FourSpeed

I'll offer a few thoughts here:

I always plan to slot my attacks with Acc/Dmg at 60/90% minimums.

To do that efficiently, Frankenslotting is, hands-down, the best way to achieve
it.

Bear in mind that an L25 Acc/Dmg IO gives a 20% improvement to each category,
so 2 of those (1 each from different sets) gives 40% to both Acc and Dmg which
clearly outperforms a +3 Acc SO and Dmg SO in the same slots, and they
exemplar nicely too.

The next thing to think about is additional improvements. In 5 slots, with
SO's or Common IO's, you can hit my 60/90 targets easily. However, that's
all you can get (ie. 2 Acc, 3 Dmg = 66/99 not counting ED in those 5 slots)

Frankenslotting, however, will allow you to meet the 60/90 targets, and
still add an SO's worth, or more (depending on what, exactly, you slot) of
Rch and/or Erdx, both of which have a big effect on DPS & DPE, and
consequently, overall performance.

Thirdly, and this is important for three reasons, is global ToHit. So, adding
a Kismet 6%, and global Acc bonuses from set slotting, can be quite helpful
when you start fighting the +2 mobs, AV's, GM's with better defenses, or
add some help against debuffs, or boost your Vet attacks (SoMu, Nemmie
etc) to the soft Acc cap. That latter, is easily dismissed, by most, but I
can tell you that it is quite effective for a SS/WP Brute during the rage
crash.

Finally, I'm going to differ from the Goddess of Math's approach a bit, but
it may just be a case of "6 of one", "half dozen of the other", and say I
prioritize Acc slotting over Dmg slotting at early levels where the shinies
are at less than SO strength. I want to get to the Acc softcap of 95% as
quickly as possible. Firstly, because extra damage does no good if you
whiff on the attack. Secondly as she mentions, it matters in terms of the
streakbreaker, and thirdly, it's better on the endurance picture (although,
with inherent stamina, that is less of a concern these days).

So, early on, I'm always trying to get at least an SO worth of Acc soonest
(3 L10 Acc, IO's or 2 L15 Acc IOs) before switching to my typical 60/90
Frankenslotting.

Maybe that's overkill, but I really, really hate to miss more than the math insists on.


Regards,
4

PS> Does anyone PvP anymore? If you do, you want more Acc there also
as most players have much better defense than any PvE critters.

My "problem child" toon is my L40-ish (43, I think?) Rad/Elec Defender.

I'm not sure if I'm at the hate stage yet, but I've definitely thought about
sending him to the bit bucket more than once.

For me, the issue with him is:

He's either Impressively Awesome ... or ... He's Dead.

There is absolutely zero in-between with him... It's Awesome or Dead...

For the most part, it doesn't matter what the targets are or what they con
(he's smacked reds around, and got killed by blues). It's really all about
whether he gets de-toggled or not...

If not, everything melts - it truly is awesome.
If so, he's insta-toast, and usually dead before I can do anything about it.

It drives me up the friggin' wall...

Ok, maybe I am at the Hate stage...

It's a real crapshoot whether this guy will live to see L50 or whether he'll
become an IO donor for a toon that doesn't make me pull my hair out...


Regards,
4

I don't have the Alpha actually slotted on my Stalker yet, but it is on my
Brute (Spiritual)...

It can be difficult to tell - especially if your attributes are already near the
ED cap. I wasn't able to see anything meaningful in Combat Attributes.

The way I finally did tell is: unslot the Alpha, and then on your Enhancement
screen, rather than in Combat Attributes, look at your powers and see what
the actual recharge values are listed for each power, and then check them
again after you re-slot the Alpha boost.

For my Brute, the change ranges anywhere from ~.5 sec (for tier 1 attack)
to 20+ seconds for Rage. Not huge, but still helpful.


Regards,
4

As a sapper with both an E3 Blaster, and a Rad/Elec Defender, I think that
sapping, while effective, it isn't the easiest, or most effective strategy.

Both Dark and Rad, can floor Acc/To-Hit easier and more safely (typically)
than a sapper can do his thing.

That said, you work with what you have.

For Mike, a couple other powers will help finish what you began with Short
Circuit and Power sink. Ball Lightning, Tesla Cage, and Lightning Field are
all pretty good in this regard.

Edit: I missed that your 1 star guy was EN - My bad. (thought you meant
Elec/Elec, which is definitely better than 1 star... as you noted)

Also, SC can have enough recharge to fire off every 10-12 seconds, so once
they are drained, I can keep them there with that and BL.

As for EB's, I was able to drain all of them on the Incarnate arc, and it was
a very effective strategy for him. In several of those cases, I was then
able to chain hold them (he has 3 holds) which made those fights much
more manageable. As for AV's and GM's though, you can pretty much
forget it - it's not happening there without a bunch of additional help.


Regards,
4

Below L45, Purple wins for sure (Incarnate benefits shut off).

At L45+, keeping a few simple principles in mind, namely:

1> Incarnate Bonuses behave like enhancements (ie. affect a power as
if you could slot extra benefit into it) rather than global benefits.

2> They still get hit by ED in the sense that the more you have of a given
attribute, the less an Incarnate will help that attribute.

