Electric Blast suggestion

One of the biggest complaints about Electric Blast is that it has no third single target blast. Most of the proposed fixes involve removing Voltaic Sentinel or Zapp to make room for one, or other similar cottage rule breaking ideas.

Instead of trying to make drastic changes, why not just tweak one of the existing powers?

Boost the damage on Tesla Cage, to be similar to other third blasts.

Of course, things like endurance and recharge would likely have to be adjusted to keep it balanced, but since the Powers guys are working on blast sets right now, it's the perfect time to get an extra adjustment thrown in.

I think it may be getting better. I've heard it rumored at least for Defenders you will be able to fire very quick snipes (if you have enough +to hit) and that Nukes are going to become crashless.

If both of these are right then, the Snipe could move into the chain and help drastically to improve Electric.

The snipe can only be fired instantly if your ToHit is 22% or higher. That's impossible to maintain solo for any Blaster except /Devices, which means the snipe can't be worked into the attack chain for anything other than /Devices (for Blasters).

On top of that, the Snipe's endurance cost isn't changing, so firing the Snipe frequently will create endurance issues for all but the most optimized builds.

And every blast set (except those without Snipes) will be getting the same benefit added, so Electric will still be left behind.

It was mentioned that Voltaic Sentinel is being tweaked to make it more like a tier 3 blast.

What exactly that is going to entail was not mentioned.

Opinion / suggestion. Not a demand. Know the difference

I've always wanted an aoe (Static Discharge, Ball Lightning or Lighting Field) for Voltaic Sentinel. At they very east Short Circuit when VS finally crashed.

I'll take any buffs VS can get. Right now, I'm using VS as a minor build up for the Defiance +20 percent damage.

I don't take VS because I find it nearly useless. It has to be summoned too frequently, and at BEST can fire 10 shots of my T1 blast. But I don't want it replaced. I want it fixed, so that it's useful. I know asking for a Gun Drone is too much, because it's a much lower level power, but I want it to be something better than a the Clockwork Connection power Penny Yin gives you.

I think buffing Tesla Cage is a fair place for improvement - look at Ice Blast. It gets the standard T1 and T2 blasts, a strong third ST blast (Bitter Ice Blast), a ST hold roughly equal to Tesla Cage (Freeze Ray) AND a ST hold roughly equal to what I'm suggesting Tesla Cage gets changed to (Bitter Freeze Ray).

So, why not buff BOTH Voltaic Sentinel AND Tesla Cage - two powers that aren't taken that often (in my experience, at least)? But I didn't make this thread about VS - I made it about TC, because I think that this change would be enough to push Electric Blast above the "doesn't suck" threshold.

Point:

If DPS were the only thing that made a set worth playing, only Fire blasters would ever have existed in the first place.

This may surprise some people, but many people who play and enjoy Electric Blast simply do not care at all that their power set is viewed as bad or underperforming by people on the forums.

My wife is a good example of that. Her main is an E3 blaster, and she does not care in the slightest that you think her character is weak.

I'd like Tesla to be an actual attack.. though that goes for all the low damage mez effects to being actual attacks.

For VS I'd like it to decide what it wants to be..
If its a quasi pet then it needs to have its mitigation and damage potential to be drastically increased since all the argo gets dumped on the player that uses the power. This could be done in a number of ways, don't care how.

If it becomes an actual pet... then treat it like such and have it deal with its own argo as every other pet in the game does. I don't care if its like Phant Armor and invulnerable, Siggy and unhealable, or like any of the other pets.

Currently its like having the worst of both worlds. It doesn't offer mitigation, it dumps all the argo (and uncontrollable argo at that) onto the hero/villain using the power, and on top of that it does poor single target damage. It needs to decide if it wants to be a quasi pet like (tornado, rain of fire, lightning storm) or an actual pet like (siggy, stoney, fluffy).