Work In Progress: Electricity Balance - Updated

overcharge's explosion being chain lightning, and a rail-gun like move

i think weapon mastery should have a little effect to damage over time. at the moment it only buffs burst damage and initial hits.

Has anyone else noticed that when testing your damage against a sparring target that the numbers don't match what actually shows above the target? I managed to pop a critical hit of over 2700 yet the combat log only recorded a critical hit of 1688. That's over 1k less in damage. I only noticed after I got a few crits over 2k and none of it showed in the combat log. The only hits were in the thousands. If our numbers are not accumulating correctly on the scoreboard it could also be a reason why electric's damage is in the lower category.

exactly! happens a lot with polarisation und electrostatic bomb. thx for mentioning that.

I actually noticed that when testing last night. Not sure it's exclusive to Electricity. Should probably put a bug report up on Arkham.

Well, I figured out the problem. It's not the powerset. It has to do with the health of the target. If the sparring target is too low, and doesn't recover before a big hit, you'll see that hit in the bubble, but only the damage the target was capable of taking is in the log. Whenever I've seen disparities like that, I've actually discounted them from testing, but I think that's the issue.

Actually, put Wired in Arc Lightnings place, move Arc Lightning down to Tesla Balls spot, and put Tesla Ball in Wired's spot. That way you have enough power points to still get Wired, all your dots, and the two Iconic dps innates. Arc Lightning is the same power cost as Galvanize as well anyway.

Also don't forget sparring target have a base defense of 1650. T5 mobs and bosses I believe have much higher defense beside hit points, with or without debuffing it's very hard to estimate what your real output is.
On that note I was able to crit for over 2k with shockwave in T5 content......much higher than Voltaic Bolt ever crit for me.

Yeah, the average Shockwave hit with WM is 2k.

Question. Is the only way to be able to put out decent numbers with electric going to be with using WM?

The damaging side will change with WM for sure. There are two ways to damage with Electricity when GU36 launches.

The current way is the Power Mechanic which is Stack Dots and applying power interactions. This version requires a lot of power to be competitive as well as knowing how to clip.

The new way Weapon Mastery by taking advantage of the WM buffs for your Burst or Initial hit moves (Shockwave, Overcharge, and Voltic Bolt) to deal more damage. The drawback to this is you'll have your DoT powers running in the background and not focus on stacking DoTs. This version requires less power and doesn't require clipping (note you can clip out of your DoTs like EC with a consumable or Wired etc).

Also take note that each method would use different mods.

For example.

Power Mechanic can use:

1. Might/Power
2. Might/Health
3. Pure Might or Precision/Might

Weapon Mastery can use:

1. Precision/Power
2. Precision/Health
3. Precision/Might

Good point. I'll look out for that the next time I test it.

Guess I'll have to try out WM when it goes live and compare the two ways. Thanks for the info.

I tested it out last night but this time I was in the watchtower. The sparring targets there seem to have more health than the base ones. Same thing when the health was high enough full damage was credited but when health got low it only credited what health the target had left. It's probably the same thing when it comes to our healing. Burst heals hit but only credited for the amount it takes to fill your team up. I haven't tested it with another power yet but it's likely the same.

I'm guessing that each power will need to find its "sweet spot" when it comes to Prec vs Might for WM. I'm hesitant to go too heavy on Prec with Electric. Any power that does a might proc on weapon damage, IMO should stay more might based. Wired is an odd buff. I would probably stick to a might base but a bit lower than what you would see for Quantum or Fire, but nowhere near Celestial or Rage.

Even if you use short WM combos, you'll be better with at least a precision lean. The combo does more damage than the buffed might cast in most cases. Only reason to not go full precision will be if you hold on to DoTs.

That is a shame. Not sure how true it is but I am seeing alot of people talk about how with Wm there is no need to use powers at all. That WM does crazy damage alone. I hope that is not the case and if it is I hope it gets adjusted. Not sure anyone wants a superhero game that is all hack and slash.

They should have just buffed the regular weapon damage since the point of WM was to balance Might based dps with Prec combo dps but alot of combo dps are still going to use WM and reap alot more benefit from it than a might based power set would. But even buffing the weapon damage would have still helped out the prec based powers more so they should have just added a different mechanic to might based attacks that only powers that can't combo into precision attacks could use. Just an idea.

I still think prec/might in red sockets. When I was running on test, I think I was going about 2.2:1.

I think there is a need for powers. Supercharges are being built a lot faster so I think people can start incorporating them more. A lot of powers still have viable SC abilities and Vacuum Bubble is always an option for flyers. If Megavolt was moved down to 50% SC with no reduction it would be very viable.

But you will still need your DoTs to increase your overall damage per second. If you get knocked on your butt, you still have your E-genesis or E-cute going to keep a burn going. When I played Earth DPS before 1H Focus Blast correction, I just set my Dots then did weapon attacks.

Prec/might, prec/power, prec/health is how I'd go.