Scrapulous

i9 has expanded the universe of build possibilities dramatically. With this expansion comes complexity and that affects how we plan our builds. I propose to set forth a way of building characters that maximizes some of the benefits of i9.

The method I lay out has been published before in my sample fire/fire tanker build. But that post was sufficiently dense, and I've received so many requests to do build analyses, that I think it's worth abstracting the method so that folks can follow it themselves.


How i9 has changed builds

Before i9, there was essentially one approach to builds: decide what powers you wanted, decide how you wanted to slot them, and then walk through a planner to make sure you can get the powers and slots when you need and want them. Synergies were limited to how one power synergized with another (example: Concealment > Stealth with Speed > Super Speed). Slotting was easy - just consider what aspects of the power you want to enhance and how much. HOs added a wrinkle to this in that one could often economize on slots and spread effective enhancement across more powers.

The Inventions system changes this somewhat. Now slotting IO sets can generate set bonuses, which are passive, always-on, free effects that impact all of your powers. This means that planning which sets and therefore which set bonuses to put into a power is more than just a matter of examining that one power by itself. It also means that you might want to slot a power more times than you would if you were looking at enhancing that power alone.

It is certainly still possible to plan slotting on a power-by-power basis, the way we did before i9. What's more, this can be very profitable - the Example IO slotting guides in my signature demonstrate some ways to slot that will garner very profitable results for individual powers. People who choose to plan their builds this way will find i9 to be a pleasant boost to their effectiveness.

But this approach may give you a rather haphazard or redundant array of set bonuses. If you're interested in maximizing your character's potential by maximizing set bonuses, then you'll probably want a more comprehensive approach.


I. Preparation
Step 1. Know Your Build
Step 2. Set Priorities
II. Core Powers and Sets
Step 3. Assess Powers
Step 4. Choose Core Set Bonuses And Core Powers
Step 5. Allocate Slots
III. Non-Core Powers and Sets
Step 6. Choose Non-Core Sets
Step 7. Total and Evaluate Set Bonuses
IV. Final Steps
Step 8. Choose Enhancements
Step 9. Plan Build
Step 10. Final Tweaking


Pre-Requisites

Although the inventions system itself is not simple, building for them can be. The first step is to familiarize yourself with how inventions work. There are some great guides and excellent references out there.

The Guide to Issue 9 Guides has some excellent resources. I am particularly fond of TerraDraconis' Introduction to Inventions.

Another excellent resource is ParagonWiki, in particular the IO Sets page. I'll be referring you to this page later in the guide.

Finally, an excellent resource for IO enhancements and set bonuses in particular is the consignment markets themselves. To find out what exact bonuses a particular set offers, go to Wentworth's or the Black Market, select the "All" filter option, and you can browse all of the available enhancements. This way you can find out for sure what enhancement values, say, a level 37 Ghost Widow's Embrace hold/range enhancement would give.


A familiarity with the inventions system, especially set bonuses and how they work, how they stack, and when they don't stack, is important to proceeding with this build method.


Now that we're prepared, let's get started.


Step 1: Know Your Build

It's important to know the build you're going to be working with. For many people who are re-working their existing builds for i9, this won't be a problem. For people who are planning a build that they haven't played before, this means doing research. Read the guides that are available and see what they say about power choices, play style and the actual levelling experience. Become as educated as you can about the trade-offs involved in your particular powerset combination.

The most important thing is to have a good idea what powers you want to take in your build. A good way to do this if you don't have a good idea is to run through a hero planner and create a build without any regard for set bonuses. You can even ignore slotting; just get an idea for what powers you like. Don't get too attached to them, because the power assessment we're about to do may shuffle our priorities a bit.


Step 2: Set Priorities

The next step is to consider what areas of your character you'd like to address. People who are re-planning their level 50s will have an advantage here, since they're familiar with how their characters play and how their current builds fit with their playstyle. But most other folks who plan builds are likely to have an idea of a character's shortcomings, even if they haven't created the character yet.

For example, my fire/fire tanker was not as survivable as other tankers, and I wanted a way to increase the breadth or depth of her damage mitigation - I also wanted to be able to pick up Taunt. As another example, I wanted to make my DM/regen scrapper more robust against alpha strikes, and I wanted to increase her offense somehow.


Step 3: Assess Powers

The next step is to evaluate the powers available to you. I do this in a pretty basic way: I list each power from my primary and secondary and then I figure out what sets they take. You can find out what sets a power takes by going to the enhancement management screen, mousing over the power, and reading the tooltip that pops up. To find out what sets powers you haven't chosen take, I recommend copying your character to Test and using a respec there to find out. I don't know of an up-to-date resource that documents set assignments.


Let's use my DM/Regen scrapper as an example of how to do this:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Primary: Dark Melee

Power Set types allowed
Shadow Punch Melee Damage
Smite Melee Damage
Shadow Maul PBAoE Damage
Touch of Fear Fear
Siphon Life Heal, Melee Damage
Confront none
Dark Consumption PBAoE Damage
Soul Drain PBAoE Damage
Midnight Grasp Immob, Melee Damage


Secondary: Regeneration

Power Set types allowed
Fast Healing Heal
Reconstruction Heal, Resist Damage
Quick Recovery none
Dull Pain Heal
Integration Heal
Resilience Resist Damage
Instant Healing Heal
Revive Heal
Moment of Glory Defense, Resist Damage
</pre><hr />

Note that we've listed all powers, not just the ones we plan to take. This is important because it can sometimes open your mind to powers that you formerly deemed ridiculous or not worth taking, but that are worth taking and slotting in i9.


But this isn't the whole story. Pool powers are significant, too. I generally have a set of pool powers that I consider mandatory for a build, whether because of concept, because I'm deliberately making the build for a particular role in teams, or because my playstyle favors certain pool powers (Stamina, for instance).

For the DM/Regen scrapper, I need Fighting &gt; Tough, Fitness &gt; Health, Fitness &gt; Stamina, and Leaping &gt; Super Jump. I will also be taking Darkness Mastery &gt; Petrifying Gaze, Torrent and Tenebrous Tentacles.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>

Power Set types allowed

Pool: Fighting
Boxing Melee, Stun
Tough Resist Damage

Pool: Fitness
Hurdle Leaping
Health Heal
Stamina none

Pool: Leaping
Combat Leaping Defense, Leaping
Super Jump Leaping

Epic Pool: Darkness Mastery
Petrifying Gaze Hold
Torrent Ranged AoE Damage
Tenebrous Tentacles Ranged AoE Damage, Immobilize

</pre><hr />

If your pool choices tend not to be so rigid, then you might benefit from listing all the pool powers and the possible set benefits. It's a bit of work, but you only have to do it once and then you can use it as a reference for every build you plan this way.


So let's total up what we have. Numbers outside of parentheses are what we have in our primary and secondary, and numbers inside parentheses are the totals with pools included.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Set type Number available to slot
Melee Damage 4 (5)
PBAoE Damage 3
Fear 1
Heal 7 (8)
Immobilize 1 (2)
Resist Damage 2 (3)
Defense 1 (2)
Stun (1)
Leaping (3)
Hold (1)
Ranged AoE Damage (2)
</pre><hr />

If you're not as rigid as I am about power pools, then you would modify the parenthetical numbers with the values from all of the pools. Right now we're not worried so much about what we're going to take as what we can potentially take and how that can benefit us. Once we understand the benefits, then we can start negotiating over what we're going to take or not take.


Step 4: Choose Core Set Bonuses and Core Powers

Now we start looking at the possibilities by examining the various set bonuses available to us. The reason the totals are important to us are because we're interested in stacking set bonuses for maximum benefit. As many people have noted, a single 10% regeneration bonus is not much to write home about. But five of them is something to be happy with. And another five 12% regeneration bonuses on top of that are something to be very pleased with.

Having large numbers of powers that take a given set type allow us to get large stacked set bonuses. Because you can stack a given type and strength of bonus up to five times, the easiest way to get large set bonuses is to stack five of the same set. That's why we're going to look at Melee Damage and Heal set bonuses.

I like using the ParagonWiki IO Sets page for this part, because it gives us a good overview of all the set bonuses available within a particular set type. Understanding the color coding can make this process easier: set bonuses in red are strongest, orange are second strongest, black are medium, blue are weaker, and green are weakest.

What we're going to do is scan the Set Bonuses table while keeping in mind the priorities we established earlier: better alpha strike survival and more damage.

First let's look at Melee Damage. We're focusing on this category because we have more Melee Damage powers available than any other kind of damage set. The Melee Damage table is big, but it's easy to narrow our focus.

The promising set bonuses that I see are: +Health, +Regeneration, -Recharge time, and +Damage. +Health would help with alpha strike survivability. +Regeneration wouldn't, but as a secondary benefit it allows us to follow one of my build principles: if you can make your main defense better without gimping yourself, do it. -Recharge time and +Damage would both help our damage output.

Of the sets, Crushing Impact gives +Health and -Recharge time, in addition to the excellent Accuracy (actually tohit, which is better); +Psi resistance is just icing on the cake. Mako's Bite gives +Health and +Damage, plus a very nice +Ranged defense bonus, which should help somewhat with alpha strikes. Pounding Slugfest offers +Regeneration, and early, too - if we didn't want set bonuses #5 or #6, we could 6 slot our attacks with 4 Crushing Impact and 2 Pounding Slugfest or 4 Mako's and 2 Pounding Slugfest to generate good enhancement and a nice combination of bonuses.

So we've got options in our attacks that meet our needs. Let's look next at Heals.

Heal sets have some very nice +Health bonuses, as well as a potent +Regeneration bonus. I also see some more -Recharge time buffs. Finally, there is a great +Ranged defense buff in Numina's Convalescence, but because it's the same strength as the same buff in Mako's Bite, the stacking opportunities are limited to five. Actually, they're limited in any case; one of the Numina's pieces is a unique global, so we could only ever get bonus #6 from that set once.

Looking at things at this point, I see two simple options. One is to six slot five melee attacks with Mako's Bite. That would give us +7.5% max health, +15% damage, and 18.75% ranged defense. Then we five slot five heal powers with Doctored Wounds, which gives +6.3% fire, cold, toxic and psi resistance (not bad as a passive benefit), a +20% boost to Dull Pain's heal (and a +10% boost to its max health), and a -25% Recharge time. The Heal benefit does not effect Reconstruction.

The other simple option is to slot the melee attacks with Crushing Impact. That gives a max health of +5.65%, a tohit boost of 12.5%, gives a recharge bonus of 25%, and a Psi resistance of +7.5%. Then five heal powers would be 4 slotted with Numina's Convalescence, giving +60% Regeneration, increasing max health by 9.4%, and boosting Dull Pain's heal by 30% and max health by 15%.

There are ways to squeeze more out of these schemes (say, by six slotting the heal powers and packing two enhancers from a non-Numina set to get another set bonus in there), and I encourage folks to experiment with mixing and matching sets to see what kinds of set bonuses you can get. But for the sake of this example let's just pick one of these simple options and go with it. In this case, let's choose the first simple option: Mako's Bite and Doctored Wounds.

So let's review what we've done so far. We inventoried our possible powers and found the two set types for which have the most eligible powers, Melee Damage and Heal. For those types, we inventoried the available sets and chose the two that stack best for our purposes.

For the purposes of the rest of the discussion, we'll refer to these as our "core sets," and the powers that contain them as our "core powers".

Of course, we need to know what those core powers are before we proceed. For melee attacks it's easy, because we only have five available; Shadow Punch, Smite, Siphon Life, Midnight Grasp, and a pool attack, probably Boxing.

For heals things aren't as clear cut. Reconstruction and Dull Pain are commonly six-slotted, so those are obvious picks. We'd like to avoid putting more than a few slots into the passives, because most of the enhancement value is wasted... then again, we're going to be putting a few slots in already, so it could get expensive to 5 slot 5 powers and then throw more slots into other heal powers. But we can profitably 5 slot Instant Healing (a click power with a long recharge) and Integration (a toggle with a noticeable end cost). Now we're down to Fast Healing, Health and Revive. Let's choose Fast Healing for the final 5-slot power.

Note: We have skipped over an analysis of the PBAoE sets for the sake of brevity. A more thorough assessment would at least evaluate them as a possible replacement for the Melee Damage core powers. There may be better synergies there, despite the fewer powers. I recommend at least a cursory assessment of alternatives like this.


Step 5: Allocate Slots

The next step is to figure out how many slots we've spent on our core powers and how many we have left for additional powers. This is important because it may alter which powers we can eventually choose.

A level 50 character of any AT has been given 67 slots to allocate over his lifetime. We are going to allocate those slots to powers now. We're going to count backward from 67 while we do this. We do this for a few reasons: 1) it forces us to prioritize powers up front, which will be valuable when making decisions later; 2) 67 is the maximum number of set bonuses we can have, and it's worthwhile to keep this in mind when allocating slots to powers, especially powers that can't be slotted with sets; 3) it means we don't have to step backwards through a build planner reworking our slots all the time, because we know up front where they're going.


So we know that we're going to put five slots each into our five melee attacks. That will cost us 25 of our 67 slots. We have 42 left over.

We know also that we'll be putting 4 slots into each of five heal powers. That will cost us another 20 slots. We have 22 left to spend.

Let's look now at utility powers:

We'd like to put 5 slots into Health to enhance it fully and get the 3 global uniques into it, but that's expensive. Let's allocate two of our slots to it for the globals and come back to this power later. 20 slots left.

We know we want to slot Stamina and Quick Recovery. One of the economies of i9 is that we can 2 slot many powers for nearly the same benefit of 3 slotting a power pre-i9. Let's allocate 1 slot each here. 18 slots left.

We want Soul Drain to have four slots total, so we'll allocate 3. 15 slots left.

We want Tough to broaden our damage mitigation - let's add two slots here. 13 slots left.

Resilience does fine by itself - I'd like to add slots here, but let's hold off for now, because the marginal benefit of slots here is relatively small.

Let's allocate 3 slots each to our EPP powers, Petrifying Gaze, Torrent and Tenebrous Tentacles. This should give us enough for decent set bonuses. Of these three, TT feels like the weakest and we could potentially lose it and reallocate its slots. Let's try to keep it in the build for now. 3 slots across 3 powers is 9. We have 4 slots left.

We wanted more slots in both Health and Resilience. We don't have enough left over to put all the slots we want into both, but let's put 3 more into Health and 1 into Resilience, leaving us with 0 slots unallocated.


So where are we? We have the makings of a draft build. We know what our core set bonuses are, and we've allocated slots in such a way to get those core bonuses while still keeping our other powers sufficiently enhanced. The next step is to choose sets for those other powers.


Step 6: Choose Non-Core Sets

While we're choosing sets, we want to keep a few things in mind; 1) we want to ensure that we get the maximum possible enhancement to our core sets; 2) we want to keep these other powers suitably enhanced so that we're not losing power effectiveness for the sake of set bonuses; 3) nothing is set in stone - we can easily reallocate slots in our non-core powers or even our core powers. If we don't see what we like in the non-cores, we can even go back and choose different core sets.

Before we get to the fun of choosing non-core sets, let's review the core set bonuses we chose, because staying aware of them will be important when haggling over the non-core sets.

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Bonus strength amount

+Health +1.5% 5
Damage +3% 5
Ranged defense +3.75% 5
Fire &amp; cold resist +1.26% 5
Psi &amp; toxic resist +1.26% 5
Heal +4% 5
Recharge -5% 5
</pre><hr />

These aren't all of the bonuses granted by our sets, but they're the significant ones. Depending on how picky you are, you might want to track things like immobilization resistance, but for the purposes of this example we're going to focus on these significant bonuses.

Now that we've got our "existing" bonuses firmly in mind, let's go shopping for more.

Our non-core powers that can take set bonuses and have more than one slot are:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Power Total Slots

Health 6
Soul Drain 4
Tough 3
Resilience 2
Petrifying Gaze 4
Torrent 4
Tenebrous Tentacles 4
</pre><hr />

One at a time:

Health: We know that we want the three Heal set global uniques, and we want to enhance the regen aspect of the power while we're at it. Some guy wrote a guide about how to do this, and he was moderately convincing. We're at least willing to implement his theories, so let's take a look at his recommended slotting:

1 Miracle 15% recovery global IO,
1 Miracle heal IO,
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal/rch OR end/heal IO

Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +2.5%
Recovery: +25%
Health: +1.88%

This is nice because it gives us maximum enhancement from the power itself and some set bonuses that we want. The max health bonus is one we don't already have (1.88 vs. 1.5), so it will stack with the ones we do have. The regeneration benefit is nice because it makes us better at what we do best. And recovery will help make up for skimping on Stamina and Quick Recovery slotting.


