NecroOmNomNomicon

If you've never played an Elec Blaster before, the powerset changes your primary objective as a Blaster. As an Elec Blaster, your primary objective is to, THROUGH WHATEVER MEANS, survive after your first Short Circuit untill you are able to land your second Short Circuit. If they die in the meantime... great. If they don't, they'll be as good as dead after that Short Circuit lands. Short Circuit debuffs recovery, which is the most important part of a sapper. This means you HAVE TO half and half slot Short Circuit, 2 or 3 slots devoted to endmod to effectively utilize it, and the rest for the damage of the power as an attack.

If you had made an Elec-Elec Blaster, that's a special case because they can chain Short Circuit right into Power Sink, which is a godlike combo especially with a damage/end drain toggle added into their regular end drain attacks. Sapping is gewd.

Back to an Elec-MM...

No matter how many -end powers you have or use, enemies recover their end in "ticks" just like we do, and they will attack you with something every time they get a tick. Only -recovery that pushes their recovery into the negative can make a sapper truly effective. You also have Drain Psyche, but it has a smaller radius and is very difficult to perma, so Short Circuit is your key power... but Drain Psyche will certainly help and stack, letting you kill both Regen and Recovery. Once the enemy has 0 end AND 0 recovery, you are done and can freely AoE in undeniable bliss as your enemies are mercilessly crushed before your godlike power.

(Please note that the nuke: Thunderous Blast is a fully ranged nuke that also has hefty end drain, and can be enhanced to completely drain the target mob of their endurance instantly. With Drain Psyche you can easily attain enough recovery to offset using a nuke, and this power can easily be frankenslotted well enough to kill all minions and luits and sap all bosses immediately)

"How do you survive until Short Circuit recharges?

Lots of ways, though the obvious one and first goal is getting tons of recharge so that the "wait time" is shorter and therefore the enemies have a smaller window of time in which to killify your face. The less obvious way is the way I suggest, using actual mitigation powers.

-Psychic Shockwave can stun

-Repulsion Bomb causes sexy knockdown and can stun

-You can put stun procs in all EndMod powers, they aren't amazing procs but when put into AoEs and stacked with real stuns they become much better. The key one is Ball Lightning, a fast recharging AoE. Put the proc in it like in my build. Feel free to try putting it into Short Circuit too if you want to play with the slotting.


All of the stuns are a low mag 2, but with a single bit of luck, they'll stack into a Mag4 and even a boss will be out of the equation. Repulsion Bomb's knockdown is very good, making it a perfect follow up to your first Short Circuit, or even a fine choice as your first attack period. Some people don't like repulsion bomb for various reasons, one being its bad cast time and recharge time. You can even go for a different mastery if you want to try damage mitigation a different way. Some other good choices are:

Mu Mastery: great proc slotting set
-Endmod Stun Proc in Static Discharge
-Endmod Stun Proc, Immobilize Stun Proc, and PURPLE HOLD PROC in Electrifying Fences, preferably make the last 3 slots more of the purple set for bonuses, or Hamidons if you want more damage.

Soul Mastery: stun toggle gets the job done with no %chances
-Oppressive Gloom, it does drain hp in exchange for the stun but on a /MM you have 167,988,356 regen so it's a non-issue

(There is also always the option to stack Tesla Cage with itself, or with any Epic Pool Hold in order to take single pesky enemies out instantly. Both Soul and Mu will give you the option to take another Hold power.)


Obviously there is a third strategy, other than simply having godlike recharge or tons of offensive mitigation powers. The third strategy is building for tons of Defense/HP (generally S/L) and using either Scorpion Shield or Frozen Armor. The issue with this strategy is a 45% S/L build is typically lighter on recharge, and that increases the critical time until the second Short Circuit, not to mention it leaves you totally helpless against any other damage type. THAT DOESN'T MEAN IGNORE DEFENSE BONUSES if you aren't doing a 45% S/L build, because some defense is always better than none, especially when you factor in that teams often give you some def buffs as well. In the end though, a carefully planned build with good control/mitigation powers is more likely to succeed in a wider range of possible fights, than a build that merely attained soft capped defenses to only one damage type or attack type. If you are dedicated to only fighting S/L enemy groups, then you might not even need to read any of this because with soft capped defense and Drain Psyche regen a Blaster is pretty unstoppable, even without sapping enemies. Either way, you have the tools to succeed.


In conclusion, Elec Blasters are pretty awesome, and building around sapping is a fun way to dominate the game. If you ever wanted a Blaster that can solo incredibly hard content, giving it /MM for Drain Psyche is the first step towards that goal, as the buffs give you incredible survivability, and the debuffs allow you to fight strong foes like AVs and kill their regen and recovery. Since AVs generally have tons of endurance and resistance to -end and -recovery, sapping them by yourself can be pretty difficult without Drain Psyche. If you really just want to solo AVs like a boss, Sonic Blast is probably a better primary, but that's a story for another time...