Alpha Slot having no effect.

I will allow for the extreme possibility that I am just being incredibly dense and missing something obvious, but here goes.

Last night I slotted the tier 1 spiritual (Recharge) alpha ability. The problem is that when I open my combat attributes window I do not see any change to my recharge bonus. Right now it is showing my 5 bonuses of 7.5% from LotGs and 5 bonuses of 5% from set bonuses for a total of 62.5%, but that's it. The value is the same with or without my Alpha abilitiy slotted.

I ran a test using hasten to measure the effect. Before I slotted the spiritual boost, I had 16 seconds of downtime between hasten running out and being recharged. Once i slotted the spiritual boost.....still 16 seconds.

Am I missing something here?

Check that the boost is actually slotted, not just crafted. There's a bunch of boxes on the left side of the window, the lowest one reads "Alpha" and has a slot in it, make sure the slot is filled.

Aside from that, I haven't checked Combat Attributes, but Alpha doesn't act like a Set Bonus or Global Effect - it acts like additional invisible SOs in every power that can be slotted for that effect. When I look at my Enhancement Management screen, mousing over my powers shows the additional recharge in each of them.

If your Hasten was already maxed out (three level 50 Recharge IOs), the Common Boost will only increase it a little bit - something like 12%.

I'm happy with it. I went from fluffy having an 11 second down time and recharge at 99.1% to him being perma (without hasten) and recharge of 107%

Part of the problem on not seeing the effect is for people slotting for over-results. If you have a lot of recharge bonus, the spiritual wont make much difference to you.

Look for the holes on your build. I have a toon with lots of endurance comsumption, and got the Cardiac. Suddenly now I can keep up the toggles from the rad debuffs, fly, stealth and armor. And still blast on the control powers. And I can do it without crying for my endurance.

Alpha wont make whats very good even better. It will make whats bad go good.

Hughhh...
Math...
*Head Explodes*

I was doing the same Korith was doing, with similar results, see if our posts help or hurt your understanding of what's going on:

And just to add that recharge is not as intuitive as something like damage and accuracy enhancements

Recharge is calculated as: P/(R+B)
P = Power's unenhanced recharge time
R = 1
B = a percentage increase added by enhancements, hasten, globals, or other powers (including external buffs like speed boost)

So R+B could be 1.7 with Hasten, or 2.65 assuming .95 with enhancements and hasten

The problem is there is already a form of diminishing returns when dividing as opposed to adding (like Damage does)

Initially, a power that has say 1000 seconds recharge gets the following:
1. 3 L50 IO recharges [1000/(1+.9908)] = 502.31 seconds
2. 1. + Hasten [1000/(1+.9908+.7)] = 371.64

Common Spiritual, as mentioned, gives 33% but since you're in the ED penalty window, only 1/6 (5.5%) completely bypasses and the other 5/6 (27.5%) is subject to ED. If you're using Mids, and you have a spare slot, try slotting a L20 common IO (25.6%) to see what the effect would be and then add the 5.5%.

So, that would be:
1. 3 L50 IO + 1 L20 IO [1000/(1+102.98)] = 492.81
2. 1. + Hasten [1000/(1+102.98+.7)] = 366.41

For Hasten itself, it's more like:
1. 450.00 unenhanced
2. 316.01 1 L50 IO (450/1.424)
3. 245.47 2 L50 IOs (450/1.8332)
4. 226.04 3 L50 IOs (450/1.9908)
5. 172.03 3 L50 IOs + Global bonus (450/2.6158)
6. 135.71 3 L50 IOs + Global bonus + Hasten (450/3.3158)

Now add .0384 and .055 for the ED affected and bypassed amounts of the 33% reduced recharge in Spiritual

7. 131.99 3 L50 IOs + Global bonus + Hasten + 33% Spiritual (450/3.4092)

So you should have seen, in theory, about a reduction of 3.72 seconds in Hasten.

Here's the second non-intuitive thing, though. The power you chose was the worst possible power to choose to measure recharge reduction. That's because Hasten's power is to reduce recharge while it's active, so it's affecting what you're measuring while you're measuring it... Second, it's not already perma, so when it shuts off briefly, that .7 in your denominator disappears.

So in your actual results, your hasten downtime is affected by Hasten itself shutting off after 120 seconds. The remaining time before it recharges is calculated differently (it's more like #5 above, not #6).

That means, without Hasten already perma, you are probably seeing most of those 3.72 seconds being 'eaten up' by the loss of the .7 recharge in hasten, while only receiving a little extra boost from the Spiritual. See, the Spritual has 5/6 affected by ED, but hasten gives you it's full 100%, .7, without ED penalties. So that brief window when Hasten is down is a real noticeable hit on all the recharges in your long recharge powers, including Hasten itself.

