Circuit_Breaker_NA

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Regarding Elec/Elec

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Endurance drain is an all-or-nothing gamble on the Blaster's part. It is said to be in design that enemies do not use certain attacks once their endurance drops below a certain point, but this is rarely noticed as the enemies have an impressive amount of endurance recovery. The only way the drain is often effective is that the enemy's endurance recovery is also killed, which is much more difficult to come by. (This is much more an issue in PvE than PvP.)

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I haven't done it much since I6 and ED but that's not what I was seeing at all. Power Sink + Short Circuit = heavily porked enemies. Particularly bosses which have much more endurance heavy attacks. Some enemy types are more endurance hungry than others - keep your eye on their bars and you'll quickly learn which is which. (For instance, Freakshow self-rez'ing tend to pop up with half endurance to start. Easy pickins!)

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One thing to note about full drain as mitigation: it is only perfectly effective when coupled with -recovery. Short circuit's -recovery lasts 10 seconds, I believe. Base recharge is something like 20 seconds. Technically, if you used your 3 non-endmod slots for recharge, you could keep this applied almost full-time (they'd have recovery active for the 3 seconds you animate), though it'd become quite an endurance hog. But let's look at why you need the -recovery to fully mitigate:

Without -recovery, enemies are still regenerating. They do so a chunk at a time, in the familliar "tick" pattern. Every few seconds, it ticks up, until they have enough to attack. Frankly, it's my experience that an electric blast blaster without access to lightning field (and I imagine that the timing rarely works perfectly with it, either), cannot rely on their attacks to counteract these ticks effectively. They either are timed wrong, or miss, but either way, the enemy gets a chance to get a shot in with its cheap attack.

Herein lies the problem. Cheap attacks for the enemy can be very damaging. Minions are the worst culprits. Way back when, I did some testing, and found that the average power a minion could use off one tick of endurance recovery did roughly 3/4s of the damage of the power he'd prefer to use when full. So full drain with no -recovery is good for 25% damage mitigation from minions -- keep in mind, you've already taken at least an unmitigated alpha strike while you drained them.

Bosses are a bit better. They tend to do about half their normal damage with their cheap, one-tick attacks. That's a heftier amount per-hit than minions, still, but presumably there's fewer bosses (and conversely, you've mitigated more per hit off a boss). Lieutenants fall somewhere in the middle, no suprise there.

So it seems that drain was balanced off the idea that it would take away a hefty amount of a boss's or lieutenant's dps, but the mob of minions would still be collectively dangerous. This makes sense if you assume the blaster is good at quickly eliminating the minions anyways with AEs. But, as ArcSalvo and I have pointed out in this thread, electric is one of the weaker AE sets. It's neither overwhelming in its damage, nor is the damage delivered quickly -- those minions will be shooting/swinging at you for a good long time while the damage ticks away on your ball lightning/short circuit combo.

But wait, did I say damage ticks away on the short circuit combo? Why, yes, I did. Here's the other problem with slotting recharge on short circuit -- it directly interferes with your AE damage capability, since you also have to slot endurance modification. You can forgo the constant -recovery and retain your damage, hoping you have a teammate to out-aggro and soak the incoming damage while your DoTs go to work, or you can slot recharge in an effort to sustain the -recovery more frequently, and find your ability to AE meager.

While we're on the subject, short circuit as a drain tool is a very late-maturing power. It's available at level 6, yet I could never recommend taking it before 20 with a good conscience. Well, perhaps if you were merely interested in the damage, but that seems pretty odd for a blaster and a PBAE DoT...

Perhaps several birds could be killed with one stone by increasing the base drain of short circuit to either current slotted levels or higher (considering it never got a bump to mitigate ED -- people used to 6-slot drain, and I feel for the poor /devices, /ice, and /fire saps who can no longer, and don't have drain-synergizing powers in their secondary to pick up the slack), in exchange for removing the ability to enhance drain in this attack. This would allow a damage/recharge slotting to be a sensible, if costly, option, without increasing the potential drain inordinately.

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Actually, I'll throw one more on the barbie here:

A very, very long time ago, Statesman told us Electric Blasters that our strength was using Endurance Drain on Bosses and ArchVillains.

You may or may not be aware, but AVs are almost next to impossible to drain. I've spammed Short Circuit and Power Sink next to them and never seen so much as a budge in their Endurance Bar.

