What is "Frankenslotting?"

Years ago when my Ex got me into this game, she went online read up a little about this. Three years later it’s defiantly the focus of what I do. I'm only posting this because all to often it ends up being a lengthy discussion while I’m on a team or trying to PVP. Not that I mind helping, I probably spend more time explaining this to peeps rather then playing. It helps if you have or understand the MIDS Hero builder, which you can download for free.

After reading this you might see a respec close in your sights but I would strongly recommend you slow down and just put some thought into some things I say in here before doing so. If your reading this, its probably because I directed you here because I ran into you in the game and you didn't understand the term.

Frankenslotting is a term that’s used when you mix match sets or parts of sets to achieve better slotting values. Almost always this will entail the use of IO's that for no reason I refer to as cards. Not SO's, not DO's, not generics, the ones you find in matched sets. Matched sets are usually horrible because they usually never give you good values, while some values are over, wasted, and others suffer. People buy them because they are sold on the idea of skimpy bonuses. I feel that bonuses are usually a gimmick in the game. When your totalling 3,6 or even 9% in a given bonus, I don’t think its going to really help. At the same time Frankenslotting can yield accumulated bonuses of 30% or more in a specific bonuses because they frequently are repeated.

I realized some odd things about slotting after playing with the MIDS program for several months, and basically got the whole overview down on what’s good and what’s not. While I am a PVP'er, frankenslotting is the same, with only some differences in recharge. In PVP, battles can start and end in just a few hits while PVE is usually drawn out more.

Lets start with Frankenslotting the Fly power, but its almost identical to super speed or even run. These come in a set of three.
Lets use the "Soaring" set. You get .....
42.4% fly
42.4% End
Which is the same as using generics without the bonuses at this point. But the third one is 26.5% fly & 26.5 End.
Using this set yields 68.90% in both fly and end, in three slots.
Frankenslotting would yield 78.55% in both fly and end in the same three slots minus any would be bonuses in the matched set.
To achieve this you use fly/end from Soaring, fly/end from Winters gift, and fly /end from blessing of the zephyr.
You don't have to use MIDS to do all this but it does help.
If you didn't already know the game has something called Diminishing Return. It means that after a certain point, your slotted value decreases in gain. Here is what it looks like using a 42.4% generic as an example......
1 = 42.4% you get your full slot value.
2 = 83.32% you lost a very small acceptable amount of 1.48%
3 = 99.08% you lost an unacceptable amount of 28.12%
4 = 105.44% you lost an unacceptable amount of 64.16%
5 = 111.80% you lost an unacceptable amount of 100.20%
6 = 118.16% you lost an unacceptable amount of 136.24%

So you can see from slotting 6 of the same generics, after the second one its pretty much downhill. The MIDS program would show the first slot in white telling you its below tolerance, 2nd slot in the green meaning its ideal, the rest in red meaning you got much less for your slotting but your also using valuable slots that could have been used elsewhere, meaning other powers are suffering for this small gain. You only got 15.76% in that third slot, but remember you placed 42.4% in there, you got jipped, and your performance will show that. It might end up in your ACC or your DMG or RCH, but something is going to suffer.
Its very important to remember something I realized about this value of slotting two Generics, it also seems to be the value you want to try to hit and not go over. So what I’m saying is you don't have to use or understand MIDS, if you can add up the value of two Generics, that tells you where you want to be and not go over. Another example is my controller takes Knockback. Those actually come in 75% each, so that tells me right there 150% is ideal. Defense comes in 25.5%, so 51% without going over is ideal.


If your smart enough to look at the base values of a power and make a personal decision as to how much if any needs to be slotted on it, then go for it. For example if a power has an unslotted ACC base value of 200% or higher, then you probably can get away with putting no ACC in there and still never miss. Most start at 70% or 90%, so 200% is very high, slotting it would only make it higher and you might not need that. One of the cool things about using MIDS is it tells you the base values right off the bat. The other nice thing is you can open up the Generic IO section to slot a power and instantly know what needs to be slotted and pretty much what the power does. Getting comfortable with it, you would almost know how many slots and exactly what to put in there in seconds.

