Weekly Discussion 58: Electric Blast

[GM Miss]

Weekly discussion 58 - Week 7/05/20-7/11/20:

 

⚔️YOU VOTED: Let's talk about Electric Blast!⚔️

 

❓Things to think about:

>Here is a link on Electric Blast: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Electrical_Blast

>How does it compare to other DPS sets?

>What things would you change?

>What do you love?

 

Don't just use these prompts, talk about whatever you want from this weeks prompt!

 

Let's Chat 😄

Edited July 6, 2020 by GM Miss

[ImpousVileTerror]

I feel that Electric Blast is fine.

 

It's the Endurance Drain and Endurance Recovery Debuff mechanics that could use some serious work.  They're great in theory, but in practice they ultimately do little in that they operate on an All-or-Nothing dichotomy.

 

There have been a lot of discussions on the subject, and a lot of ideas for how to resolve these limitations.  

I personally like the idea of giving enemies high-Endurance Cost Powers which effectively buff them to roughly their current stat line, but if one could drain off that Endurance, the enemies would no longer be able to self-buff, and effectively become weaker.  Perhaps if their Control/Debuff Resistances were lowered with diminished Endurance?  That could make Controls more effective in late-game against hardened targets too!

[Laenan]

The snipe changes helped this set quite a bit, but it still feels light on damage compared to other sets.  Additionally, I think the secondary effect just isn't that viable in game, outside of pairing it with a set like kinetics or electrical affinity. Voltaic Sentinel is also incredibly underwhelming. The damage feels hardly worth the end cost to summon it.

 

I think the new end mod sets with damage enhancements in them were also a help to the set (though the end mod aspects still aren't amazing)

 

Changes I would make:

 

Small increase in damage to all damaging powers. The amount would vary power to power but electric blast still doesn't have a third tier single target blast like many other sets.

 

Allow multiple voltaic sentinels to be summoned by a user. This combined with a small damage increase would help. Maybe slightly increase the recharge and duration to make it difficult to get a third out, though not impossible. (The current recharge/duration may already allow this, I'm not sure)

 

[Greycat]

Personal bias on this one - my first 50 on live back in I3/I4 was an elec/elec blaster. I like electric blast. (Remade as an elec/elec sentinel here.)

 

That said, I think it gets penalized for a ... not that helpful secondary effect. Most things are dead before any end drain is useful, a *useful* amount of END is not returned to the user - whether in blaster, defender or corrupter form. Yes, I have drained (or been on teams with enough other elec blast users to drain) GMs and AVs, and keep them down, but that's exceedingly rare. (That said, once Arachnos was introduced, we got to face packs of them in the form of the Mu mystics, and getting end drained at low level and *kept* there is no fun.)

 

Things I love - I'll always be partial to Sparky. Before Defiance 2.0, I liked that it meant I could still fight back if I was held or stunned. So, yeah, still partial to it. It has saved my virtual bacon many times.

 

Love - nuking a group to watch them twitch, fall to their knees, then fall on their faces. 🙂

 

Love - while I'm not normally into IOs, elec is one that I'll try to grab one specific IO early... a chance to stun, to take advantage of the end mod, and try to put it *at least* in ball lightning, and probably a few other attacks as well.

 

What I'd change? Hmm. It's been suggested to add chaining. I'd probably do that to Voltaic Sentinel. I wouldn't want to do that to everything - I don't want Zapp chaining when I'm trying to pull, for instance. Seeing Elec. attacks build "charges" (so the third one makes the next attack chain) might be an interesting idea. Or put the IO's proc into the set itself and give every attack a chance to stun.  And/or make the END drain and END return useful - not as an END cost discount, but an actual return, and/or build a temporary END drain resist.

 

Regardless, I'll always be fond of electric blast.

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Greycat

[Cutter]

Coming from the perspective of an ElAff / Elec Defender (my first elec blast character since the days before endmod enhancements were combined!). I run the Synapse's Shock set in Short Circuit, since she wants to be in the middle of things anyway and it's the best drainer we have. Attuned stats at 42:

 

So clearly damage is lacking... but I find it relatively easy to drain mobs' endurance, which is a deliberate focus here. It's keeping them drained that's the issue, since as has been said in numerous places, one refresh tick on their bar means enemies can use basically any of their powers, If end drain is going to be a viable secondary effect, in my mind, then more of the attacks in the set need to have -recovery to complement their existing -end. As it stands, -rcv only shows up on two powers: the 20 second base cooldown Short Circuit, and the much MUCH longer cooldown Thunderous Blast. Adding -rcv to one or two of the single target attacks, or one ST plus Voltaic Sentinel, seems like it would help that aspect of the set.

