Anyone else never use IOs?

Thirty-Seven · 03-14-2010 01:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

What worries me with the new and upcoming post-50 progression system, on the other hand, is that it will move the goal posts and put the "end" too far away. Yeah, you got to 50, sure. But now you can gain another 50 "not-levels" and get a bunch of other rewards, and that will take you TWICE as long as it took you to get here! Oh, and you'll need 50 people to even attempt this! Mua-ha-ha-ha-ha! Not for me. I just know they won't sell whatever future system they add in as optional this time around.

I think it is clear that this is a "worst case scenario" type of thing. I highly doubt that the Dev team would sentence their players to this type of thing. If my happiness with the game is any indication... the Devs know their playerbase waaaaay better than that.

Samuel_Tow · 03-14-2010 04:36 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Thirty-Seven

I think it is clear that this is a "worst case scenario" type of thing. I highly doubt that the Dev team would sentence their players to this type of thing. If my happiness with the game is any indication... the Devs know their playerbase waaaaay better than that.

On the one hand, that's true. On the other hand, what else could "more end game" stand for? I know what people are asking for, because I've read the suggestions, both for a level cap increase and for more raid type content. People seriously and really do envision it as more levels, tasks or loot grinds that would take LONGER than the game up to this point, citing this as the reason why we won't run out of content as soon as it's introduced. And it's not just one or two people. Practically every suggestion about "more end game" revolves around the concept of this "end game" taking more thousands of hours than even the hardest of hardcore could put in.

The developers do try to give the players what they want. In this case, I'm not worried that the developers will suddenly black out and do something stupid. I'm just worried that the constant cries for something that terrifies me to think about it will be heard and instituted in the effort to give the players what they want.

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.

Grouchybeast · 03-14-2010 07:00 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

And it's not just one or two people. Practically every suggestion about "more end game" revolves around the concept of this "end game" taking more thousands of hours than even the hardest of hardcore could put in.

I don't think that's quite true. People do fairly frequently post suggestions for long-grind end-content, but I challenge you to find such a post where there's a majority of commentors supporting the idea. Normally it's exactly the reverse -- the proposal is vehemently shot down.

If the devs were to take anything from the boards, it would be how unpopular such ideas are.

Arc#314490: Zombie Ninja Pirates!
Defiant @Grouchybeast
Death is part of my attack chain.

Samuel_Tow · 03-14-2010 08:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Grouchybeast

I don't think that's quite true. People do fairly frequently post suggestions for long-grind end-content, but I challenge you to find such a post where there's a majority of commentors supporting the idea. Normally it's exactly the reverse -- the proposal is vehemently shot down.

If the devs were to take anything from the boards, it would be how unpopular such ideas are.

Hmm... You know, you do have a point there. Believe it or not, that actually makes me feel better about the state of affairs.

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.

Street_Wolf · 03-14-2010 09:10 AM

So here is my experience.

After making this thread, I decided I'd give IOs another stab. I decided I would start making some common level 50 IOs for my level 47 MM. I gathered the recipies and salvage over the course of about a week, and I was pretty happy with myself. Then I crafted and slotted them. And THAT is where my hope for getting into IOs plummeted. When I clicked and dragged one of my 50 IOs over a level 50 SO, the bonus to that attribute was a whopping 0.4%. . .

At that point, I went back to the market and cancelled all my recipe bids and I sold off whatever I had on me.

Samuel_Tow · 03-14-2010 09:44 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Street_Wolf

So here is my experience.

After making this thread, I decided I'd give IOs another stab. I decided I would start making some common level 50 IOs for my level 47 MM. I gathered the recipies and salvage over the course of about a week, and I was pretty happy with myself. Then I crafted and slotted them. And THAT is where my hope for getting into IOs plummeted. When I clicked and dragged one of my 50 IOs over a level 50 SO, the bonus to that attribute was a whopping 0.4%. . .

At that point, I went back to the market and cancelled all my recipe bids and I sold off whatever I had on me.

Thanks to ED, upgrading triple-slotted ++ SOs into level 50 Commons is not going to give you much of a benefit. Your SOs already put you past the ED cap, and at 42.4% per 50 Common vs. the 36.66% per ++ SO, you only get an extra 5.74% per enhancement, or a total of 17.22% total. However, thanks to ED, you only get 0.15 of that benefit, so you end up increasing by a whopping 2.583% for all three enhancements.

