Rejolt

It's true. I've seen the Bunny as played by the Smurphy.

We both hate a +4 Teleport Arrow backed by Vengence. Lots and lots of vengence.

That is all.

Fire. Always Fire. When in doubt: Fire. Some people like a little Static Discharge from the Epic Pool in with their Fire.

You may need some meatshielding/buffing to team with Fire/Fire (unless you heart IOing all your toons) as you need things dead fast or you're in trouble. Otherwise, Archery/Mental gets much love from the farmers and is about as good a AoE killer + survival build as you'll find on a blaster.

I was kicked from test but I did see the numbers before I got the boot. Slotted to 95 heal/recharge + Lightning Reflexes would be 55ish second recharge, 195 regen and a 730+heal.

Can't wait until I can try the no Aid Self/no Tough build and see if I can like it with just SOs before planning IO builds.

Who do I ship money to so we can have an updated mids?

I enjoyed doing this as well and having one in each allows me to do "science" projects on what toons/ATs work best in a certain situation. I tend to gravitate to toons that can do AoE damage, crowd control and survive while doing a few other tricks to keep me interested. Chopping down AV trees has never interested me (based on time vs. reward).

However, I feel like a wealthy businessman with 14 expensive cars in the garage. I'll drive one or two often and bring out another one to impress friends - the rest tend to collect dust.

My overall thoughts:
Epic ATs are Jack of All Trades but masters of none. Even when focusing on one path other ATs seemed to work better at what I was going for.

Brutes over Tanks over Scrappers, but this could change with some proliferated changes over the last year. The issue is AoE damage vs. Survivability. Scrappers rock. My one scrapper is a Katana/Regen and I'm planning two next issue with Electrics.

My main Electrical/Energy Blaster has kept me from making similiar blap toons, but it hasn't stopped me from making many Dominators and Controllers. I solo all 3 ATs well. I tend not to play Dominators on teams.

I struggle with Corruptors past level 30, even though I fall in love with many combos of them early. I've gotten two Defenders to 50 in 52 months, but none in the last 3 years. I just like other ATs, especially ones that can solo with speed, better.

Stalkers and Masterminds are good fun. I play them solo. On teams not so much, even though I made my MM a Thugs/Pain to be good on teams... /shrug.

My next project like this will be to have one every electrical set at 50 (including epics/patrons). Thank goodness for 2nd builds!

Tankers No. 1 talent is survival. I have no issues with the heal being earlier there.

Scrappers have a smaller Resistance Cap (75 vs. 90 compared to brutes) so I don't mind them getting the heal earlier. Electric Armor scrappers that go hunting Freakshow/Rikti will be taking 2 1/2 times more energy damage than brutes or tankers.

Stalkers and Brutes have had access to electric armor for some time now. They'll be respecing into Energize on toons that are already past level 28. I'd still like to see the heal earlier for Stalkers, but they do at least have hide/some form of defense.

My defender has it. She's level 50 and got 23.3 smashing/lethal/energy defense from it. An yes, it looked like the Kinetic Shield animation when I fired it up.

Is it 30 minutes maximum that it can be charged for?

Of all the blaster sets/combos you can mess with in Issue 16's color feature... Rad/Fire seems like it would be the best-looking toy in the box.

Bonus: Irradiate would work nicely as a set up for Fire Sword Circle (sadly, you can roughly fire both off in the time it takes to move again after casting Combustion...).

If this is a direct copy from the Tanker version, Char would do very little damage and would be worth skipping unless you needed a hold (makes a possible future proliferation of Super Strength to scrappers interesting with Knockout Blow for holding bosses).

I can see a lot of Ring of Fire/Melt Armor/Fire Ball combos on Spines and Dark Melee/Fire Armor toons (shame I really like fire blast... most builds are too tight for 4 epics + slots to make them useful).

Before the flood of "not again" posts hits you:

Short Answer: Yes. Once cast, it's roughly 1 minute of having an untargetable defender spam charged bolts - thus leaving you free for other pursuits.

Long Answer: 50/50. For everything that Sparky does well someone can counter with a reason why you don't need it. Long animation and heavy end cost make it annoying to cast in a fight and unless you're fighting one really tough opponent the little guy never focuses on one target to help you finish him/her.

Damage vs. Endurance question: Draining is all or nothing. If you're not getting enough from what the other attacks do, Sparky won't put you over the top there either. Slot for damage. Sparky is inherently accurate, so while leveling up 1 Acc, 3 Dmg, 1 End redux should be enough before IOs.

IOs:
Pro -
Soulbound Alliegence or Pet Recharge sets work well with it.
Con -
You're better off with Zapp and Sting of the Manticore's bonuses.