They have 800 Endurance, and insane Endurance Recovery.

Perhaps you could look at their apparent immunity to Endurance Drain.

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If any secondaries need to be looked at, I'd say /Fire and /Ice are much further up on the list than /Elec.

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The comment about the strength being draining bosses and AVs was about electric blast, not electric manipulation. The primary, not secondary. Short circuit takes power sink out back and whups it ten ways till Sunday when it comes to drain, and it's the electric blast set that's weak because of the supposed power of drain. You're right, electric manipulation's got nice enough damage to sit fairly pretty.

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Consume: This ability underperforms compared to similar powers from other secondaries, like Power Sink and Conserve Power. Power Sink does the same thing but includes an extremely useful endurance drain attack, while Conserve Power is risk free for arguably greater endurance conservation.

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While I have thought it would be interesting to run a numerical comparison analysis between endurance taps and conserve power for a while, let me point out a very pertinent point -- taps are reactive -- you use them when you're low for whatever reason -- while conserve is proactive -- you have to anticipate the need. As such, the proactive will generally be more potent to balance the higher utility of the reactive solution.

I agree, though, if nothing else, consume and power sink should probably have more similar recharges -- these two don't seem balanced against each other very closely.

And finally, I'll be surprised if conserve power actually ends up on top (even though, proactive vs. reactive, it probably should) -- it's less effective than stamina, as I've been saying for a year and a half.

Mostly on electric blast:

Bug/Balance?

- Short circuit is a PBAE DoT power -- two factors that normally warrant increased damage -- yet it has the lowest brawl index offered by any blaster AEs, shared with M30 grenade and explosive blast. Is this intentional? Is it intended as a balance to the drain, rather than the damage? If so, is the drain considered that much more powerful a mitigatory effect compared to the knockback on the other low-damage, ranged targetted, instant-damage-delivery AEs?

Likewise, ball lightning's damage is also DoT, and not much stronger. This leaves electric is the only set without a cone as one of its AEs, and thus it can barely break 5 brawl index in an AE combo, despite being DoT (5 tics each) and requiring 3 seconds of point blank time. Intentional and balanced?

- Electric blast also has a very poor single target attack chain. It's not fast animating, like ice or fire, and it's only 2 powers + snipe, unlike ice, fire, and energy. Yet the damage values for charged bolts and lightning bolt are right in line with the other sets' first two powers. Intentional? Balanced?

- Diverging for a second from electric blast, there's one point about energy manipulation that's been sticking in my craw since release. Conserve power stinks. You fire up the game when it's new, look through the power lists, and it's described in an exciting way. It looks like a good power that you could do a lot with, and would help you out tremendously. It's not. Yes, it's amazing when it's up. But it got taken out behind the shed and beaten with a switch with ED, losing both six-slottability in its only enhancement type, AND permahasten. Even before that serious nerf with no mitigatory adjustments, stamina, a pool power, allowed for higher endurance expenditure over time. Yes, that's right. Stamina, a pool power, has *always* been better than conserve power, a secondary, and one might argue from the descriptions, one of the signature utility powers of energy manipulation, along with power boost and boost range. (Heh. Joke's on me. I took elec/energy on Day 1 of live because I thought power boost and conserve power would synergize well and let me blast well. Oops. Turns out the melee attacks synergize better with the blasts by letting me have a full attack chain as a blapper. Oh well.) With various Statesman comments suggesting that utility should be the strength of blaster secondaries, can we get this looked at, so that it at least functions in such a way that it outperforms stamina and doesn't rely on a hasten crutch?

QOL:
- Charged Bolts and Lightning Bolt seem to be misnamed -- Charged bolts is one-handed, and lightning bolt (no s) is double-barrelled.

- Endurance drain is very hard on people without both elec sets. Short circuit and Power sink both took a hit when we lost the ability to 6-slot for drain, and it's an all-or-nothing ability. Stacking both is satisfactory, or using short circuit with power boost. Elec/dev, elec/fire, and elec/ice must struggle, having to either last the 20 second recharge on short circuit to hit a second time, or rely on the enemy to do half the drain.