Soul Drain: This one is a bit tricky. It takes PBAoE Damage sets, and those focus on damage enhancement. I'm skeptical that we can get the ~95% recharge enhancement that we're used to from i8. If we slot this with common IOs, we could do 1 acc, 1 endmod and 2 recharge for an overall better performance than with the same number of slots in i8. But let's give the PBAoE Damage sets a chance before we write them off.

Scanning the ParagonWiki set bonus table for PBAoE Damage sets, it's clear to see that Scirocco's Dervish has the most potent bonuses - just look at all that orange. And now that we're looking at non-core powers, we definitely want to focus on the largest bonuses we can get. It wasn't as important with core powers because we were stacking those 5 times. With non-core powers we'll be lucky to stack two identical sets.

Cleaving Blow looks interesting because it has +Damage, but the +Damage is 1%. We can probably get better bonuses out of either of the other sets. Multi-Strike has fire &amp; cold resistance, which would stack with our core sets. Scirocco's Dervish has +Regen, which we know we like, and +Accuracy (tohit), which isn't something we're focusing on but is very valuable nonetheless.

We're concerned about the recharge, so we look at the maximum recharge we could get with the Scirocco's Dervish set; it looks to be +53%, much lower than our pre-i9 ideal of 95%. But remember that our core bonuses include a 25% recharge buff. So the practical recharge for this power is 78% (when not exemplared), which isn't stellar but is pretty good. We may even be able to pick up more recharge down the road, so let's stick with this set for now.

Set bonuses
Regen: +10%
Res (NE): +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%


Tough: We have enough slots in Tough to give i8-equivalent resistance if we choose res, end/res, and res/rch enhancements from a resistance set. Let's take a look at the sets.

Unfortunately, the 3rd set bonus for many of the armors is a 1.5% +Health. We already have five of these in our core bonuses, so we can't benefit from them, and none of their tier 2 bonuses are compelling enough to make us ignore the redundancy. Of the three remaining sets, the weak +Energy def in Reactive Armor is unimpressive, and the +Runspeed and +Fire/Cold def in Aegis are hardly better. Impervium Armor saves the day with a very nice 2.5% +Recovery and an interesting 1.88% +Psi defense. We'll choose Impervium Armor.

Set bonuses
Recovery: +2.5%
Def (psi): +1.88%


Resilience: Resilience has two slots, and a quick scan of the Resistance set bonus table shows that we could get another 2.5% Recovery out of Impervium Armor. But we haven't slotted any global effects yet, either. In particular I like the +Psionic Resist global from Impervium Armor and the resistance/+3% def global from Steadfast Protection. None of this stacks with our core bonuses, so it comes down to preference. For the sake of set bonuses, we'll choose the two Impervium Armor enhancements, which gives us a Recovery bonus.

Set bonuses
Recovery: +2.5%


Petrifying Gaze: Because we only have four slots in this power, we can only get three set bonuses from it. The +tohit in Neuronic Shutdown is interesting, but the Health benefit is redundant with our core set bonuses. For those reasons, and because Neuronic Shutdown would give us lower enhancement strength, Ghost Widow's Embrace looks best, with a large Health bonus and a significant Endurance bonus.

Set bonuses
Runspeed: +5%
Health: +1.88%
Endurance: +2.25%


Torrent: Again, we have only four slots to work with. Looking over the Ranged AoE bonuses, we see very nice +Recovery and tohit bonuses in Positron's Blast, but also a Health bonus in Air Burst. This is a tough choice between two large, helpful non-core bonuses and one small core bonus. In this case let's go with Air Burst in pursuit of our maximum Health strategy. NOTE: ParagonWiki is out-of-date: Air Burst enhancements go all the way to level 53.

Set bonuses
Knockback: +2%
Health: +0.75%
Res (smashing and lethal): +0.63%


Tenebrous Tentacles: We have four slots to work with again, but two potential set types: Ranged AoE and Immobilize. The clear Ranged AoE winner is Air Burst; since we took it for Torrent, it makes sense to stack the bonuses as much as we can. But when we look at the Immobilize sets, we see two nice bonuses in Trap of the Hunter: a large, core Health bonus, and a large, non-core tohit bonus. Another factor here is how we plan to use this power. If we use it primarily as a control (for example, as a way of keeping mobs at range, thus exploiting our soon-to-be-considerable ranged set bonus defense), then the Trap of the Hunter set is a good way to go. If we use it primarily as a damage dealing power, then Air Burst is probably a better choice. For this example, we'll take Trap of the Hunter

Set bonuses
Res (immob): +5%
Health: +1.88%
tohit: +3.13%



Step 7: Total and Evaluate Set Bonuses


Now that we've chosen set bonuses, let's total them up to see what we have. We're not done with the build yet, but we want to make sure we know what we're getting in exchange for some of the sacrifices we've made up to this point.

In adding up the bonuses, I get:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>

Bonus Strength Amount Total
+Health
1.5 5
1.88 3
0.75 1
+13.89%

Damage
3 5
+15%

Def (ranged)
3.75 5
+18.75%

Res (fire &amp; cold)
1.26 5
+6.3%

Res (psi &amp; toxic)
1.26 5
+6.3%

Heal
4 5
+20%

Recharge
5 5
+25%

Regeneration
45 1
12 1
10 1
+67%

Recovery
25 1
2.5 3
+32.5%

Res (NE)
3.13 1
+3.13%

tohit
3.13 2
+6.26%

Def (psi)
1.88 1
+1.88%

Runspeed
5 1
+5%

Endurance
2.25 1
+2.25%

Knockback
2 1
+2%

Res (smash &amp; lethal)
0.63 1
+0.63%

Res (immob)
5 1
+5%
</pre><hr />

So here we see the gains from our approach. At this point we can assess whether these bonuses have met our goals. We certainly have better alpha strike mitigation: a Scrapper's default 1338 health at level 50 become 1524, and our defense against ranged attacks is an impressive 18.75%, which will certainly mitigate a portion of the alpha strikes we face. We've also increased our offense with a 15% global damage bonus (this is as good as having a Controller running Tactics) and a 25% global recharge bonus (nearly as good as Accelerate Metabolism's recharge buff).

If the set bonuses weren't good enough for us, then we'd head back to Step 4 and re-examine the available set bonuses with an eye toward improving things. Another possibility is to reconsider our non-core power choices with an eye toward fitting the right non-core sets in. This should be done carefully, though - it's important to balance effective power selection against maximizing set bonuses.

For our purposes, the bonuses we have are more than adequate. We're not done yet, though.


Step 8: Choose Enhancements

The next step is to ensure we have adequate power enhancement with the sets and slots we've allocated. Set bonuses are important, but it's not worth gimping a power to get the highest possible set bonus.

During this process you can also decide which set IOs you want to slot into powers that are less than 6-slotted.

We know that our attacks will be getting six slots of Crushing Impact, for example.

Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rch: +68.9%

These values are quite good.


Our core heal powers will have 5 Doctored Wounds IOs:

Doctored Wounds - rch emphasis
end/heal, end/heal/rch, heal/rch, heal, rch
heal: +97.5%
end: +47.7%
rch: +90.1%

These are excellent numbers for our core heals that have long recharge timers, like Dull Pain, Reconstruction and Instant Healing.

Doctored Wounds - end emphasis
end/heal, end/heal/rch, end/rch, heal/rch, heal
heal: +97.5%
end: +74.2%
rch: +74.2%

These are good numbers for our core heals that recharge quickly but take a lot of endurance, like Integration.


Tough: We'll take the res, end/res and res/rch enhancements from Impervium Armor.
res: +50.54%
end: +24.1%
rch: +24.1%

The resistance value isn't quite up to what you'd get with 3 SOs, but the Recovery and Psi def are worth overlooking some reduced performance.


Resilience: Let's take the res and either end/res or res/rch.
res: +37.7%

Not bad for two slots and a Recovery bonus.


Petrifying Gaze: We'll take acc/rch, end/hold, acc/hold/rch and hold/rng.
acc: +47.7%
hold: +74.2%
end: +26.5%
rch: +74.7%
rng: +15.9%

These are very good enhancement values for four slots.


Torrent: We've chosen Air Burst as our set, so we'll take the acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch and dam/rng. NOTE: ParagonWiki is out-of-date: Air Burst enhancements go all the way to level 53.
acc: +26.5%
dam: +95.9%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
rng: +15.9%

We are getting very respectable performance for four slots.


Tenebrous Tentacles: from the Trap of the Hunter set we'll choose the acc/imm, end/imm, acc/imm/rch, and the lethal damage proc.
acc: +47.7%
imm: +74.2%
end: +26.5%
rch: +21.2%

These values plus the lethal proc will give us good performance. Once again we have very good enhancement value from four slots.


We also need to choose enhancements for our non-set powers.

Hurdle: 1 common jump IO
jump: +42.4%


Combat Jumping: This is an interesting case, because while it doesn't have enough slots to get set bonuses, it takes sets that have interesting globals, specifically the +Stealth from Unbounded Leap and the four Defense Set globals. Since recharge is one of our core bonuses, Luck of the Gambler's def/+5% rch global is an easy pick here.
def: +15.9%


Super Jump: 1 common Jump IO
jump: +42.4%


Stamina: 2 common endmod IOs
rec: +83.3%


Step 9: Plan Build

So we're satisfied with our power enhancement values and we're quite pleased with our new set bonuses. The only remaining thing to do is to assemble a build and make sure that we can get the slots where we want them. This will also serve as a good visual reference for where to put slots and powers when we level up.

+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: Sample DM/Regen
Level: 50
Archetype: Scrapper
Primary: Dark Melee
Secondary: Regeneration
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Fast Healing ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(7),Empty(34),Empty(43)
01 =&gt; Shadow Punch ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(7),Empty(17),Empty(40),Empty(50)
02 =&gt; Smite ==&gt; Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(9),Empty(15),Empty(37),Empty(46)
04 =&gt; Reconstruction ==&gt; Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(11),Empty(13),Empty(39)
06 =&gt; Hurdle ==&gt; Empty(6)
08 =&gt; Siphon Life ==&gt; Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(13),Empty(15),Empty(37),Empty(46)
10 =&gt; Quick Recovery ==&gt; Empty(10),Empty(11)
12 =&gt; Combat Jumping ==&gt; Empty(12)
14 =&gt; Super Jump ==&gt; Empty(14)
16 =&gt; Health ==&gt; Empty(16),Empty(17),Empty(19),Empty(34),Empty(40),Empty(50)
18 =&gt; Integration ==&gt; Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(21),Empty(39),Empty(43)
20 =&gt; Stamina ==&gt; Empty(20),Empty(21)
22 =&gt; Dull Pain ==&gt; Empty(22),Empty(23),Empty(23),Empty(31),Empty(39)
24 =&gt; Boxing ==&gt; Empty(24),Empty(25),Empty(25),Empty(34),Empty(40),Empty(50)
26 =&gt; Soul Drain ==&gt; Empty(26),Empty(27),Empty(27),Empty(36)
28 =&gt; Instant Healing ==&gt; Empty(28),Empty(29),Empty(29),Empty(36),Empty(43)
30 =&gt; Tough ==&gt; Empty(30),Empty(31),Empty(31)
32 =&gt; Midnight Grasp ==&gt; Empty(32),Empty(33),Empty(33),Empty(33),Empty(37),Empty(46)
35 =&gt; Resilience ==&gt; Empty(35),Empty(36)
38 =&gt; Revive ==&gt; Empty(38)
41 =&gt; Petrifying Gaze ==&gt; Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42)
44 =&gt; Torrent ==&gt; Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45)
47 =&gt; Tenebrous Tentacles ==&gt; Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48)
49 =&gt; Weave ==&gt; Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Sprint ==&gt; Empty(1)
01 =&gt; Brawl ==&gt; Empty(1)
02 =&gt; Rest ==&gt; Empty(1)



The build process illustrates that we had an extra power slot at 49. We took Weave for a little extra defense, but it could certainly have been anything else.


Step 10: Final Tweaking

As a final pass over a build, let's see if there are any tweaks that can be made. If you have the time and inclination, you can selectively take slots out of some powers to see if they could more profitably be placed in other powers. But there are lighter-weight things that can be done.

For example, we haven't planned for Weave. It has no extra slots, so we can't get another set bonus, but Defense sets have a large number of attractive globals in them. For example, Luck of the Gambler's def/+5% recharge global (the defense enhancement component is not on Live as of this writing, but it will be soon), or Kismet's +5% tohit unique global. For our purposes, the LotG global is the obvious pick, since it will pair nicely with our already very good +5% recharge enhancement to give us a total of +30%.

Furthermore, since we've slotted a couple of globals since we totalled our set bonuses, we can revisit the bonus that is effected. We also had a recharge global in Combat Jumping, so our final total recharge value is +35%.


Tweaking is a process that never really ends, and can sometimes evolve into a whole respec. I encourage people to play around with their builds on paper and on Test and see where they can optimize. This process has taught me a lot about how builds work and how intuitive slotting choices aren't always smart slotting choices.



Summary

You can see how this approach is somewhat time intensive. It's also a somewhat backwards approach in that it expects that you know your build, your powersets and the powers in them well enough to start making serious choices about them before you've even chosen which ones you're going to take.

On the other hand, the benefits are considerable. With some focus on the set bonuses from the beginning of the build process and with the efficient enhancements in IO sets, you can typically build a character that is as or more effective power-wise than a non-HO pre-i9 build, but with extensive, powerful passive set bonuses on top.


If anybody has suggestions about how to improve this build, tweaks to the process or questions, please feel free to ask.

[ QUOTE ]

one request for this already awesome guide, a build posted using Mid's Hero planner??


[/ QUOTE ]

There are a few things holding this up.

First, I'm writing other guides. This diminishes my playtime considerably, to say nothing of my time to revise existing guides.

Second, a week ago I finished the process of converting my builds from SherkSilver/JoeChott over to SuckerPunch's online planner. Because of that I'm not excited about installing another planner and doing all 74 builds over again. I'm also fond of the online nature of SuckerPunch's instead of having a local app.

Third, every export I've seen from this new planner doesn't include set bonuses. Without that information, I'm not sure what the value of an export feature is over any other planner. Right now it seems like a lot of work for me to install, get the build into the planner, and export it, for not much benefit. As I see it, the benefits are that people could see which set IOs go into which power in the actual build notation, which is certainly a convenience, but that omits the actual information about how the power is enhanced and what set bonuses you get from the slotting, which make up most of my considerations when deciding how to slot a power. So I'm not sure the convenience is worth the effort.

I realize that I'm rushing to judgment here, and checking out this planner is on my todo list. It's just that right now the todo list is large and growing, so snap judgments like this are the order of the day

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

1) In your above example, and all your example builds really, you assume a level 50 character with level 50 IOs. Were a character to slot a power with all six IOs from the CI set, do the IOs need to be near each other in level for the global effects to take place or can they be varied? I understand the difference in actual bonus percentage, I'm just wondering about the global.


[/ QUOTE ]

Caulderone is right. In non-exemplar situations, the set bonuses have no relationship to the relative levels of the various IOs that are slotted.


[ QUOTE ]

2) I'll use the IO set Devastation as an example here. Devastation uses two pool A rare recipes, two pool C recipes, one pool B and one unknown. Concerning the two pool C recipes that drop from Task Forces, the level range for the TF (ie Positron at 10-15) would yield a similar level of recipe, correct? Meaning if you were looking for a higher level pool C drop you'd need to (and I use this term loosely) farm the higher tier TFs to find them?


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't know. I'm not an expert on the various drop mechanics. During the open beta the way drops worked were changed a few times, and unfortunately my memory of some of those transitional states is much stronger than my memory of how things wound up - by the time the final state rolled around, I had already immersed myself in build possibilities. Hopefully somebody with better knowledge will chime in.


[ QUOTE ]

3) I've not run across them if you've already posted about it, but I'm curious about your opinion of slotting lower level IOs for the possibility of exemplaring. I'm not really concerned with pre-level 30s, but after that when IOs and SOs come neck and neck is there really that much of a noticable difference between the 30-35 IOs and the 50s, especially when you factor in the extreme price difference between them?


[/ QUOTE ]

It depends. If you're six slotting a lot of powers with IOs, you won't notice as much difference because you'll already be near the high end with many of your enhancement values, but if you only have a few slots to put into a power, then you will notice a difference. For example, two level 30 recharge IOs give a 66.6% benefit. Two level 50 recharge IOs give an 83.3% benefit. That's enough of a difference that I want the level 50 IOs for my level 50.

[ QUOTE ]

And is this level 50 IO building really only beneficial financially and percentage wise to min/max builds?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, yes. Everything I've posted here is about min/maxing, really. My fire/fire tanker guide is about how to get the maximum benefit out of sets, for example.

It's certainly possible to save inf by using lower level IOs, and if the enhancement values that you wind up with are good for you, then I think you should. I often buy IOs that are lower level than the maximum I can slot because I want set bonuses more than I want the absolute maximum power performance. You might do the same because you want more bang for your buck.

