BUGGED: SHORT CIRCUIT/Power Sink

Short circuit and power sink are no longer as effective as they used to be. I have sent numerous petitions, conversed with several GMs as well as contacted support by telephone but unfortunatly these issues remain unsolved. There was even a GM assigned to me about this topic, GMLloyd. Every attempt to find out what happened ended in failure. The games representatives all said; They would need to bump it up to a senior tech.

The major issue that I am experiencing is this. short circuit no longer gives me back any endurance from foes. This power has been draining foes of their end and returning it back to my toon for 6.5 years. However, since May it no longer returns end to my toon.

The other issue that I am experiencing is that Power Sink is no longer nearly as effective as it once was. It is fine versus some level 50 toons but the higher the foe whether by level and/or class boss, elite boss and/or AVs the weaker it gets. Now what is confussing to me is this. My toon has all tier four alpha and incarnate powers. He has some of the best enhancements and set bonuses available allowing for enhancement diversifacation. His health is maxed out for a blaster. Howerver, I noticed that as he advanced through the incarnate system he became weaker overall not more powerful.

He used to be able to run through the second mish of the Imperius Task Force/Trial by himself ahead of the group and kill all the crystals without dying except for that one small to medium sized room that had two crystals and a very large number of baddies that seemed to be packed in there like sardines. Now he struggles and dies a lot in that mission even when he stays with the team. This is how I figured out something is wrong. Now having very good enhancements and all tier four incarnates theoretically should have balanced everything like it was before the incartnate system was released. It did not.

Therefore, I was wondering if any other players that had short circuit and/or power sink prior to the release of the alpha and incarnate systems are experiencing the same issues.

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Added: I see from posts that most feel that short circuit never returned end back to their toons. I can't explain what happened over the past 6.5 years. I do know is this. I always 6 slot short circuit and power sink with either efficacy addaptors or performace shifters and not only did both powers drain end but also until recently they both returned end back to all of my toons. This change took place around this past May. I see at least one player mentioned that he recalled power sink draining and returning end and that short circuit drainded end and had a chance of returning some end back to the player. I think thats the way I recall it being written in the past. (Currently the chance of short circuit 's returning end back to the toon is deleted.) Six slotting both with efficacy adaptors or performance shifters must have made a big difference in short circuit's ability to return end back to my toons. However, at present no end is being returned to any of my toons that have short circuit 6 slotted with either performance shifters or efficacy adaptors.

This is a concern to me because electric builds and especially electric/electric builds ability to drain end and then have it returned to them is one of their most powerful powers. It would be similar to balancing master minds so that half of their pets no long delt damage.

I don't think Short Circuit ever returned endurance to you, I certainly don't remember it ever doing so. The description doesn't say that it does, either.

Can't speak to Power Sink being less effective, I hadn't noticed it but I haven't used it recently.

Put me in the "I don't think it ever did that" category too. Pretty certain Short Circuit was not giving my Elec/Son Corr any END back during last year's Halloween event.

I also went at looked at Parawiki's history for the power set as well as their archive of patch notes. I didn't see anything that might've changed something as big as this.

Still waiting for his Official BackAlleyBrawler No-Prize

All electrical powers used to have a small % chance to give a small % of the drained endurance.

I did notice that the elec powers stopped doing that around the time that elec melee was ported to scrappers.

According to the Real Numbers, the single target attacks all have a chance to return a small amount of endurance. Those powers may be bugged as _Pine_ suggests (I wouldn't know -- see below), but Short Circuit's Real Numbers don't list any chance to return endurance to you, nor do any of the other powers from the set that can hit multiple targets.

My Elec/Elec Blaster was the first character I ever created, over 6 years ago (holy crap). I've never found the endurance return of any power from Electrical Blast to be remotely critical in the playing of my character, and I especially don't remember Short Circuit ever doing it at all.

I think you're just wrong. Sorry.

Just to check, are you currently slotted with Efficacy Adaptor or Performance Shifter?

You may well have been seeing the "Chance for +End" proc in Performance Shifter firing (which you must have used if you six slotted) - if you've subsequently switched to Efficacy Adaptor you won't see that any more, as the Efficacy Adaptor set doesn't contain a proc IO.

As the proc returns 10% of your max End and has a 20% chance to trigger it's quite noticable.

I don't recall short circuit returning endurance to the caster. A spot check of the data I have available to me indicates that the power has never been designed to do that. It wasn't doing that in issue 7, issue 11, issue 17, or issue 20. If it ever was bugged to return endurance to the caster, I haven't spotted the moment when that happened. But I am fairly certain the intent was never to do that. Swartzchild's Performance Shifter conjecture is the best I can come up with also.

