Planning Builds for IO Set Bonuses

Scrapulous · 05-06-2007 03:19 PM

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:

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 > Tough, Fitness > Health, Fitness > Stamina, and Leaping > Super Jump. I will also be taking Darkness Mastery > Petrifying Gaze, Torrent and Tenebrous Tentacles.

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.

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.

Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>
Bonus strength amount

+Health +1.5% 5
Damage +3% 5
Ranged defense +3.75% 5
Fire & cold resist +1.26% 5
Psi & 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:

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 & 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:

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 & cold)
1.26 5
+6.3%

Res (psi & 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 & 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 => Fast Healing ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(7),Empty(34),Empty(43)
01 => Shadow Punch ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(7),Empty(17),Empty(40),Empty(50)
02 => Smite ==> Empty(2),Empty(5),Empty(9),Empty(15),Empty(37),Empty(46)
04 => Reconstruction ==> Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(11),Empty(13),Empty(39)
06 => Hurdle ==> Empty(6)
08 => Siphon Life ==> Empty(8),Empty(9),Empty(13),Empty(15),Empty(37),Empty(46)
10 => Quick Recovery ==> Empty(10),Empty(11)
12 => Combat Jumping ==> Empty(12)
14 => Super Jump ==> Empty(14)
16 => Health ==> Empty(16),Empty(17),Empty(19),Empty(34),Empty(40),Empty(50)
18 => Integration ==> Empty(18),Empty(19),Empty(21),Empty(39),Empty(43)
20 => Stamina ==> Empty(20),Empty(21)
22 => Dull Pain ==> Empty(22),Empty(23),Empty(23),Empty(31),Empty(39)
24 => Boxing ==> Empty(24),Empty(25),Empty(25),Empty(34),Empty(40),Empty(50)
26 => Soul Drain ==> Empty(26),Empty(27),Empty(27),Empty(36)
28 => Instant Healing ==> Empty(28),Empty(29),Empty(29),Empty(36),Empty(43)
30 => Tough ==> Empty(30),Empty(31),Empty(31)
32 => Midnight Grasp ==> Empty(32),Empty(33),Empty(33),Empty(33),Empty(37),Empty(46)
35 => Resilience ==> Empty(35),Empty(36)
38 => Revive ==> Empty(38)
41 => Petrifying Gaze ==> Empty(41),Empty(42),Empty(42),Empty(42)
44 => Torrent ==> Empty(44),Empty(45),Empty(45),Empty(45)
47 => Tenebrous Tentacles ==> Empty(47),Empty(48),Empty(48),Empty(48)
49 => Weave ==> Empty(49)
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Sprint ==> Empty(1)
01 => Brawl ==> Empty(1)
02 => Rest ==> 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.

deadboy_champion · 05-07-2007 12:06 AM

good stuff Scrap good stuff

@Deadboy

Nemo_Utopia · 05-07-2007 07:07 AM

Pure goodness, I'm glad to see your setup it very much like my own. Will definitely be linking this! Keep up ze gut vork!

Justice29 · 05-07-2007 12:39 PM

Absolutely outstanding. You really helped out guys like myself who WANT to understand all of this, but are feeling a bit overwhelmed. Fantastic and bravo. Thank you for putting it together.

Main servers: Victory and Justice. Main account: @Justice29 Secondary account: @Clever One

Pony_ · 05-07-2007 12:51 PM

Again

Cryptic------Get this guy on the payroll.

Dysmal · 05-07-2007 07:22 PM

Nicely done again. This has really helped me think about how to plan IO builds for my characters, especially those that don't have a lot of IO Sets possible to slot, like Dark Miasma.

Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn

Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos

SkyRocker · 05-08-2007 10:46 AM

WOW, just WOW...

And thanks!

UnSub · 05-09-2007 12:18 AM

Scrapulous, great guide, but one thing...

For section 5, I got myself confused by thinking I ONLY had 67 slots for enhancements (what do I know? I've only been playing CoH for 3 years! :-) instead I think the total is 91, of which 67 are allocateable. It might have just been my skimming of the guide, but you may wish to consider adding in the total number of enhancement slots you get, including those that come with powers.

Scrapulous · 05-09-2007 08:58 AM

Thanks, I'm glad you like it!

[ QUOTE ]

For section 5, I got myself confused by thinking I ONLY had 67 slots for enhancements (what do I know? I've only been playing CoH for 3 years! :-) instead I think the total is 91, of which 67 are allocateable.

