How effective is Electric blast for us?

So, I'm making a new Dark Defender and can't decide whether to take Psychic blast or Electricity Blast. I tried Radiation but didn't really like it, and Ice Blast isn't really my style. The only thing that makes me hesitant is that I'm not sure how effective the End drain is on Electric blast. It seems really low, and the secondary effect from psychic to floor my enemie's recharge times with only two powers alone is very tempting.
And the pet on Electric blast looks really, really fun to me.

There are two powers in Electrical Blast with really significant End drain and guaranteed -recovery: Short Circuit and Thunderous Blast (Tesla Cage also has guaranteed -recovery). The others will drain a bit but

Short Circuit on it's own won't drain your enemies entirely in one go, you need multiple applications which you really want to get the recharge down enough to fire it before the recovery debuff wears off (10 seconds). One of the reasons Elec/Elec Blasters are considered very good sappers is that they can combine Short Circuit with Powersink which drains 70 endurance with no slotting. The good news is Defenders can also do this combo, the bad news is they get it 12 levels later and have double the recharge on Powersink which means the combo is up a lot less often (baring a perma-hasten build).

Sparky is often considered useless. He isn't (quite) useless but unlike other pets he can't draw aggro so he's pretty much just a fire and forget attack power (which can be handy)

How does the sentinel work? Does it blast anything within a certain distance, or does it attack what I attack? That might mess up my placement when I stealth up to the enemies to Fearsone Stare them if the little guy blasts em while I'm trying to sneak up on them.

Power Buildup + Short Circuit = mostly drained mobs. Also, now you can get Power Sink on the red side as a defender.

I think Electrical Blast is one of the weaker Defender blast sets, and not a good match with Dark.

AoE damage is standard, unless you try to leverage Short Circuit for End Drain at the expense of damage slotting.
Single Target damage is low due to the lack of a Tier 3 Blast. Voltaic Sentinel isn't bad, its good damage per endurance, but its slow and often spreads its damage around. This is worse for a Blaster than a Defender though, since you aren't relying on quick defeats to stay alive.
The damage discrepancy isn't terrible - you wont quit in disgust over the lower damage, but its maybe 80-90% as much as Energy Blast, which is pretty much standard.

Power Build Up + Short Circuit gives you almost drained mobs, which is about as useful as almost held mobs, or almost defeated ones.

Kinetics/Electric makes a good single target sapper with Transfusion and SC. And Kinetics needs the extra mitigation.
Dark however, has nothing to help drain groups, and doesn't really need the extra safety. I'd recommend Dark/Psy as a better choice.

Save experiments in sapping for Electrical Control, its way better at it than Electrical Blast.

Hmm okay. What's interesting is that, with the advent of I19, Whole new power combos are starting to be viable for my playstyle. I have a Dark/Radiation Defender and the reason I took Radiation is to debuff defense since Dark doesn't do that. I didn't really like Radiation Blast itself though, the ranges on powers and the low damage on the ST attacks I think were my biggest issue.
Now I have three extra slots and can take the Leadership pool, and add some To-Hit that way, somewhat negating the reason I took Radiation Blast.
That's why I'm looking into other powersets that I may have never tried before, like Psychic and Electric Blast. It's more important for me, on this character, to add some kind of utility rather than another type of debuff. Psychic looks good because of the controller-type procs that sometimes happen with the powers, but Electric also look solid if the end drain is significant enough to matter, as it adds a type of control. Also, Petrifying Gaze+Tesla Cage means a held boss, which is also incredibly tempting, and Sentinel dealing damage while I am otherwise occupied also looks good.
That being said, I can see how they don't combo well since Electric blast can't do it's secondary ability to any great effect by itself. On a primary with some sort of End drain to push it over the top, it might be good, but not so much by itself.
It looks like I can pretty much ignore the end drain, so It will come down to how much I want to be able to hold bosses and how much the sentinel will help add damage, and it sounds like sentinel isn't going to help much there.

I run a 50 Kin/elec/elec defender and I think it works great as a secondary. Great single target sapping. Tesla cage stacks with shocking bolt to hold bosses easily in 2 attacks. Both have great recharge times (on a kin anyway might just be the spammed siphon speed...) I've got one build that is slotted for damage and think its absolutely fantastic, I put hold procs into my elec blasts that recharge very quickly and run a Charged bolts>Lightning bolt>tesla cage>shocking bolt chain that keeps anything perma held between the 2 actual holds and the hold procs (this is in between using my kin powers for the team of course). My second build is more for AoE sapping slotted for end drain and works very well in a team setting. I can drain the minions very easily and then use transferance to drain the boss (who i then run the hold chain mentioned above on for good measure). You can have alot of fun with elec.

