Why aren't you playing an Electric character?

Not all electric characters are created equal, of course. But most can sap if built properly. And sapping is incredibly effective once you can do it.

After years of playing other controls, I found electric control to be simply amazing. I didn't even pair it with electric, I have mental for drain psyche - but I sap most of the time with just the electric.

I don't know that the sapping is more effective than ice's confusing fog, but sapping gives you electricity. The biggest annoyance in the game is clockwork, freaks, and others sapping you - but you can be virtually immune to it and do it to them. Even my electric tanker who doesn't really sap loves being immune to others doing it to him.

So why aren't you playing an electric?

Oh! Hi dug. Where you been?

The question for me is not why arent you playing one.. its WHICH one to play.

Allow me to introduce my faction known as

THE ELECTRIC COMPANY

TASER (Tesla Armored Soldier w/ Electric Repulsors) Level 50 Elec/Elec/Elec Blaster

AMPED (Accelerated Magneto Pulse w/Elecrical Discharge) Level 50 Elec/Elec/Mu Dominator)

Shellshock- Level 50 Elec/SS Tank

Rede Furashi (The Red Flash )- Level 50 Elec/Shield Brute

Overload- Level 50 Elec/Psi/Mu Dominator

I also deleted a Level 50 Elec/Kin Corruptor named Gigawatt and a Level 50 Elec/Rad controller named Lockdown ( The doms were much better than both )

Because there is no point in making any new toons. >_>

On a side note, my 2nd character ever on my original account was an elec elec blaster named Lighting Angel. I got all excited that I got the name but found out it was because I typoed "Lightning".

Major herp derp

The only character I managed to make significant Incarnate progress with was my level 50 Electric/Energy Blaster. Her name was "Leapin' Liz" and she was inspired by a picture for a D&D Monster File of Shocker Lizards.

However, her damage often seemed a bit low to me, and she wasn't built to sap.

I also had a small round robot that was Electric Control/FF. His name was AARD-VARC, which was an acronym for something I no longer recall. He was going to be all about sapping from relative safety.

Sapping rarely seemed to be useful, though. Maybe if it included an Endurance Anti-Discount debuff to make powers cost more it might've been a bit better?

Did elec blast evetnually get a t3 blast?

One of my long term goals/projects was Actinic Glare.

AG is a modular, full body, cyborg. The brain case and life support module could be transfered to a wide range of cybernetic chassis, each one purpose built for specific roles.

The goal was to play AG to 50+ as every AT that could support E3 or EE-Mu. I could not bring myself to use Storm Summoning as a replacement for electric support, which left out Fender/Troller/Corr.

Unfortunately, that goal is now, likely, unattainable. And i will have to settle with getting the original AG(Brute) to 50. I might be able to get the blaster there as well.

I agree that sapping is fun and the idea of leaving your enemies too tired to fight back is just as fulfilling as crashing their toggles(talk about debuffs). But I think the enemies cheat. They always had enough juice to continue attacking and I could never tell if their shields went down. I don't think that sapping worked the same for players as it did for mobs.

I've played a number of elec characters.

EM/Elec brute, SS/Elec, TW/Elec Brute, Fire/Elec blaster x2, Mind/Elec Dom, Elec/therm Corr, Storm/Elec defender... I'm probably missing 1 or 2, probably a scrapper. All the ones I listed were fully IO'd, accoladed, etc, the works.


Elec Manipulation is good if you have the build and playstyle to support an extremely offensive melee set on a glass cannon. This isn't a set anyone can just slap on a character and wreck everything like certain other builds can (hi, ss/fire), it is the epitome of high risk, high reward. My fire/elec was probably the squishiest character I ever made but was completely viable due to the obcence ST and AoE dps it was capable of putting out, as well as being one of the best buff recipients in the game.

Elec Armor is fantastic. Elec Armor was good before IOs, Elec Armor was good before they got energize. Elec Armor was good before the entire incarnate content endgame completely revolved around energy damage. At this point Elec Armor is one of the best armor sets in the game, holding a solid middle ground between fire's offense, and dark's over the top survivability.

Elec Assault was pretty good when it came out, being one of the few sources of +tohit for doms along with much better ST damage than Thorns. It's nothing really special though.

Elec Melee has had it's places to shine. Elec/ Stalkers in PvP with the double/triple or whatever critting Thunderstrikes, or the wave of Elec/Shield Scrappers before those got toned down. Other than that though, Elec Melee has always been a poor ST dmg set with aoe that supports doing content at your own speed, but quickly begins to fall behind sets with faster recharging aoe as team pace speeds up.

Then there is elec blast, unarguably the worst blast in the game (come at me). It's occassionally had some impressive uses in pvp, especially on elec/therms (oh lordy, were well played elec/therms hard to beat), on the other hand in PvE it was a complete trash set.

A while ago I played an ice/elec blapper up to 50. While I eventually abandoned the blapper concept, electric manipulation was well-suited to the task. It had some great melee attacks, plus Power Sink to replace the endurance which that character burned through at an enormous rate.

A bit more recently I played an elec/kin tanker up to 50+incarnate. I chose electric armor because I wanted a set with excellent resists, my reasoning being that defense was easier to acquire by other means. The result was a real beast of a tanker, one that could easily tank any task force or trial, without having to contend with the damage or movement penalties found in the stone armor set.

I never really liked sapping though. If I needed damage mitigation or crowd control, it was usually to blunt the enemies' alpha strike or to lock down a bad situation immediately. 'Hard' controls always seemed more effective in typical encounters. And endurance drain ran into the same resist problems that most debuffs had versus AVs and monsters.

Still, it was very feasible to enjoy playing electric characters without getting into sapping.

For me it's the sound effects. When I used to play PnP superhero games, I loved electricity powers. But when I first made an Electric Blaster in CoH, I was underwhelmed by how the powers looked like static electricity instead of lightning bolts, and went "bzzt" instead of "BOOOM".

If the Electric Blast powerset had Lightning Storm's attack sounds and VFX, I'd be all over that.

As for Electric Armor and Electric Melee, I had level 1 characters with those that I hadn't gotten to yet, and now won't be able to get to in time.

I am playing an electric.

My favorite sapper is an Elec/Kin Corr.

Might have to peek back in on my Elec/Elec Dom.

My Elec/Elec Brute got put on hold for other concept toons.

And I was waiting for the i24 changes to Blasters to go back down that route.

Gin and Sonic is a great name and look

Quite possibly the most potent character I've ever created in the game (out of c. 200 or so...) is Luna Faraday, a "weaponized Praetorian Clockwork Home Companion," and an Elec Melee/Ninjitsu Stalker. She's about as close as I ever come to min/max'ing a character: multiple purple sets, T4 in every Incarnate slot, and so forth. Solo'd about a dozen AVs (comparatively easy, I realize, post-Incarnate, but never using Shivans or Warburg nukes...), MSTF badge, and all that. A fully self-buffed Lightening Rod out of Hide is a beautiful, terrible thing to behold...

Have a Kin/Elec defender. Easy street to play, due to sapping, but slow and utterly boring. That's why I never really tried Elec again for quite a while. Got an Elec/Nin stalker though that makes me appreciate stalking and electrifying again. Would keep playing him if the game were to continue, but have too many other characters I like more that are getting all my time when I play until the end of the world.

RagManX