However, replacing only single-slotted enhancements has a rather better benefit of 5.74% for just that single enhancement. Specifically, that's enough to put a 1.0 native accuracy power past the 90% streakbreaker mark against +1 enemies with a single slot.

But, yeah, the overall difference is not that great, all things told. You can only really get the kind of monstrous benefits people are talking about from specific Set combinations. Commons are just slightly better SOs that don't expire.

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.

ketch · 03-14-2010 11:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Street_Wolf

So here is my experience.

After making this thread, I decided I'd give IOs another stab. I decided I would start making some common level 50 IOs for my level 47 MM. I gathered the recipies and salvage over the course of about a week, and I was pretty happy with myself. Then I crafted and slotted them. And THAT is where my hope for getting into IOs plummeted. When I clicked and dragged one of my 50 IOs over a level 50 SO, the bonus to that attribute was a whopping 0.4%. . .

At that point, I went back to the market and cancelled all my recipe bids and I sold off whatever I had on me.

I assume you must have been triple slotted for whatever aspect you intended to enhance. You must consider the additional bonus from each and how quickly you'll reach diminishing returns. Simply put, using IO's requires you to slot a bit differently. Triple slotting an aspect puts you far into diminishing returns, and you might find it very worthwhile to find a simple dual or triple enhancing IO.

If you take a look at a power like Mass Confusion where a standard slotting might look like 2 confuse/2 accuracy/2 recharge. With level 50 SO's that's a 66.6% enhancement to each aspect. Level 50 generic IO's off 83.32% enhancement to each. For Mass Confusion, that translates to a 13 second faster recharge, a 6 second longer duration, and an additional 10% accuracy.

Now, if you decide to go a bit deeper and franken-slot you can easily surpass the bonuses given by SO's with just 4 slots. Using the triple enhancement from the 4 common confusion sets (leaving out the purple set), you get enhancement values of 76.48%; that shaves 12 seconds off of recharge, adds 3 seconds to the duration, and give you and extra 5.9% accuracy with only 4 slots. Even if you don't start chasing set bonuses, simple frankenslotting can let you spare some slots for things you may not have been able to enhance before.

UberGuy · 03-14-2010 01:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Street_Wolf

So here is my experience.

After making this thread, I decided I'd give IOs another stab. I decided I would start making some common level 50 IOs for my level 47 MM. I gathered the recipies and salvage over the course of about a week, and I was pretty happy with myself. Then I crafted and slotted them. And THAT is where my hope for getting into IOs plummeted. When I clicked and dragged one of my 50 IOs over a level 50 SO, the bonus to that attribute was a whopping 0.4%.

I'm afraid you've gone for one of the places where (basic) IOs and SOs converge. Simply replacing L50 (or higher) SOs with Common IOs isn't going to realize a whole lot of benefit for most things. (Note that replacing 1-2 "even-level" SOs with level 50s is actually quite a bit more noticeable, because you are not yet into the hardest hit area where ED eats away the benefits. Edit: This will become more noticeable when you are level 50 unless you upgrade your SOs to level 53s, because right now level 50 SOs are +3s for you.

IOs offer three broad categories of benefit.

Common IOs don't wear out, and if you buy them around level 25 or 30, they're basically as good as SOs. Since they never wear out, you never have to replace them again. You're already buying level 50s, so this doesn't do you much good, as mentioned above.
Set IOs let you fit more than 6 SOs worth of enhancement into 6 slots. Even ignoring that single-aspect IOs can give a bit more enhancement than +3 SOs, they additionally have the following benefits. These benfits allow you to get ED maximum for, say, damage in an attack, plus a lot more accuracy, endurance reduction and recharge than SOs could ever allow.
- Two two-aspect IOs is more enhancement than two single aspect IOs. For example, Acc/Dam + Acc/Dam is 1.25x more enhancement than Acc + Dam.
- Two three-aspect IOs is the same enhancement as three single-aspect IOs. So Acc/Dam/Rech + Acc/Dam/Rech is the same enhancement as Acc+Dam+Rech, but in two slots instead of three.
Set bonuses. If you look at set bonuses on their own, they don't look like much. The design intent is that you are expected to stack multiple bonuses together to achieve larger effect. Some bonuses really are too small or dispersed to be considered worth much. Others, such as defense, recharge, recovery, regeneration and damage, can actually add up quite significantly, especially when stacked on your own powers (and don't forget pool and epic powers here). Clearly, this is probably the most advanced approach to IOs, and also the most expensive and likely to make you want external tools like Mid's builder.