Furthermore, the -regen on short circuit isn't always enough to keep endurance floored, and there are a plethora of enemies whose "1-tic of regen" attack can do upwards of 75% of the damage of their favored full-endurance attacks. This means that 1 tic is still very deadly, and if you don't have lightning field, you have no good way to pulse drain, and even if you do or you hit with draining attacks, you have no way to ensure that you've timed it right. A simple 10 point negative range for endurance would go a long way to allowing normal attacks to help fill this timing deficiency, by allowing even non-"-regen" draining powers to ensure that the next tic doesn't allow them to let loose with a cheap attack that's almost as good as their expensive ones. Certainly more simple than doing a pass on all enemies' powers to ensure that their endurance costs are approrpriate for their threat level, I'd think.

- Some variation in sound would be welcome. I frequently get sick of hearing essentially the same "zapping" sound with a different duration every time I fire off an attack, and just turn the sound off. I think charged bolts and lightning bolt are the major culprits here. Or maybe it's just a symptom of not having a strong chain of different attacks to throw out.

Wishlist/Conceptual Flaws:

- Please do something to voltaic sentinel. He's timed, yet it takes to long to summon him (and costs too much) mid-combat. He chooses targets randomly, and switches often, when a good blaster needs to mentally plan how much damage he needs to kill target x, and in what order he wants to kill them. In this sense, he's essentially like a 40-second DoT -- sure, he may deliver a lot of damage, but its spread out, and you can't count on it to be done quickly. Additionally, he's unbuffable (will this change with the blizzard-summon buffing patch?), and does lackluster damage -- the defenders mentioned that VS does the same for blasters as defenders, and you acknowledged it and said it will be fixed. But did you notice that the defenders *like* theirs, and blasters don't? You didn't mention whether blasters would get a boost to their VS damage, or defenders would get a nerf...

- Blasters have one role. Deal damage before you've taken a full bar of damage yourself. The high density of mezzing mobs high-game make this a frustrating task. We're a one-trick pony, and mez takes away our ability to do our one trick -- and chain-mez means you can die without ever getting a chance to fight. My pet solution to this, as I've mentioned elsewhere, is to work a break-free-style mez protection into defiance, so that even if we're getting chain-mezzed, at some point we'll break out and get a chance to put up a fight. Take the suggestion as you will, but break frees are not a satisfactory solution to blasters vs. mez. It's a no-win, we can't contain them like a controller can, we can't weather them or protect against them like some defenders, and we have no protective powers like melees. We can maybe kill one as our opening shot, but against 2 or 3, or a non-minion mezzer, it's often a doomed fight.

Cross-posting to this thread something I recently wrote, since the repost of the old issues thread didn't hit on all the things I'd like highlighted, especially in regards to electric blast, which I don't think was stressed quite enough how far it lags for damage per animation as a single-target set:

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Shameless plug for electric blast -- longest animations overall, fewest chainable attacks (2! Back before I gave up and focussed on blapping, it was so bad that even permahastened, I resorted to slotting interrupt in my snipe!), an all-or-nothing secondary effect, no short-and-heavy blast, and the worst AE alpha set (DoTs *and* PBAE!).


We used to get told that this was all because endurance drain would be scary awesome in PvP. My power boosted, 3-endmod-slotted short circuit drains 40 endurance in PvP. Hell, if power boost isn't up, I use more endurance to fire it off than I drain from the other guy. Basically, SC got double-dinged -- ED halved the end drain slotting you could throw at it, and PvP threw an additional penalty on. Between the two, it's not living up in PvP, and ED alone means that heaven help you if you're not electric or energy manipulation to synergize with it. For the power that the entire set's secondary effects hinges on, this is a sorry state.


And, of course, I feel a bit betrayed after finding, despite my perseverance and struggling, that the carrot of PvP mayhem to balance all that has turned out to be illusionary.


As for seconary sets? My primary blaster uses energy manipulation, which I'll admit does what it's meant to well. If blast sets as a whole were more effective as a means of ranged damage output, perhaps non-melee oriented secondaries wouldn't feel cheated and envious of the excellent blapping offered. It feels to me, that the control offered by ice manip, the AE damage of fire manip, the utilitarianness of devices... all these things could be very good for a build -- but a few things make them very difficult. FSC's animation is one. Ice slick as a point blank cast is another. The base to-hit on targetting drone after the blow ED dealt the set's another, probably. I would urge that developer attention to blaster secondaries resist the urge to just clone what blasters say works in energy manipulation.


