Blaster Changes Don't Fix Electric


Adeon Hawkwood

 

Posted

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Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
I have nothing against powersets being "improved". On the other hand if you can have over 7 years of genuine good fun with something like this (as I have) then I would have to argue that your definition of "under-performance" or being "punished" for a selection is very subjective at best.

This game is a system that will naturally provide some powersets that are going to be qualitatively better than others. If they were all equally perfect then they would all be equally identical and boring. For what it's worth to you I have never had any problem soloing or teaming with my particular alt in this case. Once again I'll just say if you don't like Electric Blast and/or don't understand how to make it work then don't play it, but don't blindly believe it needs massive changes just because it doesn't suit YOUR playstyle.
My elec/elec blaster lives on the test server... at least it was there the last time I logged in on it. Beta server gets nuked periodically so i dont know if it is there or not.

I deleted my elec/elec off of live during/after ED when it could not sap a spawn. I tried every option I could think of on respecs to make it a fun sapper. When elec was buffed, however long ago that was, it still did not have that "cool" feel to it.

I love electrical powers. The graphics are great. My elec/sonic controller is fun and can sap an entire spawn quickly. It can cause a spawn to flop around with Jolting Chain, which is great. i enjoy it as an electric set. i also enjoy my elec/energy scrapper. Both have a "feel" that I enjoy.



I am simple and my request for elec is to add a further increase to the energy drain of the set and especially short circuit with an added AoE KD (NOT KB)

Adding KD to Ball Lighting and Lightning Bolt would be cool too I think.

After watching various TASER videos on youtube most of them have one thing in common... who ever gets zapped... gets knocked down.

Adding damage to Tesla Cage is also very important.

for voltaic sentinel, is it possible to have it only attack your target? A longer duration would be good too. One minute goes by fast.


YMMV---IMO
Ice Ember

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Lothic View Post
I have nothing against powersets being "improved". On the other hand if you can have over 7 years of genuine good fun with something like this (as I have) then I would have to argue that your definition of "under-performance" or being "punished" for a selection is very subjective at best.
I will be the second person to quote this, so that you can hear another side of the "dilemna".

Sometimes it is not just about power, its personal tastes. I LOVE the way Electric Blasts look, sound and animate. There are other sets that I feel just as strongly about like Martial Arts and Energy Blast. It would not matter if they were the absolute worst sets, which in the case of Electric Blast could be argued by some, I would still play them. But...

As a new player, I formed these attractions. But as a veteran, I can see how they stack up against other sets after trying OTHER sets. You see, If I only ever played Electric blast and never played other powersets, I would not have a frame of reference.

So then ask yourself, if your Favorite powerset (the one you loved everything about playing), was also deficient in some way which you have personally experienced while exploring other powersets, wouldnt you be asking for improvements ?

Just my 2 inf


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Posted

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Originally Posted by Edana View Post
I'm not sure this would help that much. VS seems to love staying slightly behind you and not joining in when you move on to a new spawn; yet making it more aggressive would just increase the problems caused by an uncontrollable aggro magnet.
The duration change is a QoL feature more than anything else. Having to constantly recast this power is, frankly, annoying. Perma pets generally last for 1000 seconds, though they can be killed. If they can make it work with their new weird tech, I'd say it should be a toggle (that does not suppress when mezzed) like Dimension Shift and Lifegiving Spores in Nature Affinity, that way people wouldn't have to resummon it all the time, have the ability to dismiss it and resummon it at will, and still get the ability to have it zap things while you are mezzed.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rakeeb View Post
Where did you see that it was a Top 5 set, what led anyone to say that?
Electrical Blast was indisputably one of the top 5 blaster primaries and defender secondaries

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at launch.

Currently, by my count, it's 8th out of 12, 9th out of 13 if you count Water Blast. YMMV. Still basically in the middle of the pack. But I'm sure there'll be a shakeup from recent and forthcoming changes. I'll keep an open mind about it.


 

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Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent View Post
Electrical Blast was indisputably one of the top 5 blaster primaries and defender secondaries
He he.

Unless I misremember, I seem to recall being in the mid-teens on my Kin/Elec defender and draining entire even con and +1 spawns of all their endurance with one shot of Short Circuit. That may be nostalgic, rose-colored memory, rather than accurate one.


Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.

 

Posted

With 5-6 end drain enhancements in it, I can see it happening.


