Question for the Great scrapers of the forums

Is it possible to do most of the content PVE side with not investing in IO sets?

I am a lvl 50 Kat/SR and have seen alot of posts talking about these sets but i see they are rather expensive and i am more of a casual player that has no interest in hard to find loots or min/ maxing but am i letting my team down in TF or 8 man if im not min/maxed?

On base difficulty with nothing but SOs any scrapper can do any of this game's content that isn't specifically designed for teams.

Some scrappers with nothing but SOs can do some of that team content.

You are NOT letting a team down by not being IOed out. Anyone that kicks another player because they are overflowing with SetIO bonuses is a butthead.

That said, even casual players can find themselves surprised at what they CAN manage to afford on the market with patience. Even level 50 basic IOs can provide a healthy bump to your performance since 2 level 50 basic IOs is almost equal to 3 SOs.

My first and only 50 I took there with not only no IOs except common, but horrible underslotting. I'd often not fill slots I added to powers because I had gotten enough damage or whatever. I didn't understand the game.

But, my MA/Inv, with a little stragety, could solo along the Cimerora wall. That's how I got the last level. Finished the last pip on the beach.

That said, I have great alts in their 20s and 30s who contribute more to a team when SKed up to that level than my 50 ever did.

I have since spend around 800m on her and she is quite the force to be reconed with. But I don't really dig, MA at the time.

I believe when sets were first introduced it was stated that you could still play the game content without involving any set bonuses. That has been my experience. I am a scrapper. I don't need any bonus to kick butt. Having a purple build may make it easier, but who wants easy

I always say "It's not the build it's the player" Which can evolve into 3 simple facts:

1. Good players playing IO'd out builds can do great things.
2. Bad players playing IO'd out builds suck at life.
3. Good players playing SO'd out builds are better than #2 by far.

Ultimately a good player playing an IO'd out build IS going to out perform a good player playing an SO'd out build, but your lack of IOs isn't going to be as noticeable if you build your character well and play it well.

While I would certainly echo BillZ's comments, I would encourage the OP to consider investing in some of the uncommon and cheaper rare sets. Stuff that you won't find in the "purple builds of doom" you see on the forums.

You'll often get some basic set bonuses and you'll get significantly better basic slotting percentages in most defenses and attacks.

For example, let's say you're slotting an attack with one acc, one recharge, one end, and three damage. Not a bad slotting at all. But you can get almost double the acc, end reduction and recharge all while keeping max damage and getting some basic set bonuses. You can even get a proc on some sets which is just free damage. For example, Mako's Bite is a very cheap rare set. Any high level should be able to afford these sets.

You can still do some very nice things on a budget. Frankenslotting has a similar cost to common IOs, but has a much higher benefit in some cases, particularly attacks. There ARE still some cheap sets out there that are worth having. There are some pieces that may seem expensive, but are well within reach of a 50, such as spending a few million on a Steadfast Protection or a Kismet unique, or whatever they're going for these days. Consider that a Steadfast Protection unique is BETTER than the PvP +3% defense unique that goes for billions, and it might occur to you what a bargain it is when you're paying a thousandth that price. Basically, you can make a very solid Scrapper on just the influence you've earned going from 1-50, even with something that everyone considers very expensive to do properly, like Shield Defense.

Even SOs don't suck. I was ALMOST able to solo an AV, no temps, no inspirations, on an SO-only version of my namesake Katana/Regen. I'm convinced that if I had the patience, I could get a success on either him or on my Dark Melee/Super Reflexes with an SO build.

Super Reflexes is particularly good on a budget. It is very cheap to hit the soft cap (you can do it on a practical build using only a single IO, so sets are just gravy), which gives you very, very good mitigation. My purpled-out Dark Melee/Super Reflexes won't have much better damage mitigation than you can have on a total budget build.

Why not get some sets? It's not like you can pay the pizza guy with INF.

You won't notice the difference from a well SO'd out scrapper and an IO'd out scrapper, except in really extreme situations. So on a regular team, just playing regular content, it's not a big deal at all.