I have a 50 kin/elec/power that's collecting dust as we speak. I always felt that I was able to sap well, especially after I got power build up, but generally speaking it seemed like a very under appreciated talent and I got bored with the lack of damage the set offered.

If i were fully IO'd on that character with a focus on defense it might be different, but overall I just felt the character was slow when solo and just a SB/FS bot on teams. Outide of a PBU'd Thunder Blast, the sapping on a defender is a very back-loaded form of mitigation, and the low defense of Kinetics is very frustrating with it. Plus in groups the AVs never seemed to stay completely dry and lose attacks, and the bosses were usually held/annihilated quickly enough for my sapping to be of little consequence.

I just couldn't justify playing that character over a controller, but that's kind of the problem with kinetics. It's such a busy set that it overshadows every other aspect of most of the characters who pick it until they get so sick of the set that the just give up on SB and SP completely.

Yeah, I forgot to mention that Tesla Cage is quite awesome. 5 seconds recharge whilst slotted means that it can deal with most bosses, whereas Short Circuit has twice the recharge before it can properly zap a boss (or a group, or group of bosses...)

Of course, Cosmic Burst does the same and carries Tier 3 damage.
You're right about Rad Blast though. Its secondary effect of -Dam does suffer these days, with global accuracy flying around, and the Leadership pool opening up for a lot of us this week.
But, it also lets you mix in Sands of MU quite reliably into your attack chain. Fantastic damage, especially when boosted by any -Res powers. My Sonic/Rad duo swear by it.

Hmm, okay I think I see. You have to sacrifice damage, but with the correct slotting, it can sap. That's a somewhat unusual idea, but something to consider. Like I said, I'm trying to find something to go wtih Dark Miasma, and the ability to drain in addition to all the other things DM can do is an interesting thought.
Radiation blast reduces Def, not Dam, and I took it because -Def is the only stat that Dark Miasma cannot debuff, but using the blast set itself was not fun for me. I was often either too far away for Cosmic Burst or not quite right where I needed to be for my AOEs to hit most of the enemies.
I have often seen that End drain is not terribly effective, but I am looking at the potential of the powerset as a whole. The Hold plus the free-damage pet plus the sapping ability may be enough to make it worthwhile for me to play.
That being said, I wanted something that could solo well, dealing some solid damage, and it seems to get mixed reviews in that department.

If are willing to try a different support set with Elec, you very may well want to try a Elec controller. Elec blast suffers from being a blast set that is given control and end drain. It can't do a lot of damage due to the control and end drain, but it can't do control and end drain too much because it's a blast set. Elec control suffers from none of this identity crisis. It is one of the better control sets out there. /rad, /sonic, /cold, and /kin will work in a unofficial order of best to better. My namesake is a level 50 Kin/elec and it's been at 50 for something like 13 issues. I can't in any way roll another /elec defender.

Agreed, Amy.

Electrical Blast's massive design flaw is Short Circuit.

End Drain affects bosses the same as minions, so if it can drain a single minion, then as an AoE it can equally well drain a room ful of bosses.
And thats too much for a blast set, therefore the long recharge, the low drain value etc.

If it were up to me I'd spread the drain more evenly between all powers, so that the single target blasts had a noticeable secondary effect too. Letting a blast set neuter a single boss in a few moves is acceptable, multiple bosses isn't.

Really, a blast set has no place totally neutering entire spawns like Short Circuit sort of attempts to do. That's what control sets are for.
Other AoE controls in Blast sets tend to be minion only (Dark Pit) or poor-man's controls like sleep (Sirens Song) or knockback (Gale, Shockwave).

The way I envision Electrical Blast playing would be you'd concentrate on blasting. You'd slot SC for damage. You'd blast away at a boss, and at some point before bringing his health to zero you're drop his end to zero.
On a Defender, that might happen for a leiutenant too, but a blaster would defeat them first.

Sort of like with Ice Blast. You don't think either at build time or in combat "Am I going to defeat this guy or debuff his recharge?" You just do both at once.

And yeah, I'd spread the -Recovery around too like you suggest.