Electric and Endurance Drain

Hey, all,

So I have been working hard on what has turned out to be my all-time favorite 'toon: a Dark/Electric Sapper. Basically, my build/playstyle concept usually sees me running into giant mobs three seconds after the tank, hitting Short Circuit, and watching those blue bars drop precipitously. Follow up with Ball Lightning and some targeted ranged attacks on the bosses, and my team never gets hit.

So far, so good.

Now I'm starting to think about the mathy part behind the build, and wondering what my optimal slotting should be for maximum drainage. Right now, I have Short Circuit five-slotted, all with EndMods. I have Ball Lightning at four slots, with three EndMods and an Acc. I have both Lightning Bolt and Charged Bolts at two EndMods, an Acc, and a Dam.

I am totally not worried about doing damage, as that's not really my role in teams, and I don't solo. I want to be able to zero out those blue bars on big mobs of guys as quickly as possible.

So what's the cap? How much EndMod do I need to get my powers "maxed?"

If you have SO level enhancements, 3 slots of endurance modification is plenty in short circuit and ball lightning. Personally on my kinetic/electric, I five slot ball lightning as a targetted AoE power for accuracy and damage and throw in the sixth slot for endurance modification. Ball lightning does only modest end drain. Short circuit is a five or six slot power, I would switch two of your end mods for accuracies; it still has to hit.

Since you did not mention it, I am assuming that you have not reached level 41 and higher yet. Once you are there, you can supplement Short Circuit very well with Powersink (Electric Mastery) or Power Buildup (Energy Mastery). I use Electric Mastery because it is more thematic and will drain a mob dry with Short Circuit + Powersink. I often lead with Ball Lightning beacause Powersink fills my blue bar completely, so I can use alot of endurance before then.

For slotting I shoot for Endurance drain only on Short circuit and try to hit 60% drain.
If you want to add drain to Ball Lightning, I would make sure that it is 6-slotted with 5 slots for a damage set and then 1 End Mod.

I used to slot some end mod in Lightning Bolt and Charged Bolts, but decided that set bonuses helped me out more.

Congrats on finding out how fun "sapping" can be.

Short circuit and thunderous blast are the only powers in electric blast with a drain that's worth slotting. On everything else you won't see a very good return on end mod slotting and they're best used to keep the blue bars down and deal damage inbetween short circuit's recharge. Make sure you pick up tesla cage for single target lock down if you haven't already. It's the only power besides short circuit and thunderous blast that have a 100% chance to debuff the enemy's recovery rate.

Slot Short Circuit for 3 End Drain and 3 Recharge, and take Hasten.
Slot Ball Lightning for Accuracy and Damage - its endurance drain is negligible.


Your aim of being a team sapper is a good one, but a bit of an uphill struggle unfortunately.
These are the raw numbers. In my opinion, end drain is Electrical blast is very badly designed, and one of the most broken powerset features in the game, but this is how it is. :

Short Circuit drains 35% of an enemy's blue bar, 70% when slotted with 3 end mods.
Against +1s or +2s this drops a bit.

So two Short Circuits will drain an entire group of +2s.

Ball Lightning drain 7% of the Blue bar, or 14% when slotted. That extra 7% is not very much return for 3 slots in my opinion.

Similarly, the single target blasts drain between 5% and 7% of a blue bar.

Short Circuit has a base accuracy of 1.3, so its kind of slotted with one accuracy for free. This allows you to concentrate your slotting on other things.

My mistake. I didn't check those figures.

But, the ST blasts are still much smaller than Short Circuit's value.

I've never actually checked this before. Lets see...

Say at level 50 a minion has around 400 hit points and 100 endurance.

Charged Bolt and Lightning Bolt do 36 and 60 damage respectively at level 50, and 7% and 10% drain.
So if you slot for damage, and alternate these two, it will take about 4 cycles to kill the minion, maybe 5.

If you slot for end drain you will drain the minion in 3 cycles.
A lieutenant has roughly twice the hp of a minion, and a boss had 4 times. They all have the same size end bar.

So, solo against an even-con boss.. slotting for damage will drain the boss in 6 cycles and kill them in about 16. Slotting for drain will drain the boss in 3 cycles and kill them in 30 cycles or so.