[nihilii]

I love Elec Blast on Sentinels. Top tier damage. End drain is extremely potent, in large part due to Sentinel standards: having Thunderous Blast on a 90s base recharge as opposed to 180s means it is up every spawn, so everything is sapped by your first AoE salvo and then stays there if you keep attacking.

Biggest pet peeve is Voltaic Sentinel. It's cost/animation efficient as is, especially if you use a macro so you don't have to deal with manually aiming the reticle. But efficiency be damned, casting it every minute is just a drag. Make it perma, or at least 5 minutes duration. Or let us have multiple Voltaic Sentinels out, with 2 or 3 minutes duration.

[energizing_ion]

As others have said already, the secondary effects are not great; especially in the high/end game content. 

 

Elec. Blast always looked weak, dmg wise, compared to others but I haven't really played it myself too much so I can't speak to it personally.  I'm just echoing what others have said already.  :)

[Troo]

...electric how we wanttoloveyoumore.

 

While it may not be reasonable for zero endurance to cause damage, it should needs to do something.

 

I would propose that if zero endurance does not have a way to equate to toggle dropping, then the target should become STUNNED.

[Coyote]

How about 0 Endurance = -20% Resist (everything)?

[kiramon]

38 minutes ago, Coyote said:

How about 0 Endurance = -20% Resist (everything)?

Theyre not really at 0 endurance long enough for that to help?

 

Hitting 0 endurance could do some sort of Convulsion hold for a few seconds. That'd be pretty neat. 

 

Anyways, my problem with elec is that because the debuff doesn't do anything unless you try to make it (and even then it doesnt do a lot), you basically just have a set that does damage. It doesn't have anything else that it does or makes it special. And your only non-pbaoe (which isn't all too great for damage) is ball lightning (and the nuke). It feels like it's short an AoE -- here's looking at you, Voltaic Sentinel. 

 

Maybe they could make

1. The pet start doing Chain lightning attacks

2. The pet give you a buff that makes your attacks chain

3. The pet give a debuff to enemies that makes attacks chain (like, when hit by X attacks from master, do an attack on nearby enemy Y).

 

Start building them chaining ideas into lightning like the melee/control have 😜

Edited July 6, 2020 by kiramon

[Yomo Kimyata]

I've had a number of defenders and corruptors with electrical blast, but no blasters or sentinels.  I'd like to look at the set itself first, and then the endurance drain mechanic second.

 

I'm going against type here, and I would argue that the set could probably use a damage boost for one simple reason:  this set is most effective when slotted for endurance drain.  Unless you are making a build that will really make use of that (and by that I mean have another power set or APP that uses end drain as well), then you have a character that is providing subpar damage and virtually no benefit from endurance drain.  A little endurance drain is practically useless; a lot is very effective.  So if you have a Kinetic primary/secondary or if you are using Mu or Elec for your APP, great.  But it shouldn't have to be that way if you just want to pew pew with electricity instead of fire.

 

Damage over time is a tough nut, especially if it is unremarkable damage over time.  Changing Short Circuit or Ball Lightning or both to upfront damage rather than DoT would be a great shift.

 

Every other power seems fine to me.  Voltaic Sentinel is an underrated end drainer if slotted for it, and any free damage from an indestructible source is better than nothing.

 

With respect to endurance drain, I'd love to see a detailed guide if anyone has one.  I feel that either I am doing it right, or everyone else is doing it wrong, or that I simply have low expectations, but it does a good job for what it is supposed to do.  Two or three slotted "attacks" like Transference/Short Circuit/Power Sink will take down bosses to zero and one or two more will take down EBs.  (I don't solo AVs on these builds so clueless as to how ineffective it would be).  Regular attacks from Elec, as well as Cross Punch from the fighting pool whittle down end as well.

 

The complaint that one tick of endurance is enough for enemies to use any of their attacks seems a little dramatic, and I'm not sure that it's true.  But regardless, keep the -end recovery attacks on them and it's not a problem.  I would frequently solo EBs on my corruptor redside (and this is pre Transference) in near perfect safety.  It was slow, but the only window of danger was getting them to zero in the first place and then it's just a matter of slowly kicking them to death.

