Blaster Changes Don't Fix Electric

Warning: potentially ultra boring theorycrafting follows.

There are currently two powersets that I believe succeed at utilizing endurance drain as a viable defense: electric control and electric armor. There are a few reasons why I believe they succeed. The biggest one is that endurance drain is only one of their defensive options in a fight. For these sets, endurance drain is basically "If the fight lasts longer than X amount of time, I automatically win as the enemies can no longer attack effectively". Exactly how long X is depends on slotting and the opponent, but reaching X time is not a rare feat for the sets both because of other forms of mitigation in the set and because the archetypes they are available to have no problem with protracted engagements.

What we have in electric blast is another example of a set that fails because its tools are ones that the blaster archetype is often incapable of leveraging. It's the same reason why overcharge is a very questionable mechanic on blasters. They're mechanics that work in a prolonged fight, which is something that blasters are conceptually supposed to avoid. This particular aspect of the problem is something that should be addressed through blasters, not the powerset.

Attempting to change endurance drain so that it is something other than "If the fight lasts longer than X amount of time, I automatically win" is what's often proposed, but I don't believe it's the right path. We have two other options.

-Attach other defensive secondary effects to electric blast powers. The effects in and of themselves, combined with the set's greater ability to reach point X in time would result in a set with appropriate defensive strength for a blast set.
-Increase the set's damage until it is of similar strength to other blast sets with weak, situational, or nonexistent defensive power

Those are the three options that I see, and obviously any proposed solution from someone will likely combine options.

If it were up to me to redesign the set I would do something like the following...
-Attach a chance to chain hit a second target to charged bolts and lightning bolt. Chance should be low enough that it should be a small help to area damage performance but high enough that it's a cool regular occurrence.
-Reduce lightning bolt's recharge/damage/endurance ratio down to a 6 second attack and reduce the animation time (1-1.5).
-Front load ball lightning and short circuit's damage.
-Reduce short circuit's animation time (1-2). Attach a pulsing sleep to its debuff so that enemies affected by it will be randomly slept.
-Reduce tesla cage's animation time (1.5-2) and give it the damage of a standard attack appropriate for its recharge.
-Allow voltaic sentinel to stack and attach some sort of gimmick to it to make it a more attractive and fun power. I like the conductive aura idea, but some measure would have to be taken to deal with the stacking of it on ultra high recharge builds.
-Make all endurance drain in the set guaranteed instead of just 'chance for'. Rebalance end drain values as needed.
-Add upcoming nuke and snipe changes on top of that.

The ultimate goal being to have a difficult to master set with some interesting mechanics, a situational (albeit reliable in that situation) secondary effect, and significant damage.

There is something to remember here: Thunderous Blast will become an every spawn no crash power. It will aid immensely in draining. As well as taking more than half the enemy's end, it will floor their recovery long enough to kill them in most cases.

As for how long it takes for the end drain to completely drain enemies now, it varies greatly on secondary. My first character was an elec/elec blaster and he's still around. Can drain a spawn quick enough with PS and SC that even my utter lack of defense and resistance won't make me die.

On the other hand, I've seen an elec/cold controller drain an AV in just a bit more time than that.

Yeah honestly, I feel with the nuke change that Electric Blast is going to become more like Dual Pistols in that the T9 becomes a gamechanger. Until you get Hail of Bullets, Dual Pistols is just kind of mediocre. Not that bad, but far from that good either. Hail of Bullets really swings things around and I feel the new thunderous blast is going to do the same thing for Electric Blast. Much more of a key power for the set's main tactic.

Without IOs, it can be ready in half that. With them, its ready every minute, maybe less. Certainly every spawn, for me at least.

This whole post was terrific, Garent. I just want to comment on a few things...

Decided to join in the "Endurance Drain" debate.

Although I like the general idea of Arcana's proposed 'MaxEnd' and 'ENDdiscount' debuffs, there is a HUGE darkside to that solution. What is to stop the Devs from giving this to in-game enemy groups ? :::shiver::: I think that I will pass.

Instead, I would rather see this (not my idea, was suggested long ago for Electric) ; Add -end Recovery to ALL Electrics attacks. Here is the deal, getting a mob to zero endurance is not that hard, as long as you build for it and actually attempt it. As StratoNexus pointed out, 10-14 seconds is not a long time. The payoff is huge, if you can pull it off. Myself personally, would not want that "payoff" changed (read 'broken') in order to get some 'soft-control' of some kind. But KEEPING enemies at Zero End once I get them there, THAT is what I want.

Making drain work is not hard. Making drain work without building for it, or as a side-effect, is not possible. Trying to make it work in both situations is not what we should do, because of its nature. You will just 'break' one person's style to satisfy another's.

How about a solution that addresses Voltaic Sentinel and the whole -end/-rec problem in one shot?

When VS is active all of your powers have their endurance drain properties boosted and gain a minor, stackable (to some limit) -recovery debuff that applies with every new attack. So, just making up a number here, once you hit a boss with 5 attacks he has his recovery completely shut down, and as long as you can continue to chain attacks against him, the -rec will be maintained.

This property cancels on miss, so as soon as you miss, the stacks reset and you have to build it up again. Devs love stacks these days. STACKS!

Alternate solution:

Change Aim into EM boost. Maintains the regular Aim buffs but also turns it into a mini-Power Boost that only effects -end and adds a -rec debuff to all powers whose strength is relative to the amount of damage your power is dealing (exactly the same way Fiery Embrace works with adding extra damage relative to your base damage+buffs).

Hello Neogumbercules,

I like the second thought regarding AIM. That could work. However, both suffer from the same issue of making each power become more mandatory. I would prefer that VS be an optional power, but that is just me.

I think that if they'd swap either Tesla Cage or Voltaic Sentinel for a T3 ranged attack (blaze/cosmic burst/etc.) they'd see a larger population of players making Electric Blasters.

Interesting.

Been playing a E3 for a very long time.

I have always felt, E3 is more of a controller heavy blaster type, with a cost to single target. Plenty of single target power choices to take if you want that.

It will be interesting to see what the changes entail, but probably not a real big effect to me.

None of the power effected are on all of my builds.... Zapp is situational, so on a few builds. My nova, same situation.

Thunder Clap?

Bwahwhahah! No one uses thunderclap!

yeah, a crash free ranged nuked that does -55% END and -100% recovery will dramatically change electric blasts ability to sap effectively.

After reviewing the i24 patch notes, I don't see anything beyond crashless nukes and sniper fastcast that affects Electrical Blast. I thought Voltaic Sentinel was scheduled for an upgrade to offset Electrical Blast's lack of a third blast?

You remember right, and as far as I know, that's still planned for some point in the future.