3> Even cheap/simple frankenslotting outperforms SOs, both in maxing
core attributes, and providing global bonuses. Premium frankenslotting
can approach (or even surpass in some cases) some purple slotting.

These are the results I would expect:

Incarnate + SO: Purples would significantly outperform this combo. SOs are
the red-headed stepchild for performance. Yes, the PvE content is
balanced for them, but all that means is you can acceptably handle that
content -- comparatively they're well behind the set performance capability.

Additionally, Incarnates, at most, will only benefit 2 attributes, whereas
Purple sets can be much more flexible and power specific.

Incarnate + Set: This one is pretty gray, probably too close to call, on
performance... Most of the bonuses you can get on purples are also
available on sets, and since they aren't generally unique, Rule of 5 can
beat a purple. In both cases, I'd expect core attributes to be (practically)
maxxed, so that's pretty close too. The Incarnate can go above ED by
1/6 (16.7%) or more, so in that benefit, at least, the Incarnate slot either
catches up, or possibly surpasses slightly the purple. Pretty much a wash,
I'd guess.

One wrinkle. In Incarnate TF's, purples only would lose across the board.
The penalties for not having the Alpha slot equipped are extremely severe.

In terms of performance/cost though? The Incarnate + Set is a slam dunk
winner, but that's a different comparison.


Regards,
4

Pretty @^#$@#$ rare as far as I can tell -- to the best of my recollection,
I've received no more than 2 or 3 (on all my toons combined)...

Given the amount of luck you used up getting two in quick succession, I'd
be real careful with traffic lights, heavy machinery, pointy objects, storms,
or de-orbiting debris (like toilet seats) from Russian spacecraft...


Oh, and gratz!


Regards,
4

The two that I think are the most unappreciated and under-utilized are
Air Superiority and Caltrops.

If I make a melee character - any melee character, they get Air Superiority.

It *is* that good.

Caltrops is arguably one of the best ambush mitigators in the game.

Got some inbound? Drop these little gems, and you're golden. They're also
quite nice in conjunction with Tp Foe (another pick for Underrated) for
splitting groups.

Even with the 50% chance of aggro, the guy I ported is dead before the
others arrive, and when they do, they spend their time hopping around
in the trops while I pick them off...


Regards,
4

I did it on an E3 Blaster...

I took out all the ambushes first along with the guys in the adjacent room to
the portals.

I then took out the near portals with snipe, in turn, dealing with the 3 or 4
Conscripts that aggro'd when their portal disappeared each time.

After the near side is dealt with, you can single pull the EB's back into the
adjacent room one at a time.

I use Lucks in pairs (keeping an eye on them so I always have a couple up)

If your attacks are well slotted, you should have enough dmg to take them
down singly (If Holtz hits you with the Curse, wait it out before starting
with Honoree).

In terms of temps - Shivans, HVAS, are overkill, so they'll definitely work.
Envenomed Dagger is a good thing to knock down the regen, and Recovery
Serum and Medpacks can be helpful if you're low on inspies.

The one thing that did surprise me on my E3 was that I couldn't hold
Honoree (even with 3 holds), and while I kept his End drained, he'd still
get off an attack now and then...

Still, it turned to be fairly straightforward for him to defeat those guys.


Regards,
4

rofl - that is all...

Well, you know, there's only a small handful of finite choices here...

1> Leave 'em be
2> Use a few on toons, but 1700? ... lol - you won't have enough toons...
3> Give em away
4> Sell em
5> Delete em


Pick one, or more... Case closed...

4

If you trickle them out into the market over the next few weeks, you're
probably looking at ~700 Million inf in profit or so....

Seems simple to me: sell


Regards,
4

Installed it from the .exe (I keep the versions separate - old unix habit )

Anyway, it works great, and I'd like to echo my gratitude for the work
you guys are doing to provide the community with this program.

I especially want to applaud the reinstatement of the mouseover popups
on powers and enhancements -- I didn't realize how incredibly useful those
are until 1.810 stopped doing them.

If you're soliciting end-user opinion, count me as another who'd like to see
the various bonus powers click selectable for visibility (if you have/want
them shown), and not displayed by default otherwise (the 2-column version
is quite unreadable even when set to same size as the old versions).


Once again, thanks for the awesome work, guys.


Regards,
4

It's on the map with an "AE" marking.


4

It's currently hit or miss for me too...

I get one of 3 results:

A> it actually works and puts me at the character screen

B> it tells me I'm already logged in, and I have to click the login button again.

C> it tells me I have to re-enter my password, so I have a blank password
field, which I have to fill-in again, and then click login.


As often happens with some of these teething problems -- Good Idea,
Crappy Implementation & Insufficient Testing.

Let's hope they can get it right, soon.

Which raises the question:

What's the Over/Under on the Game Devs getting that feature fixed
sooner than the Forum Devs fix the recurring logout issue???


Cheers,
4

The drop rate seems identical to me...

I haven't got any in the past couple days, which is the same result as last week...


Cheers,
4


PS> As others have mentioned, if that isn't just a case of "RNG is random",
it may be part of the same issue that is breaking PvP drops, or it might be
worth re-mining the rates if they continue.