Electrical Blast / Mental Manipulation tips pls

I have a Elect/Nrg that I 50'd and fully incarnated. In the end it was not what I wanted. I am trying again, this time with Electrical/Mental. I figure this will give me an extra cone, and an extra PBAoE when I have to fight that way. (I prefer ranged combat) I know I have to joust in for Drain Psyche, but I have actually gotten a lot better at judging when that will faceplant me or not. (I still hate it, but I can do it er mostly successfully now.)

Anyways, the guides are so out of date as to be useless. Any tips for this combo?

I am unclear: you prefer ranged combat, and you hate jousting in, yet you are choosing a combo that gets the most out of jousting in and using close combat. (3 of your most useful powers are, arguably, Short Circuit, Psychic Shockwave, and Drain Psyche.) It just seems counter-intuitive to me, since there are plenty of other combinations (especially with the changes coming in i24) that can and will out-do this combo at ranged combat.

That all being said, I am not one to talk, since I tend to favor concept over functionality. So, tips:

Your early game will be tough, but you'll jump to the other side of the spectrum by the time you hit the 40s. Early on, you don't have a lot of mitigation from either set, save for Subdue and Tesla Cage at lvl 18. I would take and slot up your T1 and T2 blasts immediately, and do the same with Ball Lightning and Psychic Scream. Those 4, plus Subdue for problem targets, will probably be your main attacks into the 20s, unless you want to dip into your melee abilities. I would also recommend taking Combat Jumping or Hover early on to give you some additional maneuverability/defense.

This could be an absolutely deadly combo by the 40s, after i24, since you can open a mob with Thunderous Blast, jump in while they are writhing and fire off Psychic Shockwave, and anything that isn't dead should be damn close enough that they can pick them off one by one.

All in all, I'd say you are best off hopping in and out of melee range with this combination, and abusing your Primary attacks to make sure that anything that gets in close range won't last much longer.

Yep, sounds like you have the gist of it!

If you are looking for good ranged blaster, I strongly suggest giving Energy Blast or Ice Blast a try.

Energy Blast, with its inherent knockback, really does a nice job of keeping most enemies off of you. You even get a 70ft. ST blast whose purpose is exactly that: send the enemy flying in the opposite direction. (Power Push is an absolute joy for anyone trying to keep enemies out of melee range.) Then, again, if you do get overwhelmed, once i24 hits, you just hit Nova, which will scatter anything it doesn't kill, and then keep on shooting.

Ice Blast's strength is it's holds. At level 26, you can hold a boss by stacking Bitter Freeze Ray and Freeze Ray. Not to mention, with most of your attacks carrying a -SPD component, the enemies take a longer time to get to you. Ice Storm gives you a different kind of mitigation, since the NPCs will want to run out of it (but are slowed at the same time), and Blizzard will do the same thing, just hit harder.

Those would be my top two for good stay-away-from-me power sets.