Current state of sapping in PVE?

[Gentoo]

I recall back on live that people always said sapping was pointless because unless you drained all end, it did nothing, and enemies could still use all of their attacks. Is that still true? Maybe now it takes some attacks away but leaves the weak ones?

 

I also recall it being said that defenders don't get better end drain modifier than other ATs. Is that true today?

 

I know sapping is now a thing that electric controllers do well, but how about defenders, corruptors and blasters? Are there any sapping oriented builds that are effective at all today?

[MonteCarla]

I've made a couple of effective sappers recently.

 

Ladybird 7 - Elec/Energy Aura/Elec Sentinel (Armored tech hero)

Short Circuit slotted for end mod (33% base drain), and slotted Power Drain (35% drain) gives me 136% drain. 

Purple patch is 80% for +2's, 65% for +3's, and 48% for +4's

So the actual drain of these two powers is 109%, 88.4% and 65% for +4's.

I was able to get +2s easily, and +3s drained pretty regularly when I added in Ball Lightning and Electric Fences

Charge Up adds 31% end drain, so another 20% or so. 

Thunderous Blast is also does 105% base drain, so that made sapping a lot easier.

 

Cancellicious - Rad/Elec/Elec Defender (Power Disruptor like Scramble from X-Men comics)

I slotted all my Elec Blast powers for end drain first over damage, just to see how well that worked. The answer was surprisingly well!

Short Circuit (43.75% base) and Ball Lightning (8.75% base) do 105% drain when slotted, or 120%+ with Charge Up. (Defenders do get better values now)

+2's are drained, +3's are close to drained.

Add in a few single target attacks and that pesky boss is drained, and everyone else is held in Choking Cloud long enough for a second Ball Lightning to drain them off.

 

Could I have picked a better primary for my Defender?

Kinetics and Electrical Affinity offer other single target drains in Transference (-56.25% base) and Shock (20%) respectively

Thermal drains 16.25% end in an AoE every 2 minutes.

Cold's Heat Loss drains 33% in an AoE every 6 minutes.

 

So yes, but Rad was very good for keeping me alive in a group while I Short Circuited them. Choking Cloud held them, Rad Infection made me hard to hit and I can heal myself when I did take damage. Cancellicious often took Alphas on the six Freedom Phalanx Task Forces, and only rarely faceplanted. 

 

I'd tried sapper builds in the old universe and always found them lacking. These two on Homecoming had just enough drainage to make it a fun and viable tactic. The key on both cases was being able to survive in melee range. I believe you could also get decent mileage out of a Elec/Elec or Elec/Energy Blaster, and definitely an Elec/Elec Dominator if you built them right.

 

 

[Uun]

For end drain to be effective you need to take foe endurance to zero and keep it there. That means you also need powers with -recovery.  Electric Blast has both. Electric Affinity has both. Electric Control has both. Kinetics has end drain but not -recovery. 

 

Defenders have the highest end drain modifier (1.25). Controllers and corrupters have 1.1.

[Without_Pause]

There's a case for Sentinels being the best sappers despite the limited cap on targets.

[Uun]

44 minutes ago, Without_Pause said:

There's a case for Sentinels being the best sappers despite the limited cap on targets.

I don't know whether they're the best, but sentinels are very effective sappers. The sentinel version of Electric Blast has a 10 target max for Short Circuit and Thunderous Blast (vs. 16 for other ATs), but Thunderous Blast has a 90s recharge (vs. 170s). I've got an Electric/Bio sentinel that leverages end drain very effectively and can take entire spawns out of commission indefinitely.

[Gentoo]

I imagine -end on a blaster would be kind of pointless, because you'd probably kill them much faster than you drain them.

 

On a defender, I think it would be much more useful, since damage isn't as good.

[Gentoo]

I reactivated an old level 50 EA/Elec defender I forgot that I had.

 

It drains enedurance much much faster than I expected. I can drawn spawns and keep them drained with minimal effort and with IOs.