 

my two inf

[Bossk_Hogg]

Thunderous Blast is using the wrong damage formula. It recharges slower than other nukes (170 vs 140 seconds) yet deals the same damage. The other ranged nukes have a longer range (80 vs 60) and also deal better damage using the standard damage to recharge formula (125 second recharge for Overcharge/Geyser). The power doesnt follow COH's own guidelines for damage, and should be normalized as it was in the Sentinel set. On top of that, it has a glacial animation of 3.7 seconds. 

 

Tesla Cage should get a damage upgrade in the basic set as it received on Sentinels. Cosmic Burst, Abyssal Gaze, Freeze Ray etc all get to deal decent damage as well.

 

Voltaic Sentinel is more or less useless. It takes too long to cast for the paltry random single target damage it adds, the pet itself moves too slow, and it lasts too short a duration. At least 2 of these issues need to be addressed for the power to be a worthwhile pick. 

 

Short Circuit should get an animation shave from its current 3 seconds. That's a lot of time to be in melee, when you arent going to fully drain the targets anyway, for a slow ticking DOT. Its slow cast time contributes to the very sluggish feel of the set. 

 

Aim should grant a boost to end drain while it is active. That would help the set out when you arent pairing it with the few specific secondary sets to achieve full end drain.

 

Elec Blast is NOT fine even ignoring its frequently useless secondary effect. It's weakness is often disguised by pairing it with other damage (blasters) or with support sets that also drain endurance, but on its own the set is demonstrably weak, given its mediocre damage and horrible activation times,

 

Additionally, End Drain doesnt respect AT modifiers. Defenders and Blasters drain the same amount. This needs to be addressed, and as I cannot fathom making end drain less on any AT's. the current amounts should be scaled up for Corrupters and Defenders. 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Bossk_Hogg

[Yoru-hime]

The secondary effect basically tries to hold you hostage. "Build your character around me or I'm not doing squat for you." If you want to use the set, you're either building a sapper or paying a price in terms of damage and AoE potential for nothing.

 

No other secondary effect does this.

 

If I had an option between today's Electric Blast and a similar themed set that traded the secondary effect in for more damage and better AoE, I'd take the latter 100% of the time, even for those ATs that benefit the most from the -end.

[dopeninja]

Give it a small damage increase, maybe a minor sleep/slow effect on some of the powers, That doesn't really add much in the way of proc's but it is something. Sparky could be made into a real pet that I don't have to remember to summon, but forget most of the time. The other option would be to nerf all the mobs so they can't fire off all of their powers with 2 points of endurance and make the drain aspect useful.

[ForeverLaxx]

Electrical Blast has always suffered from the endurance drain effect being overvalued and cutting into the blast's damage numbers as "compensation". I ran an Elec/Dev Blaster on live and currently have an Elec/Trap Corruptor and the endurance drain is nothing but meaningless if you're not focusing on that aspect. It's the only secondary effect that you really have to build around in order to leverage due to how mobs work with regards to their attacks. In addition to this, all the -end in the world doesn't mean anything without accompanying -recovery to keep them at the reduced endurance. When you spend a bunch of time and attacks trying to drain the blue bar instead of the green one, and the blue bar tics back up once immediately after you zero them out and the foe gets to hit you with their hardest-hitting attack anyway, it really points out how useless -end is when the real thing you want is -recovery to make it stick.

 

The fact of the matter is, it's faster to just delete the green bar than it is to delete the blue bar (and keep it deleted). You spend more time, attacks, slots, and nearly the foe's entire HP pool to drain their End pool just for that endurance to recover to 1 or 2 immediately and undo all that time. If slotted for damage, you just defeat them outright.

 

The real kick in the pants of Elec Blast is many sets that contain a single drain power, like Transference or Power Sink, delete large swaths of endurance in a single use without slotting whereas the only thing in the Blast set that does this, if you slot for it, is Short Circuit. The blast set, with an entire secondary effect built around endurance drain, is worse at it than singular powers in sets that offer more than just endurance drain and for some reason the Blast set suffers a damage penalty for it.

 

I understand that endurance drain is theoretically the most powerful secondary effect insofar as player safety is concerned. Indeed, foes with no endurance can't fight back and it's why Malta Sappers are so feared. However, the problem is that, as far as mobs are concerned, endurance drain means nothing until the bar is at 0 and Elec Blast has no good way to get there and no -recovery to keep them there. It's a secondary effect that does nothing unless built around, and that requires picking up powers outside the Blast set to actually leverage. Imagine if Dark Blast required both slotting and the usage of Darkest Night before its -ToHit mattered. That's the state Electrical Blast is in.

[Galaxy Brain]

 

 

 

All various threads I've been part of, but the last one is a very relevant quote related to End Drain vs certain ranks of enemy.