Sadly, I think a MM is probably the AT that gets the least out of set bonuses. That's not to say MMs can't benefit from IOs, but because set bonuses don't generally transfer to pets (there are a few special bonuses that specifically buff the pets) the general effect is more watered down.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

tanstaafl · 03-14-2010 02:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UberGuy

....

People who you meet in WW or the BM are another set of folks more likely to have IOs. But when I look at the powers' tabs for characters in other PvE contexts, set bonuses aren't very common in my experience.

You wont see the most common IOs in set bonues ie generic enhancements.

I don't suffer from altitis, I enjoy every minute of it.

Thank you Devs & Community people for a great game.

So sad to be ending ):

UberGuy · 03-14-2010 03:03 PM

No, it's true. Then again, I'm not sure how interesting it is to wonder how many people only use commons.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

Samuel_Tow · 03-14-2010 05:36 PM

People keep talking about getting more out of multi-aspect Inventions (that don't come in all combinations at all levels), but doesn't this always assume you never want to more than two-slot something? Because I keep hearing that "two slots with level 50 Commons is about as good as three," and it's not. But suppose I have my attacks three-slotted for damage and I don't want to lose that. I'm not worried about accuracy, I'm not worried about side effects. Just damage. How will that work with multi-aspect enhancements?

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.

UberGuy · 03-14-2010 05:45 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

People keep talking about getting more out of multi-aspect Inventions (that don't come in all combinations at all levels), but doesn't this always assume you never want to more than two-slot something?

Hm? I'm not sure I understand. I give a couple of examples in my bullet list up above. Is that not what you're talking about?

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

ShoeTattoo · 03-14-2010 06:00 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Street_Wolf

So here is my experience.

After making this thread, I decided I'd give IOs another stab. I decided I would start making some common level 50 IOs for my level 47 MM. I gathered the recipies and salvage over the course of about a week, and I was pretty happy with myself. Then I crafted and slotted them. And THAT is where my hope for getting into IOs plummeted. When I clicked and dragged one of my 50 IOs over a level 50 SO, the bonus to that attribute was a whopping 0.4%. . .

At that point, I went back to the market and cancelled all my recipe bids and I sold off whatever I had on me.

You had a useful epiphany, after undertaking this new experiment.

If you "double up", and try to re-do that character with set IOs, to get IO set bonuses or to frankenslot, you'll get a substantially higher level of hassle costs. You should really be breaking out a spreadsheet to calculate the frankenslotting / IO set bonuses; otherwise it is very easy to get confused and waste time and influence / infamy overslotting one characteristic, at the expense of others.

I was doing IOs for perhaps about a year. But, I've found it to be an increasingly unpleasant chore, over time. After reflecting on this thread and another seeking to merge the two markets, I recently stopped using both hero and villain markets, and switched back to pure SOs. I vendor salvage and recipes, and get back to playing more quickly.

I enjoy the game more just using SOs.

UberGuy · 03-14-2010 06:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ShoeTattoo

If you "double up", and try to re-do that character with set IOs, to get IO set bonuses or to frankenslot, you'll get a substantially higher level of hassle costs. You should really be breaking out a spreadsheet to calculate the frankenslotting / IO set bonuses; otherwise it is very easy to get confused and waste time and influence / infamy overslotting one characteristic, at the expense of others.

I think that's a totally fair reason to not want to deal with the more advanced aspects of IOs. Getting into set bonuses and even frankenslotting can be quite complicated. There are people who hate that kind of bookkeeping, and there's not much anyone can (and possibly should) do to convince them otherwise.