One thing about saving inf, however; I don't recommend saving it just to save it. Sure, keep a little stash for future goodies, but don't amass a huge pile of it just to have a huge pile of it. There is no Hero IRA to fund, no retirement to plan for, and a broke hero is ten missions away from being a non-broke hero. If you're saving for a big purchase or your other characters need the inf, that's one thing. If you're saving just to save, I advise reconsidering. A slotted IO is doing a lot more for your ability to earn inf than a pile of inf sitting idle in your account is.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]
Great thinking and numbers as always, Scrapulous.


[/ QUOTE ]

Thanks! I'm glad you like it.

[ QUOTE ]

I do have one disagreement with you though:

[ QUOTE ]
The hold resistance is actually not bad for characters with status protection toggles, because it increases the hold stacking required to overcome it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't think that this is accurate. My understanding is that anti-mez toggles have a magnitude that holds have to overcome and that the hold resistance from the bonuses merely effects the length of time you are held, once you are held.

[/ QUOTE ]

Let's say you have a hold that lasts 20 seconds and takes 10 seconds total activation + recharge time. It is a mag 4 hold.

Under normal circumstances, given enough time to stack the holds and enough endurance recovery to offset the cost, you can maintain mag 8 hold on a target indefinitely.

Now let's assume a target who has 100% hold resistance (which halves the duration of holds on him). You can't maintain mag 8 hold on him indefinitely. In fact, you can only maintain mag 4 hold, because as far as that person is concerned your holds have a duration of 10 seconds.

If that person has a mag 5 hold protection, his 100% hold resistance has made him immune to your ability to stack magnitude. Without that resistance, you'd be able to hold him even through his protection.

I prefer being able to turn off stealth, so I'd rather put it into a toggle. Involuntary stealth is sometimes a bad thing, most especially for people who deliberately want to collect aggro.

This is a great guide, ZM! Thanks for writing it; I'll be referring people to it.

[ QUOTE ]

From Scrapulous:

Kago made a great suggestion in the i9 Testing channel tonight:

[i9 Testing] Kago: [Infamous Slayer Kago] neat trick with the CH menu, set level range to only 30, all sets touch that level, and it cuts down on the repeated entries



[/ QUOTE ]

I've since discovered that there are a few sets that don't pass through level 30, but they are very few: the Bonesnap and Pulverizing Fisticuffs Melee Damage sets are the only ones omitted by this method, as far as I know.

Very nice guide!

I particularly like the way you mixed and matched sets. That really can be an art, and finding those special combinations, like what you did with the ranged epics and your alternate slotting for Frozen Touch, can really change the way an otherwise identical build plays.

It's also considerably more concise than at least one other tanker guide I could mention

[ QUOTE ]

Regeneration: +112% (not including the Procs in Health)
Recovery: 18% (not including the Procs in Health)
Max HP: +14.65%


[/ QUOTE ]

The Numina's global adds 20% +Regen, bringing this ice/ice tanker to 132%. Health itself is 40% base, but 78.4% after enhancement, bringing the build to +210.4% regen. Not bad.

The Numina's and Miracle globals in Health add 25% +Recovery. The set bonuses, that's 43%... assuming that Stamina is 2-slotted with level 50 common IO endmods, we're at +89.2% Recovery. Not bad, considering that the average i8 build was +48.75%.

The max health set bonus takes a level 50 tanker with no accolades and Hoarfrost down from 1874 to 2148 health.

This tanker's native regen is at a rate of 1666 health per minute, or about 111 health approximately every 4 seconds.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

Thanks, great post.
Gotta absorb this all in about a year when I have a lvl 50


[/ QUOTE ]

Thank you, I'm glad you like the post.

You certainly can postpone this stuff until you're 50, but I think it's important to note that you can start working on this project as early as level 4 (for collecting salvage) and level 10 (when recipes start dropping). You can start slotting IOs and collecting set bonuses very early in your career.

The test version of my fire tanker is only level 34, but I've got enough components of the sets that she has a very noticeable +Regen benefit. I use Healing Flames much less on Test than I do on Live, for example.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

what did I say to inspire this? Was it my comments on Ice Melee last night? O.o


[/ QUOTE ]

Actually, it was when we were talking about Devouring Culture's X-treem Recharge Project. You made a comment about how deep the slotting commitment is for a lot of +Recharge builds, then you minced off to bed - that got me to thinking about how single slotted powers could be used to slot globals in order to ease the slot burden for that build. I started thinking of defense powers that a lot of people wind up taking, and Hover and CJ came to mind. CJ seems more popular, and since it's less frequently slotted than Hover it seemed like the better choice for a discussion on re-assessing existing slotting conventions.

But otterly bedtimes seem to come a bit earlier than for the rest of us, because you minced off to bed before DC finished up explaining his recharge build. Once he did, the conversation veered toward Combat Jump.

Et violin, as they say in France.

[ QUOTE ]

And, it is my understanding that when using Granite Armor, ALL Jump Toggles (CJ, or SJ) are deactivated, as well as ALL Run Speed Toggles are deactivated (SS, and the Sprints).


[/ QUOTE ]

Oh! Well. In the words of Emily Litella... never mind!

I had thought that jumping was disabled, but I didn't realize the jump toggles were. My mistake! But...


[ QUOTE ]

With the global IO's in a toggle power, you have to be running the toggle power to get their benefit right?


[/ QUOTE ]

Not quite, it seems. It turns out that it depends on the global IO. iakona explains this a bit in this post. It may be worth reading the whole thread for context, but basically some of the global IO effects are acting like set bonuses, meaning both that they disappear when exemping and that they are on even if they're slotted in a toggle that isn't on.

Nutty, huh?

IO slotting example: Combat Jumping

I've noticed while playing with i9 builds that a lot of the fundamental points of conventional i8 wisdom are challenged by the new opportunities afforded by IOs and especially set/rare IOs. One example is the benefits of six-slotting Health. Another is the benefits of slotting Combat Jumping.

The idea for this guide came up in a discussion that Devouring Culture, Sniktch, Tundara and QuantumForce2 and I were having about various set bonuses, and they deserve credit for the ideas here.

We'll follow the familiar format for my IO slotting examples: first we'll take a look at my assumptions so that we're all on the same page. Then we'll look what Combat Jumping does, and then an i8 slotting baseline. Once we have that understanding, we'll compare the i8 baseline with various potential i9 slottings to see what benefits we can reap from this humble power.


Assumptions

1. We're considering a level 50 character using level 50 enhancements.
2. Enhancement values are shown after ED takes effect unless otherwise noted. I am using Circeus' formula to calculate total benefit.
3. Slotting examples are PvE focused.

Combat Jumping

Combat Jumping is actually a versatile power. It can be used for many purposes: extra marginal protection for high defense characters, a travel power, a flight control power, immobilization protection, or even just a pre-requisite to Super Jump or Acrobatics.

These are the level 50 effects of Combat Jumping:
<ul type="square">[*]+200% JumpHeight[*]+1.75 - 2.5% Defense (all), depending on AT[*]+1% JumpSpeed[*]+2077.1 or 4000% MovementControl, depending on AT (Scrappers and Stalkers get the low value, all others get the high value)[*]+20% MovementFriction[*]-8.304 to 12.975 Immobilize, depending on AT[/list]
The MovementControl, MovementFriction and Immobilization protection are all unenhanceable as far as I know, so we'll ignore them for the sake of this assessment.


i8 Slotting

SO slotting: 1 defbuff
def: +20%

This is the most common i8 slotting. Typically more slots are not put into Combat Jumping because of the small marginal benefit. Even in the best case, a Tanker, one extra defbuff SO gives only .5% defense to all. Almost any build can get considerably better marginal value out of a slot. The same slot in Weave, for example, gives twice the benefit. Builds that are likely to get noticeable benefit from such small amounts of defense are builds that already have a lot of defense... and by their nature those builds typically have many other powers that they can more profitably slot.

Slotting endurance reducers into Combat Jumping is also a mistake: it is the cheapest toggle around. It costs onky 23% of what a typical defense toggle does, it costs 19% of Tough and Weave, and only 11.5% of Acrobatics. It is a bargain endurance-wise.


HO slotting: 1 def/end
def: +20%
end: +33.3%

Somebody who is absolutely drowning in HOs could slot one into this power, reducing the very cheap .03 end per tick to a very slightly cheaper .0225 end per tick. It's not an effective use of a rare IO, but it can be done.


i9 Slotting

Now let's look at some ways to slot Combat Jumping in i9.

Common IO slotting: 1 defbuff
def: +25.5%

This takes a Tanker's Combat Jumping from 2.5% to 3.1% instead of just 3% (the SO slotting value). It is not appreciably better than SO slotting.


Set IO slotting #1: Luck of the Gambler def/end
def: +15.9%
end: +26.5%

This is the closest a single-slot IO arrangement can come to the HO slotting values: it gives a Tanker +2.9% defense, and .024 end/tick. Still not very impressive.


So we can see that slotting for pure enhancement value isn't ideal under any circumstances. But let's start looking at the various opportunities to slot for set bonuses and global effects.


Set IO slotting #2: Luck of the Gambler +5% rch global
Global bonus
Recharge: +5%

Set IO slotting #3: Karma KB protection global
Global bonus
Knockback protection: mag 4

Set IO slotting #4: Kismet +6% tohit unique global
Global bonus
tohit: +6%

Set IO slotting #5: Gift of the Ancients +7.5% runspeed global
Global bonus
Runspeed: +7.5%

These are four ways to get more potential value out of Combat Jumping with only the default slot. Only the tohit global is unique, meaning that up to four duplicates of the others can be put into other defense powers, giving a total of 25% global recharge, mag 20 KB protection, or 37.5% runspeed (more than Swift). Those with Stone Armor in particular might be very excited to get some extra mobility.


Set IO slotting #6: Stealth: Unbounded Leap +Stealth unique global
Global bonus
Stealth

This is a particularly interesting case. Are you planning to get Concealment &gt; Stealth on your build? If that's the only power you're planning to get from the Concealment pool, consider getting Combat Jumping instead, for a few reasons.

First, Stealth diminishes your mobility, while Combat Jumping enhances it. Second, Combat Jumping gives you immobilization protection, while Stealth has no equivalent benefit. Third, Combat Jumping carries only 19% the endurance burden that Stealth does. Fourth, Stealth takes 20 seconds to recharge, while Combat Jumping is recharged instantly (like Sprint).

Stealth does have twice the defense benefit of Combat Jumping, but as soon as you attack, are hit, or click a glowie half of it disappears and it becomes exactly equivalent to Combat Jumping. So Stealth's one benefit, higher defense, is valuable only when absorbing alpha strikes from mobs... and yet its core benefit, Stealth, is designed to reduce the incidence of taking alpha strikes from mobs.

Unless you're planning to get Invisibility or Phase Shift or you have some elaborate high-defense alpha mitigation strategy, I recommend taking Combat Jumping and slotting a +Stealth global into it instead. Alternately, you could slot a +Stealth global into Sprint or one of its many clones, but Combat Jumping still has the edge in that it is more end efficient, and gives defense and immob protection.


But that's just the default slot. What can we do with more slots invested?


Set IO slotting #7: Global Madness:
Luck of the Gambler +5% rch global,
Karma KB protection global,
Kismet +6% tohit unique global,
Gift of the Ancients +7.5% runspeed global
Global bonuses
Recharge: +5%
Knockback protection: mag 4
tohit: +6%
Runspeed: +7.5%

This is obviously just a concatenation of the four globals above. It costs 3 extra slots, and you can mix and match to taste.


Set IO slotting #8: Luck of the Gambler def, +5% rch global,
def: +25.5%
Set and Global bonuses
Regen: +10%
Recharge: +5%

For an investment of one extra slot, we've got the same defense bonus we would from 1 common def IO slotted, plus the global recharge benefit and 10% Regen. Not bad.

Set IO slotting #9: Kismet def/end, +6% tohit unique global
def: +13.1%
end: +21.8%
Set and Global bonuses
Recovery: +1.5%
tohit: +6%

Here we get minor defense and end enhancement, a decent recovery bonus, and the global tohit buff.

Set IO slotting #10: Karma def/end, KB protection global
def: +13.1%
end: +21.8%
Set and Global bonuses
Debt protection: +1.5%
Knockback protection: mag 4

This gives the lackluster debt protection set bonus, and is not likely to be a popular slotting option.

Set IO slotting #11: Gift of the Ancients def, +7.5% runspeed global
def: +23.2%
Set and Global bonuses
Recovery: +2%
Runspeed: +7.5%

This option offers a nice recovery bonus.


Set IO slotting #12: Granite Armor special:
Luck of the Gambler def,
Luck of the Gambler +5% rch global;
Gift of the Ancients def, +7.5% runspeed global;
def: +25.5%
Set and Global bonuses
Regen: +10%
Recharge: +5%
Runspeed: +7.5%

This combination addresses some of the drawbacks of Granite Armor while also stacking on top the regen value of Rooted.


Set IO slotting #13: Lots of Slots:
Luck of the Gambler def/end,
Luck of the Gambler +5% rch global;
Kismet def/end,
Kismet +6% tohit unique global;
Gift of the Ancients def/end,
Gift of the Ancients +7.5% runspeed global;
def: +43.5%
end: +72.4%
Set and Global bonuses
Regen: +10%
Recovery: +1.5%
Recovery: +2%
Recharge: +5%
tohit: +6%
Runspeed: +7.5%

This costs five extra slots, but gives a pretty impressive array of benefits. Most builds won't have the extra slots to do something like this, but it's an interesting demonstration of the potential of CJ to become a very versatile power encompassing travel, status protection, defense, and a wide array of bonuses.

Set IO slotting #14: Lots of Slots 2: Jumping:
Luck of the Gambler def/end,
Luck of the Gambler +5% rch global;
Kismet def/end,
Kismet +6% tohit unique global;
Unbounded Leap jump,
Unbounded Leap +Stealth unique global;
def: +29%
end: +48.3%
jump: +42.4%
Set and Global bonuses
Regen: +10%
Recovery: +1.5%
JumpSpeed: +4%
Recharge: +5%
tohit: +6%

This is a similar approach but focuses on enhancing the travel aspects of the power. This is potentially good for those who use Combat Jumping and Hurdle in lieu of a travel power. The Unbounded Leap set bonus helps here. This turns Combat Jumping into a Stealth equivalent, as well.


Conclusion

This short guide is intended principally as encouragement to re-examine i8 slotting conventions when planning i9 builds. Combat Jumping is a power that is not considered profitably enhanceable, but in i9 that changes somewhat. Even with just the default slot IO sets allow you to do some interesting things with the power: Stealth, recharge, tohit, knockback protection, and runspeed. And depending on what set bonuses you're aiming for in your build, it can be valuable to add slots to it.

[ QUOTE ]

QFT, if you are comparing a standard build with one with almost nothing but IOs, and I suspect some of them pretty hard to get, you should compare a fully tricked out HO build. That is probably somewhere close to as difficult to obtain, and is an equally viable strategy for I9 with the STF.


[/ QUOTE ]

I used SOs as a baseline for a few reasons.

First, everybody who has a level 22 or higher character knows what an SO is and how it works. They're sufficiently common that I can use them as a basis for comparison and expect that everybody reading knows what I'm talking about.

Second, I think it's actually pretty uncommon for a given build to have access to all the HOs it could use. I know that there are plenty of people out there with characters like that, but I suspect that the majority are not in this enviable situation.

Third, HO builds only apply to levels 47 and up. IO set builds can start implementation at level 10 (7 if you're really on the ball) and can evolve and grow during almost all of a character's lifetime. If my baseline build was an HO example, the comparisons I make later in the guide would be meaningless for any fire/fire tank who isn't fully HO-d out.

Granted, I show the builds at their level 50 end-state, but the principles apply on the way to 50. My Test fire/fire tank dinged 34 last night. She has some Scirocco's Dervish enhancements in five different PBAoEs - each has at least two (for the +Regen), and one has four. The level range of the enhancements is 22-35. She is already noticeably tougher than her Live counterpart - on Live I use Healing Flames much more often than I do on Test.

Fourth, I think anybody who has dozens of HOs is probably sufficiently savvy that he can tweak my example and make his own comparison.

Finally, I consider HOs not to be as magnificent as many people seem to. They're certainly excellent, but for attacks they aren't really as great as some people suggest. Why not?

What is the priority for attacks? Damage, obviously. But HOs rarely offer an advantage over even SOs. In both HO and SO slotting, attacks are typically at the damage cap, so there is no advantage here.

The next priority is accuracy. HO slotting typically has more than SO slotting, but for most PvE applications, beyond about 1.5 SOs worth of accuracy you're not going to notice much of a difference. So there's some extra value in HOs, but not a whole lot.

