invention origin vs "old school ED slotting"

For those of you who don't recall, ED refers to enhancement diversification. As a returning player (it's been far too long) I find that Paragon City's economy is totally revamped (from a depression to inflation!)- I've never had so much influence, but never been so unable to buy the things I wanted!

So, I ask myself, Apocalypse, the ranged damage "Superior" invention origin - is it really worth it? The damage these enhancements offer don't really stack up - do they? I'm asking from a position of ignorance.
I know numbers; I can do math. What I'm wondering is if that .75 % mez resistance or whatever tiny token number it might be (stacked with 0% on my blaster, lol) - is that worth the trade off of less damage?

My blaster is just about fully slotted with HO's. So, I don't really save any slots. Is the loss of damage and in some cases accuracy justified by the tiny bonuses?

I'm pretty sure the answer is "it depends", but I'd like to know what the opinions are.

You ask if Apocalypse's Superior damage is worth it.

With purple sets, generally it's the very high power Set Bonuses, and the fact that those set bonuses stay no matter what level you exemp down to (unlike other IOs)

The (Superior) rating on the enhancement is icing on the cake, of course.

If you plan things well, some of those little bonuses can add up to substantial bonuses. In particular, the Defense, Recharge, and Recovery bonuses can add up nicely. Knockback Protection is another useful set bonus to acquire.

The bonuses that you get from slotting sets are definitely worth it. The bonuses from any one power are minimal but when you start slotting lots of the same bonus they can really start to add up and allow you to do things that ED normally prevents you from doing.

The most common goals for an IO build are either soft capped defense (45%) or high recharge (with 110% for perma-hasten being a popular option) with hit points/regen probably coming in third (other goals are possible but the distribution of bonuses on the sets make them a lot harder). A lot IO builds also pick up a decent amount of global accuracy as a side effect of the primary slotting goal.

If you've got a well done HO build then as you note you'll probably end up losing some damage and accuracy in individual powers although the damage change will be minimal (most sets ED cap damage) and you'll make the difference up with accuracy. The big advantage of IOs for a blaster is that you can, with some effort, build up a reasonably substantial bonus to one defense type. Most blasters go for ranged defense but some (especially Blappers with ice mastery) go for smashing and lethal instead. If you want advice on specific slotting for your Blaster then ask either here or in the Blasters forum.

A useful tool for this is Mids's Hero Designer which most people use when planning heavily IO'd builds.
http://www.cohplanner.com/

To answer the specific question about purples the answer is not really. For the most part there are cheaper sets which are almost as good. The stronger bonuses from purples are nice but a well slotted build using more reasonably priced IOs is almost as good.

If you only plan to slot a few pieces of the set, then generally ,no, sell the drop and finace the whole build. Once you've decided that you REALLY like 1 particular toon and you want to make it the best possible then you'll need to get together a billion or so and slot him to the gills.

[WARNING: This post somehow got really long so TL;DR version: Yes.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ukaserex My blaster is just about fully slotted with HO's. So, I don't really save any slots. Is the loss of damage and in some cases accuracy justified by the tiny bonuses?

The damage loss is almost negligible, the accuracy loss can seem significant but like others have said, many sets will give bonuses of increased accuracy. Plus you're a blaster so you will no doubt have Aim and Build Up.

Now I don't know what your build is here so as an example i'll use Power Bolt in Energy Blast.

The base damage for unslotted Blaster Power Bolt according to Mids is 62.6 damage. (12.6 Smashing, 50 Energy)

HO slotting in Power Bolt for maximum damage and accuracy would be 6 Nucleolus giving totals of 109.97% Damage and 109.97% Accuracy. The resulting damage output would be 131.4 (26.3 Smashing, 105.1 Energy)

Now say you were to slot Power Bolt with all 6 pieces of Apocalypse. The percentages are now 101.86% Damage, 59.62% Accuracy, 33.13% Endurance Discount, and 89.92% Recharge Reduction. The resulting damage output would be 128.8 (25.8 Smashing, 103 Energy). In addition to this 128.8 you would have the Chance for Negative Energy Damage also slotted, giving you a 1 in 3 chance of doing an additional 35.3 Negative Energy damage. 1 every 3 times you use this power it would deliver 164.1 damage.

The difference in damage between 6 slotted HO and 6 slotted Apocalypse during the 2 of 3 times the proc doesn't fire is only 2.6 damage. The trade off of doing 2.6 less damage is you receive a 33.13% Endurance Discount. In the example of Power Bolt you would be using 3.91 endurance to activate the power instead of the base endurance cost of 5.2. Also the Recharge Reduction of 89.92% means that the power will recharge in 2.11s instead of it's base recharge of 4s.

Now these numbers are just the amounts the Apocalypse set enhances the power, this doesn't include the Apocalypse set bonuses of:
16% Regeneration (0.8 hp/sec)
3% Hit Points (36.1 hp)
4% Damage Buff(all types)
10% Enhancement (Recharge Time) - i.e. 10% recharge buff to all your powers
5% Psionic Defense

Now keep in mind in this example I used the Purple (Superior) Apocalypse set. Not all the set bonuses are going to be quite this impressive. Plus you can only slot one full set of each Superior recipes into a character. Different set's have different bonuses, obviously. And don't feel you have to slot the full set into a power. You may want to frankenslot some Acc/Dam or Dam/End or whatnot from multiple sets, or say you're like me and want as much hit points on my blaster as you can get and slot 3 Devastation for the 2.25% hit points and 3 Apocalypse for the 3% hit points. That's okay too. Look at all the sets and figure out what you want to go for.

The majority of the damage sets (at least the one's that have a level cap of 50) will enhance a power's damage by about 95% and accuracy by at least 55-60% as well as recharge and endurance reduction (both of which are key to a blaster as you want your blasts up as often as possible and you don't want them to be too end heavy)

To end a really long post that I didn't mean to make so long, HO's are still good and in some situations HO's can be more

That cleared up a great deal. Thanks!

My main is slotted out with HOs as well, with a few choice IO sets mixed in, if you don't want to change your HO build, keep your HO build and slot your secondary build with sets.