 

Posted

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Originally Posted by Garent View Post
With 5-6 end drain enhancements in it, I can see it happening.
Totally. -35% with 6 end drain versus +1s is -94.5% endurance. That's basically a full drain, given the -Recovery and mob usage of end (especially since that was back before enemy endurance was adjusted based on mob rank).


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Circuit_Boy
The fact is that Electric Blast's single-target, once you include Voltaic Sentinel and Zapp in the mix, is on par with Energy Blast's single target, with Electric Blast being very slightly weaker.
This is completely true. Also, Energy Blast is one of the poorest DPS sets in the game.


 

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Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
He he.

Unless I misremember, I seem to recall being in the mid-teens on my Kin/Elec defender and draining entire even con and +1 spawns of all their endurance with one shot of Short Circuit. That may be nostalgic, rose-colored memory, rather than accurate one.
I seem to remember that being possible as well - basically Defenders drained Endurance better than Blasters - but when I look at the raw production numbers, that doesn't seem to be the case. Both sets have a base 35% Endurance Drain on Short Circuit. It makes me wonder if it was a stealth change some time ago.

I know that before ED it wasn't even a concern, but that is WAY back.


 

Posted

I think I suggested this in another blaster thread..

What about giving Tesla Cage the dark blast treatment, and make it a high damage dot hold, like abyssal gaze? That would give it almost a 3 blast attack chain.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by MisterD View Post
I think I suggested this in another blaster thread..

What about giving Tesla Cage the dark blast treatment, and make it a high damage dot hold, like abyssal gaze? That would give it almost a 3 blast attack chain.
Thought about it. The animation time is so long that it would need to hit very, very hard in that period to make it worth it. ArcanaTime cast time is 2.376 so it'd need to do something along the lines of 170 base damage to make it worthwhile in a rotation, and hitting as hard as our Snipe is probably right out in the eyes of the developers.

There is a lot of reluctance in the development community to give us a typical ranged attack that has a longer recharge than 10 seconds. Bitter Ice Blast is the only one that has a significantly longer recharge (12), and by itself it powered the set through some hard times as a high-damage single target set. Notably, a similar reluctance doesn't exist for Scrappers or Brutes - they've got plenty of 12, 15, even 20 second recharge time powers. If you want to know if a set is good, look at the animation times and recharge times, and if they're low and high respectively you know you've got a winner.


 

Posted

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Originally Posted by Rakeeb View Post
Both sets have a base 35% Endurance Drain on Short Circuit. It makes me wonder if it was a stealth change some time ago.
End drain has undergone a fair number of changes.

I am pretty sure that in the beginning, blasters drained more than defenders, although it is possible they drained the same amount. Way back then most, if not all, players had never heard of AT mods, and I remember the argument often went, "If it is a primary power, then it will do its thing better than if it was a secondary power."

Then, in Issue 4, defender end drain was buffed to be better than blasters (and controllers were buffed as well, though back then they did not have a lot of end draining powers), because "defenders should be better at secondary effects." In Issue 6 they added the give end back ability to many Electric powers.

The big change came in Issue 7 in response to the change where higher ranked critters had more endurance. All end drain powers became a percentage of target's end, rather than a static value. I am thinking this may be when they normalized blaster end drain to be equal to defenders. I do remember it was a known and purposeful change though, it was not stealthed in (although the patch notes for I7 do not include it and I stopped searching after 2007).

There are some minor changes after I7, (and some of those lead me to believe I7 is when blaster values became the same as defenders), but mostly just error fixes.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rakeeb View Post
If you want to know if a set is good, look at the animation times and recharge times, and if they're low and high respectively you know you've got a winner.
Mmmm. Widows. So much pain.

It is amusing that many blast sets have a power that recharges in 20 seconds, but they mostly deal token damage. I was honestly surprised when Dark's ranged mez had reasonable (if still low for its recharge) damage added.


Why Blasters? Empathy Sucks.
So, you want to be Mental?
What the hell? Let's buff defenders.
Tactics are for those who do not have a big enough hammer. Wisdom is knowing how big your hammer is.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by StratoNexus View Post
It is amusing that many blast sets have a power that recharges in 20 seconds, but they mostly deal token damage. I was honestly surprised when Dark's ranged mez had reasonable (if still low for its recharge) damage added.
They're completely ridiculous with Doublehit, though.