As far as leaving out slotting because base values are already acceptable, I haven't gotten this deep into leaving things out. What I do is slot the power to the best of its ability and that’s that. If the power still performs poorly then I know it’s not because of my slotting, there are simply powers that are just not good. Some miss all the time, or have low DMG or suck End real bad. You will either have to swap the power out in a respec or learn how to use it differently so that it works for you. I establish a priority when I set out to do this, and there is a combination of things to think of. I'm using a GRAV/RAD controller when I first did this. I set my priorities like this....
ACC then END then it depends on what ever the power does followed by RCH then RANGE The reason why I think ACC should be first on everyone’s list is because if you strike and miss it will still cost you END and you can be attacked while your missing. It's just wrong on so many levels. The great thing about slotting good on ACC is it also helps you hit those purple guys easier as well.

Choosing your cards is probably the most important thing in slotting. While most are buying matched sets, you can beat them for sure. My controller has beaten melee guys in pvp in solo situations that are embarrassing to say the least, and its not because I'm a better player. It's also important to know what NOT to slot. I have found that to often sets include things that actually don't apply to the power, but will let you slot it. Like an Endurance Mod set that includes ACC. The power I put it in doesn't take ACC, but I paid for it in more ways than one. Cramming the highest amount of applicable slotting value (without going over) into each slot is the name of the game and the only time you want to use Generics is when its the only thing it takes. In addition to that you will probably always leave out something that could be slotted (if not more) in each power, all the more reason to establish a priority. Of course all this is necessary because we don’t get 6 slots in all the powers.

Here is an example. Take a shield for example, Defense / End / Rch. The base value in the RCH is usually 1 or 3 seconds. Think about it, do you really need to slot Rch? Probably not. The only time your shields will go down is when you lose all your end, which in my case I’m dead either way. You certainly can’t turn them back on without END either, so why slot it. I would slot….
Luck of the Gambler
DEF / END
RedFortue
DEF / END
DEF / END / RCH Only because it allows me to get my values up to par even though I could careless about RCH, the alternative is to buy a $2 Billion card from Shield Wall for DEF / END

If I failed to mention at this point, I'm assuming most only have two to five hundred million to spend and not a few billion. If you are lucky and have that type of money, my ideas here still work with the exception that purple cards do actually seem to give pretty good values all the way around. They give higher values to start with; they are more even or planned out better to appear to cover all areas in a much better value with little to no waste in addition to having much better bonuses.

Choosing your cards gets tricky. Lets look at a melee card that offers 26.5% ACC / 26.5% DMG. This card is worth 53% plus bonuses, which is better then a 42.4% Generic right? Well the more they split, the higher they are, but the harder it is to slot and the more slots it will take and the more they will cost. Mako's bite has a card that is split 4 ways 18.55% ACC / 18.55% DMG / 18.55% END / 18.55% RCH, well do the math, that card is 74.2% plus any bonuses. That’s a hot one. However it’s spread out so not only will it take more slots but also more split cards as well to hit your acceptable values. I try to use two to three sets in each power, this way I’m still getting bonuses.
Some peeps are smart enough to target bonuses in addition to all this, if your that good, knock yourself out.

Here is another slotting example...... in the power Air Superiority. 5 slots will slam that power with EVERYTHING you need. I used ......
From the crushing impact set....
ACC / DMG / END
DMG / END / RCH
ACC / DMG / RCH
From the Mako's bite set...
ACC / DMG / END / RCH
ACC / END / RCH
Which gives me ....
80.94% ACC In the green
80.94% DMG In the green
80.94% END In the green
80.94% RCH In the green
Which is pretty darn impressive. This mix gives you a total of 323.76 (plus bonuses) / Divided by 5=64.75% average per slot, in addition to bonuses. Peeps have argued with me on this because they worry about losing there 3% or 5% global bonuses do the math and realize your better off frankenslotting.

