Electric x3 build help

[qwerty1971]

I want to build an electric/electric/electric blaster (I love themed heroes) that focuses mainly on getting into melee, draining endurance and then picking folks off mostly by melee with a few ranged attacks. I do not know the IO system that well and would not know which sets to slot for as much defense as possible. I am thinking on Flight (Fly and Hover), Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave), Medicine (AO, AS) as my power pools and Electrical Mastery for my epic pool. Any build advice for slotting and sets would be appreciated. Many thanks. 

[Redlynne]

15 minutes ago, qwerty1971 said:

I am thinking on Flight (Fly and Hover), Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave), Medicine (AO, AS) as my power pools and Electrical Mastery for my epic pool.

You're going to need to ... compress ... those ambitions a tad there.

 

You only get 24 power picks to choose from. If you take:

• Flight (Hover + Fly) = 2
• Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave) = 3
• Medicine (Aid Other, Aid Self) = 2
• Electrical Mastery (unspecified) = 2-3 powers

You've already "used up" as many as 10(!) of your 24 power picks, leaving you only 14 more to choose from ... meaning you're going to need to DROP 4 powers out of your primary and secondary powersets.  That's ... not necessarily wise ... depending on what you're wanting to do with your build.

 

To be honest with you, I'd ditch BOTH the Flight pool AND the Fighting pool (so 5 power picks reclaimed) in exchange for the Sorcery pool so as to get Mystic Flight (a Fly+Teleport power all in one!) and then reach for Rune of Protection in Sorcery as both a "break free power" and a place to slot the Resist set IOs that add +3% Defense vs All.  You'd only need to choose between Spirit Ward (1 slot wonder power) or Arcane Bolt (Force Feedback proc ready power) as your pre-req gateway to get to Rune of Protection ... for only 3 power picks instead of 5 ... and you'd still have "room" left over to take Enflame, if you wanted to squeeze that into your build plan.

 

The Medicine Pool is ... nice to have ... but that's all, it's not NEEDED/necessary to have as a Blaster.  If you're facing power pick pressures like I'm anticipating you will, this would be the second thing I'd cut after "compressing" the Flight+Fighting pools down into using the Sorcery pool instead.

 

So if you save 1-2 power picks by switching from Flight+Fighting into Sorcery and drop the Medicine pool you will have saved yourself 3-4 power picks ... which would then be enough to let you take 17-18 powers from your primary and secondary powersets, if you're wanting to "take all of those" that you can.

 

 

 

When you can't have it all, you have to pick and choose ... wisely ...

[Vanden]

8 hours ago, Redlynne said:

The Medicine Pool is ... nice to have ... but that's all, it's not NEEDED/necessary to have as a Blaster.  If you're facing power pick pressures like I'm anticipating you will, this would be the second thing I'd cut after "compressing" the Flight+Fighting pools down into using the Sorcery pool instead.

I think that's underselling it. Aid Self is very helpful to have, and with Elec^3 you have potentially 3 holds and Force of Thunder to create space to use it.

[Redlynne]

Hey, if there's "room" among the power picks to take the Medicine pool, go ahead and take it!

But if there isn't ... if it's Medicine pool picks versus primary/secondary pool picks (and you can't have/fit everything you want into one build) ... it might be best to simply cut the Medicine pool out depending on what powers you think are most important for you to have in the build.

 

Now, that said, this might be a situation where using an alternate build ... with and without the Medicine pool ... might be a good idea, rather than just having ONE build (with or without it).

[Sanguinesun]

15 hours ago, qwerty1971 said:

I want to build an electric/electric/electric blaster (I love themed heroes) that focuses mainly on getting into melee, draining endurance and then picking folks off mostly by melee with a few ranged attacks. I do not know the IO system that well and would not know which sets to slot for as much defense as possible. I am thinking on Flight (Fly and Hover), Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave), Medicine (AO, AS) as my power pools and Electrical Mastery for my epic pool. Any build advice for slotting and sets would be appreciated. Many thanks. 

 

This sounds more like you want an ele/ele/ele sentinel than a blaster tbh.

[Tath99]

On 8/30/2019 at 2:09 PM, qwerty1971 said:

I want to build an electric/electric/electric blaster (I love themed heroes) that focuses mainly on getting into melee, draining endurance and then picking folks off mostly by melee with a few ranged attacks. I do not know the IO system that well and would not know which sets to slot for as much defense as possible. I am thinking on Flight (Fly and Hover), Fighting (Kick, Tough, Weave), Medicine (AO, AS) as my power pools and Electrical Mastery for my epic pool. Any build advice for slotting and sets would be appreciated. Many thanks. 

Hi.

 

One of my original characters on live was an Electric/Electric/Electric Blaster.  It was pre-IO's and swung between a lot of fun and frustration, easily drawing a huge amount of aggro for letting loose with its capabilities.  I would offer the following advice:-

 

•  Hover is your friend.  Hover out of range to blast safely.  Hover over their heads to melee and AOE - and if necessary fly upwards and away to escape.
•  I would suggest a good proportion of melee defence (if you can slot a reasonable amount of it) and some ranged defence is going to be your friend.
•  The END drain capabilities of an Elec/Elec/Elec blaster (are / used to be) a smidgin' short of usefulness as you levelled.  There are ranged attack IO's that offer extra end drain that might be useful?

(Recommended reading for Def advice: Defence Guide )

 

It was my own past experience that Elec/Elec/Elec Blasters are poor soloers, leaning more towards team-play.  Times may have changed.  The issue is getting into and surviving and escaping the point blank range of some of the sets capabilities.  Stealth and Phaseshift escapes and Placates might be an alternative means to achieve this.

 

(A good survivability test for an Electricity Blaster -- can you street sweep in the zones like Perez Park, Boomtown, etc.)

 

 

 

 

Edited September 2, 2019 by Tath99

[Snakebit]

End drain in the Blaster powers is nigh useless because only Short Circuit has any -recovery, which you need to keep mobs from attacking once they do get drained. 

 

Using common IO's as the baseline, you open with ball lightning and short circuit and you've dropped a max of 83 end. That means you have to come up with another 17 endurance on the entire spawn. You can't get that from Field for 5 tics, meaning you are taking damage and mez effects and you have to constantly spam Short Circuit, hoping it hits everything every time. 

 

This is until 35, when you get Power Sink. You can't rely on Power Sink until 37 when you get the recharge down to 22 seconds. While you are waiting for Power Sink to recharge, you have to keep spamming Short Circuit every time it's up (7 seconds with a 3 second animation) to keep their endurance down. Which means you are pretty much ignoring the green bar in favor of the blue bar. Yeah, you can slip in a few blaps here and there, but your timing can't be off even a little. 

 

It just doesn't play out. It didn't work with SO's and it doesn't work with IO's. You might be able to spend a bunch of influence and get better performance, but eventually you're going to end up with Thunderous Blast as your primary attack (like all the T9 blaster powers) and all that effort for end drain will have been for naught. 

 

You're better off with a Dominator  if you want to sap and blap. The Dominator elec assault set has pretty poor damage, but you can get decent numbers and actually keep large spawns drained with relative ease.  

 

 

Now, if you want to just use SC as a utility drain and focus on damage, different story. But again, you still have to combine 100% end drain and the -recovery to get any real benefit from it, and if you build for damage most stuff should be dead by the time you drain end.