And finally, even though I'm highly satisfied with energy manipulation's ability to make up for my very poor primary output, I've got a long-standing gripe. Conserve power is in an utterly sorry state. 10 minute recharge, 90 second duration. Halves endurance cost (to unslotted powers, I suppose). It's a nice idea, but a poor execution. Even when you could 6-slot recharge (the only slot option available to it) and permahasten it, stamina proved to allow a better sustained rate of endurance use. Yes, a pool power has been better than a secondary power since release. Now, of course, we can't permahasten it, and we can't do more than 3 slot it. Yet the duration and recharge remain the same. The percentage uptime on this power is abysmal now. As a personal suggestion, I think it would be an excellent option to make it a low-cost toggle with a smaller discount to your powers -- say discount a quarter instead of half. This makes it susceptible to toggle dropping and mez effects (where presumably the recharge on it would take it out of commission for a while), and it would become better than stamina, provided you could keep it up.

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Hover: We might buff it some, at some point. However, it should never be an effective travel power.

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I think a lot of people would like it if it were faster than unslotted sprint with three flight speed SOs.

As for effective at travel, Combat Jumping + Hurdle can already do this to a point. Getting Hover to where it can work about as well shouldn't break anything. Not saying as fast, but it really should be better than sprint, especially with slots invested.

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Would it kill anybody to let swift enhance hover speed, too?

And can we please figure out a way to let teleport get better over levels? flight speeds up, super-jump speeds up, super-speed speeds up... Teleport animates at the same speed, goes the same range, and costs the same for a level 14 as it does for a level 50. Scaling animation time isn't going to happen, but can we please get natural range increases or an endurance discount?

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Response from QA....

"Defiance is working fine as far as I’ve tested. [...] considering others chimed in on the thread on how well the power works."

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Abandon all hope, ye who... *sob*

Boy Cuppa knows how to crush your very soul. Not only do we open with a declaration that it's "fine" (and I held out hope she was just referring to its implementation not showing bugs), but we go for the shattering demoralization as the grand finale. Many people chiming in that the power works well? /facepalm

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2. Criticals and Scourge are probably no better than Defiance at adding meaningful damage over the course of an evening of play. Criticals and Scourge are cooler looking and make the team go oooh-aaaah. Why is that? Because when they happen everyone sees the word Scourge or Critical (Domination too) and more numbers. When blasters get Defiance, the target should have the word Defiance fly above his head and the extra damage done should be a seperate number. As goofy as this sounds, I believe this would make Defiance more fun. If an inherent is not overly useful, at least it should be fun.

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Scourge can be, in the right team strategies and whatnot, a powerful damage addition. It's not easy to use reliably (for meaningful damage, as you said), and for many players a good portion of the scourge messages are over-kill damage, but the entire subject is neither here nor there.

I like the idea of displaying defiance damage, if only for the reason that it would reveal how lackluster it is. To be on a team after taking a round of alpha by mistake, or whatnot, and have your teammates go "Wait, dude, your health is at like 10%. And you're only getting 50 bonus damage on your snipe? That's ****ed up" would at least make the problem more visible, and maybe even earn some sympathy.

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We're like, "That's hysterical. Did you write that one?"

"Yeah, that one was mine."

"You're brilliant."

"No YOU'RE brilliant."

"No YOU are."

"Okay, I'm brilliant."

And so on and so forth.

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That right there is total Bendis dialogue.

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I posted a screen shot of how this move usually ends up looking like I'm performing a colon examination. Well whether you saw it or not, I'm wondering if it is in fact feasible to change an AS graphic or not? It doesn't _have_ to be something new, but how about something less.... intimate?


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Just shout "Kanchou!" when you do that attack.

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Now THAT is funny.

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Can we get a five-point palm exploding heart technique animation? That would be absolutely awesome. I would love to execute, from stealth, a flurry of blows with, say, elbow, fist, and open palm instead of a "charging" warmup -- to have it only do damage on the final blow, however, and thus be basically just a normal assassin blow with a more exuberantly animated interrupt period.

Or at least, can we get, say, a modified Cobra Strike animation for assassination blow?

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Well I open my box and discover - ONLY SIX

I am missing ghost widow!! The box was still sealed and didn't look tampred with... everything else was in the box.

Very disappointed. =( Anyone else have this problem ? any way someone can fix this travashamockery of packaging?

I want mah Ghost Widow!

