Anyone else never use IOs?

Here's my take on it. Hero side (cos thats what I play)

Level 1-7, Sewer Trial.

Level up.

Hit WW, bid 111-333 on L45-> SO's. Fill enhancment tray with 10.

Hit Vanguard Base via Atlas, talk to Quartermaster, sell all your SO's (the quartermaster give you best possible price, some 40-60% more than a generic store will give you). Now you have 200K or so inf.

Buy L10 Training Accuracies and perhaps some recharge for Rest, and run speed for Sprint. ONLY accuracies matter. Cost is 10-20K.

At L12, get to a DO store, and kit out. 110-150K for a fully kitted out guy in DO's. Trust me, it makes those early TF's much much easier 'at level' (if you're insane enough to do TFs at level).

L17, another 150-200K on more DO's. By this time with drops, salvage and recipes, you should have a few hundred-thousand (you're BOUND to get some rare salvage, most of which sells for >1M these days).

L22, all L25's SO's. 1.5-2M.

L27, respec, sell all your SO's, funds the next lot of SOs (L30's)

L32, if you're pushed for time, L35 SOs from RWZ or Midnight Club quartermaster (nobody bothers with the origin-stores in Founders/Bricks these days). Otherwise, pick up the IOs you can off the market, or get your Crafter to make you some, or your SG or whatever.

L37, now you're looking at IO sets. You should be rolling in cash. For frankenslotting, you can get amazingly good deals on random IO's. For the 'gold plated' sets, you need to have a sugardaddy character. My L38 Shield/Electric Melee tank was gifted 350M. He has 60% of his 'cheap' sets slotted, and still has to worry about the really expensive stuff like Numina uniques, and LOTG 7.5% global recharge IO's, which are hugely expensive. He's been spending Merits on Obliteration recipes, he already has Task Force Commander, prolly spent 700merits so far. He's a beast. IO's -hugely- change the way your character plays. Not just 'a bit', but night and day changes. It takes time, it takes lots of money (because people are &^%$#'s) but it's very much worth it in the long run.

BUT, if you just want to play, then SO's work. They're cheap, fast (5 minutes to /respec and buy/slot SO's from RWZ quartermaster), and they work. People saying 'oh, but you can get L35IO's and NEVER WORRY ABOUT THEM AGAIN, yeah, I spend 5 minutes four times (L32, L37, L42, L47) and less than 10M, and I'm all set, vs the 40-50 minutes -solid effort- to futz around with a huge bank just to get generic IOs.

The end of the day, SOs are fine for all non-pvp characters.

As soon as you enter the PvP world, it's a whole new ball game, with the super-rares "I can buy that recipe for a mere 1,300,000,000inf!" 1.3B for -one- recipe. Ridiculous. And people spend it, because it makes SO much difference in PVP, where the guy with just one additional hitpoint survives long enough to crush you, before running away to gobble inspirations and use his tricks to get back up to full strength.

I use SOs exclusively in the dual build of one of my main heroes.

My logic is that, since the game is "designed upon" the numbers of SOs, then I should be able to run the content with SOs exclusively. However, I have to bump the difficulty down around -1 lvl/ 3 team members or even level at 1 or 2 teammies.

Plus, it helps me to re-live the "old days" and appreciate what we have now!

I buy the KB protection IOs for Fire or Dark Armor (and now an Electric Armor toon 'cause of the hole when you jump) characters, but mostly I slot generic ios only when I have the salvage that's dropped for them.

I kinda LIKE making IOs ... but only when it's from salvage that I've earned rather than bought. Weird, huh?

After playing the marketing game too hard on a stalker (who currently still has like a bajillion inf - can't wait till we can mail that stuff!), my next toon was a Bots/Storm and I was really burned out on the market. I decided early on to just go with generic IOs and it went pretty well. She's at something like 42nd level right now (another victim of altitis though) and I never regretted my choice.

I generally don't play a character any more after I reach 50 on it, so I don't generally bother with IOs at all. If I can grab some cheap at the AH, awesome. If not, I'll just grab SOs at Vanguard.

