ELECTRIFY!

I feel that currently enddrain is a horrible mechanic for PvE. The sets (elec melee, elec blast) give way too much damage potential for a weak effect that doesn't kick until late.

My suggestion would deal with negating enemies that can muster up an Inferno or Total Focus with just 1 tic of end, like Paragon Protectors. At the same time it would make it more of a scaling effect and make Elec sets more useful on their own rather than requiring a specific other power set to perform (I'm looking at you, Power Sink, Transference!)

To cut the chase: (also: see Summary)

ELECTRIFY!

Electrify would be a mechanic unique to the electrical attack sets like Electrical Melee, Electrical Blast, Electricity Assault and Electrical Manipulation, and in some cases Electric Armor.

Basic mechanic would be this: the less endurance the enemy has, the better chance you would have to land a hold. The magnitude of the hold would be this: 3 for single targets, 2 for AoE and 1 for toggles (Lightning Field) and the duration would be set to 8 seconds (like Tesla Cage. However, should this mechanic be enhanceable? Saying no to be safe for now)


The Electrify would check upon attacking how much endurance the enemy has, like Scourge -- but on the endurance bar!

100% endurance - 0% chance to hold
75% endurance - 25% chance to hold
42% endurance - 58% chance to hold
0% endurance - 100% chance to hold

Example: you walk into a spawn ready with a Short Circuit, slotted with 3 endmod SOs (100% for simplicity's sake) The enemies endurance are still at 100%, so the Short Circuit doesn't hold, although it drains a lot of endurance off them. About 70% when slotted.

You follow off with Ball Lightning and successfully hit enemies. Each enemy has a 70% chance to be applied a mag2 hold, which is good enough to hold a minion. The hold lasts 8 seconds. *

Then, there is a lieutenant in the spawn, and you fire off a Lightning Bolt at him. Since he has only 22% endurance left, the chance to hold would be 0.7 x 0.78 = 0.546 = 54.6%
This would be strong enough to hold a boss as they'd be a combined mag5 hold (ball lightning(2) + lightning bolt(3)) although 4 is enough.


Example: You have access to Lightning Field and Power Sink (electric manipulation and electric armor). You use a Power Sink. Lightning Field starts to apply some mag1 hold tics (each damage tic accounts as a chance to hold) When endurance is at 0%, you'll have a 100% chance to land mag1 holds.
But say, after a Power Sink (70% -end slotted), after 4 seconds there is roughly a 50% chance that minions in Lightning Field's radius have been held. 2 seconds after that there is a 35% chance to hold lieutenants.

[censored] man overpowered!

Hold your horses* . Since Lightning Fiel tics every 2 seconds, and the hold duration would be set to 8 seconds. This means it's only possible to hold up to lieutenants because the duration would be too short to hold bosses with Lightning Field alone. It is affected by purple patch, meaning:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
0 8 seconds
1 7.2 seconds
2 6.4 seconds
3 5.2 seconds
</pre><hr />

So the duration lowers the higher level your enemy is. At higher levels you can afford to spam attacks more, though.


Also, the hold aspect is to help sets that have no access to reliable -recovery. Enemies are (now) able to attack with just 1 tic of endurance, and even if the attack was brawl, it still hurts a lot more from a critter than from a player. Electrify would put more meaning on 0% endurance = game over.


Electrify would give Electrical Blast more mitigation for its loss of damage (it's decent but not GOOD, see Ice Blast for some major damage and mitigation.)

This would make Electrical sets more independent rather than relying on eachother. Although you can achieve a 100% chance to hold after you've activated Power Sink and Short Circuit, it is not that immense when comparing against an independent Electrical Blast (who would have it at 70% after Short Circuit). The power level gained by those who can keep the enemies' endurance at 0% does not increase by much, since those enemies are not attacking anyway (well, with Electrofy they wouldn't be moving either!)