Defiance:
Pro -
Woo! +20.5 damage!
Con -
Don't need that. You'll make up for it by not having to wait 3+ seconds to cast Sparky.

I like the little guy but often forget to cast it.

If you have a free power, it's worth it (my main is elec/nrg - I don't need a snipe blast anyway with Boost Range - so I took Sparky to watch my back while I blap).

Electric Armor was unique in PvP because it seemed built after PvP zones were introduced into CoX. You had slow resistance (Ice blasting, storm summoning, kinetics, etc.), damage resistance to the most damaging blaster melee (energy or electric manipulation) and you could drain any meleer silly enough to go toe to toe with you for a few minutes with just Power Sink.

Electric was FotM because it seemed to be a solution for Issue 6 power hero pvp toons. That PvP is a loooong time gone.

EDIT: And yes, Teleportation resist.

The sad part about PvP IOs being so hard to get is there are may 3 point KB resists as set bonuses.

My Electric Armor Brute has 15 points even if it exemplared to level 1 lol.

Council Knockback on their ranged targeted AoE is 3. If you face a LT, it gets a bonus to magnitude and bosses more so. That magnitude is even higher if they are a higher level.

The Karma IO is 4 points. I think a +1 boss goes 4.4 or 4.8 pts of KB, thus making that Karma useless without more help.

There's always the in-base temp power 10 pts of protection you craft...

Hopefully my math is close and this will be a within reason slotting/bonuses for Energize:

Base Recharge 1.0/120 seconds (unslotted) = 120 seconds.

2 recharge SOs 1.67/120 seconds = 72 seconds.

3 recharge SOs with Lightning Reflexes 2.15/120 seconds = 55.8 seconds.

Within Reason slotting:
Lighting Reflexes .20
Full Slotting .95
CJ w/ lotg .075
Oblit bonus .05
Doc Wounds .05
C. Impact x 2 .10

Recharge 2.425/120 with slotting/bonuses = 49.5 seconds.

Bonkers recharge:
LR .20
Overslotting 1.0
4 lotg .30
Hasten .70
2 Oblit .10
2 C. Impacts .10
Doc.Wounds .05
Very Rare setsx5: .50

Recharge 3.95/120 = 30.4 seconds.

EDIT: yeah, woops, had that as 2.95 instead of adding the 1.00 base.

Man, I just love how much discussion this power's leaked information has caused.

I'm always mixed on whether I should know what's coming or let the deveoplers/early testers make sure it works before we see it.

Energize is not finalized yet, but yeah... I have yet to play a build on live or test that let me use all powers from Electrical Melee, Armor and Mu Mastery because of the need for Tough and Aid Self to meet the challenge of all types of mobs instead of just Energy users.

I'll agree with the above:

Anything with Earth works on TFs. Illusion is a great stealther and mob placater, but earth has more tricks and flexibility for dealing with all sorts of mobs. If you're on a team you won't need PAs to survive AV alphas.

Kinetics, Radiation, Trick Arrow, Cold Domination and Storm (if you lockdown the mobs first) all set up your team to be lawnmowers.

Pick what you find the most fun. Enjoy!

My main villain is an Elec/Elec brute and I hardly use Power Surge. I'm set up so that when I do use it I'm capped for everything but Psionics and Toxic damage for really, really bad situations (like bad pulls on the last mission of the LRSF).

The crash is evil (even more so due to the lack of a heal/regen in the set up until I16 it seems) and generally the power is skippable. I just can't bring myself to drop the "in case of" power on a set with so many holes.

Wish I could give you a better answer ... lol.

Ok, Arcanaville, clean up on Stat Line 3!!

Can you punch up some numbers to see if it's enough?

And who cares if it's not... Woo!

BTW, that's the first time I've seen that video. Yikes... and yeah... laughed out loud.

I guess we close this thread now.

Or at least change it to.... is the Conserve Power change enough? lol

Considering I can't get into test to see this... be sure you didn't just spike yourself on your closed beta invite lol

Good to see though.

Orly? I'll have to do some testing with that.

I agree with the Issue 16 holding pattern. I found myself deleting more toons over the last two weeks to save room as name holders to the point I didn't madly go after leveling much (Fire/WP scrap 14 to 20, an ITF got my Mind/elec dom 39 to 41 and my Sonic/Mental blaster went 39 to 44).

Played the main through lots of exemping down, Bloody Mary runs, task forces and other just general playing for 220 million in influence badge credit (sighs and still 680 million to go for 2 billion).

I didn't do nearly enough random newbie PL'n Sunday night. Killed Behemoth's in Peregrine Island (yes Non-AE) for about 2 1/2 hours for anyone willing to join.

Favorite sentence of the weekend: "Hey! There are people in PI?!" or "There's non-AE farming?"