How is Electric Blast for corruptors?

Should I take it as a warning sign that if there are no Corruptor guides for Electric Blast it is not that great?

Is Voltaic Sentinel really unable to replace a top-tier blast like Blaze or Bitter Ice Blast?

Any comments would be helpful.

Electric blast.... kinda sucks. There are the occasional builds that can leverage it, but for the most part it's a pretty lackluster set. The reasons are several:

First, the secondary effect is extremely hard to get any use out of, because endurance drain doesn't have any effect until the enemy is *fully* drained - and that's not usually very easy to achieve. On its own, about the only good drain electric blast can leverage is that two hits of a fully endmod slotted short circuit will drain up to +2s and, if fully slotted for recharge so you can use it again as soon as the -recovery effect expires, it will keep them drained (toss in a couple uses of ball lightning and you can drain up to +3s). However, that requires you to jump into melee range, use a 3s animation PBAoE, survive for at least 10 seconds, and then use it again. If you could survive that long in melee range in the first place, it's unlikely you actually *need* the endurance drain effect anyway.

Add in contributions from a secondary set and you can get a bit more use out of end drain (i.e. fully slotted transference draining a boss and then tesla cage's -recovery keeping him there, endmod slotted heat loss and short circuit draining a mob in 2 shots, combining short circuit with endmod slotted power sink from mu for the same effect), but in general such combos are limited in their usefulness, plagued by long recharges, difficult to leverage well, or all of the above.

So without the secondary effect, you're left with a fairly ho-hum set that is severely hampered by the loss of a 3rd blast. AR can somewhat get away with that since it's such an AoE beast, and dark actually brings some mitigation and utility to the table to compensate, but elec offers only average, at best, AoE and just a (fairly decent, but still) ST hold for utility. Voltaic sentinel does not compensate, as like most pets he is quite dumb and will frequently spread his fire around, shoot at unimportant targets, and generally faff around a lot. He also costs a ton of endurance, and combines the need for frequent recasting with a lengthy cast time. He will add notably to your DPS against a single tough target when there's nobody to distract him, but otherwise doesn't really compensate for the loss of a 3rd ST attack.

It's not like a character with electric blast is *useless*, or unable to contribute to a team, but it does seem to me that it really doesn't bring anything to the table that another blast set can't do better. If you want mitigation, dark, ice, and even sonic and energy are probably better. If you want damage, most corr sets will best it. Outside a few gimmick cases, it's just not all that effective. It's still perfectly usable, but if performance is your criteria there are better choices.

One of my friends who is pretty much an expert on blast sets, considers Elec to be the bane of all existence in CoX

I'd highly recommend against it, but whatever floats your boat.

Electric Blast does everything good, but nothing great.

It has good AoE output, but it is not Fire, Rifle, Archery, or Pistols.

It has good control, but it is not Ice, Sonic, Dark, or Energy.

It has good long term AoE control/debuff (whichever you prefer to call it) with the end drain, but it takes a while to set-up, so it is not as quick as the AoE mitigation provided by Sonic and Dark.

It's single target output is good, and even great once you factor in VS, but that is less useful when steamrolling than Blaze, Blazing Arrow, Bitter Ice Blast, Power Burst, Shout, Cosmic Burst, and Executioner's Shot. I have and use VS on one character, but even I have to admit its short duration and long cast time can be annoying.

I love Electric Blast and find its versatility makes up for its lack of specialization. That being said, it can at times feel lackluster during those times you are looking for something more specialized.

It suffers from a damage stand point due to the extra mitigation it does, but the extra mitigation(end drain) is near pointless in the game depending on the situation. In a handful of situations it great, but outside of that it's not even noticeable since a dom, or controller already has the mob mezzed.

Elec Blast would be a fairly good set if Voltaic Sentinel were actually any good. As it stands, it's got nothing special going for it.

The damage is lackluster and the secondary effect, as the first reply said, is not all that useful. The best thing about it is the animation on Thunderous Blast.

My main blaster is Elec/EM.

I LOVE elec on a blaster, but it kinda blows on a corruptor.

EDIT:

On my blaster I have powerboost nearly perma, this allows me a 1 shot drain nearly anytime I want.
I have my Melee secondary to pump up my Single target DPS.
And Aim AND build up cannot hurt.

Thanks for the responses. I had rolled a Elec blast/Rad toon because I figured I could be in melee and use Short Circuit and Ball Lightning without having to jump back to fire off a cone.

Until Radiation comes to MM's, I will have to tinker around and see what blast sets I could use that are not all that commonly paired with Rad.

Had an Elec/Storm corruptor.
No idea how I leveled her to 50...
I deleted her. Elec kinda sucks for corruptor, Im sorry. And Storm drains all your endurance with the activation of 3 powers. Bad combo for sure.

i used to have an elec/mental blaster but he felt pitifully weak (the issue was more due to the fact i dislike blasters and them being glass cannons)

otherwise the elec/mental blaster was really fun, but blasters just arent my thing

for a corr if you want decent dmg and good sapping if you are set on using elec, i would use elec/kin, you get can drain baddies pretty easy and have enormous dmg boosts to help your dmg out

I've seen Elec Blast on Blasters that are pretty decent (VS gives blasters pretty gooddefiance boost).

The problem I see with VS is that many of Corruptor's buffs don't benefit it. Can VS be buffed?

Endurance drain effect it's either ALL or NOTHING. I think it can be decent with two Elec doing the draining but if you are alone and without Transfusion, it may take a while to see the benefit of -end.

Electric Blast is half of a one-trick pony build. So you're basically riding around on half a pony while Sonic rides by on a whole trick horse, and somewhere you can hear Fire and AR and Ice ride by on motorcycles.

Is it useless? No. Is it less effective than most sets, somewhere along with Psi? Yes.

I just want to point out:

The forums overstate the difference in sets.

Yes Elec Blast Lags behind a bit in single target, but its quite competative in aoe (Note elecs aoes are all 16 Targets).

Personally I find it performs outstandingly on a blaster (though I pair it with NRG Manipulation to fill in the Single Target DPS issue, and to one shot drain anything I target via Powerboost).

I wonder if VS targetting AI is the same as Targeting Drone on blasters but regardless, this may be a case to improve VS so that it stands out more.

As well, how about Thunderous Blast only draining a portion of your end and not all? If I did decide to keep my toon would it be worth taking?

One more vote for 'Terrible'. The damage isn't bad, but honestly, the delta in each set's damage isn't that enormous. It's the secondary effects and extremely inconvenient nature of voltaic sentinel that make it such a dog. If you want a set that does pure energy damage, take Radiation Blast, you can throw the Achilles Hell procs in most of your powers and make stuff actually die faster.

Has anyone done pylon test with Elec? Assuming VS's only target is pylon and nothing else...

Do you mean testing just the VS against a Pylon? You wouldn't be able to tell anything, other than that the VS doesn't do enough damage to beat the Pylons regen.

Or do you mean dropping a Pylon (using whatever means) and then doing it with and without the VS, to see what kind of DPS it contributes?

Although I suppose if someone were Elec/Traps they could do nothing but drop PGT to flatline the pylons regen and let VS do all the damage, then you could work out the DPS of VS. They'd have to be very patient though