[Grimm2]

8 hours ago, Uun said:

I don't know whether they're the best, but sentinels are very effective sappers. The sentinel version of Electric Blast has a 10 target max for Short Circuit and Thunderous Blast (vs. 16 for other ATs), but Thunderous Blast has a 90s recharge (vs. 170s). I've got an Electric/Bio sentinel that leverages end drain very effectively and can take entire spawns out of commission indefinitely.

Also, Sentinel Elec Blast's Aim clone has a +endmod tag for its duration, so you have a better chance of chunking a hard target's end right off the bat with your alpha strike. 

[stryve]

Don't forget the 'Shock' mechanic added to Electric Blast a while back. 

Basically, the lower a target's End bar is, the higher chance an Electric Blast power will trigger extra Energy damage (approximately 20% of the base power damage), along with an extra -50% Recovery.  Not clear on the exact formula, but in practice once you get an End bar under 5-10% full Shock will always trigger.  I've found this to be a pretty significant damage boost on my own Sapper Defender, running Cold Domination/Electric Blast (slotted for EndMod in all attacks, rather than Damage).

 

Pretty sure all versions of Electric Blast include +endmod in Charge Up (Aim clone).  Between that and the built-in -Recovery, I consider Electric Blast to be the best option for any Sapper build.  Even kitted out for Damage rather than EndMod, my Electric Blast Sentinel can significantly affect AV End bars.

 

I also ran a Dr. Kahn TF with an all Electric group a couple months ago.  We didn't have a good spread of debuffs to go with the sapping so it took a while to whittle Reichmann down, but he spent the vast majority of the fight just standing there staring at us.  So it absolutely is a viable tactic, if you really lean in to it.

[VashNKnives]

Also Sentinels do get a shorter recharge on Thunderous Blast and the inherent single-target debuff Vulnerability, which isn't huge but is something:

Vulnerability debuffs endurance resistance:

Spoiler

There is also another recent thread on this: here

Edited July 4 by VashNKnives

[Without_Pause]

The biggest con for end drain in the current state of the game is how much AVs can chuckle at it and say it tickles. For trash mobs? They're super easy to handle.

[SuperPlyx]

12 hours ago, stryve said:

I also ran a Dr. Kahn TF with an all Electric group a couple months ago.  We didn't have a good spread of debuffs to go with the sapping so it took a while to whittle Reichmann down, but he spent the vast majority of the fight just standing there staring at us. 

 

I guess that shows how crazy this game is, the last Kahn  I did we had 2 sappers and he never let up. Hell, he nuked us with that fist move, having no end that I could see in his bar.

[ZorkNemesis]

On 7/2/2024 at 6:14 PM, Grimm2 said:

Also, Sentinel Elec Blast's Aim clone has a +endmod tag for its duration, so you have a better chance of chunking a hard target's end right off the bat with your alpha strike. 

 

All versions of Electric Blast have +EndMod on Aim.  It was added to help the set drain more end to trigger the SHOCKED criticals easier.

[tidge]

I don't play "sappers", at best I will have some sort of power that happens to drain enemy Endurance and/or apply -Recovery.

 

I can understand the appeal: "Malta Sappers give me so much trouble, just imagine what I could do with it!"... but my personal bias is that there are so few PVE critters that it would be worthwhile to 'sap' (as opposed to debuffing/damaging) and are relatively easy to 'sap'.

 

Kudos to those who make the strategy work, but even as I make and play niche characters, I've never been tempted to make a 'Sapper'. As a secondary effect for a set I want to otherwise play... that's a different matter, yet it is still not a secondary effect I think I'd lean into.

[Grimm2]

9 hours ago, ZorkNemesis said:

 

All versions of Electric Blast have +EndMod on Aim.  It was added to help the set drain more end to trigger the SHOCKED criticals easier.

I stand corrected! I thought it was a special Sentinel thing. I should play Elec Blast on other ATs.

[Psylenz0511]

On 7/2/2024 at 7:31 AM, MonteCarla said:

I've made a couple of effective sappers recently.

 

Ladybird 7 - Elec/Energy Aura/Elec Sentinel (Armored tech hero)

Short Circuit slotted for end mod (33% base drain), and slotted Power Drain (35% drain) gives me 136% drain. 

