Well the 'slow' feeling gets better imo (get chain induction) but I have a 50 partially IO'ed ELM/Stone Brute who, even out of granite (meaning no penalties) and high fury, does pitiful ST damage by my standards. I stopped playing him, when I get back to my 50s (since I'm on a lowbie phase now, just returned) I'll only play him on ITFs and LGTFs to tank and when I have a kin, because I don't wanna waste 1 billion to offset Granite's penalties and still be underwhelmed (I did a lot of solo missions on invincible in Cimerora outside of Granite to test his damage potential without drawbacks).
Elec is good at AoE and some mitigation, and that's it. Check out 'the results are in part 2' thread for ST damage comparison on SO builds. IIRC only Spines loses to Elec in ST damage.
That's why I'm now playing an ELM stalker - you get A. Strike. L.Rod doesn't unhide you and you can crit after that with AS or Thunderstrike. And I want to like ELM on some toon because it's so pretty.
Don't worry about lining up mobs everytime for J. Ladder, you'll get better with practice. I'm very used to Shadow Maul so for me it's okay, but it's a decent ST attack on its own. Or maybe you'll like the C. Brawl-H. Punch combo better.
ElM by itself always underwhelmed me. The stalker version for the effects Kioshi mentioned is interesting, so is pairing with Shield for LR + SC (and AaO boosting the whole thing), but other than that it just seems to be a set that tries to be so many things and ultimately fails at doing anything well ; kind of like an AoE martial arts.
That isn't to say ElM or MA aren't perfectly playable, but there's always a better option.
I rolled a ElM/Inv, for concept reasons, who is now 17. Right now, I am a bit underwhelmed, and wanted to get people's thoughts on this combo at higher (32+) levels, both pre- and post-IO slotting.
My main problem is that ElM feels really slow, not very fluid. Thunderstrike and Jacobs Ladder, in particular, need a little bit of setup for maximum effect. Does it smooth out later? I'm not sure if I should continue with this Scrap, or maybe look into re-rolling him as a Tank. I don't know, so far, the set feels more suited for Tanks.