holds, Mass Confusion. That's kind of it though, everything else can be achieved with reasonable amounts or just a casual 70-100% (that the Circuit makes even simpler). Having a Demon/EAff MM to speak from experience though, I barely remember to fire off the Circuit every 15/s as-is and it's not like you can really "auto fire" it with great amounts of success.

[Redlynne]

5 hours ago, Sir Myshkin said:

it's not like you can really "auto fire" it with great amounts of success.

The $Target switching alone would get mighty annoying in a hurry ...

[Coyote]

I use the power a lot on a Bots/EA MM... it helps when a burst of damage comes in, to get the Heal and Absorb chains up faster. And it allows me to skip Hasten, which is more useful for a MM whose minions need help from Tactics more than a Defender... but a Defender would also like to be able to skip the Speed pool more easily. So it's useful. But I wouldn't base a build on spamming it, it eats up too much animation time.

 

In addition, it's easier to target through the Assault Bot and use it as the starting point of chains if you're a MM... if you're a Defender, you want to have more control over where your attacks are going. Even as a MM, I swap targets to enemies in order to make sure I'm not wasting an AoE on a lone figure away from the others. As a Defender, you need more control over your targets, and then switching back every ten seconds, then again to the enemies, is going to be really difficult.

 

It's certainly a great power, but build on using it as needed rather than spamming it.

[superjesse]

I spam my circuits constantly in groups, and blast a little here and there while my sentinels do most of my offensive heavy lifting.

Cage just outside melee so everyone can get in on it.  

Green bars never move with absorb shield up permanently.
Blue bars don't go below half 90% of the time.

Constant recharge with extra to-hit and damage makes teams a wrecking crew.

Amp up a tank if not optimal, or a troller to keep spawns on lockdown.

Win.

#clarification: this toon is a defender.  I mistakenly posted in the controller forum but I felt the need to hype Electric Affinity

Edited July 8, 2020 by superjesse
clarification

[Bopper]

It's been awhile since i tested this on Beta so I could be mistaken, but I believe the recharge buff doesn't degrade based on number of targets hit, it degrades based on which jump the target is hit by.

 

The initial target (lets call this the 1st jump) should get 100% of the effect (so 125% recharge).

 

The targets hit by the 2nd jump gets 75% of the effect (93.75% recharge).

 

All other targets get 50% of the effect (62.5% recharge).