[/ QUOTE ]

I probably wasn't as explicit about this as I could have been. I will throw it into the revision.

There are a few reasons I use the 67 figure. First of all, it's the same for everybody. No character is given more than 67 allocatable slots. However, your 91 figure varies widely. For example, Kheldian ATs have many more than 91 total slots. Furthermore, people who have the various "Prestige Power X" Sprint clones have up to 5 more.

The second reason is more important, though: because set bonuses only start accruing after your second slotted set IO, the initial slots that come with your powers are not important when planning for set bonuses. You can never get a set bonus out of a single-slotted power. So 67 is both the maximum number of set bonuses you can have, and it's a tally of your expendable slotting resources. It's a very useful way of thinking of your resources when planning a set bonus build.

There is a sort-of exception to this: global effects. You can slot Steadfast Protection's Knockback resistance global IO into the default slot of a power and reap those benefits. But it is a minor exception, and it's easier to handle that exception on its own than it is to work with a variable amount of total slots.

Sapph · 05-09-2007 10:10 AM

I read this after planning and writing my Bot/Dark guide - I'm happy to see we planned along the same lines, and that my design philosophies (stated MUCH more briefly - a mere paragraph) were validated.

Quilcene · 05-11-2007 03:40 PM

Let me see if I have this straight, you said, "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."

Now, does that mean I can have 5 +Regens at 12% and another 5 +Regens at 4%? Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set? Or am I limited to only 5 +Regens no matter which set?

Thanks for any clarification!

Eldandil · 05-12-2007 01:59 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep.

milk_weasel · 05-12-2007 07:39 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep.

[/ QUOTE ]

unless this was just changed, you cannot. you can have no more than 5 of each percentage for each buff type

Liberty
My 50s:
Hero: Armor Assassin (scrapper), Cross Dresser (scrapper), Surly Seaman (blaster), Defensive End (Tank), Rad Rhino (Cont)
Villain: Beast Infection (Corr), Sweet Zombie Jesus (MM), Milk Weasel (Stalker), Orgullo (MM), Agent Eris (Crab)

Nemo_Utopia · 05-12-2007 09:13 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Let me see if I have this straight, you said, "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."

Now, does that mean I can have 5 +Regens at 12% and another 5 +Regens at 4%? Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set? Or am I limited to only 5 +Regens no matter which set?

Thanks for any clarification!

[/ QUOTE ]

Just pretty sure it goes as follows:
Case 1) Yes
Case 2) No
Long answer: It doesn't matter what set the bonus comes from, only the strength. Bonuses are limited to five of the same strength by type, not just the same type.

Eldandil · 05-12-2007 09:27 AM

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep.

[/ QUOTE ]

unless this was just changed, you cannot. you can have no more than 5 of each percentage for each buff type

[/ QUOTE ]

Hm. I could've sworn he said "5 at 12% and another 5 at 4%". O.o

I stand corrected.

Edit: Ah, I see where I went wrong. I quoted the wrong part of the post. Had meant to quote the bolded part below:
[ QUOTE ]
Now, does that mean I can have 5 +Regens at 12% and another 5 +Regens at 4%? Can I have 5 at 12% from one set and 5 at 12% from another set? Or am I limited to only 5 +Regens no matter which set?

[/ QUOTE ]

As Nemo_Utopia has already answered, 5 x 12% & 5 x 4% = yes, 5 x 12% & 5 x 12% = no.

Livingston · 07-29-2008 12:06 AM

Just curious, it is noted that Quick Recovery has no sets that can be applied to it. Is this because they had no endurance modification sets at the time this was written?

Work_Ethic · 07-29-2008 12:16 AM

[ QUOTE ]
Just curious, it is noted that Quick Recovery has no sets that can be applied to it. Is this because they had no endurance modification sets at the time this was written?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. There were many new sets roled out after the inital release of the l00t into the game.

Endurance Mods, Taunt, Purple sets, To-hit buffs, To-hit De-buffs are a few......

Paragonwiki has most of the info regarding IO sets.

I hope this helps.

"I'm not scared of anyone or anything Angie. Isn't that the way life should be?"
Jack Hawksmoor, The Authority.

Livingston · 07-29-2008 04:47 AM

Thanks for the reply.

I am aware of the things you mentioned, I was just clarifying if it was a time space issue or if there might be some other reason it wasn't included.

*Longs for update*

(5 stars)