Purple patch is 80% for +2's, 65% for +3's, and 48% for +4's

So the actual drain of these two powers is 109%, 88.4% and 65% for +4's.

I was able to get +2s easily, and +3s drained pretty regularly when I added in Ball Lightning and Electric Fences

Charge Up adds 31% end drain, so another 20% or so. 

Thunderous Blast is also does 105% base drain, so that made sapping a lot easier.

 

Cancellicious - Rad/Elec/Elec Defender (Power Disruptor like Scramble from X-Men comics)

I slotted all my Elec Blast powers for end drain first over damage, just to see how well that worked. The answer was surprisingly well!

Short Circuit (43.75% base) and Ball Lightning (8.75% base) do 105% drain when slotted, or 120%+ with Charge Up. (Defenders do get better values now)

+2's are drained, +3's are close to drained.

Add in a few single target attacks and that pesky boss is drained, and everyone else is held in Choking Cloud long enough for a second Ball Lightning to drain them off.

 

Could I have picked a better primary for my Defender?

Kinetics and Electrical Affinity offer other single target drains in Transference (-56.25% base) and Shock (20%) respectively

Thermal drains 16.25% end in an AoE every 2 minutes.

Cold's Heat Loss drains 33% in an AoE every 6 minutes.

 

So yes, but Rad was very good for keeping me alive in a group while I Short Circuited them. Choking Cloud held them, Rad Infection made me hard to hit and I can heal myself when I did take damage. Cancellicious often took Alphas on the six Freedom Phalanx Task Forces, and only rarely faceplanted. 

 

I'd tried sapper builds in the old universe and always found them lacking. These two on Homecoming had just enough drainage to make it a fun and viable tactic. The key on both cases was being able to survive in melee range. I believe you could also get decent mileage out of a Elec/Elec or Elec/Energy Blaster, and definitely an Elec/Elec Dominator if you built them right.

 

 

+1 on electric/electric dominators

 

 

[BossBriquet]

I have a few electric doms. Love the set!!! electric control is really all you need for sapping, though [Power Boost] from a number of the secondaries really helps.  My main is elec/dark/dark.  Its like playing a controller with dark miasma and dark assault.  I like dark better for damage and debuff than personally.  

 

Sleep, power boost and electric fences with the aura running and your mob is oddly quiet 🙂  Choose your preferred secondary (rem power boost power helps).

 

A few of the epics/patrons have added drains too.  I'm headed towards [Soul Consumption].  Its a lot of fun and safe.  

 

 

ANywho... my 2 pesos

[kelika2]

Most of the time enemies will die too fast for sapping to matter

And AVs/GMs/etc have special low end or even free attacks

And most people do not realize that Lt class enemies have 140 end, bosses have more and so on after that.  might even vary by enemy group

 

and after rolling a few sappers recently you need to do a lot of it in a short amount of time or its kinda useless

[Auroxis]

On 7/6/2024 at 2:03 AM, BossBriquet said:

I have a few electric doms. Love the set!!! electric control is really all you need for sapping, though [Power Boost] from a number of the secondaries really helps.  My main is elec/dark/dark.  Its like playing a controller with dark miasma and dark assault.  I like dark better for damage and debuff than personally.  

 

Sleep, power boost and electric fences with the aura running and your mob is oddly quiet 🙂  Choose your preferred secondary (rem power boost power helps).

 

A few of the epics/patrons have added drains too.  I'm headed towards [Soul Consumption].  Its a lot of fun and safe.  

 

 

ANywho... my 2 pesos

I've been working on my Elec/Sonic/Mu dom who has Power Boost and Power Sink to help with sapping, and it's been a decent experience. The downside of Sapping is that it takes several seconds to get going, so fast paced teams won't get that much use out of it. Being fast yourself is key as mentioned above.

 

Having a couple solid end drains and a strong build able to move ahead of everyone will give you a good experience with sapping. Dominator can sleep the pack and hold down/dps the bosses while draining, Elec/EnA Sentinel can be tanky enough to stand in the pack while firing off saps. Defender doesn't really have much in the way of staying safe while initiating, so that's a bit of an issue. But I'm sure with the right build and powerset combo you can pull off something similar.