As one last parting thought on it, though, someone has saved you a ton of spreadsheet work with Mid's/Titan Network's Hero Desginer. There's really nothing that competes with it, and it will only very rarely lead one astray with respect to what it shows and what happens in game. I would always recommend it to anyone, even just for frankenslotting. Heck, I recommend it even just for non-IO builds, since it has all the latest powersets in them.

Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA

ketch · 03-14-2010 07:46 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

People keep talking about getting more out of multi-aspect Inventions (that don't come in all combinations at all levels), but doesn't this always assume you never want to more than two-slot something? Because I keep hearing that "two slots with level 50 Commons is about as good as three," and it's not. But suppose I have my attacks three-slotted for damage and I don't want to lose that. I'm not worried about accuracy, I'm not worried about side effects. Just damage. How will that work with multi-aspect enhancements?

I'd say it's quite rare that anyone would slot only one aspect of a power. I can't imagine anything that doesn't benefit from more recharge, accuracy, or endurance reduction. Of course, if someone does that for simplicity's sake I'm not one to stop them.

3 lvl 50++ SO's: 96.48% enhancement
3 lvl 50 generic IO's: 99.08% enhancement

Using a blaster's Blaze, 3 IO's only pushes out about 5 more points of damage than 3 level 50++ SO's. So, in this case, the difference isn't very noticeable.

Looking at a more realistic scenario in which you're enhancing at least 2 aspects of a power, you can beat out SO's and save a slot with IO's.

3 lvl 50++ damage SO's, 3 lvl recharge 50++ SO's: 96.48% to each.
2 lvl 50 generic damage IO's, 2 lvl 50 generic recharge IO's, 1 lvl 50 damage/recharge from the Devastation set: 96.7% to each.

I'll re-iterate what UberGuy said because I whole-heartedly agree. Mid's is an excellent tool that takes all the math and fuss out of it. Just pop things in and if you see you've hit the red then you've gone too far. It's nice for planning out simple builds as well as planning out frankenslotted and fully IO'ed builds with sets.

Samuel_Tow · 03-15-2010 02:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by UberGuy

Hm? I'm not sure I understand. I give a couple of examples in my bullet list up above. Is that not what you're talking about?

OK, let me rephrase this: Do dual-aspect enhancements not offer less percentage per aspect than single-aspect Commons? As such, would three Damae/Else enhancements not be worse than three damage Commons of the same level? I can't seem to find decent enhancement values on these things, since ParagonWiki seems to list triple-aspect Inventions at 50% enhancement, and I SERIOUSLY doubt that's per aspect, since even Hamidon enhancements don't do that any more.

Basically, how am I getting more from enhancements that do less? I realise I'm getting OTHER things, but suppose for the sake of example that I don't care about other things. How am I getting one particular aspect better enhanced with multi-aspect enhancements than I am with single-aspect ones?

I know I can enhance OTHER aspects of a power, but then that starts sounding suspiciously like giving up a little of one aspect to gain a lot of another, which I'm actually not much of a fan of.

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.

Panzerwaffen · 03-15-2010 03:40 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Samuel_Tow

Basically, how am I getting more from enhancements that do less? I realise I'm getting OTHER things, but suppose for the sake of example that I don't care about other things. How am I getting one particular aspect better enhanced with multi-aspect enhancements than I am with single-aspect ones?

I know I can enhance OTHER aspects of a power, but then that starts sounding suspiciously like giving up a little of one aspect to gain a lot of another, which I'm actually not much of a fan of.

I'm not sure of a better way to explain it, than to simply drop an example on you.

Take two 6 slotted attacks.

Attack one is slotted with SO's. Accuracy, 3xDamage, Endurance, Recharge.
Total values are: 95% Damage, 33% each for Accuracy, Endurance, Recharge.

Attack two is slotted with a mix of uncommon level 35 set IO's as follows:
A/D/R
A/E/R
D/E/R
A/D
D/E
D/R

Total values for attack two are: 60% Accuracy, 96% Damage, 60% Endurance Reduction, and 77% Recharge Reduction.

So you're not getting any more damage really because of the ED caps, but you'd be getting nearly double the accuracy & endurance reduction and more than twice the recharge reduction vs. SO's in the same 6 slots.

Samuel_Tow · 03-15-2010 03:45 AM

Right, so basically Inventions Sets don't give you more percentage, but rather give you more bonuses beyond what you'd normally slot for.