:: shrug ::

For the most part, I don't bother. There are a handful of toons I bother with IOs on...otherwise, I, uh, usually forget to even do new SOs. Honestly, I have a level 50 fire/rad controller who is usually my go-to TF toon and nobody notices that she has half red SOs unless I mention it. Terrible, right? I keep meaning to update her, but I'd rather just play the game.

I know how IOs work. I know how to make them, slot them, I know the set bonuses...I have a couple market toons that make money off of them, and those toons that do bother with them are either full up on set bonuses or full sets of commons. It just doesn't matter to me. It's a game, and when I'm tweaking out builds for every single character, to me, that's work. I have quite a lot of friends in-game who play the IO game, and they do incredible things with their tweaked out characters. Just not worth it for me, that's all.

Only recently, and not entirely on purpose. I got lazy and used my alt build instead of respeccing on one mid-40s character, and didn't have any IOs to slot into them, so just as an experiment (or so I thought) I filled the enhancement slots with SOs, just like in the good old days, and went off to play to see if the new build suited me at all.

When 2XP weekend is over, I'll probably go through and swap a bunch of them out for a mix of Hami-O's, frankenslotted IOs, and level 50 common IOs, and be even better. But for now, I can still take down even relatively tough Elite Bosses with just a hatful of inspirations and no temp powers, and none of the teams I've been on have complained. There are worse things running around in this game than a character with no IOs.

There is absolutely nothing wrong at all with sticking to SO's. And anyone who believes otherwise is living in their own little world. The game is balanced around SO's, so far as I'm aware.

I've got toons that are still SO'd, I've got toons that are just generic IO's (making generics is not an issue once you've gone for all the invention badges), I've got toons with a couple of Set IO's and the rest generics, and I've got one toon that would class (to me) as IO'd (no purples, a couple of expensive things for endurance purposes, enough set bonuses to get her up to 40%ish defence to melee and ranged on a MA/Shield Scrapper.)

Play the game however you damn well like, and ignore anyone who tries to order you to play it their way. Telling the difference between people trying to order you to play their way and people offering well meaning advice is, of course, the tricky bit

I'm mostly all over the map but I don't have any characters who don't use at least common IOs. There's just no point IMO. I do have a main who has the crafting badges though so making IOs from 15+ is pretty cheap.

I always use IOs, but I've certainly been in plenty of teams where people head off to buy DO/SOs after their old ones expire, so it seems pretty common for players to still use them.

Personally I haven't touched DOs or SOs since IOs became available (and I never used TOs, other than slotting accuracies when they dropped). I slot generic IOs at 12, then depending what I can be bothered doing either replace with more generics at 22 or start frankenslotting in the mid 20s. I start thinking about sets late 30s/early 40s (though I may go for -kb, procs, or 2-set-bonuses earlier).

I almost always buy generic IOs pre-crafted for similar cost as buying equivalent level DO/SOs from vendors (I alt a lot and bid several levels in advance, so plenty time for lowish bids to fill). For sets I almost always buy the recipe and craft it myself, though I'll do a quick run of lowball bids on pre-crafted just in case. I always felt it was a bit silly that my enhancements (and by extension my powers) got slightly weaker when I'd just gained a level, so even ignoring sets, IOs just make sense to me and I'd never want to go back.


But SOs are definitely alive and well from what I've seen; most Pugs I join will at some point have someone break to update enhancements because they've gone red, at all levels of the game.

Some interestng opinions and approaches here.

So, for giggles, I'll toss my current approach into the mix along with a few
disclaimers to help give some perspective to my playstyle.

1. I'm a solo player almost exclusively. In general, that means I level more
slowly than most, but I'm definitely not a "casual player"... On the 3 main
servers I play on, I have small bases geared for storage and crafting.

2. L50 is usually retirement age (or at least, play it rarely) for my toons.
The "journey" of playing the alt from scratch, and seeing how it evolves
along the way is the interesting part for me.

3. All my toons are well-funded (see guide in sig) and self-sufficient. For
all but the premier IO's (most of which I don't use), cost isn't a problem
for any of them.

Given those disclaimers, my newbie alts typically progress similarily from there.