Edited July 9 by Auroxis

[Zect]

On 7/2/2024 at 12:54 PM, Gentoo said:

I recall back on live that people always said sapping was pointless because unless you drained all end, it did nothing, and enemies could still use all of their attacks. Is that still true? Maybe now it takes some attacks away but leaves the weak ones?

 

You can drain all end very quickly (1-2 powers), this has never been a problem with properly built sappers (think powerboost + thunderous blast). While I don't think sapping can fully replace a mit layer like def or res, it does reduce incoming dps by a significant amount and you can do funny things with it like heavily delaying cyclopes from using their unstoppable.

 

However sapping was indeed nerfed against hard targets a few patches ago by homecoming, one of the few nerfs in the history of coh I consider a bad idea. EB/AV's/GM's min recovery is now 25%/25%/50% respectively. AV's GM's can still use attacks costing less than 10/15 end respectively. This and the fact that they introduced the Shocked! mechanic for elec blast reflects how dps, over all else, has become the primary concern of both Homecoming developers and players.

[plymster]

I've played a few different sappers, mostly defenders (they do the most end and rec drain the quickest, as far as I can tell).  My faves are:

 

Time/Elec/Energy - super tanky with massive def and to hit debuff, plus zeroing out all the trash mobs instantly, and the Bosses pretty quickly thereafter.  The Slowed Response -res debuff is gravy for cooking AVs.

 

Marine Affinity/Elec - Tide Pool debuffs dmg, Toroidal Bubble gives you decent res, then hit a group with Whitecap (knocking down everything to avoid alpha and triggering frenzy to further reduce dmg), then Short Circuit and Ball Lightning to kill the end to keep future attacks from coming.  Plus all the dmg bonus from Tide Pool and Shifting Tides murders GMs and AVs.  I've done 2 DIBs with him, and we took down the GMs at the end sequentially and still got the badge easily.

[honoroit]

How effective?

 

Elec/elec blaster, no /kin in team, versus synapse BABBAGE, you can get the end bar to less then half by time BABBAGE dies, and shock is NOT proccing.

 

Versus regular mobs, the end drain to self helps, but typically 2-3 of electro-fireball / electro-pbaoe-one and T9-thunderous blast will empty them to the point SHOCKED is going off.

 

Any synergy with another sapping character is most effective in getting SHOCKED going faster, as opposed to making monster UNABLE to fund powers due to OOM.

 

Monsters kind of cheat here too, and regularly cast whatever they like on sliver levels of FP/mana.

 

But blaster works quite well elec/elec

 

Yours,

 

FIGS - anime main protagonist

 

 

 

Edited August 11 by honoroit

[Doomguide2005]

     I feel like there's an undercurrent of it's either damage or sapping for a sapping character running, perhaps unintended, through this thread.  Nope!  Two level 21 to 50 Endmod sets (Power Transfer and Synaptic Shock) contain damage aspects.  Using them can maintain your sapping capacity and push damage to early DR/ED territory in 5 slots (iirc my Emp/Elec build correctly, about 80% ED damage).  After that you've got the 6th slot for choice of enhancement or Proc and or plus at 45+ something like Musculature to further enhance both Endmod and Damage aspects plus 2 Interface abilities (Gravitic and Preemptive) also can effect Endurance aspects of the foes.  Even back on Live I had an Emp/Elec/Power build which could reapply an ED capped damage and endmod debuffed Short Circuit after about 7 seconds while PBU was active.  

[honoroit]

It's probably not worth the extra end drain vs DMG over diversity cap, when at ive-done-the-things incarnate levels that are ignoring so much enh diversity:

• you'd be taking a DMG cut on architypes like blaster to cause a condition which does not work on monsters like it works on players, kupo.
• Pve monsters don't act as if they're malta zapped, not at all.

 

It's not worth it, as is, in my big expertise opinion...

 

...now, if being end dry made monsters sleep 1-2s, as soft cc, that'd be nice. Why so short? It's why even mass hypnosis (non pulsing sleep) is great - works as an interrupt.

 

 

-- (breakfast prince) Figs, powerset balance expert

Edited August 14 by honoroit