Blaster Changes Don't Fix Electric

Strato:

A 20% damage nerf because you bring "support" to a team is far, far too much because first and foremost you are a blaster. The objective of the Blaster, its primary purpose, is to do damage to enemies and defeat them quickly.

Assault Core Embodiment does not influence the Sentinel because it produces a stacking 75% buff on YOU, the character; this does not translate to your pets in the same manner than a Mastermind using the Assault Core Embodiment does not transfer that 75% buff to his pets. In his case, the Mastermind is better off using Support Embodiment, but that would be quite silly for a Blaster to use. It wouldn't affect the VS anyway.

The idea that a Blaster's utility kicks in after ten seconds or so of pounding on a mob is a horrid idea, because solo that means the Blaster is dead. We simply don't last that long solo. In a team, the enemy group tends to be demolished in 10 seconds. Successful Blast sets, such as Fire, Ice, and Beam Rifle, are successful because they don't have a build-up period where their secondary effect takes hold. Beam Rifle, for instance, achieves its supporting function 1-2 seconds into the combat, and will so do so in an AOE manner in ~3 seconds with Penetrating Ray; Disintegration is well and active at that point. Notably, they don't pay a set cost with the design of their secondary effect; it is to their clear advantage in a damage sense to use it right away and maintain it.

Frankly, I think that should drive a discussion on whether or not Electric Blast can continue to be a relevant Blaster set with a secondary effect that takes substantial time to take hold. Removing it entirely from the Archetype is probably beyond the scope of things that can be done at this point, so a Cottage-Rule-breaking fix is probably the only answer.

So, rather than whine without ammunition I did some math and absolutely amazed myself. With the change to Zapp, assuming Elec / Devices (the other secondaries are just boned now), Electric Blast is honestly better than I'd thought... assuming we can keep the Sentinel on task. As Strato has pointed out above, the little guy has a bad habit of ignoring what you want him to do.

If the Blaster could control its targetting, and it's DPS was raised to a degree (probably 1.5x what it is now - that or allow it to fire more often, re-enable slotting for Recharge Speed to accelerate its little attack), then we might have something.

Let me be very clear, though. Electric Blast is still packing a functionally useless secondary effect. It also has weak in-set AOE; Short Circuit is just bad as an AOE and while Ball Lightning is functional it's nothing special. I'd propose changing Short Circuit entirely to something that matches Jolting Chain in initial design and graphics, but has Short Circuit's functionality with a significant cast time advantage.

An interesting secondary effect replacement might be to allow Electric attacks to build a stack of a debuff called Charged, and a couple of particular attacks (thinking Zapp, Thundering Blast, and maybe Tesla Cage... that's a huge reach tho) will have a chance to "ground" the target, with a little AoE blast effect and minor damage that gets better per stack. But now I'm just coming up with random crap.

sypher_vendetta said

I didn't see anyone else post this up. Apologies if I missed it somewhere.

Voltaic Sentinel- 60s recharge, 3.3 cast, 44.5 damage times 15 attacks is 667.5 damage, 202.3 DPA

It's actually an amazing single target "attack" assuming the fight lasts long enough and there's nothing distracting it. Biggest drawback (aside from the obvious distraction one) is that it can't stack. Having your best attack be on a forced 60 second recharge is really bad. Even if it were capable of stacking, a 30 second recharge with SOs would still be pretty bad. It has a 1.4 accuracy bonus on its attack though, so it would be pretty slot efficient if it didn't cost 26 endurance.

Also, I just wanted to say that I'm very encouraged by Arbiter Hawk's comments about he and Synapse intending to make sure that Electric Blast (and some others) are up to snuff under the new Blaster paradigm, as he said.

He's acknowledged that the lack of a true 3rd ST blast, VS's behavior and numbers and the Endurance Drain secondary effect all have made the set under perform.
So... all those things acknowledged and a commitment to making sure they're in a good place after the changes should mean good things for us Electric Blast lovers.