Tied for third priority are endurance reduction and recharge. They actually aren't tied, but which is more important depends on the attack and the attack chain, so let's consider them equivalents for now. HO slotting makes enough room that you can slot one more of either endurance reduction or recharge than you could with SO slotting. That's nice, but both endurance reduction and recharge operate on diminishing returns, so adding a second SO or IO isn't as impressive as adding the first. It's a nice boost, but not a big deal.

I actually think the best use of HOs in this case is to only 5 slot attacks instead of 6 slotting them, freeing the slots for other powers. In a slot-starved build this can make a huge difference, and here I will acknowledge that HOs are superior to SOs. In this case I'll note that you can get the slot benefit with only one HO.


Where I think HOs shine in particular is cases where you can slot six of them to get, say, 12 effective SOs of performance out of them. Such powers are few. Here's one: Lich. Slot it with 3 acc/debuff and 3 dmg/mez. The effective enhancement is:
acc: +95%
dmg: +95%
hold: +95%
fear: +95%
immb: +95%
acc debuff: +56%

This is actually 18 effective SOs of enhancement. HOs are clearly far superior to any alternative for this power.

But most powers can't benefit so much from HOs. I don't see a huge benefit for fire/fire tanks in i8, and what benefit there is is mostly in slot economy. And since the i8 build has slots to spare after the mid-30s, I see that as a dubious benefit. Moreover, since you can acquire competitive enhancement values with Set IOs, I think that's a superior option since you can start building the sets early in your career instead of waiting until level 47 to start building your character beyond SOs.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

I have a pretty hard time understanding this, and if you posted a breakdown of your thoughts on it, I'd appreciate it.


[/ QUOTE ]

Sure, I'm happy to.

[ QUOTE ]

Well, you've adimittedly done several non-optimal slotting from a I8/ED perspective things. In particular, you've slotted less damage, recharge or accuracy than "normal", in the expectation that these will be corrected/supplemented by set bonuses.


[/ QUOTE ]

I don't feel that I have done a lot of sub-optimal slotting, actually. I slotted for set bonuses (which typically involved 6-slotting the attacks - not exactly sub-optimal) for +Regen and +Health, and I was merely pleasantly surprised by the secondary benefits of the +tohit and +Recharge.

I can see why you might think that I did slot less than optimally, because I wrote a lot about that possibility. But doing that would have reduced some important set bonuses, so I didn't. The primary powers in each build are very well slotted. When I did the power-by-power breakdown, all of those values are raw enhancement values without set bonuses factored in. I don't factor set bonuses in until the very last section where I talk about "what we have gained." I can see that I should make that more clear.

The only areas that are weak in both builds are areas that are explicitly outside the build's specialty. So the PBAoE build has weaker ST attacks than the i8 version. I don't feel that this is sub-optimal, because the PBAoE attacks have all gained compared to i8. The build fulfils its purpose admirably. It'll be weaker against single targets at 50, but during the early and mid game it's actually more balanced than the i8 build (which doesn't get any ST slotting until the late 30s, while the i9 version gets a slot in each ST attack early on).

For example: Scorch and Boxing have these enhancements without set bonuses:
acc: +21.8%
dam: +43.6%
rch: +21.8%

and Incinerate has
acc: +21.8%
dam: +91.9%
end: +21.8%
rch: +48.3%

They're not totally ideal, but they're very respectable ST attacks in a build that is optimized in every way for AoE. It also occurs to me that I used the Pounding Slugfest (levels 10-30) set to slot the ST attacks in the PBAoE build, so those set bonuses will be around for some exemplaring.


In the ST build, the ST attacks are all slotted more powerfully in every dimension than in the i8 build. Furthermore, there is a single PBAoE attack that I couldn't have fit into an i8 version of the ST build (because we had to take Acrobatics). Without set bonuses, the PBAoE attack won't be very useful, slotted as it is for only damage. Those who plan to exemp a lot would get more mileage out of an acc/dmg HO in that single slot. But I don't think FSC is going to be a core element of your exemping strategy.


So the raw enhancement values in each build's primary offensive function are better than the i8 SO equivalent. The raw enhancement values in secondary offense abilities are worse but not awful in the PBAoE build and better merely for existing in the ST build. If you're playing to the build's strengths, I don't think they'll be gimped compared to the i8 SO baseline.


[ QUOTE ]

In addition, you potentially have slots that literally do nothing, such as the extra three slots in Health that contain the uniques.


[/ QUOTE ]

The few globals I slotted are more than made up for by the extra enhancement value of the multi-aspect IOs.


Of course, I used SOs in my i8 build as the baseline for comparison, and I think that's where our assessments differ.


[ QUOTE ]

If you're one of the lucky folks who has access to a lot of HOs, this seems even worse, because the "slot compression" you get out of HOs goes a long way to helping counter the loss of enhancement strength that happens with Exemplaring.


[/ QUOTE ]

To some extent this is true. But not as much as it may seem.

Let's compare an HO'd PBAoE with our PBAoEs above.

HO: 3 acc/dam HOs, 1 IO end, 2 IO rch
acc: +95%
dam: +95%
end: +42.4%
rch: +84.8%

Set IO: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%

HO slotting is superior in accuracy, although at levels of accuracy that are pretty high in the first place. For PvP this is a concern; for PvE I'd argue that the difference is unnoticeable in all but extreme cases.

HO and Set IO slotting are equivalent in damage.

HO and Set IO slotting are nearly equivalent in endurance reduction: Set IO has a small edge.

HO slotting beats Set IO slotting by a noticeable amount in recharge.
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Attack Set IO recharge HO recharge
Combustion 10.2s 8.1s
FSC 13.5s 10.8s
Burn 27.1s 21.7s
Consume* 93.0s 97.4s
Blazing Aura N/A N/A
</pre><hr />

*Consume was slotted differently than the other PBAoEs in the i9 build - it lost the proc and gained a common rch IO, to make its native rch enhancement 93.5%, higher than the HO slotting example.

Blazing Aura is treated as N/A because it's a toggle.

So the major area of difference is in recharge. And it's not an insignificant difference. I don't think it will alter an attack chain, because I haven't seen a PBAoE attack chain for a fire tank, really - PBAoEs are so situational for efficient use that they don't chain well. But it certainly will have an impact on overall DPS.

Will it be a noticeable difference? Probably. Will it mean that the set bonus focused i9 PBAoE build will be gimped next to the HO-focused i8 PBAoE build when both are exemplared? If one recharge enhancement is the difference between "gimped" and "not gimped," then I guess so, but I don't think that's the case.


We can make a similar comparison for the ST attacks:

HO: 3 acc/dam HOs, 1 IO end, 2 IO rch
acc: +95%
dam: +95%
end: +42.4%
rch: +84.8%

Set IO: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%

Once again, HO slotting beats Set IO slotting in accuracy. Outside of PvP, most players won't notice a difference unless they're fighting +4s or higher. Set IO slotting is slightly more damaging, and noticeably more end-efficient. It is also noticeably slower.

The ST attacks compare more favorably because the Crushing Impact set that we used doesn't "waste" a slot on a proc - all six slots are devoted to enhancement.

Let's look at recharge values:
<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Attack Set IO recharge HO recharge
Scorch* 2.1s 1.6s
Fire Sword 3.6s 3.3s
Boxing 1.5s 1.4s
Incinerate 5.9s 5.4s
Greater Fire Sword 7.1s 6.5s
</pre><hr />

*Scorch had a slot removed, so it only has a recharge value of 42.4% - if anything, this analysis shows that I should have done that to Boxing, instead. Alternately, boxing could profitably get a chance to disorient proc, either of two chance to knockdown procs, or the chance for NE damage proc, at the cost of negligible recharge benefit and some Psi resistance.

For ST attacks, the recharge difference is much less noticeable, both because the difference in recharge between Set IO slotting and HO slotting is less in this instance and also because ST attacks tend to recharge faster than AoE attacks so the marginal benefit of higher recharge is less noticeable.

These differences will have a small impact on attack chain, but I don't think the differences are enough to say that the Set IO build is gimped, especially since it's doing slightly more damage and for a less endurance.


[ QUOTE ]

Since (in contrast to HOs) multifunction IOs have enhancement strengths lower than SOs


[/ QUOTE ]

That's true except for quad-aspect enhancers, which have enhancement strengths higher than HOs (72% compared to 66.6%). When mixing and matching sets, if I have use for all four aspects I typically try to stack quad enhancers from every set I'm using if I can for exactly this reason.


Scrap

Sapph wrote:
[ QUOTE ]

I note you discount the &gt;20% To-Hit bonus as being "DO" level. When it comes to enhancements, To-Hit is very much not the same as Accuracy. I don't know what the exact conversion rates are, but I do know that 1% of To-Hit buff is worth more than 1% of Accuracy enhancement. Is it possible that, with all the stacking, 21% or 22% of To-Hit buff would actually equal 33% Accuracy?


[/ QUOTE ]

and Grinnz wrote:

[ QUOTE ]

You can't compare "DO-level" tohit with an accuracy DO.


[/ QUOTE ]

and supported his comment with more information than I knew.

My response: Yes, I drew a distinction between tohit and Accuracy, and then deliberately glossed it over because a) it's been over a year since I've read Arcanaville's treatise on the differences, b) I had it in my head that against even level mobs there was no difference - obviously conflating two of Arcanaville's guides, and c) my guide was already getting pretty long.

But it's an omission, so I need to understand the stuff and make it clear in the next version of the guide. There isn't an easy conversion, clearly, so I'll just draw a line in the sand and use that as a baseline.


Sapph also wrote:

[ QUOTE ]

Of course, the obvious follow up question is: so what if it does? If the gold standard for PvE slotting is 1 Acc, doesn't that now mean 1 IO Acc? Should any To-Hit buff need to equal 40% to be worth slot replacement?


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I mainly used SOs as the unit of comparison because everybody knows what an SO is. But there's another reason: one SO of accuracy is enough for me to feel that a power with a base accuracy of 1 is hitting "enough." This is totally subjective, but to some extent it's a shared assumption: I read more about 1 acc, 3 dam, 1 end, 1 rch slotting than about 2 acc, 3 dam, 1 end slotting, for example. There are certainly people who allocate 2 of six slots to acc in powers that have a default accuracy of 1, but I have it in my mind that those are mostly PvPers or people who routinely fight +4 or higher mobs. Since I'm not one of those people, I'm prepared to present my build as-is and let them tweak as necessary for their purposes. I will say that there's enough accuracy enhancement (not tohit) in most powers in both builds for most purposes.

[ QUOTE ]

Good grief. I'm sure that is an amazing analysis but if this is the kind of understanding and analysis and comparison effort I'm going to have to do to make use of the IO system, to be anything than just another random d*****s who slots IO stuff just because it drops, then I just dont want to bother. Thats crazy. I'm sticking to SOs. Maybe in a year or two it will seep into my brain somehow.


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, I had a lot of reasons for writing this - proof of concept, demonstration of the benefits of set bonuses to nay-sayers, demonstration that some powersets are left in the cold by the current sets (coming soon), provoking discussion about builds in the community - but one of the reasons is so that people who don't want to think about this stuff can look at a guide and say "looks OK to me, I'll try it."

And once somebody tries it, he's likely to tinker a bit, since his playstyle and assessment of various bonuses is likely to be different from mine. And tinkering is the beginning of understanding.

That's my hope, anyway.

[ QUOTE ]

Sadly, something a lot of players will have to consider is how spectacularly gimp this build would be if it exemplared underneath the level of its set bonuses.


[/ QUOTE ]

I should have addressed this in the guide. Here's my first stab:

Since I recommend slotting level 50 set IOs, most of these bonuses are fragile in the exemplaring case. You can slot the procs at the lowest level possible for the set and give yourself some exemplaring room there. Some of the globals can be slotted at very low levels. The level minimums for the globals are:

Karma KB protection: level 10
Steadfast Resistance KB protection: level 10
Steadfast Resistance res/+3% Def (all) global: level 10
Luck of the Gambler recharge global: level 25

So you can keep your knockback protection all the way down, which is very important: if that were lost as soon as you exemped, you'd be in dire straits without Acrobatics.

The Steadfast Resistance res/def global can safely be dropped to a low level, too, because neither build relies on the resistance enhancement component - it's too low even at level 30 to save us a slot from our Titanium Coating sets without dropping our resistance enhancement below the ED soft cap, so I opted for redundant resistance enhancement. Because of that, you can get this at as low a level as you like, ideally 10.

The Luck of the Gambler globals are at 25, so some exemping will eliminate those even if you can find globals at 25.

And, of course, if you have all level 50 IOs and set IOs, all your set bonuses will vanish as soon as you exemp to any level.

Does this gimp the build?

Well, it takes away those delicious +Regen and +Health passive buffs. But the build still compares favorably. Even taking the set bonuses out of the equation and factoring only the raw enhancement values, both builds are overall better than their i8 equivalents. The PBAoE build loses some ST effectiveness but gains plenty of PBAoE effectiveness. The ST build will lose some utility effectiveness in Consume (because the set bonus recharge won't be bringing Consume's recharge into parity with i8 any more), but overall it will still be more powerful than i8.

Will the builds feel gimped when you exemp? I don't think there can be any question that they will - the set bonuses are too powerful not to notice their absence. But will they be gimped compared to the i8 build exemped to the same level? I don't think so.

I agree that such a big step down is a problem. I see it as a problem with the exemplaring mechanism, not a problem with the build. I realize that will seem like splitting hairs to some people, but nobody needs to build around set bonuses. I will, because I like increasing the upper limits of my power even if I won't always be at those limits.

Scrap

Thanks to everybody for the kind words. I've gone back and re-read the post, and detected some numerical errors (I claimed that 1864 was greater than 1874... nice) and plenty of grammatical errors (I didn't proofread... nice) that will be corrected in the final version that I'll post in the Guides forum when i9 goes live. If anybody sees any of these mistakes, please let me know either with a PM or by replying to this thread. I'm not shy about being wrong

Thanks again,

Scrap

That has got to be some higher power telling you to stop there

[ QUOTE ]

Then add in the 2.5 end from Choking Cloud (when it's toggled on)


[/ QUOTE ]

Or when it's not. Set bonuses are always on

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

With this slotting, I've got the useable bonuses of Recharge 21.75%, Endredux 48.94% and Hold 54.38%. This means that the power costs 1/2 as much to run (a bit still)


[/ QUOTE ]

Well, end reduction of 48.94% doesn't approximately halve the end cost. If it did, an end reduction of 100% would eliminate the end cost, and anything more would give you end back. You can see how that would be a balance problem.

Endurance reduction follows the same diminishing returns formula as recharge: new end cost = old end cost / (1 + endrdx value).

So an end reduction enhancement value of 48.94% makes Choking Cloud cost 67.14% of its original cost.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

At what point, level wise, would it be feasible to begin this process? Using your build as an example (even though I know you stated you already have this 50), if I were starting from level 1 when could I plan on starting the slotting?


[/ QUOTE ]

This is an excellent question; I'm glad you asked. It's something I had planned to address in the guide, but obviously the outline in my mind lost a few things as it evolved.

I'd start working on this from your character's inception. Some of the global effect IOs are in low-level sets, so it pays to keep an eye out for them. What's more, it seems to be advantageous to have your globals be the lowest level possible, since exemplaring eliminates (or is supposed to eliminate - I haven't been keeping track of that mess) any globals that are higher than the level you're exemplared to.

When allocating slots, I tried to choose a path that allowed the most important bonuses (+Regen, +Health) to be unlocked as early as possible, assuming perfect availability of IOs. For the most part this allows for effective i8 slotting, too. So you can slot your powers with TOs/DOs/SOs as you would normally, replacing them opportunistically as common IOs and set IOs become available and desireable. This seemed to work better for the PBAoE build than for the ST build, in the sense that I think the ST build will play a bit more awkwardly until the mid-30s because of some of the slotting choices I made (putting 2 extra slots into Super Jump early in the build, for example), but if you can get the set IOs early in your career, then those choices will pay off as the set bonus stacking starts to unfold.

The main tension here is Acrobatics. Can you get two knockback protection IOs before 20? If not, you'll want to take Acrobatics and respec once you have the two IOs.

And really, availability of IOs won't be clear until i9 has been on Live for a while. Test is not a good sample. It might be best to build and play a standard i8 build until you have a sufficient critical mass of set bonuses and IOs to switch over.


[ QUOTE ]

Obviously the best IOs are going to be level 50s, right? The single effect 50 IOs are 40% enhancement if I'm not mistaken (which I may be, I'll admit) and the lower level ones reduce in effectiveness. So the ideal build would be the above slotting with all 50 IOs. But would you get the same global health and regen bonuses from, say, level 35 IOs?


[/ QUOTE ]

For everything but globals and procs, yes. For globals and procs you want them as low as you can conveniently get them.

