Pet77

Originally Posted by Bohmfalk

Since I never use either, it doesn't really matter to me which is taken, it's just a placeholder for sets.



It's Shadow Meld, a power from Soul Mastery. Gives like 30% def for a short period.

Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino

Well, alpha/omega/etc are part of the new Incarnate 'endgame' system; since you're not level 50 yet, you don't have to worry about that.

IOs are... well, less complicated than you might expect, but still pretty complicated. In a nutshell, to create an IO enhancement, you need 2 things - a recipe, and some salvage. Salvage drops from enemies, and comes in three types - common (white), uncommon (yellow), and rare (orange). Recipes, depending on the type, either drop from enemies, can be gotten after completing missions, or are purchased with 'merits' that you get from completing story arcs/task forces. Once you have the recipe and the required salvage, you take them to the university (there's one in steel canyon) and use the crafting table to combine them into an enhancement.

IO enhancements themselves have some differences from standard DO/SO/etc type enhancements. First, they never expire. They still follow the rule that you can't slot more than 3 levels above your current level, but you can have a level 10 IO slotted when you're level 50 and not only will it still work, it'll still have the same enhancement value it did when you were level 10. The total enhancement value provided does varies based on the level of the IO - a level 50 IO will provide more enhancement than a level 15 IO.

Second, IOs come in two varieties - 'set' IOs and 'common' IOs. Common IOs are like SOs - they just provide a single type of enhancement like an SO, although they don't expire. Set IOs are different - you don't just have a 'generic' damage set IO - instead, you have set IOs from, say, the 'crushing impact' melee damage set. Set IOs tend to enhance more than one type of aspect at once - say, acc/dam or acc/dam/end instead of just acc, dam, or end. They don't enhance the individual aspects as much as an SO or common IO, but the *total* enhancement value is usually greater (i.e 2 acc/dam IOs give more total enhancement than one acc and one dam). Finally, set IOs come in, well, sets. If you slot multiple IOs from the same set into a single power, you will get small extra bonuses which vary depending on which set you slot - for example, if you slot three IOs from the 'crushing impact' set into a melee damage power, you will gain a small boost to your maximum HP. Slot a 4th from that set, and you will add a 7% accuracy bonus to all of your powers. Add a 5th and you'll gain 5% bonus recharge on all your powers.

There are two major uses for set IOs. The first is to ignore the set bonuses and just slot lots of double and triple aspect set IOs to get more total enhancement bonus in a power than you could do with SOs, or to get equal to SO performance while saving slots - this practice is referred to as 'frankenslotting', since it usually involves slotting individual IOs from a variety of different sets in a single power. To do this, you generally buy set IOs from the cheap 'junk' sets. These sets are usually less expensive since they don't have good set bonuses, but the actual IOs still provide just as much enhancement. Using this, it's pretty easy to get slotting superior to SO slotting, for pretty cheap. For example, my 'standard' frankenslotting for ranged attacks (Maelstrom's Fury acc/dam, dam/end/rech, Ruin acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rech) at level 30 provides roughly the same enhancement as 2 acc SOs, 3 damage SOs, one end SO, and one rech SO, along with a couple of minor set bonuses.

The second major use for set IOs is for the actual set bonuses themselves. This offers a whole nother level of performance beyond even frankenslotting - you still usually get enhancement values beyond what you could do with SOs, plus you can stack up huge amounts of stuff like accuracy, HP, recharge, regeneration, recovery, defense, etc from the set bonuses. This tends to be much more expensive, as the demand for the 'good' sets almost always vastly outstrips the supply.

Finally, there are certain 'special' IOs that have bonus effects above and beyond set bonuses - these work even if you only have the one special IO from the set. For example, there is the +recovery special from the 'Miracle' healing set, which, when slotted into a power like health, gives you a bonus 15% to your endurance recovery. Most of these are 'unique' so that you can't slot more than one of them on a character.

This page gives a general overview of the IO system, as well as linking to more detailed subpages on various IO topics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...n_Enhancements

For a lot of melee characters now, the new hot thing is to use IOs to 'softcap' your defenses. This refers to the way the tohit formula works - enemies have a base 50% chance to hit, and your defense is subtracted from this. They have a 5% minimum they can't be reduced below, so that means that 45% defense is the practical maximum useful amount of defense - this is the 'softcap'. Melee sets usually can't get that much defense by themselves (for example, fully enhanced SR hits about 30.5% defense to melee/ranged/aoe), but with the addition of extra defense from set bonuses, most sets can be pushed to the softcap and become a *lot* more durable.

If you want to trick out your MA/SR, this is probably the most direct way. Essentially, you'll want to take all of SR except elude (since extra defense doesn't do anything if you're already at the cap), along with combat jumping and weave, fully slotted for defense. That will put you at about 39% defense - add in the steadfast protection special 3% defense IO in tough, and you're at 42%. A few set bonuses from melee and other sets will put you at 45% and into a whole new level of survivability.

When it comes to planning out builds, the best tool out there is Mids' hero designer. This lets you plot out entire builds, all the set IOs and everything, and calculates and displays all the relevant totals for you. You can also export prettily formatted builds to post here on the forums for critique. It's an invaluable tool if you want to make any serious use of IOs. You can get mids here: http://www.cohplanner.com/

I'm not at my usual computer, so I can't post a build right now, but I'm sure someone can help you with a specific build for MA/SR that hits the softcap.

Originally Posted by Memphis_Bill

As mentioned, SOs are still what the game's balanced around. Even some of the characters I used to unlock the Alpha slot were SO'd out (or on their SO builds.)

As for inventions:

You don't *need* to do anything with them. However, even if you look no farther than common IOs (damage, acc, recharge, defense, etc.) they can be of benefit, since they don't expire (and from 35 on, are stronger than an even-level SO.) I tend to kit out with them at 15 and save the money I'd otherwise spend on DOs 'til I'm ready to jump up to the IOs (and use SOs in between.)

Using set IOs, you can do one of two things (or a combination of the two) -

1. Frankenslot. Using, say, Acc/Dam IOs from multiple Ranged damage sets (pay attention to the set type your powers can take!) you can squeeze (say) 6 slots worth of enhancement out of 5 slots.

2. Go for bonuses. Want a Blaster with some defense? Start looking for sets that provide it, and slot for it. (Note that you can't have more than 5 of the same bonus type-and-level - for instance, 3% Smashing/Lethal defense - active. Slot more and they'll be ignored... but more 1.85% will work.)

Wiki links:

IO scaling
IO set bonus - general info
Listings of IO sets by category/level/bonuses

Originally Posted by Symar

Alpha slot is out! But you can't do anything with it until you get to level 50. When you do get there (or if you already are) you should have a contact added, Mender Ramiel in Ourobos. He starts it all up. (If you can't get to Ourobos, ask any player level 25+ to open you a portal, they should have one.)

It's actually fairly simple. Here's the wiki page for it http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Alpha_Slot