Help me update my view of accuracy

Now... There was a time when I dealt with defence and to-hit numbers A LOT. I ran the calculations, I crunched the numbers, I did my homework and I came out with a lot of ready solutions that I could just use without thinking. One of these solutions was "two accuracy enhancements in henchmen." Now... I don't know how long ago that was, but it has to have been a LONG time ago, because I thought about it now, and... Well, let's just say that things don't add up.

Back in my day, through the miracles of grade school mathematics, I figured out I wanted to slot two "accuracy enhancements" in at least my minion and lieutenant henchmen. I don't remember why, but I believe this was to take them up above the 90% mark and into the top tier of the streakbreaker, which required two enhancements plus supremacy. But does it? Well... Apparently not.

Here's my thinking, looking at minion class henchmen. Playing at Malicious before, I was facing enemies my level and +1, which would be +2 to +3 to my henchmen. Worst case scenario would be that my henchman would have to hit an enemy with a base to-hit of 48%. With a single level 50 Common Accuracy slotted and the 10% buff from Supremacy, that'd add up to around 82.59%. So... SOL. No 90% deal breaker, no good.

But how about this? Recently, I decided to tweak my difficulty to include more enemies of a lower level. With Malicious gone forever, what else could I do? So I'm currently fighting things at -1x3. And, yeah, before I get dog-piled on with "You did what? With what!?!" and "Learn to play!" (been there, done that), this is a uniform difficulty between all my characters, which has to account for Blasters and Stalkers and everything else I might choose to play. The thing, though, is that with this difficulty setting, I'm actually never going to face anything higher than even con (not by myself, anyway), which means my henchmen are never going to face anything over +2. At +2, I'm looking at a much more respectable 56% base to-hit, which with a level 50 Common accuracy and Supremacy adds up to about 93.99% Huh... It's not quite to-hit cap, but it's above the 90% boundary above which nothing matters, and for the cost of only a single enhancement.

So here's my question: Do you believe that I should build for what I expect to face on my OWN missions, knowing that I'm going to be behind the eight ball if I team and end up fighting things +1 and +2, or do you feel I should slot for teams and extraordinary circumstances, sacrificing slots and possibly even powers in the process? I don't team often, and when I do I usually SK people up to me. But on the other hand, when I go on a TF, I tend to be on the lower end of the level range, so there's a good argument for both sides. The question is, which one do I go to?

P.S. I do know one thing. A lieutenant henchman at base enemy level (+0) is going to face things +1 to +2. As we've already seen, at +2 I can spare myself the second accuracy enhancement, which I previously had in there. Why have it to begin with, then? Well, because I did this calculation way back when, and at the time there WERE no inventions, only SOs. And indeed, at SO levels, you CANNOT break 90% against a +2 enemy. Of course, that means that I'll have bad accuracy against these enemies for the majority of the game, but it's a question of principle.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

I would look into using cheap dual action IO's, like 2 Dam/Acc's instead of one Add and one Dam, that way you get higher %'s and can have both.

Personally I would never have anything less than 99% accuracy slotted into any of my pets, no matter what I run on.

Also the way I see it is that if you slot them better you can up your difficulty rather than lowering your slotting because you only run on a low difficulty.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

Well, I have... Let's see... Mercs, Bots, Thugs, Necro... Four Masterminds to a decently high level, and I've slotted ALL henchmen on ALL of them for damage first and foremost Yeah, even the Lich, despite the fact that he doesn't really have all that much to offer. I'm not averse to slotting them for anything else, just... Afterwards. For which, by the way, saving a slot off accuracy is a big boon. One less accuracy slot means, for instance, one more slot for heal, or for hold. I'm not exactly looking to free slots so I can use them somewhere else, but with six slot max in any given power and, like, four things to slot for... That can get kind of tricky.

As for difficulty, I actually picked -1x3 sort of by default. Back with the old difficulty settings, I played Tenacious/Malicious, since that was the highest I could go without upping enemy levels, and that gave me a rough equivalent to +0x2, with the next step up being +1x1 and the next step down being +0x1. I wanted to tweak things in favour of more and weaker enemies, so take from one, add to the other and you get -1x3. I turned off my bosses for two reasons. One, at this difficulty, I get boss spawns half the time and DOUBLE boss spawns are not unheard of. Another, with the advent of the new difficulty changes (and possibly earlier), bosses started spawning far, far too often. They're no longer an end of the level... Well, boss. They've entered regular spawns, and that's just too much hassle. Granted, my Masterminds could probably eat them for breakfast, but my Blasters can't, and I need a consistent difficulty setting between all of my characters. So, I get this.

Interestingly, I progress faster and get more drops to the time spent at -1x3 than I did at +0x2, and it's not always easier, but it's a HELL of a lot more fun

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

You don't have to deal with sets to get good acc/dam in your pets, although you DO need to use set IO's. The trick here is frankenslotting - just slot the 3 cheapest acc/dam pet IO's you can get your hands on and you will get 60% accuracy and 60% damage. One more damage (SO, IO or whatever) will cap your damage at that point and only take 4 slots, leaving you more slots for your secondary or extra slots for procs or other enhancments in the pets.

I realize that most folks don't like dealing with creating IO's, figuring out which give the best set bonuses and so on. The thing is that you get SO much out of frankenslotting that it is almost a sin not to try. If you avoid any expensive set IO's and only buy the cheapest you can find on the market it is not going to cost that much. I slot up all my mastermind pet powers this way around L27 - I buy level 30 acc/dam pet IO's, whatever happens to be selling cheap, craft them then slot them in my pets. Then I never have to look at my pet slotting again, at least not until the low 40's where I might look into replacing the acc/dam IO with acc/dam/end for those pets that tend to burn through end.

Looking at the market redside right now there are 5 edict of the master L30 acc/dam for sale - last 5 sales price range 15k-20k. 4 unquestioning loyalty with a price range of 5k -100k. 5 commanding presense, last 5 prices 50k-100k although they would probably go for less than that.

I certainly don't recommend going out for IO set bonuses in any big way on a mastermind but frankenslotting to get the most enhancement bonus you can out of 4-6 slots is they way I go on all characters.