Hmm. Maybe end drain isn't in quite as bad shape as I thought. Then again, using six attacks to temporarily diable a boss is still far worse than using two Tesla Cages.

Absolutely True Dr.Mike

One of the things that I have done before (when I had 1 endmod in each attack) is to use Short Circuit, then cycle attacks on the toughest target while waiting for Short Circuit to cycle. Against Lts or problem mobs, you can Tesla+Short Circuit and then cycle CB/LB and usually have them drained before SC recharges. This gives you alot of breathing room.

When leveled below 39 I find the idea of enhancing the drain in the ST attacks much more attractive, but even so, I would only slot more than 1 spot in Short Circuit.

Now that I have spent alot of time at 50 with this powerset, I feel very weakened when de-leveled and cannot hit SC+Powersink. One of the down-sides to Electric Blast really.
For a Defender, I really feel that something is missing pre-ancillary. Just not sure how to prove it to the devs.

The recovery debuffs are more important than the endurance drain imo. Short Circuit and Tesla Cage are the only blasts that apply guaranteed recovery debuffs on a hit.

I find that Short Circuit begs to be frankenslotted with IOs from PBAOE and End Mod sets.

You can mix and match to get solid amounts of Accuracy, Damage, Recharge and End Mod using doubles and triples. Don't underestimate SC's damage, it's not too far behind Ball Lightning.

For controllery attacks (tesla, electric fence, shocking bolt), does the end drain/end drain over time still take effect if the mag isn't high enough to affect the target? Basically, would those serve to keep a harder target low, even if they couldn't control it?

Last night, I was on a team doing a mission full of Nazi Werewolves, and basically following my normal chain of events: drop a tar patch, debuff the ugliest bad guy, follow the tank in, hit Short Circuit, follow up with Ball Lightning, then area heal, and by that time, SC is back and I can hit it again. Tesla as needed.

About halfway through the mission, the tank says to the group: Holy sh*t, you have a ton of end drain! My bar has barely moved the whole mission.

Sort of made my whole night.

I think I might sacrifice one of my End Drains in SC for a recharge. I think you guys might be right that the best End Drain enhancement I could have is being able to do it again right away...

(Are you guys sure on the end drain from Ball Lightning? I feel like I hit a good 25% of a red minion's bar with that...)

When I leveled up my Dark/Elec, I first tried to go for Endurance Drain. I found it frustrating. Most of Dark Miasma is more effective at range, including the most effective power, Fearsome Stare, a cone. Short Circuit requires you to be in PB AoE range, and it takes at least 2 shots to drain endurance. So I found myself running in and out of melee. End Drain is one of the weaker effects in the game, as it doesn't do all that much unless the endurance of foes is completely drained. (However, I have to admit that I had to solo a lot -- without a tank to grab aggro, I was getting hit a fair amount.)

Eventually, I discovered that the most effective End Drain came from Power Boost followed by Thunderous Blast . . . but that drained all of my endurance, too. I eventually gave up of focusing on Endurance Drain . . . but still use the Power Boost+Thunderous Blast combo at times.

I later made a Kinetics/Electric built around Endurance Drain. (He has a great concept . . . with an Egyptian theme, he drains his foes and stores the energy in himself for attacks. Name is "Sultan Battery" -- say it out loud) The Efficiency Adapter set in Short Circuit is great. Even better, Power Boost + Short Circuit will drain the group, as will Power Boost + Thunderous Blast. The Kin/Elec has the advantage of being able to recover his Endurance with Transference after using the nuke. A little bit of EndMod in Ball Lighting and Voltaic Sentinel helps keep them drained for a little bit.

The nice thing about using Power Boost instead of Power Sink is that Power Boost buffs a lot of things other than Endurance Drain -- longer holds and Fear! One of the best aspects of my Dark/Elec is the two holds allows me to quickly hold a Boss, and Fearsome Stare controls everybody else. That, and two pets with the cute names of Fluffy and Sparky.

Its interesting to see this post this morning.Since iv recently created a Dark/Elec Defender for PvE Farming and PvP uses.

I find it Ironic that very shortly after I do a Sewers Run or get to 20 and head for Talos with any new toon, and perform like a Tanker on it it gets brought up in a post on the forums.

Maybe its a Coincidence, maybe not.I just find it funny.