At L7 they slot common L10 IO's, and at L12 they slot L15 commons.
They're cheap enough, and quite simply, their performance benefit is
*well above* corresponding TO's and DO's.

At L17, I'll pop in L20 common IO's on a case-by-case basis as new slots
are added, or if I feel a power needs a bit of a boost.

Also, during this timeframe, I have put together a basic Mid's build for the
toon, and I have a pretty good idea of the sets I'd like to put in. Armed
with that info, I go ahead and start placing bids for L25-L28 set IO's based
on the Mid's plan - I may substitute depending on what is actually available,
but starting 5 to 10 levels early gives me plenty of time to get what I want.

At L22, I begin slotting the set IO's I've been purchasing. I'm probably the
poster child for frankenslotting, and those sets are picked to give bonuses
in all the PvP zones (where I like to dabble from time to time). I cannot
recall the last time I put an SO in a build - L25 sets outperform SO's.

Once slotted, those powers are done... I don't look at 'em or think about
em again.

Powers taken above level L35 (ie. post Siren's Call) typically get frankenslotted
with L35-L40 sets...

None of my toons use any SO's, or Purple IO's or PvPIO's. In fact, I think
only a couple of them have IO's higher than L40's slotted.

I do have a handful of special IO's that I slot: Everyone gets a Kismet Acc.
Most of them get a Karma or Steadfast -KB. Squishies typically get a Stealth IO,
and any of the toons I make for PvP also get a Reticle for perception.

Any others are on a toon-by-toon basis depending on what I want them
to accomplish, so I have the odd LotG or Numina or Performance Shifter
in certain toons.

...and there you have it....

My builds typically run 25M-75M in total cost. Their performance is well above
SO builds, and typically about 80-85% of premium builds which is plenty
good enough for me.


Regards,
4

I rarely use IOs until my toons hit 50. Usually I'm leveling too fast to bother looking for recipes, salvage and the whole crafting ordeal.

I usually buy SOs once I'm 22 and and then garbage slot whatever drops as it comes. If I get a recipe with the appropriate salvage, I'll craft it and throw it in, otherwise they get vendored/AH'd.

After 50 I'll keep putting in SO's as they drop and retrofit IOs as I see fit.

Lvl 25 Generic IOs are 1% less effective than SOs. and they NEVER degrade, or have to be replaced. To me the little bit of extra time is worth the return of not having to worry about replacing them, and the cost is well worht it in the logn run, especially if you have the recipies memorized. I'm a little OCD, so I usually have a few characters on each server with the Crafting Table accolade, I get on them once in a while and just make a crapload of 15, 25, and 35 IOs and leave them in the base for my SG to pillage.
I haven't touched SOs/DOs since they came out. Usually, I run unenhanced until 12, since it doesnt take me very long to get there, even without PLing. At 12 I'll plug in some lvl 15 IOs (better % than DOs), and another round of generic IOs at 25. Around 30-35 is when I start looking at Sets or Frankenslotting, unless I really feel like I need to conserve slots before then.(frankenslotting 4 Dmg(or whatever primary effect is appropriate)/Acc/Rech is like having the power 6-slotted with SOs)

I start IO'ing all of my characters at 22.

I think it's odd that some players find to to be a hassle to replace SOs. I mean, I guess I just level slowly, but I feel like that once I'm in my mid-late 30s, I'm only switching them out every couple weeks.

I used to IO up at level 32, or even sometimes level 27. Lately, though, I'm relying on SOs longer, and I'm not missing IOs. I usually only IO up these days to cover significant hole in endurance management or to get a highly specific IO (ie: knockback protection). Still, even that is becoming increasingly rare.

Its the tedium, not the time or expense, that is bringing me back to relying on SOs more and more, once again.

I start slotting common IOs as soon as I can, just so I don't have to worry about them going red. (Plus I find DOs really annoying -- the names aren't very descriptive, and I can never remember which one does what.) Somewhere in my 30s, I start shopping for cheap sets. Don't usually have enough inf or patience to go for any of the really expensive stuff. By the time I hit 50, I'm ready to retire the character and start a new one.

It's incredibly annoying to replace enhancements every 5 levels. I avoid it like the plague.