In relative terms Power Sink should get "weaker" against both higher level and higher ranked foes. It obeys combat modifiers, so the purple patch should reduce its effectiveness against targets of higher level than you. It has always behaved that way. Its not intrinsically less effective against higher ranks but higher ranked foes have more endurance, which means when you drain a percentage of their endurance what's left is going to be more for higher ranked foes. This will allow them to use more attacks before running out of endurance. Without more precise information, I cannot address the issue of whether Power Sink is behaving as it should, but I have and use Power Sink and I haven't noticed a specific problem.

Yeah, at the time I joined this game (forum reg date), Short Circuit has never returned endurance. I would imagine that the proc from your IO may have caused you some confusion about that.
I haven't noticed Power Sink behaving any differently than it always has.

While I've been playing a couple of new alts the past few weeks, up until then I was playing almost exclusively on my Elec/Elec Blaster and have not noticed any problems/changes with these powers.
I just figured I'd give you my experience on the matter!

The biggest "nerf" to Endurance draining on electric blast, that I can think of, was the introduction of Enhancement Diversification.

Going from being able to slot Short Circuit for +200% Endurance Modification (Issue 5 and earlier) down to about 95% Endurance modification (Issue 6 and later) caused 2 problems for short circuit operating alone:

1: It no longer can fully drain equal leveled (+0) enemies in one shot, on its own.
2: It's effectiveness alone against +3 or higher enemies is drastically reduced, since it takes 3 applications to achieve full drain, even fully slotted (+95%), without any other powers helping it out.


Luckily for you, you are Elec/Elec, and have some help for Short Circuit in the form of Power Sink:
You basically NEED power sink and short circuit both to fully drain targets, and both to be fully slotted (+95%), and even then, the amount of combined drain is going to be penalized by hitting higher level targets:

Combined drain values of Power Sink and Short Circuit, each slotted to +95% endurance modification
+0: 132.6% drain
+1: 119.34% drain
+2: 106.08% drain
+3: 86.19% drain (NOT FULL)
+4: 63.648% drain (NOT EVEN CLOSE)

Ball lightning can add a few points to these, but since you're likely using it as a damage power, it's few points of drain aren't going to help much in the spots where you need it, the +3 and +4 range.

But, as far as I can tell, Enhancement Diversification is the only game change in the game that reduced the effectiveness of endurance drain. It was potentially a BIG reduction though, depending on your powersets and your ability to supplement Elec's draining abilities. About the only blaster secondaries that got off easy (that I can think of off hand) were Energy and Electric, due mostly to Power Sink and Lightning Field for Elec, and Power Boost for energy.

If you're looking for a way to boost drain, an Oft overlooked power is Tesla Cage: It has a -100% recovery debuff that is easily permable and cheaper to maintain on bosses than spamming Short Circuit. Slotting Endurance Mods increases the strength of recovery debuffs, allowing you to floor the recovery of even +3 bosses, and NEARLY floor the recovery of +4's. This can make plinking away at them, even if you're not holding them, a much safer prospect. Perhaps not so attractive for you though, since Shocking Grasp + Tesla Cage are much more immediately effective than trying to drain them.

As far as Short Circuit and Ball Lightning no longer returning endurance, to the best of my knowledge they never had this ability. I recall being dissapointed that was never added to them, because of how fun +End per target hit would be in basic AOE's. A beautiful dream, but not one that ever saw the light of day.

Good luck and cheers, Elec blasting can be a uniquely difficult experience, but also uniquely rewarding.

I'm with the others on this one. Short Circuit has never returned End to the caster
(and I've been playing my E^3 Blaster since Day 1).

Also agree with Teeto_K -- you need BOTH SC & PS to drain mobs since ED.
Ball Lightning, and (surprisingly) Tesla Cage are also helpful at keeping a mob drained,
but a single cast of SC or PS will not fully drain a mob these days.

I haven't run my Blaster lately (too many alts), so I can't speak to whether
PS is different since I21. I suspect not, but I can run some Tips over the weekend
and check it. I do know it was fine a few weeks ago...

(EDIT - 10/10/2011)
I did run some Tips and the SSA over the weekend, and didn't notice any oddities
with either Short Circuit or Power Sink. It took both to drain an even con mob, and
only Power Sink gave me any end as part of the power cast.
Both seem to be working the same as always to me... <shrug>
(/EDIT)

I'm not sure what it is you are actually encountering, but I'm quite sure Short
Circuit didn't work the way you described.


Regards,
4

PS> Other than Power Sink, which is specifically designed to give you
End (when you hit a mob with it), the other powers (T1 & T2 attacks)
wth a "chance" to do that have been minimal, and inconsequential at best,
in my experience <shrug>. Any end they did give back was virtually unnoticeable.