 

The issues with elec blast can be summed up as: 

 

1) Clunkiness

Short Circuit, Thunderous Blast, and Voltaic Sentinel are all very slow powers for what they do. SC and TB are very slow to animate, and SC deals its damage over time to further slow down the process while TB does not do the correct damage. Sparky has a long animation with would be ok if you didn't have to CONSTANTLY re-summon the little guy. These three powers are highlights of the set, but end up being very clunky in practice due to very slow animations/constant application. 

Not only is this very slow in today's game, but for a lightning-themed set its odd the powers are slow at all. At least the attacks *hit* instantly unlike most other blasts! If these got sped up, hit harder (either damage or end drain, other perks), or in Sparky's case lasted longer/stacked then it would be huge for the set.

 

 

2) End Drain vs the World

In the last quoted thread, I went over how end drain is not really.... worth it in the bread and butter attacks most of the time. You will usually defeat enemies far faster than you drain them, outside of specific End Drain powers. Not only is End Drain binary by nature of it being all or nothing for taking effect, but powers also either do a bit of drain or they are one-shot wonders themselves. 

 

I'd rather a different secondary effect on a number of the powers with low ST drain and re-emphasize the heavy drain powers to be honest, if not have a chance for Critical Drain that @oedipus_tex had came up with a while back to actually leverage the effect on the majority of powers rather than just a few. As it stands, End Drain really only works if it is fast and constant like we see in Elec Control, and to do that we often see SC + X other power (Power Boost, Power Sink, Kinetics, Etc) which is honestly annoying since it makes any other pairing sub-par.

 

An unsung part of elec blast though is the end-return. This only has a chance to occur, but if it were made much more consistent that could be something fun to lean into. Other suggestions such as applying a debuff that scales on lost endurance, bonus damage scaling on endurance (Proved possible by the prior Beta Dark Melee!), and the like would also be welcome. 

 

Edit: adding in a possible "+End Cost" debuff when hit by the attacks would stack wonderfully too.

 

 

 

3) Old Set vs New Themes

Elec Blast is the oldest electrical primary, and it is lacking something that every set since has gotten: a Chain Power. As I mentioned in point 1, elec blast's unique powers are a ranged proper-nuke, a pseudo pet, and a PBAoE end drain but they all have their own issues... but the super iconic Chain Lightning is sadly not present in the set. Finding a way to fit that in there, even if it were attached to Voltaic Sentinel being active as @kiramon mentioned would be cool!

 

In addition, the idea to have Aim have altered stats to include +End Mod would be sweet as well. Just something more to lean into the set's strengths on it's own rather than needing to double-dip into a paired Drain set.

 

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by Galaxy Brain

[drbuzzard]

Only place I have played electrical blast on homecoming is on a couple of sentinels. I quite like it on them, but bad memories of electrical from other ATs on live means I don't bother using the other versions of the set.

 

The sentinel version is quite nice in general. About the only things I wouldn't mind seeing changed are:

A) making voltaic sentinel less clunky with continual resummons and why does it have to be placed anyway? Have it just summon in place near you like auto turret in devices. This will save time and bother. I'd also not object to seeing it have a chain effect since the chain gimmick does seem to be universal in the other electrical sets (save armor).

B) quicker animation on thunderous blast.

 

Otherwise I don't mind it at all, and it's one of the best of the sentinel sets.

 

[kiramon]

6 minutes ago, drbuzzard said:

Only place I have played electrical blast on homecoming is on a couple of sentinels. I quite like it on them, but bad memories of electrical from other ATs on live means I don't bother using the other versions of the set.

 

The sentinel version is quite nice in general. About the only things I wouldn't mind seeing changed are:

A) making voltaic sentinel less clunky with continual resummons and why does it have to be placed anyway? Have it just summon in place near you like auto turret in devices. This will save time and bother. I'd also not object to seeing it have a chain effect since the chain gimmick does seem to be universal in the other electrical sets (save armor).

B) quicker animation on thunderous blast.

 

Otherwise I don't mind it at all, and it's one of the best of the sentinel sets.

 

 

For A), in case you haven't, you can powexec_location me Voltaic Sentinel to at least pseudo-do what you want 🙂

 

PS I'm down for changing AIM to be a mini self-Amp Up- like  >>+acc, +special (end drain), +chance to fire electrical bolts that deal damage (akin to Martial Arts +toxc dmg) and drain end.... >: ) just call it CHARGE UP lol

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by kiramon

[Yomo Kimyata]

For what it's worth, I recently ran identical missions with TA/elec and TA/rad. in the mid-20s.  /Elec killed significantly faster and that was with basic slotting.

