Possible Thermistor Short/Fried?
A few days ago I had an ABS print fail badly and the hotend got all gunked up with ABS blobs. I headed the tool and then used some needle nose pliers to pull the majority of the ABS off the block. Sadly I wasn't as careful as I should have been, and when I was trying to get some off my pliers hit the thermistor cartridge and there were some pretty good sparks.
Since then I have been trying to print in ABS and PLA. Both are failing miserably. PLA is having major issues with layer adhesion. The prints are brittle and the layers separate when I am pulling the part from the bed. I am also seeing major issues with the first layer. See the picture for what I mean.
I have tried using Live Z Adjust to no avail. I have been trying every setting in Slic3r for the last two days and I am pulling my hair out. I can't get a quality print to save my life. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. 
RE: Possible Thermistor Short/Fried?
The sparks were probably the heater cartridge leads. But the only way to tell if things were damaged is to grab a DMM and start measuring resistances and voltages. It could be mechanical and you are fighting a bent heat break.