Summary
<ul type="square">[*] Increasing chance to hold enemies depending on their endurance.[*] Magnitude 3 for Single Target, 2 for AoE and 1 for Toggle.[*] Hold unenhanceable, unboostable, set to 8 seconds, affected by the Purple Patch.[/list]


The animation? The Zappy dance of course.
*)Purple Patch

edit: some typos, added link to purple patch.

Sounds good. I've never been a friend of sets using -end as a form of mitigation, in fact I've never bothered to play any of them past the initial levels.

The mechanic is, as you said, completely borked in PvE. Mobs can cast just about any power with minimal endurance so you need to 1) have a reliable source of -end and a reliable source of -recovery or 2) be able to spam a reliable (not a 20% chance for) -end power every other second to keep the enemy from attacking.

Currently there's practically no reason to give up damage for the non-reliable and often useless -end mitigation. Why give up damage for that?

I'm up for anything to make those sets better.

Thanks

Any kind of improvement to the Electrical sets would be the right direction.

Really think this a good idea, It would bring life back into my Elec toon and it doesn't seem over powered or under powered. It really is one of the best suggestions I've read in quite a while!

I'm sorry to say I didn't read the OP in detail - I'll do that the first chance I get. Just saying that I hope this will still also leave the original endurance drain in sets that have them, instead of outright replacing them. My Elec/Elec/Mu Brute can and will use Endurance Drain as a viable and powerful mitigation tool in an efficient and effective manner under the current system.

Sorry, will read it thoroughly later, my attention is distracted right now..

Just as an aside, it IS possible to negate NPCs endurance. A friend in SG had an elec Corr (thing he still does) that can end-crash anything up to and I think including an AV. Not 100% sure on the last one. But it was always a laugh end-crashing CoT and watching them all go for the knives. Suuure boys. Come to papa

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

With elec melee, the usefulness of some of the sec effects like sleep change depending on what you pair it with. I think this is to allow for some form of balance between secondaries that -fight duration and secondaries that don't so, should come free as a secondary effect and not factor into loss of damage as a result.

Elec Blast well, I wonder..but some powers are fairly effective that make up for ones that aren't and paired with other powers you can have one helluva enjoyable and supportive toon thats all I know

[ QUOTE ]
With elec melee, the usefulness of some of the sec effects like sleep

[/ QUOTE ]

Sorry, sleep is useful since when? Most epic fail effect ever...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I like what I read. True one of the best suggestions of all times .

I also think that electricity based sets have dmg reduced unfairly. I havnen't played one myself, but from the looks of the other ppl, the inherent chance of end drain and gain to self is far from useful at this point.

Excellent idea!

To me the only really reliable use of -end I have seen is on a Kin/Elec Defender using Transference and Power Sink? to drain the enemy, then having lightning field to keep them at zero.

Anything without Lightning Field just seems pointless to me at the moment and this would change that for the better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

it already has a chance to hold. it isn't a very long hold though. my kin/elec defender can drain bosses of end using just short circuit and transference. short circuit has a -recovery component to it.
the only issue here is the scaling for chance to hold. it's unbalanced

I actually like this idea a great deal, and I don't believe it would be that difficult to code if they steal the Scourge coding (though it would require doing it to a rather large number of powers).

The only problem I have with it is the suggestion that the hold have a standard length no matter the actual animation time or whatever of the power in question. I would be much more likely to support this if, rather than having a standard 8 seconds for every effect, it is instead a duration that scales with the duration of the -rech effect or something like that. Otherwise, you'd be pretty much able to just stand there and kill off entire fields of minions and lts. without any real risk to yourself just by popping Power Sink and keeping Lightning Field up.

It sounds good on a Blaster, wherein surviving for the first 8 seconds of a fight isn't something you can completely rely upon, but you've got to remember that Scrappers and Tankers would also have access to these. It might make more sense to have it differ depending on the AT in question: the squishier the AT, the better the hold duration (Defenders>Blasters>Scrappers>Tankers, for example).

I like the core concept of making end reduction a more gradual mitigation instead of the current all or nothing implementation. I'm not convinced that this is the best way to do it, but I don't ahve anything better so /signed.

Oh wow, hadn't even noticed the thread necromancy.