Something needs to be done about Electric Blasts

I have been playing this game since 2 months after Beta. I simply cannot accept anymore that Electric Blast is ok. I have an Electric/Electric Blaster level 50 who I enjoy. Had an Kin/Elec defender at 50 who I deleted because it was so pitiful and I have an Electric/Kin Corruptor currently at level 35. I have not played Electric Assualt on a Dominator. I was waiting for the Electric Control set that was mentioned before giving that a whirl.

I honestly think that Electric Blast is woefully underpowered and I believe it misses more than any set I have played. Also highly annoying is the animation which shows a HIT even when you MISS. That should have been fixed years ago.

I have yet to see any Dev comment officially on Electric Blast, yet univesally it seems that the community agrees that there is something that is lacking from this set. It needs some love.

Is this a question?

If so then yes.

Otherwise, no.

Hope that clears it up

My Kin/Elec is awesome, and she has no trouble draining EB's of their endurance.The same can be said for my triple electric blaster.

Sounds like you aren't slotting correctly.

Maybe I should have been more clear in my post.. My bad..

Damage seems to be sub par. Draining isnt the issue. I can drain most foes quite well. Its fighting them that takes forever.

I'm not a big fan of blasters in general, having only one at level 50. However that one is elec/elec and it seems fine to me. I think damage output *in a crowd* is lower, since there's less AoE than some other sets.

Damage seems lower because it lacks a tier 3 blast like other sets. Tier 3 being powers like: Blaze, Shout, Bitter Ice Blast, Cosmic Burst, etc. But if you look at the actual damage numbers, Electric Blast's tier 1 and 2 blasts (Charged Bolts amd Lightning Bolt) do more damage than anything but Fire (and that's taking Fire's DoT into account).

Instead of a tier 3 blast you get a summonable pet that fires Charged Bolts every 5 seconds for a full minute. That's 12 Charged Bolts that fire off, independant of anything else you may be doing, that don't cost you endurance beyond what it costs to summon Voltaic Sentinal.

When people say "Electric Blast's damage sucks!", they are almost never taking Voltaic Sentinal into account. I guarantee the devs are taking it into account when they balance the sets with each other.

Pair it up with a good secondary and you're golden. I have an elec/eng blaster, without VS, and he does just fine in both the damage and the end drain. I don't notice a difference between killing time between him and my eng/elec blaster, since with the energy I have to deal with the KB occasionally, which can add to the time it takes to kill mobs if you have to chase them.

It would be nice if the secondary effects were a bit more effective, but the bigger problem with endurance and NPCs is that they don't seem to follow the same rules we do, as far as firing off powers. As long as they have a sliver, they can hit their attacks, whereas we have to have enough end to use bigger attacks. If you're not draining all their end, you haven't disabled them.

No, same rules for End, but most of them don't have huge costing attacks.

Eh, part of any primary set selection is thinking about what secondary to pair it with. On my Elec/Elec Blaster, I found that I kept forgetting to summon the Voltaic Sentinel, so I respec'd into another ST attack. It was a good way to go.

Its two first tier attacks are decent and on par with other Blast sets, and pack a good punch. It also has a good hold in the set, and the Nuke is fun, and ranged (ie, don't have to announce your presence before using it).

I do feel like making the end drain a primary feature does limit how many secondaries it's a good idea to pair with. You don't necessarily have that issue with most of the other primaries (though they do have synergies, of course), which is something of a drawback. Still, it is a fairly fun set that can do well if you work with what it can do.

I don't know if VS actually uses "pet aggro rules" (attack things that are non-aggroed and not mezzed, far as I can tell) but it seems like its attacks are WORSE than average. Having said that, I agree that it is a good hitter for the hard targets.

Whomever said

I agree that the lack of that tier 3 blast is a part of the issue. It defintely seems to make a difference and I believe more so for defenders and corruptors than it does for a blaster because a blaster does have access to a secondary that can do some significant damage.

I believe that Electrical Blast needs looking at, but not for its damage.

The secondary effect of End Drain is implemented in a very odd manner that makes it quite ineffectual except when paired with a handful of other powersets or on superteams.

Its sold as a lower-damage/high-control set, but falls short on the high control part.

I have an electric/electric blaster and two /electric tankers.

I haven't gotten the tanks up far enough to tell if they rock. They feel good, and I can reccomend wp/elec to anyone who digs melee.

My blaster is not a normal blaster like my fire/ice or AR/ guys are. He's a sapper. You know how everyone fears the Malta Sappers. Yeah, that's me. And just like a controller, sometimes your team won't realize it's you making the difference, but when you know that EB didn't try to attack for 20 seconds because he had no end and no recovery. Ha, that's good times.

OP, delete yours. :)

Pro: Elec has additional controls and mitigation. End drain being outside of the norm so in some cases it can be rather effective. This means Elec is deemed a defensive blast set and gets lower damage because of it.

Con: End drain is highly hit, or miss. A NPC can attack with a sliver of end. Even when it is effective, a controller in the vast majority of cases has already controlled the target/mob in question so the additional mitigation is made minor, if not irrelevant. A properly built end drainer can end drain a number of tough things, EB, AVs, etc., but a large number of them lose hit points against a team about as fast they lose end. Outside of epics, SC needs to hit twice for it to fully drain a mob. SC animates in 3 seconds and that's not adding recharge time. By the time a mob is fully drained, the battle has vastly been decided.