Lets compare this to a matched set....Using 5 out of set of 6 from Crushing Impact, leaving out the Proc.
The Proc is that oddball card that does something not possible with generic IO's, like chance for recharge, or extended dmg etc....
Those 5 give you ....
68.90% ACC In the white meaning its low
98.29% DMG with a loss of 23.62%
47.70% END In the white meaning its low
47.70% RCH In the white meaning its low
For a grand total of ... 262.59% divided by 5= 52.51% average per slot, plus bonuses. Do those bonuses make up for the 61.17% loss, certainly not. Not to mention you still get some bonuses in frankenslotting. Technically you will lose one bonus per two sets used and two bonuses per three slots used in each power.

Sometimes you have to use Generic IO's because its all a power will takes; sometimes you have to give up certain things a power can slot for as well.... Here is an example.
Lets look at the pet offered in the GRAV section of my controller. It's important to know that PVE peeps especially melee guys hate it when you use KnockBack. Its because they have to be close up to hit them, and your knocking them away. My Singi pet takes the following for slotting.....
ACC/ DMG / END / HOLD / IMMOBILIZATION / INTAGIBILITY / KNOCKBACK / RANGE / RCH. Probably going to use 6 slots if you want to use most of these but your not going to be able to max all of them. The end is only an issue when I summon the pet, so not to big of a deal. Singi never dies (when he does, I get scared) so Rch is probably not a big deal either. But in PVP I die a lot so Rch is important that direction. Singi is excellent at holding groups so hold is good. Ill share my PVP slotting keeping in mind KB is maxed because I want it in PVP......
Endoplasam Exposure x 2
ACC / MEZ
Kinetic Crash
DMG / END / KB
DMG / KB
Force Feedback
DMG / END / KB
Blood Mandate
ACC / DMG / END giving me....
86.02% ACC
88.07% DMG
63.60% END
123.74% KB
66.60% mez
This is a rare example where Hamidons worked out good because on one hand they do offer high values; on the other they don’t cover everything, making it harder to slot good.

A PVE example might be better as….
3 x Endoplasam Exposure
Call to Arms Dmg / End
Expedient Reinforcement
End / Dmg / Rch
Dmg / End
ACC 94.93% in the yellow, has 4.97% of loss.
DMG 69.45% in the white
RCH 21.20% in the white
Mez 94.93% in the yellow, has 4.97% of loss.


Sometimes you have to pick and choose what to focus on and leave other things unslotted, and it just depends on what you want. The aforementioned did not slot for Range or Intangibility or KB, so I felt those were the least important in the way I use Singi in PVE. Since I don’t really care about DMG being a controller, it only got slotted because of split cards I used to get End and Rch.

Lets take one last look at leaving things out and prioritizing. I’m looking at a power I have, called Crush. It takes ACC / DMG / END / IMMOBILISATION / RANGE / RCH / SLOW. You can tell from how many there are that you are going to have to have some things either not max slotted or not slotted at all. Since I’m a controller, DMG is not a priority, slow and immobilization is. Here is what I came up with in 6 slots….
Trap of the Hunter
END / IMM
Enfeebled operation
END / IMM
ACC / IMM / RCH
Pacing of the turtle
ACC / SLOW
END / RCH / SLOW
Tempered Readiness
ACC / SLOW
Giving me ……
73.78% ACC in the green
73.78% END in the green
73.78% SLOW in the green
73.78% IMM in the green
42.40% RCH in the white

I decided to write this because there seems to always be one person on team with me that I can tell is suffering from DMG or END in battle. I might be in the same boat, with the exception that I’m face to face with a purple and they are standing way back, and I’m jumping over to them every 10 seconds to heal them at the same time. You don’t have to be a math major to understand this, just know how to add is all. Let me know if this helps anyone, I’d like to know.

I’m open to any comments or feedback, as I’m always learning as well.
Arctic Soul

I agree that Frankenslotting is very useful and certainly easier to get max bonuses out but I think you dismiss set bonuses too cavailerly. Through the use of set bonuses I got my DP/Mental with 5 points of Ranged Cap and 10 points of Smashing/Lethal.

Yes, it is a very specific build but it lets me leap into combat for Hail of Bullets and leap back out alive. At range I am very difficult to hit and with a purple popped I can even outlast Defense Debuffers (unless there are a ton of them).

