[ QUOTE ]
Or is that just an elaborate way of saying "I can throw any numbers out there I want, even if they're completely and utterly mathematically incorrect, but you have to believe me because I'm invoking Arcanaville's name in the middle"? Because that's what it looks like.
[/ QUOTE ]
Someone tell Werner that we found someone that calculates attack chains and hasn't heard of "ArcanaTime" yet.
FYI the reposted version of the original "ArcanaTime" post (I didn't call it that, but the name seems to have stuck) is here in the guides section. I wish I had saved the original discussion thread, but I keep forgetting to tell the forum admins when I want something marked to save (my archetype population analysis thread went bye-bye also, so I'm reconstructing that one and going to repost it soonish and get it flagged to keep, since I get requests for that one as well periodically).
[Guide to Defense] [Scrapper Secondaries Comparison] [Archetype Popularity Analysis]
In one little corner of the universe, there's nothing more irritating than a misfile...
(Please support the best webcomic about a cosmic universal realignment by impaired angelic interference resulting in identity crisis angst. Or I release the pigmy water thieves.)
Various points for various people who need, apparently, to be yelled at by me:
/em lecture
1) DPA vs DPS: unless you're running about 300% recharge, or you're a fire/mental/elec or AR/whatever blaster, you do not have a full attack chain of AOE's. Now admittedly 2.67 (3.0?) seconds in melee range is a long time, but it's stupid to basically claim that Short Circuit is three times as bad as Fireball, as if Fireball-fireball-fireball was a gapless attack chain.
2) Multiplying damage by max number of targets is ALSO stupid. I've run two fireblasters and two or three others up to fifty, with a few in the lower and medium levels, and I rarely hit more than ten guys with an AOE. 10% would be a VERY generous estimate.
3) There's a difference between saying "I don't know what Arcanatime is" and saying "You're making stuff up." Wild and wrongheaded accusations, while fun and dramatic, might make people get put back on /ignore. Which would be a shame.
/em alakazamreact
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Elec blasters are much better than most give them credit for, especially if they only look at hard numbers.
I have an elec/elec/elec who has always been a joy to play. No matter who is on the team he does a significant amount of the damage, blasters included. I've had many comment on the toon even when in the midst of all blaster teams, so much that several have asked for his build (which I admit is entirely unorthodox and not easy to play).
There are many variations you can use with equal effect (depends on playstyle) but I found my most efficient elec/elec/elec to focus on single target attacks (other than TB, Thunderstrike, and Static Discharge). That's just me. Not too shabby as a PvP toon though he can't stand up to the specific builds too well, but I don't spend my time building his loot to go all out on IOs either.
[ QUOTE ]
Final point to reiterate, because this is getting too drawn out. You're assuming you'll always be hitting max targets in your calculations. I doubt this happens more than 10% of the time in real life unless you're exclusively playing on large teams. If I'm on a big team, it's either usually a pretty fast moving, high DPS one where a 3 sec animation will be largely wasted, or a PUG where I'm not going to be very safe standing in the middle of 16 mobs for those 3 sec, rooted. Your experiences are different, obviously.
[/ QUOTE ]
I disagree about the animations either being too slow to be useful or too slow for safety. Worse case scenario is that you need a wait a few seconds for the Tank to grab aggro before you rush in. Just a matter of playstyle strategy.
One thing that hasn't been highlighted is that Electricity/ makes for a Blapper friendly build/platsyle. My first and only lvl 50 Hero was a E^3 and was a hell of a lot of fun to play.
I think this one's directed at me. 
[ QUOTE ]
1) DPA vs DPS: unless you're running about 300% recharge, or you're a fire/mental/elec or AR/whatever blaster, you do not have a full attack chain of AOE's. Now admittedly 2.67 (3.0?) seconds in melee range is a long time, but it's stupid to basically claim that Short Circuit is three times as bad as Fireball, as if Fireball-fireball-fireball was a gapless attack chain.