Try on a long recharge power 30-1000 seconds, without any Recharge reduction and turn off Hasten. Try with the Alpha and without it slotted. You should almost surely notice the results then.

also a quick note, the 5 set bonuses for 5% may not be appearing unless you used those powers recently (click or toggle), so you are potentially not seeing .25 of additional recharge in those calculations unless you fired those powers then activated hasten.

Again, simplest comparison is with a long recharge power, unslotted for recharge, without hasten running.

The thing to keep in mind with the Alpha is that they are not global enhancements, yes they affect all powers but they function like slotting the powers and are subject to the Enhancement Diversification (ED) penalties (except for the portion that is specifically exempted).

So if all your powers are maxed on Damage through slotting then putting in Musculature won't help you much other then the exempted portion. If your damages are in the 40-60% range then adding the Musculature will help boost them all to 70-90 so you will see a difference.

However, also keep in mind that the rare (1/2) and very rare (2/3) Alpha have greater exemptions from ED so even though now you may not get much from it you may still want to start down the path on the tree because the rewards will be greater later.

The two powersets you mentioned have the following special effects:
End Mod
Sleep
Disorient
Resistance

as well as (less than the others)
Knockback
To Hit Buff (thb)
Taunt
Def

Cardiac is good for Endred/res/sleep
Muscular is good for Dam/endmod
Nerve is good for Acc/Def/Taunt
Spiritual is good for Recharge/heal/thb

Most of the other benefits are not yet available in game, but you can start working toward them. You can also swap in and out what's in the Alpha slot, so you're not limited to a particular line (unlike an Enhancement which can't be replaced without deleting/overwriting it).

I would recommend in the beginning to think about whether you miss people (Nerve) or ever run out of end (Cardiac).

Let me give you an example of when you might want muscular, right now.
Suppose you only used common IOs and you had something like 2 L50 Acc IOs and 3 L50 Dam IOs in all your attacks, which all had 5 slots.

Well, you could slot the Muscular, and remove a Dam IO and replace it with an EndMod IO. Chances are, you don't slot any EndMod in your Elec powerset. This would boost your endmod about 42% with L50 IOs, so about a 1.5 times increase over the base drain. So, instead of your powers draining about 7-10% end per hit, they'd drain about 10-14%. That's not too major, but in another team with another endmod drainer, you might be able to see yourself visibly contribute to end draining bosses, for example.

However, say you have 5 slotted attacks, but you're using Set IOs. Well some of the best set bonuses (like Recharge Reduction) come only after having 5 of the same set in the power. So in that case, not only would muscular probably not improve damage much, you probably don't wanna lose those set bonuses just for endmod bonuses.

That's why, I might focus on end (Cardiac) if you're running multiple toggles (like say Tough/Weave + your set toggles). In the beginning, it's probably the one you will notice after actively running a map. The rest, maybe sometimes, but you're probably already slotting Acc and Dam and Recharge Reduction, if you're running Hasten with 60%+ global recharge, then you're doing fine in that area as well, I'd guess.

If nothing else, more end reduction let's you be a little sloppier, run more toggles, use high end draining attacks all the time with less regard for your end bar. Sometimes, the end bar really can be a limiter (it's what it's designed to do, hence the reason why so many people think Stamina was required) to going all out and building up that Fury bar.

Well, if you're not missing much, have no End issues to speak of, and you're not missing your opponents, then I'd say at that point Musculature is the best choice. Accuracy, Endurance Reduction and Recharge eventually reach a point where another few percentage points will cease to make a difference in your build (specifically, when you have a 95% chance to hit most or everything you fight, you stop running out of endurance altogether, and you never find yourself waiting for a given power to recharge).

If you find that the above don't always apply (you miss more than you'd like, and frequently have a less than 95% chance on your last to hit roll per your combat stats, if you do run out of endurance - and I note you've said it's not been an issue, or if you want even one or two powers of yours to come up a second faster than they do - especially if it means permanent uptime for a click power), then that would be an area to focus on.

While, as I've argued, Musculature probably isn't as useful to Brutes as it is to other ATs, it just may be that your brute is the rare one that doesn't have any issues at all with Endurance, Recharge or Accuracy, in which case Musculature would be better than 3 options which achieve virtually nothing for your build.



As for the idea of changing your build around - 6-slotting Stamina doesn't make sense to me. It could be those set bonuses have been worth it for you, but I (almost always) find that the set bonuses I get from slotting my attack and defense sets with IOs can do just the same while the enhancements themselves do more for the powers that they're in; Stamina gets no benefit from Accuracy, Endurance Reduction, or Recharge enhancements.