Single aspect IOs at level 50 and above are 42.4% enhancement for schedule A. The build above assumes level 50 IOs, so if you're level 36 and have the above slotting, you'll be somewhat weaker than what you see above (in terms of power enhancement - the set bonuses will be exactly as strong as you see above, because they ignore character level), but you'll still be stronger than with SOs. IOs achieve approximate parity with SOs at level 30 and only get better beyond that point. Furthermore, multi-aspect IOs at level 30 are better than SOs because the total enhancement benefit is higher than for a same-level single-aspect IO.


[ QUOTE ]

And items like the unique and global IOs, can those be crafted at any level or are they set at a specific one? This question is a bit unrelated to your post, I know, but curious I am.


[/ QUOTE ]

Recipes have levels. The global will be created at the level of the recipe that was used to make it. As I understand it, any level character can craft any level recipe. Sets have level ranges within which they will drop. Any set IO recipe can drop at any level within that range, and globals are no exception.

I hope this helps. Please ask if you have more questions.

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

It looks like your post got cut off in the "XI. Single Target +Health Build" section.


[/ QUOTE ]

It sure did! And I thought the post preview had everything in it. What a pain in the wumpus.

Thanks for the heads up, Martavius!

Scrap

XI. Single Target +Health Build

This build will pursue +Health bonuses via single target attacks.

[u]Slot allocation[u]

First let's see what kind of slot investment we'll need to get the most +Health bonuses.

We will definitely want to six-slot Health and Healing Flames, because Heal sets have two excellent +Health bonuses. That's 10 slots there. We also want to slot our resistance sets with 3 Titanium Coatings to get the +Health bonuses there, which takes 6 more slots. Finally, we'll want to slot our single target attacks with at least 3 Crushing Impacts for the +Health bonuses there. With 5 single target attacks, that's 10 more slots. Finally, we'll want three Unbounded Leaps in Super Jump. Total bare minimum cost for +Health bonuses: 28 slots.

That leaves plenty of room, so let's look again at how we can expand these investments for greater benefit.

Looking again at Crushing Impact, the deeper set bonuses seem worth taking: +tohit and -recharge. As we saw with the PBAoE build, even a few of those can make a big difference. Let's 6 slot each of our single target attacks with Crushing Impact. Five full Crushing Impact sets gives us 11% immob resistance (can I get a "Hell, yeah!"?), +5.65% max Health, +12.5% tohit, +25% recharge, and +12.5% Psi resistance. Not bad at all. The cost of six slotting five attacks is 25 slots. We have 42 more to play with.

Defenses will take 5 slots for Healing Flames and 2 each for Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, for a total of 11. That leaves another 31.

Support will occupy 1 slot for Build Up, 1 for Fiery Embrace, 1 for Stamina (we're employing the lessons in efficiency that the last build taught us), and 5 for Health. Furthermore, we're going to want 3 slots in Consume and at least 3 in Blazing Aura. Those 13 slots leave us with 17 for EPPs and discretionary slotting.


[u]Set allocation[u]

So let's start putting sets to powers.

A full set of Crushing Impact gives the following:
acc: +68.9%
dam: +143.1% (before ED scaling)
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%

The single target attacks we'll be taking are Scorch, Fire Sword, Boxing, Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword. Every one of these attacks will benefit from a six-slotted Crushing Impact. If we need the slots, we can always pull the sixth slot out of some or all of the attacks, at the expense of Psi resistance.

Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.

Three Titanium Coating enhancements (res, end/res, end/rch) give
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep res: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%

We'll be slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough this way.

In Healing Flames, we're going to try to maximize our +Health bonuses:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%

This gives us two identical 1.88% Health bonuses from a single power, and considerably better healing performance than in i8.


Support slotting will be a bit more expensive.

Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina each take one slot.

We'll put five slots into Health, but we'll slot it differently than we did for the PBAoE build:

1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO

heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%

We've dropped 15% recovery to get another 1.5% health bonus out of Regenerative Tissue.

We'll be adding 3 slots to Consume:
Scirocco's Dervish: dmg/rch, acc/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +74.2%
end: +47.7%
rch: +47.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%

Slotting Consume this way isn't ideal, because the recharge is considerably below its i8 equivalent. But it gives us a powerful Regen bonus and a good tohit bonus, which I am anticipating stacking for profit down the line. If we can spare a slot later, we'll add a recharge IO back here to establish parity with the i8 baseline.

Blazing Aura gets another 3 slots:
Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dmg dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%

We've saved some slots here: the i8 version had 6 slots, and less acc and equal damage. It had a taunt enhancement and somewhat better endurance efficiency, however, so we lose ground in those respects.


This leaves us with 17 discretionary slots.

We will take a similar approach to discretionary slots as we did with the PBAoE build: we will assign one slot to knockback protection in Plasma Shield and use the default Combat Jumping slot for another kb protection IO, 1 slot in Fire Shield for Steadfast Resistance's res/+3% def global, 2 slots into Weave for defense enhancement, and another into Weave and one into Combat Jumping for Luck of the Gambler recharge globals. That's another 6 slots, leaving us with 11 unallocated.

We're going to take a similar approach with the epics, as well. We want to add 3 Devastation slots to Char and Fire Blast to get the fantastic Regen, Health and Damage bonuses from Devastation. And we'll add 4 slots to Fire Ball to get Accuracy and Recovery from Positron's Blast.

We'd also like to put two slots into Super Jump for the +Health in Unbounded Leap, but we only have one slot available. We'll take a slot out of Scorch in order to do so, sacrificing some Psi resistance.



[u]The Build[u]

Here's the single target build.


[u]The Build[u]

+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: Hot Poker
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Scorch ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(9),Empty(34),Empty(46)
01 =&gt; Fire Shield ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(11),Empty(33)
02 =&gt; Fire Sword ==&gt; Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(13),Empty(33),Empty(46),Empty(50)
04 =&gt; Healing Flames ==&gt; Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(7),Empty(29),Empty(37),Empty(40)
06 =&gt; Combat Jumping ==&gt; Empty(6),Empty(7)
08 =&gt; Blazing Aura ==&gt; Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(15),Empty(34)
10 =&gt; Consume ==&gt; Empty(10),Empty(11),Empty(17),Empty(34)
12 =&gt; Plasma Shield ==&gt; Empty(12),Empty(13),Empty(19),Empty(33)
14 =&gt; Super Jump ==&gt; Empty(14),Empty(15),Empty(21)
16 =&gt; Boxing ==&gt; Empty(16),Empty(17),Empty(21),Empty(37),Empty(46),Empty(50)
18 =&gt; Tough ==&gt; Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(23)
20 =&gt; Hurdle ==&gt; Empty(20)
22 =&gt; Health ==&gt; Empty(22),Empty(23),Empty(25),Empty(27),Empty(37),Empty(43)
24 =&gt; Stamina ==&gt; Empty(24),Empty(25)
26 =&gt; Build Up ==&gt; Empty(26),Empty(27)
28 =&gt; Fiery Embrace ==&gt; Empty(28),Empty(29)
30 =&gt; Weave ==&gt; Empty(30),Empty(31),Empty(31),Empty(31)
32 =&gt; Taunt ==&gt; Empty(32)
35 =&gt; Incinerate ==&gt; Empty(35),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(40),Empty(43)
38 =&gt; Greater Fire Sword ==&gt; Empty(38),Empty(39),Empty(39),Empty(39),Empty(40),Empty(43)
41 =&gt; Char ==&gt; Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42)
44 =&gt; Fire Blast ==&gt; Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45)
47 =&gt; Fire Ball ==&gt; Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(50)
49 =&gt; Fire Sword Circle ==&gt; Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Sprint ==&gt; Empty(1)
01 =&gt; Brawl ==&gt; Empty(1)
02 =&gt; Rest ==&gt; Empty(1)



I don't know of a planner that handles IOs, so lets look at the enhancements on a power-by-power basis.

Scorch: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +97.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%

We've removed a dmg/rch from Scorch to put an extra slot into Super Jump for another +Health set bonus. I chose dam/rch because Crushing Impact was already well past the ED soft cap for damage (we lost only 4% damage enhancement after ED), and because I think our set bonuses will make up for the lost recharge. We could just as easily have taken out the acc/dmg instead, and that might even be a better option for PvE.

Notice that even with only 5 slots, Scorch is better in every way than its i8 counterpart.


Fire Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection res/def global
res: +60.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Def (all): +3%


Fire Sword: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%

This is our standard Crushing Impact slotting, complete with Psi resistance. Notice that it's more accurate, more damaging, more efficient and considerably faster than the i8 version.


Healing Flames:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%

Again, we've focused on getting two Health bonuses from Healing Flames.


Combat Jumping: 1 Karma Knockback protection global, 1 Luck of the Gambler 5% recharge global
Set and global bonuses:
Kb protection: mag 4
Recharge: 5%


Blazing Aura: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dmg dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%


Consume: Scirocco's Dervish: dmg/rch, acc/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end
acc: +47.7%
dmg: +74.2%
end: +47.7%
rch: +47.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%

This isn't ideal recharge value, but perhaps our set bonuses will help make up for that.


Plasma Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection Kb protection
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Kb protection: mag 4


Super Jump: Unbounded Leap end, jump, stealth
jump: +42.4%
end: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Jump speed: 4%
Health: +1.5%


Boxing: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%


Tough: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%


Hurdle: 1 IO jump
jump: +42.4%


Health:
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO

heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%


Stamina: 2 IO endrcv
endmod: +84.8%


Build Up: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%


Fiery Embrace: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%


Weave: Luck of the Gambler: def, def/end, def/rech, +5% rch global
def: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +5%


Taunt: 1 IO taunt
taunt: +42.4%


Incinerate: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%


Greater Fire Sword: Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%


Char: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch, acc/dam/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +18.5%
rch: +66.2%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%


Fire Blast: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +47.7%
rch: +39.7%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%


Fire Ball: Positron's Blast: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, dam/rng, acc/dam/end
acc: +47.7%
dam: +99.0%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
rng: +15.9%
Set bonuses:
Recovery: +2.5%
Fire and Cold res: +1.58%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +6.25%


Fire Sword Circle: 1 dmg IO
dmg: +42.4%

An acc/dmg HO might seem like a better investment here on the surface, but let's wait for the set bonus totals before deciding.


[u]The Set Bonuses[u]

Let's see if this approach has paid off.

Health: +23.29%. This takes a level 50 Tanker with no accolades from 1874 health to 2311 hit points, a gain of 437 hit points.

Regen: +123%. Combined with our enhanced Health, and we have 201.76%. Not as good a buff as the best passive regen an i8 Regeneration scrapper has (+224.25%), but it is working on a higher hit point total, so the net effect will be higher.

tohit: +25.02%. This is a lot of extra accuracy. This is why I put only one dmg IO into Fire Sword Circle instead of an acc/dmg HO: with this kind of accuracy, we can focus on the highest possible damage enhancement.

Recharge: +41.25%. Wow. This isn't quite as good as Hasten, but it's better than a recharge SO in all of your powers, and it's almost as good as a level 50 recharge IO. This helps to make up for some of our powers that are suffering from weaker-than-i8 recharge. We'll reexamine them in a moment.

Def (all) +3%. This combined with Weave and Combat Jumping gives us +13.43% defense to all. This is not the best defense layer, but I'll gladly take it.

Psi resistance: +10%. While this seems unimpressive on the surface, combined with our increased hit points, we are effectively 33.29% more resistant to Psionics than in i8. Not bad, considering that we weren't shooting for Psi resistance.

Recovery: +15%. This isn't as good as our PBAoE build, but we gave up on Recovery to gain +Health. In fact, this approach is worth considering for that build, as well.

KB protection: mag 8. Again, this opportunity to be free from Acrobatics is what gets us Weave, which is over half of our Defense (all).

Damage: +6%.

Immob resistance: +11%.
Sleep resistance: +6.6%.
Negative Energy resistance: +6.26%.
Fire and Cold resistance: +1.58%.
Jump speed: +4%.
Run speed: +4%.



[u]i8 vs. i9[u]

With this build, it's not clear that much has been lost in the translation from i8 to i9. The PBAoE build lost some ST effectiveness because it 6-slotted a couple of PBAoEs that were less robustly slotted in i8. That's not the case here: all of our single target attacks are 6-slotted, just as they would be in i8.



What have we gained?

Much greater survivability. The +Health combined with the +Regen will make us very survivable. For example:

In i8, assuming no accolades and no Health, a level 50 tanker healed 468.5 health per minute. In i8 our tanker, with no accolades and 1-slotted Health, healed 718.3 hit points per minute. If Health had been 3-slotted, it would be 833.93 health per minute.

In i9, our tanker with no accolades heals 1743.4 hit points per minute. This isn't as much as our PBAoE tanker (1864.3 per minute), but it's competitive, and it blows the doors off our i8 heal rate.

What else?

We've added a small but significant defense layer: +13% defense to all. We've also added some minor Psi resist - not enough to plug that hole in our mitigation, but it makes the hole smaller.

We've gained more effectiveness from our ST attacks. They are all more accurate, more damaging, cheaper and faster.

We've gained considerable passive enhancement bonuses. Our passive tohit buff is +25%. Our passive recharge buff is +41%. Our passive damage buff is 6%. How does this affect our performance?

Fire Sword Circle, with only one slot, has this effective enhancement:
acc: +25%
dmg: +47.4%
rch: +41%

That's more than 3 SOs worth of enhancment. Not bad for only one slot.

Scorch, which lost some recharge enhancement when we took a slot out of it (dropping it to rech: +42.4%), has an effective recharge of 83.4%. Our other single target attacks have an effective recharge of 110% - after ED! Consume, which looked to be much less competitive with the i8 version because it has only 47.7% rch enhancement natively, now has 89%, bringing it to near parity with i8. Fire Blast, with 39.7% native rch, has an effective 81% rch. Fire Ball, with 26.5% native, has 67.5% effective.

In fact, it's worth looking at one of our fully-slotted single target attacks:

Without set bonuses:
Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +68.9%
dam: +101.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%

With set bonuses:
Crushing Impact: acc/dmg, dmg/end, dmg/rch, acc/dmg/rch, acc/dmg/end, dmg/end/rch
acc: +93.9%
dam: +107.5%
end: +68.9%
rech: +109.9%

Both damage and recharge have been enhanced past ED soft caps, which illustrates some of the best advantages of set bonuses. It's also worth noting that accuracy values like this (with a significant proportion of them the deadly tohit) are PvP-capable.



XII. Conclusions

There are a few lessons to be learned from this exercise.


[u]Stacking set bonuses can provide enormous benefit[u]

For very little loss in effectiveness, we have increased our character's effectiveness considerably. The passive benefits should not be underestimated - this character will regenerate considerable health even when mezzed. And having defenses and enhancement effects that cost no endurance is a non-trivial benefit.


[u]Conventional slotting wisdom should be re-examined[u]

We've slotted powers in ways that would seem ridiculous in i8. We gave Health more than 3 slots. Stamina, Build Up and Fiery Embrace only have 2 slots. We slotted Burn with accuracy. Consume is slotted for damage. In some cases, like Health, i9 has made six slotting a power that takes only a single enhancement type an efficient, and even very effective use of slots. In other cases, like Consume and Burn, the advantage of stacking set bonuses far outweighs the drawbacks of slightly sub-optimal slotting.


[u]Stacked set bonuses can replace enhancements[u]

By stacking set bonuses we have given all of our powers the equivalent of two extra slots. One benefit is that this makes our one-slotted Fire Sword Circle perform like it was three-slotted. Another is that it makes our six-slotted powers perform like eight-slotted powers - this kind of passive tohit and recharge bonus would be ideal for AOE holds, for example. When you factor in the impressive efficiency of multi-effect set IOs, we have single target attacks that act as if they are 11.4-slotted with SOs.


[u]Global IOs can replace or enhance power choices[u]

If you have a build with more slot flexibility than power choice flexibility, you can consider trading slots for powers. We did this with Acrobatics: at the cost of two slots, we were able to free up a power choice. The PBAoE build could probably do so with Stamina, as well. These globals can also enhance existing powers - we were able to enhance our Regeneration and our small defense considerably by employing global IOs strategically.


XIII. Summary

[u]PBAoE Regeneration build[u]

<ul type="square">[*]+249.44% total +Regen buff. +13.89% Health buff (before accolades). 2134 max health, recovering 1864.3 health per minute passively (vs. 718.3 in i8)[*]13% defense to all (vs. 2.5% in i8), 26% defense to Psi and 29% defense to AoEs[*]More effective AEs - effectively 9-slotted in SO terms[*]Less effective ST attacks - effectively 3.76-slotted in SO terms[*]Less reliance on Consume - 30% more Recovery than i8[/list]
[u]Single Target +Health build[u]

<ul type="square">[*]+23.29% max Health (before accolades). +201.76% total +Regen buff. 2311 max health, recovering 1743.4 health per minute passively (vs. 718.3 in i8)[*]13% defense to all (vs 2.5% in i8)[*]More effective ST attacks - effectively 11-slotted in SO terms[*]Passive set bonuses adding up to 2.1 slots of SOs[/list]

XIV. Closing Comments

So that's the guide. It took a lot longer to write than I had expected. I'd like to abstract the steps I took into a more explicit and formal "how to" guide, but I like having the concrete examples to illustrate just what can be done.