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I just learned of this recently myself... we'll fix it. Keep an eye out for news on how- we're still trying to figure out what happened.
-Loki

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Good to hear, and props to Cryptic for caring to make this right. I, too, am missing Ghost Widow, and was alarmed at missing the one I looked forward to the most (as a dominator fan).

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#1 End drain only works if they're fully drained, partial, it's a no go.


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Ooops. That's not true. Some AV powers require an amount of Endurance - so that if the AV doesn't have it - he can't use it. So bringing one down to 0 isn't exactly necessary to have an impact.

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I would accept this as a counter argument if mobs had a lot of powers that require more than two ticks of power regen.

Seriously. Grab a coder by the neck, stick him on an internal server, get him to code in a flag that will log when an NPC wants to use a power, but doesn't have the endurance for it. Play for a week and count the times that log triggers off on one hand. Bonus points if you also log the time it takes between that "wanting to use the power" and when it's able to get the power off. I guarantee you that it will never be more than 4 seconds, and will be a rare occurrance.

Now, log damage inflicted by a stamina'd mob that is started at full drain, vs. one that you don't touch with drain. I think you'll find that due to the very high damage value of "brawl-equivalent" NPC attacks, the drain reduces damage over time by AT MOST 20%. Now go see how well a knockback can keep something on it's back, or look at the values of slows. Bummer, eh?

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Stimulant must not be as good as clear mind.

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Why not? Stamina's better over time than conserve power, even with hasten. 6-slotted stamina allows more endurance output than even a 6-recharge conserve/6-recharge hasten COMBO can. Where's the equity? Every other power pool provides a lesser effect than analogous powers in actual power sets. Stealth is slower than cloaking device, stimulant is shorter than clear mind. Aid other is worse than heal other. Invisibility is worse than superior invisibility. Challenge is worse than provoke.

Stamina is better than conserve power PLUS hasten.

Huh?

All I'll say on the matter is this: fighting tesla clocks as an electric blaster exposed me to tesla cage (well, with a slight difference -- theirs is a sleep -- thank goodness -- and the player version is a hold) very early on. And I'll be darned if that didn't build up my anticipation of getting it at level 18, long after I was encountering clockworks on a regular basis.

In fact, I was so stoked to get it, finally, that I went on a rampage in Skyway, caging up all the clockwork tesla knights I could find. And there was much trash talk. Oh yes, it was a loud room that night.

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Im not sure that you could make a very good argument that a single target blaster generates as much agro as an AE blaster.

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In a group setting? Of course not. But in a group setting, you can get a tanker to provoke, and then the kill rate of AEing still far outshines that of single target. Given the option of getting a blaster that mows through everything, and one that mows through one thing at a time at the same speed -- which do you pick for your group?

And soloing, it is exactly the case that the aggro is equal. I find a group of 6 minions and shoot one -- they all turn around and go "huh? BANG!" -- just like if I hit all of them at once. And that's the crux of the issue. Single target isn't safer but slower solo -- it's just plain slower, and if you've got anybody else doing mass aggro in a group, it's still just plain slower, and you're both safe.

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Making mobs tougher and making our AOE weaker

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Never said exactly this. My hope is that making mobs tougher ALONE would bring AOE damage into line. But, I'm still researching different methods to solving this problem.

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Then what's the plan to make single target attacks on blasters worthwhile? Where's the advantage to an ice or electric blaster who doesn't have the full arsenal of strong AEs? The fact is, short of a snipe, AE powers can do nearly the same damage to a single target as single target powers -- albeit at an elevated endurance cost. But this equates to killing 20 minions in the time it would take to kill 1 minion with a single target build.

What this presents is horrible risk for blasters without good AE power -- they aggro just as many, for no better kill rate per target. And they can't tackle tougher, smaller spawns, because they still kill too slowly vs. AEing -- if it's 3 mobs, the AE is as or more efficient, and if you can survive long enough to kill 3 mobs one at a time, you can survive the initial volley that AEing them would subject you to. It's just not a feasible tradeoff unless the single target damage per move is higher by a factor of 2 or 3. Snipe's a good amount -- for, say, lightning bolt at best (using electric as an example), if you're happy with the current damage of AEs.

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This is a known bug and should be fixed in a future patch

Thank you,
Vyvyanne

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It better be known, I reported it the first day the issue went live on Test. Heh.