But try to learn what recipes and salvage are valuable and you should be able to earn a good amount of inf by the time you hit 50 and you should be able to at least dabble in IO's, which do improve your performance.

I have a couple heavily IOed characters. But I don't start seriously looking into it until I hit the 40's and have a better idea what I want out of the character.

That said, I have a BS/DA who is softcapped (not the easiest thing to do), and I did it for 350-400 million (which is comparitively cheap for an IO build)

The key to it for me is I was in no hurry to get it done. I took my time with it, ran some TFs for merits to use on random rolls. I kept the price down because I used a lot of what I got as random rolls in the build instead of paying for everything out of pocket. Since your character is already level 50 and doesn't sound like it has any performance issues, you can take your time on anything you choose to do with it. Do't think yo have to IO out a character all at once, do it a little bit at a time.


Even with all that, you don't NEED all that to be effective. There isn't a single powerset combination in the game, of ANY AT, that requires IOs to do it's job and be effective at it.

True, a Ferrari will outperform a Honda Civic, but they'll both get you to work just fine.

To be honest, your team will barely notice the difference if you're super-IOed or not if they're decent players, even at higher difficulties.

4 examples:

1) Took my SO'ed Spines/Dark on a Striga story arc, I was the only melee. Support was 2 kins so I had to take alphas (didn't have Tough yet, she isn't 50). With 2 kins, I had a chain of Ripper-Spine Burst-Ripper-Spine Burst and could use dark regen liberally, no end issues with transf and SBoost. If I were all IO'ed out, I think the only difference would be that... well maybe I'd use dark regen less if I built for defense? And that's it, and could be made irrelevant if we had a forcefielder.

2) Inspirations make all the difference!!! I was in a 7 Demon MM team with my stalker (yeah me and 100 demons lol), all mobs were red/purple and I was in my squishiest stalker, elm/regen, the only one with no defenses, and level 25. Some loose demonling pulled Barracuda (pink EB) and she simply decimated all the MMs and demons with her Psi AoEs. I soloed her (a pink EB set for 8) because of of inspirations, used some reds and purples. Now, what I were IO'ed like my planned build for this stalker when he hits 50? I'd have to use insps the same way because I'd have only 25% ranged def (her attacks are mostly psi/ranged) and 32% melee, besides 60% rech. The difference would be that I'd have taken her down faster and used less purples, but that's it. No biggie.

3) Running an +2 ITF, the IO'ed SM/WP Brute died quite a bit, which was usual for our +2, +3 ITFs runs. In another +2 ITF, a SS/WP Brute practically 'soloed' it, meaning he was killing everything extremely fast and jumping into mobs before the rest of the team, leaving my EM/Nin IO'ed Stalker feeling bad since I had no AoEs and even the bosses and problem minions (surgeons) I'd normally go after were going down fast with all the fury the Brute had and the lots of Footstomps per minute took care of the surgeons. After the ITF I asked 'dude what the.... how did you do that? Are you all purpled out?'. He said 'No, I only have a few IOs. The Empath was giving me Adrenalin Boost all the time so my regen, recharge and recovery were absurd all the tf'.

4) Just remembered. Similar to the first one. My DB/Elec scrapper 'tanking' a S. Psyche TF. I had a sonic and a kin with me, so between the ring of -res around me and SB, I was doing damage and chaining attacks like a very well IOed toon.

One toon I can say that makes some difference because of IOs on teams is my Mind/Emp troller, she has 86% global rech and almost perma mez protection, the controls like terrify come up very often, as the regen/recov auras, I have a nice damaging ST attack chain with purple procs that has the added benefit of mezzing most bosses in 2 hits, I can fort a lot of people, so it helps the team a lot, I barely have to heal with so many buffs and controls. But... on my first MoSTF I has like 30% global rech from IOs (no other significant bonuses) and was the only empath. Sure I optimized her to control and buff as much as possible (and there's still room for more but the more recharge I put in this toon, the busier she becomes - so many controls, so many buffs, so she's okay for now), but it's not like she was bad on normal IOs, I did various STFs with her before we had the 'Master of' thing when she had no IOs, except for a -KB I bought early because ya know, KB sucks.