Please take a look and give me your corrections, criticisms, comments and whatever else you may feel like adding. I know that I've probably made some mistakes, and I may have passed over some obvious optimizations, so I hope folks will provide some input.

Thanks for reading!

Scrap

[ QUOTE ]

Given that others (maybe not you...) have already admitted that they're spending more on Test than they would on Live do you think that the prices that you bought and/or sold at were an accurate reflection of the Live game prices?

If so...why considering that anything spent on test is not really gone?

If not...then why are you bothering with it in the first place?


[/ QUOTE ]

I'm amazed. Never once did it occur to me to go to Test to find out what prices will be like on Live, but it seems that for you that is the only reason anybody would go to Test.

This is why I have been playing exclusively on test since the beta opened up to everybody: 1) I wanted to learn about the Inventions system; 2) I want to check out the STF; 3) I want to examine how I can push my builds beyond their i8 limits; 4) I am enjoying learning this new game system, and don't anticipate returning to the Live servers until I am preceded by Issue 9.

I am also learning a vast amount from dedicated people like Protea who spend a lot of time examining, testing and evaluating the many mechanisms involved in the Inventions system. I feel like when i9 goes live, I will be able to hit the ground running, with builds already planned out, specific IOs in mind, an a plan of what salvage I need to hold on to and what I can afford to sell. When I got to Test I was flailing around in the consignment house and slotting whatever enhancements I found. Now I have builds planned for five of my characters and I'm developing more as I go along, and I can make much more educated purchasing decisions.

Scrap

I. Introduction
II. References
III. The i8 Fire/Fire Tanker
IV. Planning for IOs
V. PBAoE Damage Sets
VI. Damage Mitigation Sets
VII. Melee Damage Sets
VIII. Other Sets
IX. Choosing Bonuses
X. PBAoE Regeneration Build
XI. Single Target +Health Build
XII. Conclusions
XIII. Summary
XIV. Closing Comments


I. Introduction

I'd like to follow up some of the discussions about slotting individual types of powers with a discussion of how to modify an existing build using set bonuses. IO sets add a couple of new dimensions to planning a build, so I think it's worthwhile to provide an example of how one might approach IO builds.

For this example I've chosen a Firey Aura/Fiery Melee Tanker. I've chosen this particular build for a few reasons. First, this build has been a very popular one in the past, and because of this the decisions and trade-offs involved are very well-understood by the community. Second, the build is very tight in terms of power choices, so this gives us an opportunity to see how we can use IOs and a comparative availability of slots to relieve some of the power tension. Third, it has a lot of powers that take the same set types, so it provides an excellent example of how to focus on sets.


II. References
IO slotting example: AoE Holds
IO slotting example: Health
IO slotting example: Melee Attacks
Fire/fire tank discussion


III. The I8 Fire/Fire Tanker

First I'd like to start off with the i8 build, so that we have a baseline for comparison. This build is the one I use on Freedom. I'll explain the choices I've made because an understanding of my reasons will be valuable when we discuss how to evolve the build using IOs.

These are the major choices that every fire/fire tank has to consider:

1. AoE or single target? Fire tankers can do both well. They are the best tanker at AoE, and they're arguably better at it than many scrappers. I chose an AoE focus because I prefer to maximize specialization rather than to create generalist builds.
2. Burn or no Burn? This is a pretty divisive issue when it comes to fire/fire tanks, in part because of Burn's controversial history. In any event, I felt that Burn was an important component of a fire/fire tanker's AoE strategy, and since tankers team well, it blends well with AoE controls. I chose Burn.
3. KB protection - Acrobatics or Hover? Fiery Aura has no knockback protection, so in i8 fire/fire tankers have to dip into pools to get any. Hover is popular because it's more economical than Acrobatics (no pre-reqs for Hover, 2 for Acrobatics). Burn, however, is incompatible with Hover, and I prefer Super Jump on my melee characters, so Acrobatics was an easy choice for me.
4. Immob protection - Burn or Combat Jumping? Fiery Aura has no toggle immobilization protection. I had already decided on Acrobatics for KB protection, so Combat Jumping was an easy choice here.
5. Tough or no Tough? Fire Shield with 3 even-level SOs provides only 46.8% smashing and lethal resistance, while Fire Shield and Tough both with 3 even level SOs provides 70.2%. The difference in survivability is noticeable, and I want my tanker, even a fire/fire tanker, to be capable of tanking for an 8-man team. I chose to take Tough.
6. Stamina or no Stamina? It's tempting to rely on Consume for endurance issues. Given the tight early power choices, I actually did this until level 28, but it wasn't easy. I like the buffer that Stamina provides.
7. Taunt or no Taunt? Taunt is a valuable tool for a team tanker, but given that I was spendy in other power pool areas (Acrobatics, Stamina, Tough) I didn't have a lot of room for Taunt. I took it at 49. I could certainly have used it earlier, but it wasn't too hard to maintain aggro with Blazing Aura.

The build:

---------------------------------------------
Exported from Ver: 1.7.6.0 of the CoH_CoV Character Builder - (http://sherksilver.coldfront.net/index.php)
---------------------------------------------
Name: heat_death2
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Blazing Aura==&gt; dmg(1) dmg(3) dmg(5) taunt(13) end(17) end(25)
01) --&gt; Scorch==&gt; acc(1) dmg(37) dmg(37) dmg(37) rch(40) end(43)
02) --&gt; Fire Shield==&gt; res(2) res(3) res(7) end(34)
04) --&gt; Healing Flames==&gt; heal(4) heal(5) heal(7) rch(9) rch(17) rch(25)
06) --&gt; Combat Jumping==&gt; def(6)
08) --&gt; Consume==&gt; acc(8) rch(9) rch(11) rch(21)
10) --&gt; Combustion==&gt; acc(10) dmg(11) dmg(15) dmg(21) rch(27) end(27)
12) --&gt; Plasma Shield==&gt; res(12) res(13) res(15) end(36)
14) --&gt; Super Jump==&gt; jump(14)
16) --&gt; Boxing==&gt; acc(16) dmg(46) dmg(50)
18) --&gt; Burn==&gt; dmg(18) dmg(19) dmg(19)
20) --&gt; Acrobatics==&gt; end(20)
22) --&gt; Tough==&gt; res(22) res(23) res(23) end(34)
24) --&gt; Hurdle==&gt; jump(24)
26) --&gt; Health==&gt; heal(26)
28) --&gt; Stamina==&gt; endmod(28) endmod(29) endmod(29)
30) --&gt; Fire Sword Circle==&gt; acc(30) dmg(31) dmg(31) dmg(31) rch(33) end(34)
32) --&gt; Build Up==&gt; rch(32) rch(33) rch(33)
35) --&gt; Fiery Embrace==&gt; rch(35) rch(36) rch(36)
38) --&gt; Incinerate==&gt; acc(38) dmg(39) dmg(39) dmg(39) rch(40) end(40)
41) --&gt; Char==&gt; acc(41) hold(42) hold(42) hold(42) rch(43) rch(43)
44) --&gt; Fire Blast==&gt; acc(44) dmg(45) dmg(45) dmg(45) rch(46) end(46)
47) --&gt; Fire Ball==&gt; acc(47) dmg(48) dmg(48) dmg(48) rch(50) end(50)
49) --&gt; Taunt==&gt; rch(49)
---------------------------------------------
01) --&gt; Sprint==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Brawl==&gt; Empty(1)
01) --&gt; Gauntlet==&gt; Empty(1)
02) --&gt; Rest==&gt; Empty(2)
---------------------------------------------

I don't track specific slotting in hero planners, so the enhancement notations are my own shorthand.

You'll notice that well-slotted single target attacks start to appear in the build in the late 30s, so by the late game the build is more well-rounded and can do decent single-target damage.


IV. Planning for IOs

There are a few approaches to IOs. One is to see how you can improve your existing build by replacing SOs with IOs. That's a fun approach and it's not a small amount of work. The process is essentially looking at individual powers and seeing what sets you can slot in them. I've shown some ways to do this for individual powers in my IO slotting example series.

But I think there is another, potentially much more effective way to approach a build: by examining the set bonuses available to it and maximizing the most attractive ones.

[u]Examining the Powers[u]

Let's start by assessing the powers available to us and what sets they take.

Fiery Aura:
Blazing Aura: PBAoE Damage
Fire Shield: Resist Damage
Healing Flames: Resist Damage, Healing
Temperature Protection: Resist Damage
Consume: PBAoE Damage
Plasma Shield: Resist Damage
Burn: PBAoE Damage
Fiery Embrace: none
RotP: Stuns, Healing, Melee Damage

Fiery Melee:
Scorch: Melee Damage
Fire Sword: Melee Damage
Combustion: PBAoE Damage
Taunt: none
Breath of Fire: PBAoE Damage
Build Up: none
FSC: PBAoE Damage
Incinerate: Melee Damage
Greater Fire Sword: Melee Damage

Pools:
Combat Jumping: Defense
Super Jump: Travel
Acrobatics: none

Hurdle: Travel
Health: Healing
Stamina: none

Boxing: Melee Damage, Stun
Tough: Resist Damage


To total these, we have:
6 PBAoE Damage powers
5 Resist Damage powers
3 Healing powers
2 Stun powers
5 Melee Damage powers
2 Travel powers
1 Defense power

From this we can see that if we want to stack set bonuses, we'd be best off focusing on PBAoE Damage, Resist Damage, and Melee Damage sets. Let's take a look at those sets at the ParagonWiki IO Sets page to see what stands out. I typically log in to the game and verify the information and the set bonus amounts in the CH/BM by using the following filter settings: level Range 30-30 and "All" in the field that allows you to select whether you want selling, buying or all. The ParagonWiki page offers a good way to see all the bonuses of all sets in a type at once, and the CH/BM provides the numbers.

It is important to remember for the following section that you can only stack a set bonus of a particular strength and type five times. So if you have 8 set bonuses of +5% max health, you would only get +25% max health from them. But if you have 5 set bonuses of +5% max health and 5 set bonuses of +4% max health, you would get +45% max health from them.


V. PBAoE Damage sets

Looking across the set bonuses, I see a few interesting candidates. Cleaving Blow has +Recovery and +Damage. Multi Strike has +AoE Def and +Melee Def, both at 1.88%. And Scirocco's Dervish has +Regeneration, +tohit, +AoE Def and +Psionic Def.

+Recovery is an interesting option, because enough of it could conceivably eliminate our dependence on Stamina, which would free up three power choices and two slots. But looking at the CH/BM, I notice that the amount is only 1%. Even stacked 5 times, this won't be enough to change the build.

+Damage is very intriguing. A fire/fire tank is already offensively very effective - increasing that damage globally for zero endurance cost is a very attractive option. However, this bonus value is also only 1%, not enough to have a serious impact on the build even quin-stacked.

The +AoE Def bonuses from Multi-Strike and Scirocco's Dervish are interesting. AoE attacks aren't prevalent until the end game, but this bonus is worth considering because it provides a way of achieving layered defenses. It's well understood that the best damage mitigation is achieved by layering multiple types of defenses (regeneration/healing, defense and resistance) together. Since fire tanks have healing and resistance, this could be a compelling way to add defense to the mix. Multi-Strike's AoE Def bonus is only 1.88%, while Scirocco's is 3.13%, so Scirocco's clearly has the edge here.

+Melee Def is even more compelling than +AoE Def, because it's useful in every encounter, especially for Burn tankers. Multi-Strike's bonus is 1.88%, which yields 9.4% melee defense when stacked five times. It's not phenomenal, but it's better than SR's Melee Def passive slotted with 3 SOs.

+Regeneration is also interesting, because it increases the depth of one of Fiery Aura's layers of mitigation. It's also a rather high bonus, at 10%. Stacking five of these would give us +50% Regeneration, which is better than unslotted Health. Not bad at all.

+tohit (mis-labelled on ParagonWiki as +Accuracy) is also interesting. Enough of these bonuses could mean that we could forget about slotting attacks for accuracy. The bonus value is 3.13. Quin-stacked that makes +15.65% tohit, nearly half of an SO. If we can get more +tohit from other sets, this could be a very viable option.

+Psionic Def is interesting because it Psionic typed damage passes through a large hole in our i8 defenses. Our healing is the only mitigation we have against Psionic attacks, so adding defense here creates a layer of defense against such attacks. The bonus is 3.13%.


VI. Damage Mitigation Sets

This is a good opportunity to bring up Global effects. Resistance sets have a good number of them, and since they're always on in passives and on while the toggle is on in toggles, we should consider them in the same boat as set bonuses when planning what sets we want.

At this point we should also consider the relative expense of acquiring some of these bonuses. It is common and profitable to six-slot attacks, but six-slotting defenses typically results in waste. Because of this, it may prove impractical to achieve the fourth and fifth bonuses available in these resistance sets.

What's more, it could prove difficult to stack Resist Damage set bonuses five times. It's not impossible, but it would require taking and slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield, Tough, Temperature Protection and Healing Flames. Because this would diminish Healing Flames' primary function and wouldn't be an efficient use of slots in the case of Temperature Protection, we should consider the possibilities with a grain of salt.

I see plenty of good things here. Aegis offers +AoE Def and +Toxic Res, as well as a global unique +Psionic Res and Mez Resistance enhancement. Impervious Skin has a +Mez Resist enhancement and +Health and -Recharge bonuses. Impervium Armor has a +Psionic Res global and +Recovery, +Psionic Def, +Endurance and +Psionic Res globals. Reactive Armor has +AoE Def, and +Toxic Res. Steadfast Protection has +Recovery and +Health bonuses, and Knockback protection and resistance and defence global IOs. Titanium Coating has +Health and +Melee Def bonuses.

We discussed +AoE Def in the PBAoE section, but it's worth noting that the PBAoE bonuses are of different values than the Resist Damage bonuses, so there is a lot of stacking potential here. The Aegis value is 3.13%, while Reactive Armor's is 1.25%.

+Toxic Res is interesting because our i8 toxic resistance comes entirely from Healing Flames, and it's a low value: 20%. Aegis' 3.13% toxic resistance bonus could nearly double that if five-stacked.

+Psionic Res is compelling for the same reasons +Psionic Def is: we have none now, and it's a significant weakness in our overall mitigation. Aegis' global and Impervium Armor's global both give 3% resistance. Impervium Armor's set bonus is 3.13%. If we had five powers with Impervium Armor's Psi Resist bonus, we would have a total Psi Resist of 30.65% (15.65% because of set bonuses, and 15% because of Psi Resist global enhancements).

+Mez Resistance is interesting principally because it increases the number of mezzes that are required to overcome our mez protection. This isn't a global that I would stetch to get, but if it's easily attainable it's worth considering.

+Health is very compelling for a tanker. A higher maximum health means a proportional increase in regeneration effectiveness. It also obviously means that we could take more damage before dying. This bonus capitalizes on the already very high base hit points of a tanker, and so is especially appealing. All of the max health bonuses in Resist Damage sets are +1.5%.

-Recharge is valuable in a way similar to +tohit: it is potentially a way to reduce the number of enhancements in a power. Looked at another way, it's potentially a way to increase the -recharge of a power beyond ED efficiency caps without the diminishing returns. Impervious Skin's -recharge time is 5%. 5-stacked, that makes for 25%, which isn't far off an even level SO's value.

+Recovery has already been discussed. The values here are considerably more interesting, however: Impervium Armor offers 2.5%. Steadfast Protection offers only 1.5%.

+Psionic Def comes from Impervium Armor at a value of 1.88%, which is stackable with the 3.13% bonus from Scirocco's Dervish. If they were both 5-stacked, that would be 25.05% defense to psi.

+Endurance increases maximum endurance. The value comes from Impervium Armor, at a value of 2.25%. Five-stacked that would be 11.25%, which would increase our endurance by 11 points and increase recovery by a proportionate amount.

Knockback protection is particularly compelling for us because we have to make a devil's bargain to get it normally: either 1 power choice and limited battlefield mobility, or 3 power choices and super jump as your travel power.

The +Defense/Resistance IO in Steadfast Protection bears some mention. It gives +3% defense to all, meaning that it stacks with any other type of defense. On its face it's not much better than Combat Jumping, but if we can get some other defense buffs, this makes them that much better. It's also a unique enhancement, meaning that we can't just slot 5 of them to get +15% defense to all.

+Melee Def was covered in the PBAoE set section, but we should note that Titanium Coating's value is different than Multi-Strike's, so we could conceivably get 21.9% Melee Def with five of each bonus.