[/ QUOTE ]
The phrase that seems to have struck off this brouhaha was that SC does approx half as much damage as the next least damaging attack. As a matter of semantics, this is a perfectly defensible argument. If you look at pure DPA, the next least damaging attack is in the 30s. 17 is a bit more than half of 30--this is where that statement came from. You can certainly refute this by factoring in recharge times and AoE caps, but on its face, it's a correct statement. So why look at DPAs for AoE attacks?
In a realistic application of different blaster primaries' AoE attacks, some of the recharge time is more or less irrelevant because you're either going to wipe out the spawn in one salvo, or you're not and you're picking off survivors w/ST attacks. If your fastest recharging AoE comes back in time, you might recast that, but rarely are you recasting your longer recharging AoEs, esp if it's something that needs to be "set up", such as a cone.
Let's look at a typical Fire chain. You do FB+FB, Blaze, etc to clean up the mess for a spawn you know you can take out 90% of w/the FB (breath & ball) combo. Recharge is irrelevant in this case. Let's talk about a tougher spawn that might need more cycling. You go FBall > FBreath > RoF > Blaze, and around now FBall is recharged (which is why I'd lead w/it in this case instead of Breath) and you recast FBall. In a sequence like this w/no gaps (if your recharge isn't that great, stick in Flares or something), doesn't your DPA matter a whole hell of a lot more than your "DPS" based upon your recharge? What if you have (PB)AoEs in your secondary? You do FB > FB > RoF > FSC > Combustion, and look, Fireball's back up again. How do you optimize that chain? How do you determine which attack to skip? DPA (and recharge) order and positioning needs.
Now, is Elec "three times as bad as Fire"? Good lord, no--I've never said or intimated that. Does the fact that SC has a miserable DPA drag down Elec's overall AoE performance? Of course it does, which is the whole point of looking at individual DPAs--to get a good gauge of how effective a chain in that powerset will be, and how to prioritize them. If you were playing Elec/Fire, you likely shouldn't fire of SC in favor of FSC or Combustion, unless you were aiming for the end drain, but you wouldn't know this unless you knew what the respective DPAs were (yes, yes, range & AoE caps matter too). Can you realistically have a BL > FSC > Combustion > BL chain? Yes, but more to the point, the spawn should be dead by this time, so you wouldn't need to go much further than maybe a 2nd BL, esp if you led w/BU or Aim. No need for SC in this case (again, unless you're going for end drain).
Of course, if you're playing Elec/Elec or En/En or whatever, you're not going to have gapless AoE chains, but if evaluating sets to determine which has a more effective AoE attack, isn't it worthwhile to determine that the ET > EB chain is more time effective than EB > SC, and by quite a bit? Of course, Elec does a lot more than just damage and I've repeated that it's a good set, but if someone wanted to play a blaster to do lots of AoE damage, I'd sure as hell steer them away from Elec (and En, and Psi, and Son...). And since the topic of this thread is "Is electric/ really low damage," this is particularly relevant data.
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
wow were nuking this..yes lees dmg per power faster recharge and is used right drains all end and can lol in the enimes face and yes his 2nd aoe dose less dme but to more ppl so its the same screw the math its not that hard to figer out and as for sparky if u use him in a chain that involve 2ndary powers hes stronger and his main job i think is to keep that 1 criters end down and help with dmg here and there and he last longer at higher lvls yes unslotted powers suck when u first get them....its not my job to shove numbers down ur neck..play what u find works i really like my elec/eng/elec he can survive mellee cuz they cant atk back and hes got 70% smashing/leathal with just so's and the final note that some1 pointed out is its energy dmg and not resistaed as much i really cant wait till i can io him a lil and see what he can do.
[ QUOTE ]
1) DPA vs DPS: unless you're running about 300% recharge, or you're a fire/mental/elec or AR/whatever blaster, you do not have a full attack chain of AOE's. Now admittedly 2.67 (3.0?) seconds in melee range is a long time, but it's stupid to basically claim that Short Circuit is three times as bad as Fireball, as if Fireball-fireball-fireball was a gapless attack chain.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is badly wrong.
First AR / Just about anything never mind the APP will give a seemless AOE attack chain.