[drbuzzard]

2 minutes ago, kiramon said:

 

For A), in case you haven't, you can powexec_location me Voltaic Sentinel to at least pseudo-do what you want 🙂

 

Yeah, I know about that, but use it for caltrops.

[kiramon]

13 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

For what it's worth, I recently ran identical missions with TA/elec and TA/rad. in the mid-20s.  /Elec killed significantly faster and that was with basic slotting.

 

Rad doesn't have a real replacement for Lightning Bolt (X-ray is basically Charged Bolts while Neutrino is in its own little gap filler world).  Irradiate matches to Short Circuit, which leaves you ball lightning to Electron haze-- a cone vs a targeted aoe.  Down the line, though - Rad would get Cosmic Burst (its big hitter) and another AoE, vs a hold (which can be procced out to be a big hitter) and a little fuzz ball.

 

Early on, Electricity has everything a basic ranged set has -- it just doesn't have any of the extras because it gives it up for an all-or-nothing secondary effect. It's niche, so finding a way to make it work better rather than replacing it is ideal -- hence, A) some sort of debuff at Zero end, B) chain lightning sparks somehow that would spread more drain/-recovery

 

Heck, even making the Self+end a little PbAoE would be cool and give a support aspect to the set. 

Edited July 6, 2020 by kiramon

[Eva Destruction]

As nearly everyone else has said, the end drain is useless unless you build around it.

 

The set also suffers from a lack of a heavy-hitter.  Fast-snipe makes the lack a little less painful, but it still means the set lags behind most others in terms of ST damage, and it doesn't have great AoE to compensate. 

[Galaxy Brain]

54 minutes ago, Eva Destruction said:

As nearly everyone else has said, the end drain is useless unless you build around it.

 

The set also suffers from a lack of a heavy-hitter.  Fast-snipe makes the lack a little less painful, but it still means the set lags behind most others in terms of ST damage, and it doesn't have great AoE to compensate. 

Tbf, in a pure ST environment VS does work 

[gameboy1234]

7 hours ago, ImpousVileTerror said:

It's the Endurance Drain and Endurance Recovery Debuff mechanics that could use some serious work.  They're great in theory, but in practice they ultimately do little in that they operate on an All-or-Nothing dichotomy.

This is probably fair.  I played with a teammate on Posi 1 who by that level could actually drain the CoT down to 0 End, so that they couldn't attack at all.  It was cool and awesome and helped a lot, but it was also either OP or did nothing.

 

Not sure what to do about the End Drain / Recovery Drain because it affects every mob in the game, and could take a ton of work to rebalance. 

 

Maybe: reduce the End drain / Recovery Drain so it's only a little, and then put a ton of it in the Tier 9, some nuke with a huge recharge.  Allow *some* total shutdown at highest levels, but only some as it's a Blast set after all.

 

Then I would replace the End Drain / Recovery Drain on all the lower tier attacks with a light Stun effect, to add a little CC to the set without being overwhelming.  Clockwork get a stun that you "wake up" from if you take damage (it's basically a Sleep) which might be good, and the VFX for it is already in game and looks cool.  A small chance of that per attack would add a bit of control without being overwhelming.  (A high chance of Sleep would make the set very solo friendly, but might require adjustments elsewhere -- to base damage, or End cost -- to keep it balanced.)  I also think a Sleep type CC would be much more intuitive for the Devs to balance.

 

But I'm guessing from having watched the set played.  Take with a large dose of salt.

 

Edited July 6, 2020 by gameboy1234

[gameboy1234]

7 hours ago, Greycat said:

Things I love - I'll always be partial to Sparky. Before Defiance 2.0, I liked that it meant I could still fight back if I was held or stunned. So, yeah, still partial to it. It has saved my virtual bacon many times.

Something I've been thinking: Honestly I think there's only so many good mechanics that one can come up with for a good and fun class buff mechanic.  I feel like the idea that one needs to have a unique mechanic for each class is what is causing problems finding good mechanics.  So, why try?  Fury (Brutes) is fun.  Give Blasters Fury.

 

The more hit rolls you throw out, the more damage you get.  Sounds like a great mechanic to me for Blasters.  Also the more you get shot at the more damage you get, but pulling aggro has different connotations for a Blaster as opposed to a Brute.  Let's just pause a moment to remember all of our blasters who (briefly) pulled too much aggro.