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Posted

Quote:
The big change came in Issue 7 in response to the change where higher ranked critters had more endurance.
The explicit design goal was that critter endurance recovery should pretty much always be greater than critter endurance usage. The implications of this design goal for player endurance drain powers have never, in my opinion, been taken seriously.

Under this design, if you're not stopping recovery somehow, your end drain boat is sinking, and a 10% or 25% bigger bucket won't fix your problem.

But the devs (and many players) seem to be looking at just damage right now, so I don't expect anything about endurance drain to change in the near future.

The most frustrating part of improving weak sets is that the devs know which sets they are, and they have the means to improve the sets. How do we know? Because of all the critters that are blessed with NPChood and have uberized versions of Dual Pistol blasts, Elec blasts, etc. Make all our elec blasts a non-random, guaranteed recovery debuff, like the uberized elec blasts critters get, and endurance drain becomes much more useful again.


 

Posted

I skimmed through most of this thread, it's a lot of the same old arguments. Clearly, as these arguments have been brought up for issue release after issue release, there is an underlying problem, despite elec blast's strongest supporters claims of uber l33tness.

I post this in most of the "fix elec blast" threads.

How to fix it:

There are 2 major offenders, and one minor one in electrical blast when it comes to performance. They are:
Tesla cage and VS as major
Short Circuit as minor

First, Short Circuit- the power is simply too long an animation for the results. I am sure it is penalized mostly for it's endo drain ability, which is OK, but when combined with the mediocrity of the rest of the set, it becomes a problem.
Fix: shorten the animation, but only just a little. Clipping too much time would probably make a new animation needed, and the current one is too cool to replace. Then, front load a big chunk of the dmg, with the remainder given in 2-3 rapid tics.

Secondly, the two major offenders.
-Tesla Cage: this power was probably seen as balanced back in yesteryear when considering it was in a set that could also sap endo. It is not balanced anymore, not within the set nor against other sets with holds. This power should be given damage to make it function like Abyssal gaze. There is no reason not to.
- VS: First- avatar FAIL. Please give VS a new interesting avatar. As for the rest- this guy should work out in theory, but it doesnt in practice. VS should be given a longer duration, even at a higher endo cost if need be. VS should gain more ability- lightning field for one, and i would give it Tesla Cage. Not the new improved damaging tesla cage- but the current one with a lower mag hold, like a mag 1 hold. This does two things: it adds minor aoe dmg to the set and increases VS dmg potential, and secondly it adds some very soft control to the set as random minion holds. Most importantly: IF the player pays attention, they could then use their own Tesla Cage on the same target as VS to increase the mag of the hold. A new non-button mash mechanic/trick up the sleeve for the set.

These things would do wonders for the set. Using the defensive power in the set(Tesla Cage) would not hurt your DPS output(comparitively) and VS would become less annoying and potent enough to actually cover for the loss of the tier 3 blast.


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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent View Post
The explicit design goal was that critter endurance recovery should pretty much always be greater than critter endurance usage. The implications of this design goal for player endurance drain powers have never, in my opinion, been taken seriously.
Critter power creep has resulted in many of the recent enemy groups being much more end hungry as they put out more damage. Endurance drain begins having a more noticeable impact in this situation, even if you don't have -recovery to back it up. It's kind of an odd balance situation where endurance drain is actually scaling positively with critter strength.


 

Posted

I've played and love electric blast for awhile, but it does have its issues. As awesome as short circuit is as a debuff, I agree it could use some love in the attack side. Frontloading damage would indeed help.

Voltaic sentinel is hard to use. Game responsiveness has gone down, so placed summons sometimes don't work correctly...and the summon takes far too long to work easily in combat, while the duration isn't good for the pre-combat mode. While many have been suggesting it go to the "more permanent pet" mode, I'd rather it function like it does now, but taking a cue from dark control's haunts...a targeted summon, though giving it a faster summon cast, same cast as a blast. This way it could be summoned quickly in combat without any delays. I would LOVE for this to also be targetable by foes, even if that means it can die faster. This would give it a dual use...damage or a quick distraction to make using the PBAoE short circuit safer.

I also agree with tesla cage getting damage. Ice blast gets damage in its hold, why not give tesla the same? It could be a damage over time if they were worried about too much bang in the set, but this would give the power a better use against tough, mez resistant foes as well.


 

Posted

One permanent volty would be cool, but as far as I can tell, permanency and summoning limits in this game are more appropriate for targetable pets that can tank for you.