You know, really, if there were COMMON multi-aspect enhancements and they came in close to all combos, or at least all that made sense, I might be convinced to give them a try. As it is, the rarity, cost and non-uniformity of Sets just turn me off.

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.

Major_Glory · 03-15-2010 03:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain

True Story!

Tonight I logged on to our 3rd account which was offline for like 4 months, and I played the lvl 50 Fire Kin Corruptor who is maxed out on all SO's and OMG SHE SUCKED.

Flipped over to a lvl 50 ALL IOed character and was FREAKIN AMAZING.

I think that statement sums up the IO argument for me too.

The difference is like night and fraking day.

Samuel_Tow · 03-15-2010 03:51 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Major_Glory

I think that statement sums up the IO argument for me too.

The difference is like night and fraking day.

SOs are given to me just one step removed from free of charge. Purple enhancements and Hamidon variants don't tend to be as easy to obtain. It's not a question of merit, it's a question of worth, and I'm not sure it's worth the cost of investment.

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.

Paladin_Musashi · 03-15-2010 03:58 AM

You don't have to get purples... Purples are honestly down to bragging rights, or squeezing the last 10% recharge bonus you needed to perma hasten or something like that.

The rare and uncommon level sets are not that expensive at all (Especially if you buy them with merits) and you can achieve MASSIVE improvements to your toon by using them, even if you're just frankenslotting rather than going for the set bonuses per-se.

Samuel_Tow · 03-15-2010 04:03 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladin_Musashi

You don't have to get purples... Purples are honestly down to bragging rights, or squeezing the last 10% recharge bonus you needed to perma hasten or something like that.

The rare and uncommon level sets are not that expensive at all (Especially if you buy them with merits) and you can achieve MASSIVE improvements to your toon by using them, even if you're just frankenslotting rather than going for the set bonuses per-se.

Buying them with merits assumes you have merits to buy them with, which don't exactly grow on trees. True, you can farm them or grind them, but at that point, these are no longer "cheap." As well, just KNOWING what you're doing takes the kind of time, research and planning that not everyone is willing to put forward. I'm not saying everything is purples all the way, but I can't agree that these things are not a lot of work and waiting just the same.

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.

Paladin_Musashi · 03-15-2010 04:11 AM

Honestly I don't see it as a terrible expense. Run almost any two TFs blueside, or pretty much any three SFs redside (Seriously devs, fix this), and you can get one of the most useful single IOs in the game, the Steadfast Protection +3% defense global.

And since TFs are really where the fun is IMO...

Catwhoorg · 03-15-2010 04:12 AM

Sam,

it really isn't that hard if you approach it with a truly open mind, and a tiny bit of knowledge.

Swap out one Acc and one dam for 2 Acc/dam/recharge triples

You get the same acc boost, the same dam boost and one whole 'bonus' recharge enhancement.

ADR not available ? drop in an ADE for splitting the 'bonus' between end and recharge.

It is especially easy with melee and ranged attacks due to the large amounts of sets there.

Here is my hint for ones to try this with:

Melee
Focused smite and Crushing Impact ADR

Ranged
Ruin and Thunderstrike ADR

@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

Paladin_Musashi · 03-15-2010 04:17 AM

I should also point out that while it takes time to learn which IOs are good for what, I used to spend literal days (And I'm talking about 24 hours of actual work on the build here when I say days) agonizing over slotting on my builds before I even took the toon out of the tutorial, back when all I could use were SOs. It's only in the last year or so that I have a few 50s sitting around to shower money on my new alts with, and I used to be broke, broke, broke all through the game, to the point where it was depressing to me and I didn't have a single character past the mid-late 30s.

IOs have fixed all that for me. For a couple million inf donated by a higher level toon, I can kit a new character in IOs when he hits level 22 and I never have to replace those, until level 50. I can't express how big a difference that is in terms of expenditure over the toon's whole career.

And it actually takes me only a few hours of work to create a toon's build now, now that I can frankenslot to hit the ED caps on three attributes of a power with a mere four slots. Now that I can use set bonuses to fix holes.

The "investment" required for me is actually significantly reduced by the use of IOs.