Unusual slotting

In theory, the enhancement system allows us to customise our characters. Two Assault Rifle blasters, for example, could differentiate themselves in line with their radically different concepts.

"The Marksman" prides himself on never missing, and has 3 accuracy enhancements per power, maybe some end redux to match his calm calculated approach.

"Blunderbuss" uses special explosive ammo, and slots damage and recharge, as suits his more gung-ho approach to combat.

In reality, though, I get the idea that most people find an optimal slotting scheme and stick with it. I used to slot 2 Acc, 3 Dam and maybe a Recharge or End redux in all my blasters before I9, now I almost always slot Thunderstrikes.
I build for concept pretty heavily, but have never taken it this far.

Has anyone ever slotted for concept at the expense of efficiency?
In particular, has anyone ever decided to make an innaccurate character and stuck with it, deliberately not slotting accuracy enhancers?

My claws scrapper doesn't slot more accuracy than gets in accidentally when slotting for dam/end/rech. She gets plenty of acc from set bonuses (since she's slotted for maximum +rech, most +rech set bonuses come AFTER acc bonuses), and basically never exemplars so doesn't need to worry about losing those bonuses.

She also has a Kismet +tohit and Focused Accuracy (though FA isn't always running).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dispari I don't know why Dink thinks she's not as sexy as Jay was. In 5 posts she's already upstaged his entire career.

Mega-Joule.

She was an Elec/Elec blaster slotted, primarily, for Accuracy and Endurance modification with Damage being in her last slot or two.

She wasn't terribly useful to most teams. But was pretty useful against AVs, since she could sap them to the point of brawling, basically.

-Rachel-

I'm pretty sure missing half the time would annoy most people, concept or no concept.

Sacrificing performance for concept bores me. I'm more interested in the convergence of concept and performance, and building characters that are both conceptually satisfying and mechanically powerful.

I don't consider enhancements to be an RP tool so much as meta-game mini game. As such, I see no reason to SLOT for concept. Instead, I BUILD for concept. Enhancements are just numbers. Visually, what people see the most is powers as they are used, so it makes sense to pick powers for concept. But picking enhancements for concept, especially considering you end up capping things because of it, isn't something I see.

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 have one which is slotted for concept and also fun to play.

My nrg/nrg blaster I wanted to slot up fairly cheaply in the early days of I9, so I bought lots of dam/rng HOs at 100K each and every ranged power has 2 in. Combined with boost range, this gets silly and he can snipe from the next county (and use his t2 from normal snipe range).

Apart from that my toons are slotted for efficiency.

I've tried a couple of "build concepts" but without much real success... like a blapper vs long range - ultimately I've found that a general good build on a toon works much better all ways round, for me at least.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Every once in a while I retcon rp reasons for the names of the sets I choose.

For example, my retro blaxploitation Scrapper uses platform go-go boots for her Martial Arts kicks. These are her trademark lead-filled platforms and they're (in my imagination) as famous as Thor's hammer or Captain America's shield. When IOs became available, I slotted multiple Mako's Bite sets for the large damage bonus they give, and retconned that they were sharkskin boots. She also uses Touch of Death (complete with the negative energy proc) in her Boxing to have a literal Fist of Death strike. Although this has no effect on the game at all, it amused me once in particular, when a Nemesis soldier who was already wounded mouthed off about how Nemesis was invincible and my Scrapper was doomed. The Scrapper then went through the animation for Practiced Brawler, held her right hand cocked for a second, then Boxing animated and she struck underhand, doing damage, a critical, and the negative energy proc, killing him.

Similarly, I decided a Steadfast Protection +3% defense IO was an amulet of protection one character got from her father.

Obviously this only has limited applications. It's pretty silly for everyone on a random PUG to discover they each have an amulet their dads gave them.

I six slotted Kick with Kinetic Crash on my fire/fire scrapper, knockback is at 170.91% for Mag 4.22. I love using it as a finishing move when the target has a sliver of Health left, kick 'em in the nads and watch the corpse go flying!
It makes me giggle.

I slotted the Radiation Blasts that I took on my Empathy Defender largely for defense debuff because he is built as a support character and I feel that making the rest of the team hit much much more reliably probably contributes to damage more than if I slotted for it. However, that isn't so much slotting for concept, it's just me figuring that the most efficient use of slots wasn't in the "conventional" slotting.

I had a friend who built a Lord of the Jungle-type character around Jump Kick.

He slotted up and used Jump Kick as much as possible, on a barechested toon with a kilt for a loincloth. JK actually looked pretty good in that context. He'd mix in a little bit of howling and chest-beating too. If we'd had vine-swinging as a travel power, he might still be playing that toon. :P

I occasionally slot for concept, mainly involving the various procs. Some people diss them or the set, or only use them to complete a set, but some of them lend themselves well to concept. Sting of the Manticore for instance has that Chance for Toxic one, and since that's as close as my Archer will get to having a poisoned arrow, she has one in her snipe. My now-deleted Dual Blader had a Kinetic Combat Chance to Knockdown in one particular attack (which I don't remember now), since I thought it looked like it ought to knock someone down. My Fire/Storm Controller has Ghost Widow's Embrace Chance for Psionic in her hold, from the idea that seeing all the chaos she causes might cause some real trauma.

I enjoy the idea of procs in general, they give the opportunity to tweak things just a bit. I'll go looking for and slot procs even if I don't plan to use anything else in their sets.

I'm working on a storm/energy defender slotted for knockback above all else. Picture Power Push six-slotted with knockback IOs: forget "Why did the Hellion cross the road?", this is more like "Why did Lord Recluse cross the road?"

Same as Primal. I only generally 'slot for concept' with regards to procs. I'm a huge fan of the procs and I'd say my most successful character is my main, Kat/SR.

His concept is, he uses a bokken instead of an actual sword. And because wooden katanas are even better than swords, I've got his attacks slotted for at least 95% dmg plus 2 procs. Some accuracy bonuses (and the -def) help him hit dodgy foes and 1 proc is the achilles' heel -res proc/gladiator -res while the other is a lethal or energy dmg proc. I feel it works for concept as, with his wooden sword, he hits like a truck...or perhaps cuts them in half

ED sort of nerfs that. Sure, you could slot in 5 Accuracy and say you never miss, but the game mechanics say you will miss sometimes and you've overslotted accuracy to the point where they provide no benefit.

Yeah, I'd rarely if ever slot for concept unless I wanted to focus on a particular special effect or proc.

Don't mind doing funny things with my little-used power pool powers though.

I have an energy blaster who is heavily slotted for knockdown/knockback. Some of his powers certainly do less damage than they could, but I am often able to knock mobs off their feet and against a group of say, 3 melee mobs, rarely do any of them actually get to me due to repeated knockdowns.

However, I have been on teams that hate this build and ask me not to knockdown so much, which effectively means not using about half my attacks at all. Thus, he tends to solo only, but I find him hella fun to play.