In my mind, Volty has more in common with things like Rain of Fire. You're allowed to Rain of Fire, Burnout, Rain of Fire, because it's basically the same advantage as Fire Ball, Burnout, Fire Ball (just spread out over time).

Similarly, the first (and, after seeing how it goes, possibly only) fix I'd like to see to Volty is let us have multiples. Volty, Burnout, Volty is basically the same advantage as InstaZapp, Burnout, InstaZapp (just spread out over time).

This means electric blasters/corruptors/defenders could easily be running around with two or three voltaic sentinels at all times. Would that fix the electric blast set as a whole? Probably not. Would it increase the set's fun or cool factor? I think so, as long as Volty's long summon animation time isn't too much of a party pooper (at 3.1 seconds, that's a serious possibility). And from the devs' point of view, it's an extremely easy change.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Rigel_Kent View Post
This means electric blasters/corruptors/defenders could easily be running around with two or three voltaic sentinels at all times. Would that fix the electric blast set as a whole? Probably not.
I've actually run the numbers on this specific case and I can say that it doesn't fix things. Even though its DPA is so high, being on a 60 second recharge means that even at the recharge cap it's being used too infrequently in an attack chain to significantly boost its damage. Its recharge would have to be reduced as well.


 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Garent View Post
Critter power creep has resulted in many of the recent enemy groups being much more end hungry as they put out more damage. Endurance drain begins having a more noticeable impact in this situation, even if you don't have -recovery to back it up. It's kind of an odd balance situation where endurance drain is actually scaling positively with critter strength.
Its actually intentional, albeit indirectly so.


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Posted

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Originally Posted by Arcanaville View Post
Its actually intentional, albeit indirectly so.
[Citation Needed]


 

Posted

The advantage of Electricity Blast (ELB) has always been its versatility, and I don't think that should change. But the truth is that Endurance Drain -- and the powers in the set that favor it -- has lost a lot of its power and utility.

Put simply, even in the low-level game, fights don't last all that long anymore. And even when they do, the potency of End Drain has dropped dramatically, requiring multiple hits to get the old results. So even if you have Short Circuit and Power Sink, the utility of using them has greatly diminished.

And balancing the set around the use of Voltaic Sentinel -- a "Love It or Hate It" power that many ELB players skip -- doesn't help, either.

Also, many of the suggestions would appear to require a lot of work on the part of the developers, in some cases an amount of work that seems prohibitive.

With all that in mind, I would...

* Balance Recharge Times. This is something that should be done across all Blaster sets. I don't mind if ELB does significantly less damage than Fire or whatever else, because you can explain that away thematically. Setting something on fire does kinda seem like it hurts more than zapping someone with a defibrillator.

But what you CAN'T explain away is why a Fire Blaster's Tier 1 and 2 blasts fire in half the time. 2 and 4 seconds versus 4 and 8? That's insane. Getting more attacks overall AND having the most-used ones recharge twice as fast is wacky.

Again, I'm not asking for more damage and I don't need Charged Bolts and Lightning Bolt to recharge in 2 and 4 seconds, respectively. But 3 and 6 would be nice. ELB's attack chain is piecemeal at best. If you must crank the DMG down a bit for balance, fine. But the attack chain is very bad for low-level ELB builds as-is.

* Overhaul Short Circuit. Again, the utility of this power has diminished tremendously over the years, and re-jiggering the way End Drain works sounds like a big job. Given ELB's troublesome attack chain, why not change this to a single-target, 80ft blast? Hear me out...

Make it like Dehydrate in Water Blast. You're siphoning the electricity/energy out of your opponent, causing moderate damage in 4 ticks while also receiving a benefit of some sort over those 4 ticks. Dehydrate's heal is a game-changer, because not only is it a great attack, but it dramatically increases your survivability. And since you're an Electric guy absorbing electricity, a heal would make sense (though it could be endurance, or you could lose the benefit altogether, keep the Tier 2 damage, and make it a more powerful single-target end drain).

I like the idea of a heal because of the survivability, but the other ideas work well, too. Either way, you can keep the name of the power the same because it still fits, and the animation could still be cool (like the first half of the Thunderous Blast animation, before the BOOM).

This would fix the ELB attack chain problem, with the first 3 blasts, including this one, recharging in 3/6/10 or 3/7/8 like Water Blast.