VII. Melee Damage sets

There are ten melee damage sets with a total of 35 bonuses. I've already demonstrated in the earlier sections how to filter out the bonuses with very low values (i.e. damage bonuses of 1%), so I won't even bother mentioning such bonuses in this section.

It's not likely that we'll be able to stack Melee Damage sets, PBAoE Damage sets, and Resist Damage sets due to slot limitations, so I'll only be discussing stacking synergies with the Resistance sets except in cases where synergies exist between the first two bonuses from either attack category.

Crushing Impact offers +Health, +tohit, -recharge time and +Psionic Res. Mako's Bite has +Health, +Damage, and +Ranged Def. Pounding Slugfest offers +Regeneration and +Damage. Touch of Death has +Health, +Damage, and +Melee Def.

+Health is particularly interesting here because it's also available in the Resistance sets. However, most of the sets here have the same value as the Resistance sets do, limiting stacking options. Exceptions are Crushing Impact and Smashing Haymaker, with a 1.13% bonus, and Bonesnap and Bruising Blow, with .75% bonuses. Five Resist Damage sets and five Smashing Haymakers would produce a 13.15% bonus to max health (and regeneration).

+tohit was discussed in the PBAoE section. Crushing Impact's bonus value is 2.5%, which gives 12.5% when five-stacked.

-Recharge is another interesting possibility. Unfortunately, the bonus value in Crushing Impact is identical to the one in Impervious Skin, preventing us from getting a 10-stack benefit.

+Psionic Res is also interesting. The value in Crushing Impact is 2.5%. Five stacked, that's 12.5%. Stacked with five Impervium Armors, that's 43.15%, which is really quite excellent. This is also an expensive approach, however - it would require an expenditure of 60 slots, leaving only seven slots left over to put into other powers.

+Damage is potentially very effective. Mako's Bite increases damage by 3%, and Touch of Death by 2.5%. A free passive 15% boost to all damage with no cost in endurance is nothing to sneeze at. Unfortunately, lack of synergy in our resistance sets limits us to 15%.

+Ranged Def is increased by 3.75% in Mako's Bite. Five stacked, that's 18.75. I'd prefer that value in Melee Defense, but ranged attacks are omnipresent, and especially so for tanks without Taunt.

+Regeneration is interesting here not because it stacks with anything in the Resistance sets, but because it's an early bonus in the Pounding Slugfest set and it might be good for stacking with the PBAoE sets. The value is 8%.

+Melee Def is valuable to a tanker in most any situation. The value in Touch of Death is 3.13%, which would provide a 15.65% melee defense if five-stacked. If combined with a five-stacked +Melee Def from Titanium Coating, that would be 28.15%. It would also require a 30 slot investment in defenses and no heal enhancement in Healing Flames.


VIII. Other sets

Scanning the other sets available to us, we see some bonuses that can stack with some of what we saw available in our three primary categories.

Our Healing powers give us access to the excellent global enhancements in Miracle, Numina's Convalescence and Regenerative Tissue, as well as some very nice +Regeneration and +Health bonuses. You can read more about this in my IO slotting example: Health discussion.

Our Stun powers offer some potential with early +Recovery and +Regeneration buffs.

Our Travel powers offer +Health. Unfortunately leaping doesn't offer the +Regeneration buffs that flying and teleport sets do.

Our Defense power gives opportunities for +Recovery, +Regeneration and +Health with minimal slotting.



IX. Choosing bonuses

There are a few set bonus candidates that stand out.

+Psionic Res is an interesting one. As we've seen, with an intense focus on Resistance sets and Melee Damage sets, we could achieve a 43.15% resistance to Psionic damage. This comes at a price, however: only 7 slots to spend on things like Health, Stamina, Build Up, Fiery Embrace, Consume and EPPs. It also means that Healing Flames is limited to its base healing value. That's expensive for a rather narrow benefit.

+Psionic Def is a more compelling option for psi mitigation, because while it requires 6 slot investments in PBAoEs, it only requires 3 slot investments in Resist Damage sets. If both were five-stacked, we'd have a value of 25.05% psi defense. We're still looking at a rather narrow benefit.

Positional defenses (+Melee, +Ranged, +AoE) are interesting. Melee defense is probably most important to a tanker, with Ranged second in importance and AoE last. These are less narrow than psi defense/resistance, but they require similar heavy investments into defenses.

+Regeneration is very tempting. It tends to be a rather shallow bonus, meaning that it can be had with minimal investment. It's a mitigation type that applies to all damage types and all positional attacks. Its bonus values are also well diversified, raising the possibility of stacking bonuses across PBAoEs and melee attacks. Unfortunately, +Regeneration bonuses don't exist in Resist Damage sets, which does limit the stacking available. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact that +Regeneration is available in almost all of the ancillary set types available to us (Healing, Stun, Defense). The +Regeneration approach seems to favor PBAoEs because of the very powerful +Regeneration buff in Scirocco's Dervish. On the other hand, it's the first set bonus available so it's possible for single target builds to access the bonus with minimal investment in PBAoEs.

+Health is another very interesting option. It provides broad mitigation and boosts regeneration. Health bonuses are often paired with +Regeneration, but it's worth noting that there is an independent Health bonus in the very nice Crushing Impact Melee Damage set. It would seem that a focus on +Health favors the single target approach.

+tohit and -Recharge are both interesting. If we could stack either to SO levels, it could be a very compelling way to shave slots off all our attacks. Unfortunately the best we seem to be able to get to is DO levels, which isn't enough for me to focus on these set bonuses.


The two most outstanding candidates seem to be +Regeneration and +Health. Both of them increase the depth of one of our layers of mitigation. So let's examine two potential builds: one PBAoE build emphasising +Regeneration and one single target build emphasising +Health.



X. PBAoE Regeneration build

We're going to go with the original spirit of the build and focus on PBAoEs. This will also allow us to pursue the +Regeneration approach and find out just how good these bonuses will get.

[u]Slot allocation[u]

Let's start by looking at the bare minimum we'll need to maximize our +Regeneration bonuses. We will want to six-slot Health, which will require 5 slots. We're going to want to slot at least 5 powers with at least 2 Scirocco's Dervish IOs to get the +Regeneration buff from that set. We'd like to slot some single target powers with 2 Pounding Slugfest IOs for the +Regen buffs there. Luck of the Gambler has a +Regeneration bonus equivalent to Scirocco's Dervish if we decide to slot only four PBAoEs. And Rope-a-Dope has a small bonus if we have a spare slot to fit into Rise of the Phoenix. Finally, Healing Flames can give us some nice Regen set bonuses.

This clearly won't require a lot of slots, so we can consider also what secondary set bonus benefits we'll get. The most promising set bonus is Scirocco's Dervish - since we'll be investing at least a bit into it to get that great +Regeneration, and since the rest of its bonuses have such high values. If we 5 stack every bonus from Scirocco's Dervish, we'll get not only a good +Regeneration benefit, but 15.65% Negative Energy resistance (not fantastic, but it'll stack well with the ~47% from slotted Plasma Shield to make Shadow Cyst encounters less horrifying), a 15.65% tohit boost, which won't replace any acc slotting but will certainly help when fighting purples and AVs, a 15.65% AoE defense boost (not ideal, but certainly helpful), and a 15.65% psionic defense (very nice).

Focusing on 5 stacked Scirocco's Dervish sets means we'll be investing 25 slots into PBAoEs, which is not much of a sacrifice since we want to focus on that area anyway. It leaves 42 slots for defenses, support and EPPs. We can figure that support will take 11 slots (2 for Build Up, 2 for Fiery Embrace, 2 for Stamina, 5 for Health), leaving 31 for defenses. If we put 5 slots in Healing Flames and 2 each in Fiery Aura, Plasma Shield and Tough, that gives us 20 remaining for EPPs. In theory that means we can put 5 in each of 3 EPP powers... although we might want to poach some of those slots for extras in our defenses or some single target attack slotting.

By extras in our defenses, I mean things like knockback protection, psi resist globals, and the very nice globals from Kismet and Luck of the Gambler.

The drawback of this scheme is no slots for single target attacks, which can be a real pain when soloing bosses or when fighting AVs solo or teamed.


[u]Set allocation[u]

So let's start putting sets to powers.

A full set of Scirocco's Dervish gives the following:
acc: +74.2%
dam: +100.7% (before ED scaling)
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
regen: 10%
NE res 3.13%
acc: 3.13%
AE def 3.13%
psi def 3.13%

The PBAoE powers we have in the i8 build are Blazing Aura, Consume, Burn, Combustion and Fire Sword Circle.

Those enhancement bonuses are good for most of our PBAoE attacks. Blazing Aura will suffer a bit from a lack of Taunt and a bit less endurance reduction than it had in i8. Consume will have much less recharge than is ideal - it may be worth swapping the proc for a recharge IO and sacrificing the +Psi Def bonus in that instance. Burn, although it won't benefit from the accuracy, will definitely benefit from the endurance and recharge enhancement. And Combustion and Fire Sword Circle will only improve.


Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.

None of them offer us +Regeneration, but three offer +Health, which will indirectly increase regeneration and will also boost survivability. Of those three, Titanium Coating gives us the best bang for our buck resistance-wise, but Steadfast Protection has an interesting +Recovery bonus while the others have only the snoozeworthy (har!) Sleep resistance. My inclination is to go for Titanium Coating, because three slots in Steadfast Protection will only provide a 26.2% resistance boost if the enhancements are level 30. This is considerably lower than the ED efficiency cap of 50%.

So we put 3x Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech in Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, giving:
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%

For Healing Flames, we want to get the maximum heal benefit and as much +Regen as possible:
4 Numina's Convalescence: end/rech, heal/rech, heal/end/rech, heal;
2 Triage: end/rech, heal/end/rech
heal: +96.1%
end: +86.9%
rch: +94.6%
Set bonuses:
regen +16%
health +1.88%
heal +6%

This gives us two +regen bonuses from one power. Healing Flames also performs better than in i8, with a considerable endurance discount.


OK, now it's time for support slotting:

Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina don't take sets, so these are a no-brainer: 2 slots apiece. Then again, we could certainly allocate only one slot apiece, giving BU and FE recharge bonuses of 84.8% instead of the 95% they have in i8 and the 99% they'd have with 3 IO recharges. For now let's assume they each get 2 slots, but remember that we can potentially free up to 3 slots here by taking some slight performance hits.

An aside: the difference between Stamina with 3 endrcv IOs and Stamina with 2 endrcv IOs is +49.75% recovery and +46.2% recovery. That difference is only 2 or 3 +recovery set bonuses. We can probably pick up the difference without even trying.

Health is another matter. Without going into detail, there's plenty of regeneration benefit to be had from six-slotting Health, so we're going to do it, and we're going to do it this way:

1 Miracle 15% recovery global IO,
1 Miracle heal IO;
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO

heal: 96.1%
Set and global bonuses:
regen: +57%
recovery: +27.5%
health: + 1.88%

The total regen buff here is +135.44%, which gives us a nice, large base to build the rest of our +regen set bonuses on.


So now we're left with 20 slots to spend on EPPs and discretionary slotting.

Before we get into EPPs, let's look at the discretionary slots we might like to add.

We have an opportunity to gain one power at the expense of two slots by giving up Acrobatics in exchange for slotting two knockback protection IOs. It's not clear yet whether this is a good trade. I can think of two things that might be worth taking in place of Acrobatics - Taunt and Weave (more on Weave in a moment). Let's remember this potential trade off and revisit when we have a better idea where our slots are going.

It would be good if we could give each of our single target attacks an extra slot, in order to 2 slot Pounding Slugfest into them. This would both give us more +Regeneration, and also partially mitigate the single target weakness of our current PBAoE focus. The i8 build has only 3 single target melee attacks: Boxing, Scorch and Incinerate, so this would take 1-3 slots.

Finally, there are some globals I'd like to be able to slot. These are: Aegis and Impervious Skin's Psi resistance (low priority), Steadfast Protection's +3% Def (medium priority), Kismet's +6% toHit global (low priority), and Luck of the Gambler's +5% recharge speed (high priority).

I want the defense from Steadfast Protection so that there will be three layers to our mitigation scheme. Even if the defense layer is shallow, any increase in the third layer of mitigation represents appreciable gains in overall survivability. The +3% defense added to slotted Weave and Combat Jumping would give ~13.3% defense to all, which is not bad on top of moderate resistance and moderate healing.

The tohit global is a nice-to-have: even stacked with our 5 Scirocco bonuses, it's still not enough to remove accuracy slots from powers: 21.65%. It would mean that we could perform better than one might expect with 2-slotted single target attacks, however.

The LotG +recharge would be nice for this reason: two of them would provie a 10% passive global recharge buff. This would nearly make up for the shift from 3 IO recharges to 2 IO recharges in Build Up and Fiery Embrace (84.8% becomes 94.8%, which is only .2% less than the current i8 build). Furthermore, it gives that 10% benefit to every other power we have. It costs nothing, because we have taken one slot each from Build Up and Fiery Embrace, and put one of those slots into Combat Jumping and the other into... well, what? We don't currently have another +def power, but we have just been discussing taking Weave. It seems like this represents a dovetailing of goals, here.


OK, now let's look at epic powers.

For Fire Blast I'd like to slot Devastation for its very high +Regeneration and +Health buffs that will stack with all the buffs we already have. This means slotting it 2 times minimally. It would be nice to put give slots into it for the +Psi Def, which would stack nicely with our 4 Scirocco's Psi Def bonuses. Let's consider 3 slots the minimum for now.

Char is an interesting case. The best set bonus available to us for holds is Ghost Widow's Embrace +1.88% Health. But Char can also take Ranged Damage sets, so we have the opportunity to slot Devastation again for a powerful +Regeneration, a better +Health, and a +Damage. Depending on whether you're willing to sacrifice hold utility, that's a compelling option. The old-school Controller player in me wants to slot for hold duration, but another option is 3-4 slotting Devastation and then throwing 1-2 hold IOs in. Let's call 3 the minimum slots for Char, with an ideal of 5.

Fire Ball is even less promising. Positron's Blast is nice on the surface: look at all those high powered bonuses. Unfortunately the +tohit doesn't help us, because it's the same strength as the 5 we're getting from Scirocco's Dervish. The -recharge is nice, and the +recovery is also nothing to sneeze at. But the bonuses are all nice to haves; there isn't much synergy to be seen here. Then again, another AoE is another AoE. Minimum slots is 0 (and if we put so few into it, we'll need to reconsider choosing it), ideally 5.



So this is what I'd like to do:

Put one slot into each of Boxing, Scorch and Incinerate. Total cost: 3 of 20 remaining slots.

Dedicate 2 slots to knockback protection. Ah, but we can use the default CJ slot for one of them, so the other goes into a resist toggle or Weave (depending on whether you get access to a Steadfast Protection or a second Karma first). Total cost: 1 of 17 remaining slots.

Shift one slot from Build Up into Combat Jumping and one from Fiery Embrace into Weave for LotG +5% recharge IOs. Total cost: 0 of 16 remaining slots.

Put one slot into Fire Shield for the Steadfast Protection defense global. Cost: 1 of 16 remaining slots.

Put two more slots for enhancing Weave's defense. Unfortunately we won't benefit from 2 of the excellent LotG set bonuses: the +Regeneration and +tohit are identical to the Scirocco's bonuses, so they won't stack. It's worth considering the much weaker Serendipity bonuses, because they will stack... although we won't get the +tohit from Serendipity because we'll be slotting 1 LotG and 3 Serendipity. I prefer to stay with LotG and get the decent +Health bonus from it. Cost: 2 of 15 remaining slots.

Remove one slot from Stamina. Gain: 1 slot.

Total to slot into EPPs: 14 slots.

If we put four slots into each of the three epic powers, we have two discretionary slots. I'd like to put those into Incinerate to enhance our weak ST attack chain somewhat.


