Electrical Blast?

Hi all! Long time reader, seldom poster here.

How is Electrical Blast as far as Blaster primaries go?
I don't see many around.

Occasionally solo, prefer teams, no PvP.

I haven't nailed down a 2ndary set but recommendations are welcome.
TY in advance!

Electric blast is OK damage, nothing great or nothing bad. If you pair it with electric secondary, it gets a whole lot better. I'm actually thinking of doing another elec/elec since the first one was so much fun to play.

I think elec/ is a bit of a jack of all trades by itself but with an appropriate secondary (elec or energy) you can make a really powerful blaptroller type toon with a whole load of safe to use hard hitting melee attacks. It's all about endurance drain but you can't drain enemies completely (or well, not fast enough) with just elec primary.

I suppose you could make a generic blaster out of it with some other secondary but personally I think that'd be a waste of an awesome blast set

Elec/Elec is nasty and that is the only secondary I would pair the Elec primary with.

Single target damage is lacking due to lack of a heavy hitter like Blaze or Power Burst.
In its place Electrical Blast gets Voltaic Sentinel, which provides nice damage over time but poor burst damage.

AoE damage is standard, unless you slot Short Circuit for end mod instead of damage.

The secondary, Endurance Modification, is a bit off in my opinion. The only power that drains significant amounts of End is Short Circuit (apart from the nuke). The three ways to use the secondary effect are:

Elec/Elec - use Short Circuit and Power Sink to drain entire mobs of their end from level 35 onwards
Elec/Energy - use Power Boost and Short Circuit to almost drain a group in one hit from level 28 on, finish off with Ball Lightning and single target blasts. This used to work much better a few issues ago until Power Boost was nerfed.
Elec/anything. Use Short Circuit twice. Its got a base 20 sec recharge, with slotting for recharge and end mod you can neuter any group in around 10 seconds.

All three techniques require slotting Short Circuit for end mod first, and losing a bit of AoE damage as a result.

On the upside, Tesla Cage is an absolutely brilliant hold for a Blaster.

Elec and Energy secondaries are good pairings because they provide some good melee damage to make up for the poor ranged damage. I found both sets play like Dominators - neutrlaise from range and then bring them down quickly once its safe to close to melee.

I'd say decide what you want to be first. Elec/Elec/Elec is a lot of fun but can go three ways, depending on how you slot. It can be a pretty straight forward blaster, or it can be a good blaptroller, or it can make an excellent Sapper.

Of the three, the third is my preference, and can be very effective on anything up to and including EBs.

If you take Elec as an epic pool too you'll get three excellent holds and a good immob but you'll probably be weak in melee damage.

Of all the blaster sets it's probably the hardest to fine tune but is very rewarding - but you're DPS isn't going to be as high as most other blaster types out of the box. Then again, it doesn't need to be.

Q: "What do you call an EB with no endurance?"

A: "Anything you like, he can't do much about it!"

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

I think Elec blast is a bit weak for a primary, in all honesty. Not brokenly weak, but a little weak.

Now if you pick a strong secondary and epic pool, you can kind of patch the holes, IMO.

And all elec build ends up being pretty decend and all around useful. Good single target damage, when take and use the melee attacks. decent/good aoe, if you take the static discharge. Good damage midigation with 3 possible holds and an end sapping trick noone else can really do. And even a gimic power that helps up your damage on av fights... if you take him. (the pet.)

The sum of the 3 elec powersets, IMO, equal a good blaster. All of this is IMO of course. My Elec/Elec/Elec is only lvl 30 atm. Diffenetly weaker then my Ice/Ice, Fire/Ice, and Sonic/NRG at the same level, but not so much so that he's not fun to play. He is fun. And I like his concept. I'm hoping with more slots and access to the elec epic, he'll round out. I think he will.

But at the end of the day, i don't think he'll be as good a single target damage dealer as my Sonic/EM. I KNOW he won't do AoE like my Fire/Ice/Elec blaster, and he won't be as safe to play as my Ice/Ice/Ice. But he'll have better AoE then the Ice and Sonic guys, be fairly safe, and have respectable single target. Kind of a middle of the road guy. A jack of all trades, i think someone said. I can live with that.

yeah, that's the downside of the triple-E. As we all know from personal experience, an opponent with no endurance is about as dangerous as boiled toast. It's laughable and quite satisfying when it works. Watching an exhausted Paragon Protector waffle and panic, yearning for MoG... ah, good times.

Problem is, it requires they have NO endurance left. Not 10% or 5% or the tiniest sliver. Even on fumes they can fight back.

The one other thing Electricity has going is that it's a little more exotic damage type. The raw numbers might be a little lower, but there aren't many enemies that can shrug it off.

So, would you slot SC for damage or end drain? My kneejerk reaction from reading the above is to forget the end drain and stick with damage. I tend to team mostly anyways, where i'm looked appone to kill stuff, not really control. *shrug*

I'll tinker with it when the time comes and see then. Thanks for the info, i didn't know the purple patch effect end drain. (i guess i should have, but it never crossed my mind. lol)

I slot for end drain myself. 2 acc, 1 dam, 3 end mod. It's easier to buff your damage than buff your secondary effects.

Short Circuit is a gret power to "frankenslot", ie mix and match set IOs for the raw enhancement bonuses.

3 Dam/Rech, 1 Acc/Dam and 2 End Mod IOs will allow you to have your cake and eat it.

That's enough End Mod for a Elec/Elec blaster to drain a group with SC and slotted Power Sink.

And Short Circuit has a base accuracy of 1.4, so a 20% acc boost from an enehancement upps that to 1.4*1.2 = 1.68, equivalent to a normal attack with 2 SOs roughly.

Even better, replace the two end mod IOs with an End Mod and End Mod/Rech from the Performance Shifter or Efficiacy Adapter sets.

As you might have noticed, electric blasters tend to be fairly reliant on their secondary. An Elec/Ice, for example, probably didn't mind giving up AoE damage in favor of stacking holds and debuffs. An Elec/Fire, on the other hand, is all about PBAoEs, much like Rad/Fire. An Elec/MM probably doesn't mind tanking a bit for a team.

the odd thing about elec/ is that on paper, it kis "meh" among other primaries.

but it is probably the most synergistic of them, working well with about every secondary, and becoming a contender for a best blaster build in some combos (elec3 IMO is one of the best builds in the game XD)

apologies, Umbral. I deleted that post after realizing my signature is badly out of date.

I just made a elec/dev the other day and he is really fun so far. Only lvl 12 atm, but its pretty fun. Think the sentenil and gun drone flyin around at the same time will be fun, with the lil targeting drone as well.