Most of the /Mental combos will give a seemless AOE attack chain combo without electric and only moderate recharge bonuses.
If you are going to lecture you might as well get it right.
Dave_P: I had something to say but then I saw you throw in Combustion to improve performance and my brain collapsed.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
[ QUOTE ]
Dave_P: I had something to say but then I saw you throw in Combustion to improve performance and my brain collapsed.
[/ QUOTE ]
/Shoots Fulmens with Healing Arrow
Combustion >> SC for damage, my friend. 
(Yes, in many cases, you'll likely be using neither power, but if you had to choose...)
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee
Another really nice thing about elec is it goes well with defiance, my elec/mm has almost all his ranged single target dps while mezzed, hes got his first 2 blasts, his secondary immobilize and sparky all zapping away when he is mezzed.
yes elec/elec or elec/eng has soome great defiance chain atks ...ppl say sparky sucks but if you boost/aim./build up/ sparky/ aoe's the damg boost some1 quotes was in like 26% i dont look at the numbers but i notice a diff in his dmg if i do that and if i just summon.... low starting dmg yes but its not resisted much and has good potential else were
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yes elec/elec or elec/eng has soome great defiance chain atks ...ppl say sparky sucks but if you boost/aim./build up/ sparky/ aoe's the damg boost some1 quotes was in like 26% i dont look at the numbers but i notice a diff in his dmg if i do that and if i just summon.... low starting dmg yes but its not resisted much and has good potential else were
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I think Sparky's Defiance buff alone is closer to 30%.
his buff is 20.5%
Wow, lots of information in this string of posts. However, I think what get's lost in alot of the number crunching for us laymen is how these numbers relate to each other.
What I mean is, like CB and DP said it's all relative to how many mob's you engage at a time. It would be more representative to have a line graph to illustrate this "curve" than just words. (I'm more visual what can I say) Or even pie graph representations of the different aspects of the powers as a whole (since we all agree that damage isn't the only reason for picking a power). But lastly, I think we can also all agree that although the numbers make a difference, it's the experience that takes the cake. If someone thinks a power is better it will be hard to make them see otherwise because "better" is a very ambiguous concept.
As far as the disagreements between CB and DP I think more could be done to come to an understanding if they first agreed on a common starting point. It's as if they want to argue on temperature differences outside but are living in two different places. Unless you two just wanted to argue with each other, in which case you could have saved the board some space and just sent personal messages back and forth.
Anywho, that's my 2 cents.
well low dmg or not i think the elec power are real fun visuially to use.
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The defender version was ghastly, but I am having good success with the blaster primary. It seems to be doing better than my archery/ at the same level.
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Exact opposites of my experiences. Electric blast's damage over time seems decent to me, but it's burst damage is poor. That taken into account, it works better for me as a defender set than blaster. That is examining the blast set in isolation of course, go something like elec/elec and you can overcome that with the melee attacks if you want to blap with some nice burst damage.
Also noticed however, that on a defender Volty does almost as much damage as the tier one blast. The blaster version doesn't do anywhere near the same as the tier one blast. So it seems volty as a "pet" isn't knocked down as much as the regular defender blasts are. Add to that volty's slow steady damage tends to come into play more often on a slower killing defender compared to a quicker killing blaster. I find him more useful to defenders.
As to archery, it can get all three of its ST attacks by level 6, including the massive damage of blazing arrow. Add that to the extra accuracy boost and endurance discount which are more important in the lower levels than later. Archery is fantastic at low levels for a blaster. So, really different feel than you on that one.
First 50 blaster was E^3. I play her about once a year or so.
I'm not sure why Elec/ is such low damage.
The secondary effect, though fun sounding, isn't effective in most situations, and is completely useless against late game threats like AV's, GM's, and the like.
Its psuedo-pet is, as Riverdusk mentioned above, terribly underpowered for blasters.
Its nuke is the least powerful that still has a crash. Granted... it does look pretty sweet and you can do it from range... and it's usually still enough to drop the minions and lieutenants if done after BU-Aim.
