Electric Blast

[oedipus_tex]

What are overall opinions of Electric Blast separate from when it is paired with the Electric secondary? I almost never see this set in action. I'd like to try it with something other than the standard builds, but I've always been intimidated because I've heard some not so positive things about how the set functions. Thoughts?

[Adeon Hawkwood]

My opinion is that it's a solid blast set but it works better on Defenders and Corruptors than Blasters that also got a large buff with the I24 changes.

 

Electrical Blast is one of the best blast sets for damage mitigation since you can drain enemies of endurance and stop them attacking. The problem is that Short Circuit is short ranged, slow to cast and requires two applications to drain most enemies. These drawbacks are easier to overcome on a Defender or Corruptor where you can lean on your support set to keep you alive while you do this. Most Blasters have a hard time with this although Elec/Elec Blasters can leverage Power Sink to improve things.

 

The other weakness of Electrical Blast is the lack of single target damage. The fast snipe changes do help quite a bit there however, but unless you take /Devices they requires a significant investment in slots to use (although that may be changing in the next patch).

 

Finally I'll note that the I24 Nuke changes were a big boon to Electrical Blast. Thunderous Blast was always an excellent ranged sapping power and now you can use it without crashing.

 

So overall I would prefer to take Electrical Blast on a Defender or Corruptor. If I was going to take it on a Blaster I'd probably look at either Ice, Electrical or Energy as my secondary since all of those have abilities which can help overcome the weaknesses of Electrical Blast. Electrical offer more single target damage and another drain. Energy has single target damage and can boost your existing drains. Ice has single target damage and control/slow powers to help keep you alive when moving in close.

[Novacat]

In terms of straightforward capabilities, what they say on the tin, it's not a bad combination.

As a blapper, you'll have a series of PBAoEs to work from, can slot Short Circuit and Power Sink for severe drain if used together (two 50 IOs and nothing else for those powers adds up to -128.32% endurance drain and something like -366% recovery to keep it there), that's before any other powers or drains or anything. You get two holds, two sleeps and two stuns (the latter of which are AoE) so you can build for a decent amount of mezzing that'll stack with any epic pool you choose.

Thunderous Blast is one of the ranged nukes and this is a good thing. Granted they don't hurt quite as much but they're way easier to set up and place and thus are very *usable*

 

The less fun parts, however...

1) Forget range. You've got an effective combat reach of about 12 feet if you want to use all of that drain.

2) If you're not meleeing, you're low on single target damage as you're using AoEs a lot and even the epic pools may not change this too much

3) Due in part to point 1, your nuke loses some of its value of being ranged: you're in the middle of things anyways so in many ways you're just losing out on the damage compared to a point-blank.

 

Now, here's where the numbers probably decline. If I take Energy Manipulation, all of my primary's end drains are significantly stronger. Sure I lose the one-two punch of power-sink and short-circuit, but Thunderous Blast with two drain IOs just became 145.4% all on its own already, SC itself is now in the 90s, ball lightning reaches 18.34% with two IOs...

And if I took Mu Mastery, Electrifying Fences is in the 40s too, or Electrical Mastery's EMP for a cone, a hold, and another 131+% from two IOs with power-boosted EMPulse.

 

Or what if I don't care about drain except for SC, Thunderous and... one more thing to top'em off? It's not like AVs and Giant Monsters are all that affected by drain anyways without several other electricals running around, so as long as elite bosses and below are totally offline, right? What if I took Tactical Arrow for all of those self-buffs? ESD offers a 55% base drain - easily dragged above 115%. They're under 3 mag of hold as you leap in to short-circuit, tossing your ball lightning mid-jump 'fore you land. As long as LTs, Minions and Bosses are all dry, which is easily achieved with those other non-/Elec options, that's the grand majority of the protection and usefulness of drain right there.

 

So that means there's at least two other good options even if you do want to drain things with Electrical.

But, if you want to drain and blap, the thought of keeping a whole bunch of fuel-depleted victims in close proximity as your lighting field taps them and your regen/recovery-type Sustain helps keep them stunned and the biggest guy in the area gets put to sleep right afterwards if that wasn't enough to shut him up? Elec/Elec/Elec can jump in there with extreme resistances (except psionics so do slot some IO sets for that) and AoE things to disruption then death.

[Keilis]

I've been trying to figure out Electrical Blast as well.

 

Damage - By itself, Elec Blast's damage is lacking.  Either I need to shore it up with secondary attacks or I need to make damage not my only priority.  For the former, there are plenty of options as a Blaster, and for the latter, there are many options for Defenders and Corruptors, and while your damage will still be low compared to other blast sets, it's a less bitter sacrifice for concept than it would be on a Blaster.

 

Endurance Drain - But wait, there's something in Elec itself that could be worth the lower damage - End Drain!  As a Blaster, pairing Elec/ with either /Elec or /Energy will make you able to drain foes easily, and they also offer blaps that'll help your damage, while /TA has ESD and loads of other non-attack goodies.  There are a few options in the support sets, with Kinetics of particular note, since you'll want to be in melee anyway.  It's worth noting that End Drain values for Elec Blast powers are the same between archetypes.  Now, all that said, it's possible to get >100% End Drain with just Elec Blast itself, but it takes the Agility Alpha and very aggressive slotting.

 

Mitigation - You've got a Hold, but until your enemies' End has bottomed-out, you'll be taking damage and CC.  Personally, I find that a KD proc in Ball Lightning is considerably helpful.

 

There's a piece of the puzzle I've left out - Sentinels.  Sentinels = Blasters with less damage, right?  Not so much in this case.  You do take a 20% hit to damage, but, unlike other versions of Electrical Blast, Tesla Cage does damage, and that's BIB-level damage, too.  If you go for the Elec APP, you get a version of Havoc Punch that's quite nearly as good as the Blaster version (95%), though it takes longer to recharge.  As far as inherents, Blasters probably come out ahead when solo, but Sents' inherent can boost the damage of an entire team.  Also, while Blasters may do more damage overall, I really like how, on a Sent, I can leverage my inherent against specific targets and it comes with endurance buffs.  I haven't made high-end builds for both and examined attack chains, but I suspect Sentinels aren't far behind, and might actually be ahead in some ways.

 

Oh, and then there's defenses and mez protection.  That's important, too.

 

Personally, I wound up going with an Elec/SR Sentinel.  I gave up some damage compared to what I could've had as a Blaster, but I can drain things very quickly with BL as I'm jumping in, SC when I land, and a tick of Lightning Field, and my frequency is limited only by the cooldown of SC, not PS or PB.  With the KD I've slotted into BL, my mez protection, my more-than-soft-capped Defense, and my ability to shrug off Defense Debuffs, I'll be much, much safer than I would've been otherwise.  I'm pretty safe *before* I've sapped the group, and then *everyone's* safe.

 

... -ish.

 

I'm not saying it's the right answer for everybody, but I think that going Sentinel is worth considering for anyone interested in Elec Blast.