Not noticing Alpha Slot Effects

I got the Spiritual Uncommon for my Brute (Recharge Bonus). Without it, I already have high recharge (77.50% - 147.50% with hasten). When I slot the Alpha Spiritual, I'm not noticing any extra recharge (I even timed the recharge on a few powers with my comp's clock), nor can I see any of its effects in the combat window or power info.

So, what do you think is happening? Am I not timing things right (hard to see how I could be messing that up, but maybe...)? Am I at ED Recharge cap (all of my powers are slotted with IO sets of some kind, and I didn't think global recharge added to the ED cap)? How can I tell?

I'm going for Nerve Uncommon 2nd tier to get a defense bonus and see if that's noticeable (or viewable in combat window), but basically I'm wondering if something is wrong or if these bonuses just down show up that much on heavily IOd toons.

Finally, I know I have the Alpha slotted correctly, I see its Icon in my active powers lists.

Suggestions? Musings?

First thing is if when just slot an alpha or swap building or something you need to zone before you get the effects, for me at least. The Alpha slot will show up in your enhancement mangement numbers, (were it says something like damage 97%, end 30% etc) here if you were already at about 95% or so rech before your alpha it should say about 110% for recharge.

The important thing is that the alpha slot is NOT a global bonus but more like a global SO.

I had the same question about my brute. With a high base recharge such as yours, the effect is hardlly noticeable. My base recharge without hasten was 62.5% and I only saw a 1 second improvement in hasten's recharge time. If you pull up your enhancement screen and look at a power that you have not slotted for any recharge, you will see the 33% extra rechare from the alpha boost. The alpha abilities act as enhancements to you powers, they do not fuction as set bonuses.

I will say that once I slotted the 2nd tier, it was more noticeable, as more of the boost ignores ED. It cut my downtime on hasten by about 5 seconds.

Hope this helps.

The alpha slot seems to be to shore up deficiencies in builds rather than to make them more uber.
The fewer deficiencies in your current build, the less the alpha helps.

I chose the +rechg/+stun for my nrg melee toon because I had not slotted for +Stun at all. I had already gotten my rechg and dmg to the ED redline and the acc was all equivalent to at least 2 SOs.

First, Alpha boosts will not be visible in the combat window because they are not global bonuses. They function as though they were slotted in each power you have individually. ED checks only slotted values, not global buff values.

Open your enhancement window, mouse over a power, and note the slotted recharge enhancement value. Close the window, unequip your Alpha, and then check the same power again. The slotted recharge value should be smaller.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Socorro I got the Spiritual Uncommon for my Brute (Recharge Bonus). Without it, I already have high recharge (77.50% - 147.50% with hasten).

Is that global recharge, or does that factor in slotting as well? If that's the total value of all recharge, bear in mind that adding the Spiritual Uncommon will shave, for example, at most one second off a 20-second power (from ~8.1 to ~7.1 seconds). If you have additional recharge from slotting and/or the slotted recharge values are high enough that the Spiritual boost is being partially reduced by ED, it will be even less.

For faster-recharging powers it will be even less noticeable; for super-long recharge powers it will be rather more noticeable.

Recharge and endurance reduction kind of get hit twice with dimenishing returns. One on how the formula for recharge and end reduction works and then ED. So even if your powers were fully slotted or you had other recharge some where else in the build you might not notice the alpha slot. As it stands now I would not be slotting for bonuses that you already get via inventions, maybe when they come out with rare and very rare you could go that route. Right now what I focus on what attribute I could go for that would allow me to move a single slot away from that power and still be ED capped with the alpha slot. So for defense or resistance base characters this means I dont have to fully slot passives or I can choose IO sets that dont have much recharge in them to get other bonuses.

Just an example for you to use. I gimped the endurence on my kat/sr scrapper. I got rid of a few IOs the did end and got rid of the +end from the Epic pool. I then got the Cardiac Incarnte (to teir 2) and my end issues are now gone. If I would of had NO end issues I'd be saying the same thing the OP was saying.


I to min/max your builds reduce the IOs for what ever incarnate you plan for. Also keep in mind that Plow TFs are not needed to get shards. Farm maps work. Or just playing lvl 50 content shards drop all the time. Just saying.

Indeed.

To take full advantage of the Alpha slots one should make a build that is 'deficient' in one of the areas where the slots can be beneficial, AND don't plan on exemplaring.

A well built toon with the ability to exemplar down well gains less from the Alpha slots than other toons which are not

Hasten is always ready for recast with spiritual boost alone on my fire/shield/fire scrapper. He was 6 seconds off before I equipped. The rare boost will help me avoid the crash altogether. Seems to be working for me.

I can see the bonuses when hovering over powers in the enhancement window - thanks for that tip. So, even though these bonuses aren't 'global', for certain bonuses I should expect the see the effects of them in the combat window were applicable, correct?

Ex: I have Energy Defense around 30% when I have all my toggles on. If I get the 2nd tier Nerve Alpha (with defense bonus) I should see this percentage go up in the combat window due to the powers that produce that number having their effects enhanced. Sound about right?

I was wondering the same thing, but then realized I had created a Spiritual boost
but I never went to the 'Equip' tab to actually equip it
Perhaps me sharing my 'Duh' moment will help someone else.

Or at least make you feel smarter than me