And hey, I know I talked a lot about buffs from defenders and trollers, but even with an odd team composition you can steamroll. I once did a Katie Hannon TF on my DM/DA scrapper with seven blasters. DM is single target and good for taking down bosses. With 7 blasters, there was NOTHING left for me to kill, I felt truly useless. I only felt I was contributing when I had to tank the AV (Mary) but besides that they just killed everything before I could get to the mobs.

That's the cool thing about teaming, you can always contribute and in the presence of buffs you can perform like you spent billions on your toon. Debuffs also make your killing speed much faster and protects you like you had defense/resistance (like Darkest Night).

I went overboard for recharge on my mind/emp for sentimental reasons (first toon, still like playing her), I know that with this recharge she'll be able to do more than I can handle because even SO'ed a mind/emp is a very busy toon already.

I'll go overboard on my fire/sd because I want to farm with her, same for my SS/Fire Brute. And eventually on my claws/SR because I want to solo crazy stuff with no insps.

Of course when the players are plain bad an IOed toon can make a lot of difference. An ingame friend asked me for help on a mission, I said yes (my dm/da scrapper, 50 and 'decently' IO'ed, nothing too fancy) and when I saw it was an 8-man team I asked 'WTH....' and he said the mission was too difficult. It wasn't, the players sucked big time, all the mobs had ranged psi attacks (Mother Mayhem mission) and the FF defender didn't have the ranged shield for example which would have turned the mission into a cakewalk. When the AV appeared, the players did some stupid stuff, like the other scrapper going off to fight a faraway mob (and dying) and before I could get there, the peacebringer was trying to blast ALONE at the AV, obviously he got two shotted. Instead of regrouping and stuff, the blaster also tried to take her alone, etc. I got tired of all the stupidity (yes I was saying 'we need to regroup, wait to take her on when we're together, hey other scrapper come here and stop trying to solo that random mob' but they wouldn't listen) so I decided to solo her since /DA resists psi well (capped the resist with one orange) and I had lots of red and blue insps.

I know I wrote too much (I don't feel like playing the game much after i17 because it's looking like crap - Intel GPU issues, so I stay in the forums since this would be my playtime now), but you can always contribute to the team and nobody ever asked if my fire kin had softcapped defenses (he's close), if my dm/da had IOs, and nobody ever complained I was using a SO'ed toon or even a subotpimal build - like my ELM/Stone Brute, I got him to 50 so fast via 2xp+ITFs that his build when he hit 50 was horrible by my standards, he died when he shouldn't sometimes and nobody said anything - maybe they'd complain a bit if I died at every mob lol, but on a Granite toon you have to try hard to do it.

So don't worry about IOs if yu don't want to. I'd only recommend you to get 'quality of life IOs' that aren't expensive and greatly improve your toon's survivability, like a -KB IO if you don't have protection, a steadfast +3 def for a defense toon... When I was 28 on my fm/sd, I took 3 trips to Dark Astoria, got some rare salvage and recipes, made 50 million and managed to buy a kismet +acc and the steadfast +3 def IO, both improved her quite a bit at these levels. But I'd say a -KB IO (I think Karma is the cheapest) is the one you'd need the most, especially on a melee toon with no kb protection like fire armor, dark armor, ninjitsu, etc.

Agree with others IOs are good stuff.

Example:
I locked a toon [foolishly thinking that I could make cash off the very low supply recipe drops] and IOed her out at 25. Nothing higher than 28 and on missions she was a god compared to the SOed, or perhaps DOed toons.

Global Recharge? Yeah, you can feel it. Enhancing Damage AND Accuracy AND Rech into the 90s or 80s? FTW, man, FTW. You can't do that with SOs til the 40s.

Frankenslotting is cheaper than SOs and better for numbers. Sets give bonuses, great ones at times. A toon without IOs is crippled, but can still get to 50 if they are on good teams.

I usually run on SO's until about level 32. Then I start buying common IO's until I'm level 50. Once I reach level 50, then I start seeing what all sets I'd like to buy, and plan a build for full sets of IO's. You don't have to have all the set IO's. My WP/SS Tank is running mostly common IO's and it's a beast to play.

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