Is it unplayable? Heck no. But it's completely overshadowed by fire, archery, ice, etc. Viable but not that fun outside of conceptual builds.
Just did a huge amount of # crunching in my DPS thread when it comes to the bread and butter of the sets (the tier 1, 2 and 3 blasts)
Comparing DPS, DPA and DPE, Elec is actually rivaling Archery for ST, with only AR and Fire above it.
So, no Elec isnt really that low damage, at least over time. But in burst, its cant really measure up.
yes the end drain dont really help u most times but when it dose its fun to see a mob have to wait a few cseconds b4 it can atk and that few seconds is life or death at times.
Ok so heres a little thing to keep in mind.... some things in this game are worth more than DPS if in the right hands. Ele/ is one of those sets. I have a 2 year old 50 Ele/Dev/Fire. In my 1-50 grind I died between 10 and 15 times. My groups were always 7 or 8 people, and all we did were TF's, Radios, and holiday events like Rikti Invasions (that was a great summer). No PLing, no MA's, just a bunch of people PUG'in with some other people, leveling. No one ever said I wan't carrying my own weight on the team. Ele if Frankenslotted well saps and does decent damage, you have a bit of mez to complement trollers and defenders, and you have a pet that if you really know what your doing, can be the greatest tool in your utility belt, but if used poorly, will get you and others killed. Me and another troller could usually get holds on AV's, if even for a few seconds. Trust me haveing an AV unable to attack 2 out of every 5 seconds is fantastic. Sparky can attack around courners without pulling aggro while the rest of the team bio's. In the heat of battle sparky is a great way of getting good defiance while adding to party DPS, and doesnt stick around so long as to cause trouble from group to group. And when all else fails, with a couple presses of the button, you can sap bosses and under. 2 or 3 Ele/ and /Kin's working togeather can sap AV and keep them from Nuking.
/Dev was a great complement for a few reasons. On really hard targets, but not AV's setup a bunch of mines where you might retreat/pull to. If things go sour, let the mobs suicide themselves. If the party is wiping alot, these mines will save your life. Also there just isnt anything like toe bombing a large group of mobs. Secondly Gundrone is sparky v2.0. GD+VS is about a 70% defiance bonus to your next attack or two. bringing these out, using TB, and letting GD and VS do cleanup while you recover is amazeing. The other powers in /Dev are hit or miss, but GD is mandatory.
i also picked fire mastery, for one power: Rise of the Pheonix. Now you are prolly wondering why, if I've only about 12 times in my grind. Well it comes to one thing, at 50 debt is the spice of life. I no longer care about getting debt, and actually since this is my badge hunter, i need it. In the first day after getting 50, i made over 5 million debt. Within a week 50 mill debt. My SG used to care about debt cause I cared about it, after i got them killed a bunch, they understand, and embrace the way i play. I use Rise as a way of refilling end. I solo 8 person spawns. They love it. Not once have they said I don't do my part.
DPS is great, every team needs it, but saying Ele/ is weak due to lack of DPS is silly. You are still doing 10x defender damage. And you got plenty of tricks to help the party.
Dunno bout those charts, but with the numbers given, Short Circuit's rech is 1/3 of RoF and Ice Storm. Given those numbers, SC does more damage than both rains because you can use it 3 times in the amount of time it takes to use 1 of the others.
Other than that, i personally think Thunderous Blast is the best looking 32 blaster power there is.
Final point to reiterate, because this is getting too drawn out. You're assuming you'll always be hitting max targets in your calculations. I doubt this happens more than 10% of the time in real life unless you're exclusively playing on large teams. If I'm on a big team, it's either usually a pretty fast moving, high DPS one where a 3 sec animation will be largely wasted, or a PUG where I'm not going to be very safe standing in the middle of 16 mobs for those 3 sec, rooted. Your experiences are different, obviously.
My claims are backed up by my numbers, yours by your own calculations (more or less). Let's let ppl who want to make their own Elec blasters make their own decisions, shall we?
An Offensive Guide to Ice Melee