Ice/Electrical - Curious

[Sura]

Hello!

 

I'm a long time Ice Armor player; first Ice/Axe (way back in the day) and now Ice/Staff.  I find myself wondering about combining Ice with Electrical Melee as a Tanker to synergize the END drain pieces of those two sets.  Plus that level 38 teleport in Elec looks like it could be a blast.  I don't see much around about Elec though.  Anyone tried this?  Thoughts on how they might work together?

 

Just thoughts on Electrical Melee and its powers would be welcomed!

 

Thanks!

[Rylas]

First – It couldn't hurt to try it, so why not?

 

Second – Someone more knowledgable might correct me, but I don't think end drain is a terribly reliant mitigation tool in game. Not unless you can debuff their recovery too. My experience with it has been that foes will always have just enough End (i.e. 1 pt) to keep attacks going for the most part. It could be my perception on the matter is flawed, though.

 

That said, Lightning Rod is a hella-fun power!

[Sura]

Oh, I'm already trying, it's just going to take me a long time to get to good ol' 38+.  :)

 

For Recovery, in Pines it shows that Jacob's Ladder, the cone, has -100% Recovery, though it doesn't indicate how long.  Even without it though, if all of my attacks drain END, maybe the bad guys might get in some Brawls but it might keep bigger things from going off, especially when stacked with Energy Absorption.  Not real helpful for AV's, I'm sure they can't be drained, but for others it might work.

 

Thanks!

[Gigajoule]

Well, I am not really an expert by any means. I did play an Ice/Ice Tanker and Elec/Energy Blaster pre-shutdown and have a level 50 Elec/RadMelee Tanker now though, so I do have some experience with End Drain in various forms, even though I haven't rolled a character with Elec Melee per se.

 

My feeling is that End Drain isn't the best synergy with the -Recharge that Ice inflicts, since the waiting time you impose on enemies for their attacks to recharge and the waiting time you impose for their End to recover to be able to do their weakest attack don't really stack, if you follow my meaning. To put it another way, if you are keeping them at zero End, the slowing effect of Chilling Embrace, Energy Absorption, etc, is kinda going to waste.

 

And if you don't drain all their End to zero, then you haven't actually prevented any attacks.

 

The other thing about End drain as an offensive strategy is that it is mostly only useful soloing (or perhaps duoing). In a normal group situation, everything dies so fast, the mitigation effect of draining End won't be very noticeable against the much more obvious impact of the enemies being drained of all their hitpoints by the rest of the group by the time your End drain finishes animating. Although, sometimes it can be useful: if a group gets split up somehow (what? never!), and you find yourself alone with an aggro-cap worth of enemies on you, draining their End while you either wait for help to arrive or (more often) just solo the group yourself slowly actually does help mitigate the incoming damage somewhat. It won't shut the bad-guys down altogether, but they will mostly only be using their cheapest End-cost attacks once they are fully drained. (That assumes the enemies are considerate enough to come close enough to be drained, of course. Wisp Oppressors and what-have-you will try to stay away.) But even though that is a valid "use case" for End drain, you probably wouldn't want to intentionally seek out that kind of situation. It's generally more efficient to stay with the group after all.

 

And the only things that don't die fast, namely AVs and Giant Monsters, are for all practical purposes immune to End Drain shenanigans anyway. That necessitates that End Drain not be the only tool in your toolbox for mitigating damage. And if you have some other tool, the conventional wisdom goes, why not just focus on that other tool and forget about End Drain altogether? Easier to be a specialist than a generalist, so the thinking goes. In practical terms: are you going to slot Energy Absorption for Defense and Recharge or for End Mod and Recharge? It will be less effective to try to do both. Most Ice Tankers focus on the Defense aspect of EA and ignore the End-draining effect. And, to be honest, that is probably the right call for most builds.

 

That's not to say End-drain is bad-- it does have some impact in the right situation-- just don't have unrealistically high expectations for its awesomeness, especially from Energy Absorption.

 

And there is this to note as well: the Alpha Musculature Total Radial (rare) and Radial Paragon (very rare) Incarnate abilities improve End Mod effects as well as damage. This End Mod effect is quite noticeable for my Electric Armor Tanker's two End-draining attacks, which are all I need to shut down a big group of bad-guys' Endurance if I decide I want to (though, as noted, most of the time, this is unnecessary). It probably would be even better with Electric Melee.

[Sura]

Great response Gigajoule, thanks!

 

I was pretty sure that END drain could only take me so far; I'm glad to hear from someone that's messed around with it.  Ultimately in this case I'm not stepping backward at all by leveraging more END drain by bringing in Elec melee; I have been running Staff, and it has essentially no synergy (other than adding smashing specific defense) with Ice.  Elec melee will get me a less resisted type of damage, shut down enemy Recovery with some of its attacks, and drain even more enemy Stamina with all of its attacks.  Plus I can't get that Lightning Rod opener out of my imagination...

 

:)

 

 

[Sura]

Update on this...

 

My Ice/Electric Tanker has hit 50, and it's been a fun ride.  No real barriers other than one brain dead day when I decided to try and tank Carnies and kept de-toggling myself with the Flying Carpet.  Ugh.

 

For the most part I lead with Lightning Rod, then go to Energy Absorption.  This means I've pulled a bunch of +DEF and also drained most of what's around me's endurance.  I then have Ball Lightning, Electrical Fences, Chain Induction, and Thunder Strike as draining (and taunting) AoE's to follow, and Lightning Clap to add some more nifty possible knockdown and disorient.  I can't recommend Electric as a Tanker secondary enough, it feels powerful and has good AoE. 

 

It's difficult, maybe impossible, to tell what END Drain is lending to my damage mitigation.  It's doing something for sure.  Storm Shamen can lose their Hurricane, Paragon Protectors can't pop that final power of theirs, that kind of stuff.  I'd test more if I could think of a way to do so.  Ultimately it's not hurting me, and it's all incidental; I'd be doing the same things even if I wasn't trying to drain.

 

I'm trying to figure out some low level incarnate stuff now.  It looks like in the Alpha Slot I can do Agility, which not only works with my Defense (eventually) but starts out by adding END MOD to all of my powers that can take it, is that right?  Or Musculature, as Giga says. 

 

Anyway, really glad I tried this out, it's been a great time thus far!

[Kruunch]

Lightning rod is one, if not the best melee alpha breakers in the game.

 

And it's amazing to behold.