[u]The Build[u]

So let's take a look at the build and then examine the set bonuses:


+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: Heat Death
Level: 50
Archetype: Tanker
Primary: Fiery Aura
Secondary: Fiery Melee
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Scorch ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3)
01 =&gt; Blazing Aura ==&gt; Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(9),Empty(31),Empty(37),Empty(43)
02 =&gt; Fire Shield ==&gt; Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(13),Empty(17)
04 =&gt; Healing Flames ==&gt; Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(7),Empty(23),Empty(34),Empty(40)
06 =&gt; Combat Jumping ==&gt; Empty(6),Empty(7)
08 =&gt; Combustion ==&gt; Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(11),Empty(27),Empty(34),Empty(40)
10 =&gt; Consume ==&gt; Empty(10),Empty(11),Empty(15),Empty(33),Empty(39),Empty(43)
12 =&gt; Plasma Shield ==&gt; Empty(12),Empty(13),Empty(15),Empty(23)
14 =&gt; Super Jump ==&gt; Empty(14)
16 =&gt; Boxing ==&gt; Empty(16),Empty(17)
18 =&gt; Burn ==&gt; Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(19),Empty(37),Empty(39),Empty(46)
20 =&gt; Tough ==&gt; Empty(20),Empty(21),Empty(21)
22 =&gt; Hurdle ==&gt; Empty(22)
24 =&gt; Health ==&gt; Empty(24),Empty(25),Empty(25),Empty(33),Empty(37),Empty(43)
26 =&gt; Stamina ==&gt; Empty(26),Empty(27)
28 =&gt; Fire Sword Circle ==&gt; Empty(28),Empty(29),Empty(29),Empty(31),Empty(34),Empty(40)
30 =&gt; Build Up ==&gt; Empty(30),Empty(31)
32 =&gt; Fiery Embrace ==&gt; Empty(32),Empty(33)
35 =&gt; Weave ==&gt; Empty(35),Empty(36),Empty(36),Empty(36)
38 =&gt; Incinerate ==&gt; Empty(38),Empty(39),Empty(50),Empty(50)
41 =&gt; Char ==&gt; Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(46)
44 =&gt; Fire Blast ==&gt; Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(46)
47 =&gt; Fire Ball ==&gt; Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(50)
49 =&gt; Taunt ==&gt; Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 =&gt; Sprint ==&gt; Empty(1)
01 =&gt; Brawl ==&gt; Empty(1)
02 =&gt; Rest ==&gt; Empty(1)



Notice that Acrobatics is gone and we've picked up Weave. While levelling, if you haven't got at least one KB resist IO by level 20, it's probably worth taking Acrobatics until you do get one, then respeccing back out of it.

You'll notice that slots are tight throughout the build, even tighter than in the i8 build. I distributed the slots evenly across powers so that the early +Regen set bonuses would be available as early as possible. The later set bonuses won't come until the later levels, but they aren't crucial to the build.

I haven't tracked enhancements in this planner, so let's examine them now.

Scorch: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8%
dam: +43.6%
rch: +21.8%
Set bonus:
Regeneration: +8%

For a small slot investment, Scorch gives us a considerable return. Combined with our global tohit and recharge buffs, it will be a solid performer, and its set bonus is of course of high importance. It does suffer some performance degradation from i8.


Blazing Aura: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%

The first of our five Scirocco's Dervish sets. These represent the heart of this build. It is less end efficient than the i8 version, and has no Taunt enhancement. However, it's far more accurate and does some interesting lethal damage now and again.


Fire Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection res/def global
res: +60.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Def (all): +3%

Our first Titanium Coating power, which will give us +Health. We also see the nice +Def (all) from our global unique. Its resistance is superior to i8, but its end usage is slightly more.


Healing Flames:
4 Numina's Convalescence: end/rech, heal/rech, heal/end/rech, heal;
2 Triage: end/rech, heal/end/rech
heal: +96.1%
end: +86.9%
rch: +94.6%
Set bonuses:
Regen +12%
Regen +4%
Health +1.88%
Heal +6%

Healing Flames only gains from IOs. It has comparable heal and recharge values, but a very impressive endurance discount and some nice set bonuses.


Combat Jumping: 1 Karma Knockback protection global, 1 Luck of the Gambler 5% recharge global
Set and global bonuses:
Kb protection: mag 4
Recharge: 5%


Combustion: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%

Our second Scirocco's Dervish power. It is better in every way than its i8 predecessor: slightly more damage from the proc, far greater accuracy, a better end discount and faster recharge.


Consume: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end; 1 common rch IO
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +93.5%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%

Scirocco's Dervish set #3. This is also much better than its i8 predecessor, although it has two more slots to its name. It is far more accurate, far more damaging, cheaper and faster. It's a minor shame to spend so much damage enhancement on such a low-damage power. Note that the proc has been eliminated in favor of an IO recharge. This deprives us of one of our Psi Def bonuses, but for much better endurance recovery performance.


Plasma Shield: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech; Steadfast Protection Kb protection
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%
Kb protection: mag 4

Like Fire Shield, this performs slightly better resistance-wise, but is less end-efficient than its i8 predecessor.


Super Jump: 1 HO travel/end
speed: +33%
end: +33%

Before level 47, this can be slotted with any travel set IO or common IO according to taste.


Boxing: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8%
dam: +43.6%
rch: +21.8%
Set bonus:
Regeneration: +8%

Another decent-benefit-for-minimum-investment single target power.


Burn: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%

Scirocco's Dervish set #4. This version is much better than its i8 predecessor, although it also has three more slots. The accuracy is wasted, but the endurance and recharge are significant benefits, and although the procs may fire while enemies are out of the patch, you'll still get lucky from time to time.


Tough: Titanium Coating: res, end/res, end/rech
res: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set and global bonuses:
Sleep resistance: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%

Like all of our resistance shields, Tough is slightly better at resistance but slightly less endurance efficient. The set bonus is what makes this situation better than i8.

Hurdle: 1 IO jump
jump: +42.4%


Health:
1 Miracle 15% recovery global IO,
1 Miracle heal IO, 38.6;
1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO, 42.4
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO 26.5

heal: +96.1%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Regen: +12%
Recovery: +25%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: + 1.88%

Health with IOs is vastly superior to i8 Health. Without this massive Regen boost, I would be skeptical of the benefits of pursuing our Regen strategy, but this slotting not only makes our Regen prospects impressive, it also gives us considerable padding on the Recovery front. Not only should we not notice that our resistance toggles are less end efficient than in i8, we should see a noticeable improvement in our endurance recovery rate.


Stamina: 2 IO endrcv
endmod: +84.8%


Fire Sword Circle: Scirocco's Dervish: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rech, acc/rech, acc/dam/end, lethal proc
acc: +74.2%
dam: +95.1%
end: +47.7%
rech: +47.7%
20% lethal proc
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
NE res: +3.13%
tohit: +3.13%
AoE Def: +3.13%
Psi Def: +3.13%

The final Scirocco's Dervish set. Like Combustion, FSC performs much better with IOs than it did in i8.


Build Up: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%


Firey Embrace: 2 common recharge IOs
rch: +84.8%

Build Up and Fiery Embrace lose some recharge performance from its i8 version when considered alone, but we'll see later when assessing set bonuses that they actually have effective parity.


Weave: Luck of the Gambler: def, def/end, def/rech, +5% rch global
def: +58.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +10%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +5%

Weave is a new addition to the build. As mentioned earlier, two of its three bonuses are unfortunately redundant.


Incinerate: Pounding Slugfest: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch; Crushing Impact: dmg/rch
acc: +21.8%
dam: +91.9%
end: +21.8%
rch: +48.3%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +8%
Energy &amp; NE def: +0.63%

Incinerate gets two more slots than Boxing and Scorch, which makes it somewhat more powerful. The extra set bonus is negligible. I put a dmg/rch from Crushing Impact in there to make it a more frequent contributor to our attack chain and to increase its damage. Another approach would be to put the final Pounding Slugfest IO in, the disorient proc. It would give us a +2% Damage set bonus and a 15% chance to disorient with Incinerate. I'd rather have the proc in Boxing or Scorch, because they fire much faster, and I'd like our ST attack chain to be tighter, so I opted for more recharge and damage.


Char: 1 common hold IO; Devastation: acc/dam, dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch, acc/dam/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +92.7%
end: +18.5%
rch: +66.2%
hold: +42.4%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%

Char slotted this way isn't ideal from a control perspective, but it's not bad, either. Compared to i8 (acc, holdx3, rchx2) it has twice the acc, the same rch, half the hold enhancement and a small endurance break. But we also get three excellent set bonuses. Another option is to take a slot from Fire Blast and put another IO hold in here.


Fire Blast: Devastation: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, acc/dam/rch, acc/dam/end/rch
acc: +66.2%
dam: +97.9%
end: +47.7%
rch: +66.2%
Set bonuses:
Regen: +12%
Health: +2.25%
Damage: +3%
Hold res: 3.3%

Fire Blast builds on the very good Devastation bonuses we got from Char. Compared to its i8 equivalent (acc, damx3, end, rch), it is considerably more accurate, slightly more damaging, has a greater end discount and a much better recharge boost.


Fire Ball: Positron's Blast: acc/dam, dam/end, dam/rch, dam/rng, acc/dam/end
acc: +47.7%
dam: +99.0%
end: +47.7%
rch: +26.5%
rng: +15.9%
Set bonuses:
Recovery: +2.5%
Fire and Cold res: +1.58%
tohit: +3.13%
Recharge: +6.25%

Compared to i8 (acc, damx3, end, rch), Fire Ball is more accurate, slightly more damaging, cheaper and has better range, but is slightly slower torecharge. The slower recharge is almost entirely mitigated by the Recharge set bonus here, however, to say nothing of the other set and global bonuses we have.


Taunt: 1 common taunt IO
taunt: +42.4%


[u]The Set Bonuses[u]

Now let's take a look at our set bonuses all together.

Regen: +171%. Add the enhanced Health value, and it becomes +249.44% to regeneration rate. For the sake of comparison, a Regen scrapper who has Health and Fast Healing both 3-slotted with SOs has a passive regeneration boost of +224.25%. Considering that tankers benefit more from the same amount of Regeneration, this looks like considerable mitigation to all types of damage.

Health: +13.89%. This will take a level 50 un-accoladed Tanker's 1874 hit points and make them 2134. An extra 260 hit points is nothing to laugh at. Another way of looking at this is as if it is 13.89% resistance to all damage types.

Recharge: +16.25%. This isn't anything to plan a build around, but it's not bad at all. It makes up for the i8 to i9 loss in rch enhancement that we see in Fire Ball, Build Up, and Fiery Embrace, and it makes all of our other powers that much better.

tohit: +15.65%. Another nice bonus. This makes our single target attacks even more accurate than their much-better-slotted i8 equivalents, among other benefits.

Def (all) +3%. This combined with Weave and Combat Jumping gives us +13.43% defense to all, which becomes even more significant when paired with the next two set bonuses:

Psi Def: +12.52%. This isn't what I'd call filling the psi gap in our defenses, but it's considerably better than nothing, and combined with the Def (all) is a considerable boost to our survivability.

AoE Def: +15.65%. This is just a nice bonus.

Negative Energy resistance: +15.65%. Combined with our 47.58% from Plasma Shield, this gives us 63.23% resistance to Negative Energy.

Sleep resistance: +6.6%. Unless I have badly misunderstood how these set bonus resistance to individual mez types work, this is nearly useless.

Heal: 6%. A 6% boost to Healing Flames unrestricted by ED is a minor but appreciable benefit. Unfortunately this won't work for Healing Flames, since Healing Flames can be enhanced for resistance.

Knockback protection: mag 8. This frees us from the reliance on pool powers to keep from getting tossed around like a rag doll.

Recovery: +30%. Combined with our 2-slotted Stamina, this gives us a total Recovery buff of +76.2%, compared to an i8 value of 48.75. This might even be enough for some fire tanks to drop Stamina altogether and rely on set Recovery and Consume.

Energy and Negative Energy defense: +0.63%. A negligible benefit.

Damage: +6%. In practice this boost won't be very noticeable.

Hold resistance: +3.3%.

Fire and Cold resistance: +1.58%.


[u]i8 vs. i9[u]

So what have we lost in this transition from i8 to i9? Principally we have lost effectiveness against a single target. Let's illustrate by comparing i8 Scorch against i9 Scorch:

i8 Scorch: 1 acc, 3 dmg, 1 end, 1 rch
acc: +33.3%
dmg: +95.0%
end: +33.3%
rch: +33.3%

i9 Scorch: Pounding Slugest: acc/dam, dam/rch (level 30 enhancements)
acc: +21.8% +15.65% tohit set bonus = +37.4%
dam: +43.6% +6% set bonus = 49.6%
rch: +21.8% +16.25% set bonus = 38.1%

As you can see, the overall efficacy of the attack is lower in i9, even if some values are higher. The most important value, damage, is much lower.


What have we gained?

We've gained increased survivability. The passive regeneration alone is an impressive benefit, especially when paired with the max health bonuses. In i8, assuming no accolades and no Health, a level 50 tanker healed 468.5 hit points per minute. In i8 our tanker, with no accolades and 1-slotted Health, healed 718.3 hit points per minute.

In i9, our tanker with no accolades heals 1864.3 hit points per minute. Our i9 tanker heals more per minute than our i8 tanker even has.

So that's pretty good. What else have we gained?

+13% defense to all, and 26% def to Psi and 29% def to AoEs. This is a not insignificant addition to the breadth of our mitigation scheme: we now have good resistances, very good regeneration, good healing, and low-mid range defense. Layered together, that's nothing to sneeze at.

We've gained more effectiveness from our AoEs. They all do more damage from procs, denser enhancement, and set bonuses, most of them are more accurate (not Burn, of course), and they all cost less endurance and recharge faster. Our attack chains are smoother, cheaper and miss less. Even our temp and veteran powers are more accurate and faster to recharge.


XI. Single Target +Health Build

This build will pursue +Health bonuses via single target attacks.

[u]Slot allocation[u]

First let's see what kind of slot investment we'll need to get the most +Health bonuses.

We will definitely want to six-slot Health and Healing Flames, because Heal sets have two excellent +Health bonuses. That's 10 slots there. We also want to slot our resistance sets with 3 Titanium Coatings to get the +Health bonuses there, which takes 6 more slots. Finally, we'll want to slot our single target attacks with at least 3 Crushing Impacts for the +Health bonuses there. With 5 single target attacks, that's 10 more slots. Finally, we'll want three Unbounded Leaps in Super Jump. Total bare minimum cost for +Health bonuses: 28 slots.

That leaves plenty of room, so let's look again at how we can expand these investments for greater benefit.

Looking again at Crushing Impact, the deeper set bonuses seem worth taking: +tohit and -recharge. As we saw with the PBAoE build, even a few of those can make a big difference. Let's 6 slot each of our single target attacks with Crushing Impact. Five full Crushing Impact sets gives us 11% immob resistance (can I get a "Hell, yeah!"?), +5.65% max Health, +12.5% tohit, +25% recharge, and +12.5% Psi resistance. Not bad at all. The cost of six slotting five attacks is 25 slots. We have 42 more to play with.

Defenses will take 5 slots for Healing Flames and 2 each for Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough, for a total of 11. That leaves another 31.

Support will occupy 1 slot for Build Up, 1 for Fiery Embrace, 1 for Stamina (we're employing the lessons in efficiency that the last build taught us), and 5 for Health. Furthermore, we're going to want 3 slots in Consume and at least 3 in Blazing Aura. Those 13 slots leave us with 17 for EPPs and discretionary slotting.


[u]Set allocation[u]

So let's start putting sets to powers.

A full set of Crushing Impact gives the following:
acc: +68.9%
dam: +143.1% (before ED scaling)
end: +68.9%
rech: +68.9%
Set bonuses:
Immob res: +2.2%
Health: +1.13%
tohit: +2.5%
Recharge: +5%
Psi res: +2.5%

The single target attacks we'll be taking are Scorch, Fire Sword, Boxing, Incinerate and Greater Fire Sword. Every one of these attacks will benefit from a six-slotted Crushing Impact. If we need the slots, we can always pull the sixth slot out of some or all of the attacks, at the expense of Psi resistance.

Now let's take a look at mitigation powers.

Three Titanium Coating enhancements (res, end/res, end/rch) give
res: +55.6%
end: +26.5%
rch: +26.5%
Set bonuses:
Sleep res: +2.2%
Health: +1.5%

We'll be slotting Fire Shield, Plasma Shield and Tough this way.

In Healing Flames, we're going to try to maximize our +Health bonuses:
3 Numina's Convalescence: end/heal, heal/rech, end/heal/rech;
3 Miracle: end/rech, heal/rech, end/heal/rech
heal: +97.6%
end: +91.1%
rch: +97.3%
Set bonuses:
Regeneration: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Recovery: +2.5%
Health: +1.88%

This gives us two identical 1.88% Health bonuses from a single power, and considerably better healing performance than in i8.


Support slotting will be a bit more expensive.

Build Up, Fiery Embrace and Stamina each take one slot.

We'll put five slots into Health, but we'll slot it differently than we did for the PBAoE build:

1 Regenerative Tissue +25% regeneration global IO,
2 of Regenerative Tissue heal/rch, end/rch, OR end/heal;
1 Numina's Convalescence +20% regen, +10% recovery global IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence heal IO,
1 Numina's Convalescence end/heal OR heal/rchg IO

heal: +96.9%
Set and global bonuses:
Regen: +45%
Recovery: +10%
Regen: +12%
Health: +1.88%
Runspd: +4%
Health: +1.5%

We've dropped 15% recovery to get another 1.5% health bonus out of Regenerative Tissue.

We'll be adding