Great guide, but set bonuses have a place too if you are looking to patch holes in your AT/Power builds.

Good guide, needs a bigger font.

No, your right, I wasn't exactly trying to dismiss bonuses but I think most peeps think they are the highlight while in my opinion they aren't. Can they help, yes they can. An extreme example is a scrapper I just talked to today that put an endurance set in Stamina. That set includes Rch, End, and ACC which the power doesn't even take. So they got 101.47% End Mod while the 73.78% ACC / 26.50% End / 73.78% Rch wont do anything to the power. But they did it to get the 13.6% HP / .03 End / 10% regen / 2.5% Dmg buff / 5% Rch. Do these out weigh the cost of the 215.70% lost in wasted and unused slotting in addition to the four slots you didn't have to use to get acceptable value in addition to some other areas that suffered from the wasted slots you used. No way. And its often like this. I rarely see bonuses matter that much. The shocking part is how I hear peeps argue with me over the 1,2,3,5, or 7 or 10% bonus they are clinging onto so dearly. I know they all are different, some are global, and do different things but come on. A good example for my controller is Mez, Hold, and immobilization. Is 3% Mez resist or the effects of the Mez really going to make a difference? No it wont. But often times in Frankenslotting you end up putting 2 to 3 sets in one power and find the same bonus repeated as the first bonus in alike sets. At one point that mez bonus was up to 45%. Would that make a difference, sure, at least a noticible difference anyhow. I would much rather have 45% from repeated bonuses rather than 3% bonuses scattered across 20 fields.

Re: Set bonuses

(Liked the guide btw - Only suggestion is changing "card" to enhancement so everyone is on the same page *shrug*)

Set bonuses allow someone to severely focus their build for a single stat. Usually this stat is Def or Recharge. Because of this, the focused builds tend to gimp on the actual slotting of the power in itself. This can be both good and bad - mainly depending on the power.

Personally, I usually do a mix of both. I like my set bonuses, but I tend to not go nuts over them. Whenever I can, I frankenslot my key powers (even if that means 5 of a set and 1 other IO to bring all of the stats to where I want them) and use powers that I "don't care about" or that aren't overly impacted by the stats anyway for muling set bonuses.

T1 blasts are a good example: Generally a very short recharge (3-5 seconds). Low-ish End cost and low-ish damage. If you 6 slot it and frankenslot it for max dmg, acc, end, and rech, you'll get a power that you can spam every 2 seconds instead of every 2.5 seconds, and you'll spend 2.5 end instead of 2.7 doing 67 damage instead of 63.

Those types of powers benefit very little from frankenslotting, unless of course you are trying to conserve slots then they can be frankenslotted quite nicely in 3-4 slots (usually)


Re: Bigger font

Heh - you don't need a bigger font. People just aren't used to reading Times New Roman anymore. Change it to Arial or Tahoma and people won't complain

Thanks for the comment. You definitely have some refined points. At the same time you also agreed I was more interested in the general point which was also right on. I just wanted to point out that my overall fact in this was to know how to program the power to the best of its ability without waste and not looking at bonuses, procs, or the use of generics. When I’m able to beat a melee in arena, it tells me they simply don’t know how to slot. I’m not seeing the DMG priority on CI though. Maybe I’m missing it because it might be a repeating effect of DMG. As I recall it was crazy low like 79.5 in PVP and 31.8 in PVE (unslotted). It just seemed like the 5-7.1s mag (1-32.9s in PVE) in immob and the 111% slows outweighed the DMG idea. I did actually have it slotted for DMG along with a chance proc in there and ended up selling it for 700 mill. The DMG aspect did nothing it seemed. You are right about still being able to target needed bonuses. One of the things I failed to mention was that in frankenslotting you can almost always swap the same values with different cards. This of course could offer different bonuses. For example using a mix of two from Red Fortune and one from Luck of the Gambler, versus using Two from luck of the Gambler and one from Red Fortune, might give you better bonuses you were needing. I was however looking at the premium cards in my ideas. Of course the better bonuses are usually placed on the higher priced cards. I also may not have mentioned that at one point my GRAV / RAD had 30 Ho’s and I’m much better off frankenslotting.