GavinRuneblade

I hate to be the one to break the news, but you can't slot purple sets until you are fully level 50. I dunno why the mechanic is different for them than other level 50 sets, but it is.

Not true. Both Touch of Death and Smashing Haymaker also give S/L defense. They give less than Kinetic Combat (about half) but KC is NOT the only S/L set out there.

Personally, I like to slot Smashing Haymakers while levelling because they are so plentiful and cheap that I don't have the temptation to respec just to pull them out and sell. I can slot over them freely. If you buy them crafted you might not feel that way, but rolling them on your AE tickets, or buying the recipes is really affordable.

Touch of Death is almost always a bad idea, only worth it if you specifically need the extra accuracy and damage it outputs, since you're spending 6 slots instead of 4 and getting only half as much defense out of the extra investment. Usually you're better off going KC and two from another set with good Accuracy pieces and/or a decent proc if you're already over 95% damage enhancement.

Emphasis mine.

Begin baseless speculation:

Now, as I've been lead to understand the incarnates system is sort of looking like new epic pools. In other words more powers and slots. But I dunno if that's just people talking or if that's accurate (at this stage I think no one does though it might be possible to disprove if a Dev formally shot the idea down somewhere).

Adding a new defense toggle to a squishy is competitive with adding set bonuses via IOs in terms of the end result. Do I think it will be this simple? No. I'm guessing the are not going to make it easier for us to add more set bonuses AND more powers with the same scaling that goes on from levels 1-50.

I'm assuming it will be different somehow. But that said, adding a new toggle would allow two ways to get to the softcap: powers and set bonuses.

End baseless speculation.

The key thing is that you only get the set bonus for pieces in that specific power, not in all powers. Also, the proc is not unique so you could put it into your attack, and a second one in taunt to get the full 6-piece bonus from the set. I'm not recommending you do this or do not do this, just saying it is possible.

vendor trash = Salvo and Far Strike instead of Thunderstrike. Or Cleaving Blow instead of Obliteration. Triage instead of Numina's or Doctored Wounds. There are typically 20 to 40 recipes of most of the trash sets for sale for under 5k scattered among various levels.

And yes cheap. I recently bought and crafted a level 24 cleaving blow dam/end for less than 50k total including recipe (509) and salvage (1818 total = 309, 309, 1200) and crafting cost (36,820). That gives me 19.2% dam/19.2% end from character level 21 through 50. Slotting one SO from level 22 through 50, only replaceing it when it expires costs over 240k total, and gives a maximum bonus of 38.3%, an average of 33.3% and sometimes as low as 24% right before it dies. Looks like the Cleaving blow is cheaper, available 1 level sooner, and gives higher bonuses.

But as Siolfir points out, you do gotta blow the time crafting it. I prefer crafting to finding the right store and figuring out the chaos of what icon is the enhancement I want. It takes less time for me to shop and craft than to use a quartermaster.

I do craft random drops I get. But I sell most of them. Generic IO recipes you can buy from any crafting table, you can also spend AE tickets on them. Technically, you can spend merits on them, but please don't.

I've never transferred inf between characters. I once used Fulmens to move influence to infamy so I could buy prestige for my base. I still haven't ever used the email thing except to send an IO to a friend and I sent myself one large inspiration to see how it works.

But I use AE until level 10 because I don't like the "get no drops until 4, then only salvage until 10" mechanic of real missions. That boost typically gets me 20 million before level 10, and provides me with my first few IOs both at the same time.

Still, I think it might be the time thing. Most of my level 30-ishs have to be getting close to 100 hours on them. I'm horridly inefficient at leveling. I have a level 43 whose been around for over two years and I actually play him "a lot". That's less than 1 level every 2 weeks. Plenty of time for orders to fill.

That couldn't be possible and still have it be a dual build. The whole point is to swap around the slots and powers. If you kept the same IOs some/most would be invalid.

But as a player with sever alt-itis, I definitely understand the desire and sympathize with it. What I found as a solution is to sell IOs to people with dual builds. Money makes the pain go away.

Thanks. In that case 5 SO-power enhancements slottable at level 1 are pretty good. Just a shame they're not Acc/Dam since Accuracy is what we need most at that level.

@kheldarn, yes Master was right I was talking about slotting two different ones into the same power. Since they're dual aspect that's the best way to get an apples to apples comparison to DO/SOs: use two slots.

I think the problem is your lack of alt-itis. I have 9 villains under 35 and all of them have more than 90% of their slots filled with IOs. I don't play any single one more than two hours a week and rarely more than once a month. If one gets a great IO they can't use (volley fire drops for a brute) then I craft it and use my base to transfer to my corrupter or dom. And between that and giving them a few weeks for bids to fill before I login next, I've never had any issues.

I imagine that playing the same character and leveling fast like you do, the villain market might not work well enough.

This is even true on weapon sets where it causes redraw. I have air sup on my bs/regen and I exemp down to level 14 all the time, and without air sup it would be extremely frustrating.

Ah, hmm, just tested and it seems you are right. But you can input the powername into chat in brackets like [arachnos soldier.pummel] and have it come up. You can do that for any powerset and power even the ones from enemies.

Depends on the set. The confuse also packs the highest ranged defense bonus in the game (5%). And some of the procs offer things that are unavailable anywhere else (chance to hold in an AoE immobilize is spectacular, chance to knockdown added to aoe dots, etc).

I'm not really as much of an idiot as I appear to be. I'm at least half as intelligent as that.


Wait...

If you slot two of them you'd have
33.3% Dam and 33.3% recharge AND two shots for 10% small damage.

If you were able to slot two level 4 SOs at level 1 you'd at best have
38.33%/38.33%, and +0 SOs are 33.33%.

So these seem to be too powerful for the advertisement as being on par with DOs. They are better than +0 SOs (in the sense of the same total % as a +0 SO with a proc on top).

Edit or did I miss-read and they are giving 8.3%/8.3% for a total of 16.6%?

It is available all the time. Open your powers window. Even the greyed out powers you can right click on. It pops up a window with a description, but a second tab has the detailed information.