I was once a huge, HUGE fan of Short Circuit, but it's not nearly the power it was. I'll miss it, but something more akin to Dehydrate is a better fit for today's faster-paced CoH.

* Speed Up Tesla Cage & Increase Range. I've been out of the game a while until very recently, so if the animation has already been decreased, ignore this. But definitely increase the range to 80ft like Shocking Bolt. Adding some damage like many have mentioned here would be great, too (especially if the Short Circuit revamp is shot down), but a faster animation would smooth it out quite a bit.

* Reconsider the Secondary Effect. If End Drain is going to remain a broken secondary effect for ELB, maybe just dial up the frequency of the mini-hold that sometimes occurs in the wake of an electric blast -- that quick couple seconds where a target stands there shaking -- a bit.


Basically just tweaking a couple recharge/animation times & overhauling Short Circuit would go a long way toward fixing the set as a whole, in my opinion. I like a lot of the other ideas mentioned here, but I think finding simple ways to address its shortcomings is more realistic for the devs.


Global @Watchdog

 

Posted

Honestly I'd wait and see how ELB plays now that we'll have a non-crashing nuke. Thunderous Blast was always a decent nuke, especially for sapping, but because the crash was based off of how many enemies it hit it was largely used against single targets. Now that it can be leveraged against whole mobs like it was intended to I think they can become pretty functional sappers again even if you don't take Electrical Manipulation.


 

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Quote:
Originally Posted by Watchdog View Post
But what you CAN'T explain away is why a Fire Blaster's Tier 1 and 2 blasts fire in half the time. 2 and 4 seconds versus 4 and 8? That's insane. Getting more attacks overall AND having the most-used ones recharge twice as fast is wacky.

Again, I'm not asking for more damage and I don't need Charged Bolts and Lightning Bolt to recharge in 2 and 4 seconds, respectively. But 3 and 6 would be nice. ELB's attack chain is piecemeal at best. If you must crank the DMG down a bit for balance, fine. But the attack chain is very bad for low-level ELB builds as-is.
Actually, I CAN explain that away. Recharge values aren't set arbitrarily. There's an equation that connects recharge, damage, and endurance costs. Fire blast's four second recharge time means that it has the exact same endurance cost and base damage (as in before the fire secondary effect of DoT) as charged bolts, another four second recharging attack.

Changing the recharge time of electric blast's first two attacks would, as a consequence, also reduce the endurance cost and damage of those powers.


 

Posted

That's not the point. I know how the numbers work, and I'm fine with all that. The difference is that the pacing of ELB's attack chain is bad and Fire's is not.

Think of it from the perspective of a new player. Without veteran powers, a level 10 Fire Blaster has an array of ranged powers up all the time. More blast powers to choose from AND balanced with faster recharge times so that an attack is always up.

A level 10 Electricity Blaster has his 4-second blast and 8-second blast. Figure in the 16-second AoE and that's a pretty crappy attack chain. And aside from adding enhancements, that chain never really changes. The proposed snipe change -- forcing a glance to see if it's okay to fire it in combat -- isn't really a solution.

No one wants to be running around waiting for attacks to recycle all the time, especially when there are 9 sets where this isn't a problem (or is much less of a problem). It adds to frustration, makes misses worse, and serves no useful purpose whatsoever.

So, like I said, BALANCE the recharge times. If the damage and endurance levels need to be tweaked to accommodate that, fine. But don't have me standing next to another blaster twiddling my thumbs while he's always got attacks up for no reason. This is a game, and that is not fun. And there are other sets that could use this type of attention, too.

This is also part of the reason I advocate turning Short Circuit into an 80ft ST blast. Play Water Blast for a while at low levels. You have a viable, fast, effective attack chain pretty early on. You have attacks to choose from, instead of slower recharges that leave you fewer choices. So not only do you have attacks up, but you can cycle them tactically to be more efficient.

It adds diversity to the gameplay, making it more entertaining.

With Electric Blast, your ranged cycle is so small and slow that you have no choice which to use next -- It's always whichever one recharges first. You have no options in a ranged build because there are only 3 ranged attacks to choose from.

ELB basically forces you to use melee powers like SC and your secondary attacks because the ranged chain is 3 powers that are all the slowest-recharging of their ranks. And I get that the END and DMG are balanced along with those times. I'm saying reconfigure the balance so that the ELB ranged attack chain doesn't suck out loud.


Global @Watchdog