How will you alpha slot?

Probably going to go with more defense as that will allow me to cut down on alot of the slots I need or allow me to forgo needing to buy defense/endurance HOs. If this allows me to take out multiple slots out of a power I can move it to one that actually needs it. What I really want to do is perma hasten but I have like no clue as to how much recharge its going to take.

It's been so long since I IO-ed out my night widow that I'd forgotten some of the details. My attacks are already near 90% recharge enhancement except for Strike, so I wouldn't gain much by going for a Spiritual boost. I don't have endurance issues, so I guess I'll just go straight for Musculature.

The endurance/resistance one for the crab spider.

Endurance Range on my Ranged/Control focused Fortunata.
Endurance Range on my Ranged/AOE/Pets Focused Huntsman.

Endurance Range on my Traps/ice/Force Defender

Accuracy Defense On my Elec/Nin and Spines/Nin stalkers.

I'm terrible at deciding these alpha slots.

I'd like to get my crab the Spiritual boost for the recharge. But it wouldn't help her get her pets out much more as they're already max-slotted for recharge. Musclature is another choice, not so much for the damage bonus (because she's max slotted there also) but for the defense debuff. But she has endurance problems in long fights, so Cardiac is appealing also.

I think she's going to have several enhancements and swap them out at need. I'll probably solo with the Cardiac, and wear Musculature or Spiritual if she's on a team with endurance recovery buffs.

With the slots freed up by inherent Fitness, my Crab picked up both Assaults (it bothered me that I didn't have space for them previously). This however tipped his endurance balance a bit too far into the realms of running dry, so for Alpha I went with Cardiac. And now he's very much in tankmage territory, almost never needing to slow down or stop.

My Fortunata will probably go for Cardiac too as she has to pop the blues if she's in a scenario that warrants full use of her AoE chain... but I kinda want to get Spiritual to bring Psychic Wail and Aura of Confusion available more often (although, with ED'd recharge and decentish global bonuses, I'm not sure the return would be worth it there).

My Night Widow, eh, I'll probably get Musculature - she doesn't have much that really needs more recharge, her endurance management is fine, and Nerve doesn't offer her anything.

My Bane is in a similar boat to my Night Widow.

Going for the end redux as that is the main issue I have on my crab spider. in llonger fights be burns through end and the damage resistance boost will help as well.

Of all my toons, the only one that I’m having trouble with alpha slot decision is my crab. Crabs have so many different abilities that its hard to figure out what to slot. I have my IO sets built to maximize positional defenses. After much review, here’s what I came up with

-Cardiac: Useful if you took leadership pool powers. Pick this and never run out of endurance.
-Musculature: Most versatile of the slots…gives you lots more damage while improving debuffs and a bit more endurance
-Nerve: useless
-Spiritual: Useful if you are a mastermind-crab, wanting perma-pets. Otherwise, skip.

I would highly recommend the musculature set for any crab. The reasons why are listed below, with supporting numbers. Note that I’m looking at the final level of the alpha slot, since I like to plan ahead..
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Spiritual:
The Spiritual line doesn’t really entice me much. I didn’t slot my crab for recharge, and didn’t take hasten. The only powers that I have that aren’t up as often as I’d like them are my pets and serum (maybe omega, but meh). I didn’t go for perma-pets, I slotted to max out his survivability. Other bonuses this set provides are healing (for serum and health), Disorient and slow (useless for you), jump, and To Hit Buff (which would up your Tactical Training: Leadership and Aim).
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Nerve:
Accuracy isn’t too important to me, I already have tactical offensive and Combat training: tactics, as well as set bonuses. Taunt, confuse, and fly are useless to me, as is hold. So really this would be for more defense…which is what I’ve been slotting him for. The defense bonus is 20%, so with the ED mod, we’ll call that 13.3%, roughly (the more exact number are below). Important to remember here is that we aren’t getting 13-20% base, but instead a 13% increase to our powers. I did some math, and came up with numbers, based on what was currently slotted:

Combat Training : Def--- BASE: 7.5% to ranged --- Enhanced: 11.8% --- With alpha: 12.8% (+1%)
Combat Jumping ---BASE: 2.5% to all ---Enhanced 2.8% ---With Alpha: 3 (+0.2%)
Tactical Training : Maneuvers --- 10% to all ---Enhanced: 15.75% --- With Alpha: 17.2% (+1.37%)
Weave --- BASE: 5% to all --- Enhanced : 7.8% --- With Alpha: 8.29 (+.48%)

So, it total, 2% increase to all defense, 1% increase to ranged defense. Pretty tiny. If I had maneuvers (and I wish I did), we would see a similar maybe +0.3 defense to all in here.
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Cardiac:
The main buff of this set is end reduction. This would be useful on many crab builds, especially those with the leadership power pool. I find I don’t often run out of END, but when there’s enemies around that drain it, it can be rough. Also note that most characters don’t max their end redux on most powers…and as a result, Enhancement Diversification is less pronounced….you’ll get more use out of these bonuses. Other things in this set are range (useful for a crab, we have 1-3 wonderful cones…but not necessarily needed), fear (useless to you), sleep (also useless), and resist. The resist is the most tempting of the secondary abilities…so lets again look at the numbers.

Crab Spider: 3% -> 3.6% S/L, 2%->2.4% PSI
Tough: BASE: 15% to S/L ---Enhanced 21% --- With Alpha: 23.9% (+2.9% to S/L)
Fortitude: BASE: 15% S/L, 25% E/N/C/F/T---Enhanced: 23.6% and 39.4%---With Alpha: 25% and 43% (+1.4% S/L, +3.6% to E/N/C/F/T)

Total Resist:
S/L from 47.6% to 55.2% (+5%)
Psi from 2% to 2.4% (+0.4%)
E/N/F/C/T 39.3% to 42.95% (+4%)

Again, the numbers look sad…though a bit better then the defense numbers. If you had taken wolf spider armor, you would get some other petty number. Also, my tough isn’t maxed on resist in my build, so you could get a few more % out of that.

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Musculature:

Lastly is the damage increase set. Crabs are AoE masters…we do tons of damage, and pull lots of agro (that’s why I tried to max my defense). Having more damage is great, and we would actually have two different viable options with this set, both core paragon and radial paragon have their uses. Core would give more overall damage (roughly +32.35% compared to +23.65%), while Radial also gives end mod, run speed, and to hit deduff…both sets also have defense debuff and immobilize. Almost all of our attacks have a –defense component to them, which I often forget, so this buff is useful. The runspeed will unfortunately effect mental training, swift, and sprint. My crab took Darkest Night from the soul mastery set, which has –ToHit to it, but like the resist and defense powers, the bonus provided from the alpha slot would be quite low on this. Worth looking at, however, is the end mod modifier. I assume this effects stamina, which two slotted would look like this:

Stamina: BASE: +0.44 End/s---enhanced: +0.8 End/s---with Alpha +0.93 End/s (+0.13 end/s)
(3 slotting it would provide an enhanced +0.857 End/s ---Alpha +0.97 End/s)

Yes, this is way less the benefit you would the Cardiac End Redux…but it is something.
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