Jophiel

I'd actually go with the analogy that it's more like a computer. Some people just buy a computer out of a box and get to playing on it. Some people buy most of a computer and then spend time adding to it to help boost its performance. Some people spend a lot of time and money trying to keep their computer on the cutting edge and squeeze every bit of performance possible out of it. Some people are happy upgrading by just buying more memory or maybe a new graphics card; others worry about the motherboard or overclocking the processor, etc.

But all these people are actually using their computers in the meantime. The guy who wants the best possible system still puts his components in and fires up his games and plays them until he starts drooling over the next wave of upgrades.

And, just like with IOs, you have some people who can't imagine why anyone would degrade themselves by buying a system at Best Buy or from Dell instead of handpicking the best pieces and assembling it their kitchen table because then the computer is so much better and so much cheaper. And you have people who say "Look, I just want something that'll play the games I want to play, has a warranty in case it stops playing them and requires the least amount of tinkering on my part before I get to the 'fun' stuff."

I guess I'm a pretty middle of the road guy since I'm playing on an old Dell with new memory, graphics card and power supply I replaced and since I advocate for Common IOs but don't spend a lot of time/money trying to noodle out all the best set-frankenslotting techniques.

Exactly. Once you're talking lvl 30 IOs, it doesn't really matter how long they take to fill -- once they're filled you need never upgrade them if you don't want to.

I don't approach using IOs as something where I need to fill every slot with an IO at 25 or even 30. Once I can use SOs, I fill my slots with them and then start placing lowball bids in WW or crafting the IOs I happen to get the bits for as random drops. Every now and then just scroll down my receipe list, see what's white and decide if it's something I can use. My Controller is now level 32 and is about half IO's now and half SOs. When I bought SOs at level 27, it cost me a million influence. Upgrading my SOs at 32 to level 35 SOs cost me about 800k (even with the much higher cost of SOs at that levels). Out of curiousity, I averaged the slots I had IOs in and estimated a 600,000 inf savings on not having to refill those slots. By the time I hit lvl 40 SOs, almost all of my slots should be filled and it'll cost me almost nothing.

The thing is, placing those bids in WW costs me nothing aside from a little inf tied up and if you're dropping millions in SOs, having 15,000 tied up in salvage bids shouldn't be an issue. Using the drops I get is practically free (minus the lab fees). But I never spend a lot of time on it or spend "hours" trying to build a straight IO build. Heck, I don't spend hours on sets, although I'm sure some people do.

What it does is establish a baseline of power you know you aren't going to dip beneath. You can enhance further at your leisure without concern that your enhancements are going to go yellow/red. I have characters in the 47-50 range who will make a lvl 50 DMG IO when I have the stuff in my pocket but I don't have to worry about still having some 35's filling slots.

I don't think people really wonder why someone wouldn't want to spend billions purpling out their slots. It's the people who won't even use Common IOs over SOs which cause the head-scratchers. Judging from this thread, folks all have their own justification for it and that's cool but purples don't factor heavily into most people's builds, period.

The ones with a kidnapped Mazzy Stardust always make me laugh though.

I want everyone to to know that I'm a giant mooch and want as much free art as anyone is willing to give me

That said, I'm a polite art mooch and wait for people to offer before diving in and asking for art.

Again, this is all up to personal preference but I went last night at lvl 26 and put in the following bids:
8x lvl 30 Damage IO @ 1,000
8x Iron @ 500
8x Masterwork Weapon @ 1,000

I wasn't entirely optimistic because Masterworks were going for 25,000 (I think the weekend helped drive prices up) but by the end of the night when I was level 30, I had purchased everything for 20k. Throw in the creation costs and I still saved about 75% versus buying eight lvl 30 SOs and these will never go red on me.

I had actually slotted up all new SOs at 27 because I knew I wanted to play all evening and try to hit 30+. A full array of SOs at that level cost me right around a million influence. Saving 75% of that can mean a lot for a character who isn't being fed influence from an alt, etc. And, again, you don't have to spend another 1.3 at lvl 35 and 1.75 million at level 40, etc.

I don't personally care how other people enhance themselves but some people who think it's too much of a hassle/expense might find they can save a lot of time and influence by taking the plunge to at least common IOs.

I don't see these two things being mutually exclusive

Great work so far, Wassy!