Elec/Elec-what's good, bad, ugly?

[JnEricsonx]

Pretty much the topic.

[MTeague]

Bad/Ugly: 

• Electric Blast is often looked at as a lower-damage blast set.  However, I personally never noticed it being that bad on my Elec/Elec blaster.
• I don't think Elec Blast gets any extra Damage Proc's.  There's procs for Ranged Damage and Targetted AoE dmg of course, but it's not like Rad Blast where you can toss in the procs from Defense Debuff / Accurate Defense Debuff, etc.
• Electric Affinity can be "busy".  As in, you could probably ALWAYS be cycling some powers to buff / debuff at any given moment.  You'll have to find a balance you can work with for maintaining buffs while still hurling offensive power.

Good: 

• With the new EndMod/Dmg sets (Synapse's Shock, Power Transfer, etc),  you have the option to boost the sapping effect AND boost the dmg effect, which is nice. 
  • Sapping probably will never matter for minions (they'll just die), but could be nice for some bosses.
• Faraday Cage is Status Protection, so much like a FF Bubbler or Sonic Bubbler, you'll be able to mostly shrug off mezzes once you're situated for battle.
  • unlike them though, you're vulnerable on the move.  Faraday Cage is Stationary, though it can be resummoned to your current location.
  • but while you're moving from point A to point B, before you resummon, you could be mezzed.
• You should never ever run out of end, ever. 
• You get a pet fairly early, and you can bounce your circuits off that pet when soloing to have the circuit bounce back and affect YOU.  This means the vast majority of your powers are still helpful when soloing, as opposed to say, an Empath who can't Fort themselves or Clear Mind themselves, or a bubbler who can't use the ally-bubbles on themselves.

[kiramon]

I'm pretty sure Faraday can be used while mezzed. Think i've had that happen before, similar to a breakfree. Confirm or deny. 

[Cutter]

(Context: I have an Elec/Elec defender in her 40s, and dragged a DP/Elec corruptor into the 30's before re-rolling him.)

 

As far as blasting goes, the only power I've found any of the newer endmod sets to have value in is Short Circuit. My def runs a full set of Synapse's Shock there. That alone is dropping over 65% of the mob's blue bar. But the damage is pretty crap.

On 7/17/2020 at 9:45 AM, MTeague said:

• You get a pet fairly early, and you can must bounce your circuits off that pet when soloing to have the circuit bounce back and affect YOU.  This means the vast majority of your powers are still helpful when soloing, as opposed to say, an Empath who can't Fort themselves or Clear Mind themselves, or a bubbler who can't use the ally-bubbles on themselves.

Wall of ElecAff rant incoming 🙂

 

My experience with the pet and chains has been that it's incredibly frustrating solo, and useless teamed.

• Solo - you have to target the pet to benefit yourself. This means every time you want to heal or buff yourself (which, as was noted, can be often due to how busy the set can be), you not only have to take time off blasting, but you ALSO have at least one extra click in there to target your pet first. If you've got twitch shooter reflexes that's prolly no big deal, but for my slower hands I've been on the wrong end of the life-and-death difference more often than I like. Yes, you technically can just target through Sparky all the time to remove that need to click, but then you're firing blind 'cause there's no reticle telling you what the pet has fixed on. This also doesn't include the fact that you have to resummon the pet pretty frequently, again taking time out of blasting.
• Team - on my def I've literally summoned the pet maybe half a dozen times when I'm on a team. I find it to be wholly unnecessary, except maybe when you get to an AV. You don't need it for chains, and you sure don't need it to debuff standard mobs.

With that in mind, I quite enjoy the defender. She mostly teams, and I feel like I'm "supposed" to use my primary more often anyway. I still find time to blast (SC > BL does good work). On the flipside, I nuked my corruptor. I wanted to run him more as a solo character, and I found ElAff just didn't work for me there. If you're going to be teaming more often than not, you could likely make it work for you.

On 7/17/2020 at 10:43 AM, kiramon said:

I'm pretty sure Faraday can be used while mezzed. Think i've had that happen before, similar to a breakfree. Confirm or deny. 

I have used it while mezzed before. No more break-frees is a plus. I'll also note that the protection granted by Faraday is supposed to linger for a few seconds after you leave the cage - I haven't noticed it, but also haven't gone looking for it either.