How do you slot - ACC or DAM?

So early on, my COH mentor had encouraged me to slot 2 ACC in my powers, especially in early levels. Hitting things became crack to me, and I kept 2 ACC slotted throughout higher levels. Today, I'm re-evaluating this style, so that maybe I slot an additional DAM in place of one of my ACC, staying 1 slotted in ACC at higher levels. Of course, I'll keep 1 END and 1 RECH in the mix where possible, but was wondering what your experiences were. I'm assuming someone like Arcanaville has probably done the math to determine where the real return on investment is: i.e. hitting more often versus hitting harder.

Keep in mind, too, I seem to end up on lots of teams fighting reds and purples, predominantly, so the jury's still out on whether to keep my 2 ACC style or not.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts, and maybe seeing any math anyone has done on this.

Cheers.

In general, it is better to 3 slot Damage than anything else.

You really only need 2 Acc if you are going up against reds (that is, you have your difficulty set to like +2 or more) or if you take on a lot of CoT. There can also be individual AT builds that have trouble with accuracy, for instance I've found my Kinetic Controller needs a little extra Acc since he has no way of boosting to hit or debuffing Def. Then again, he really only needs that accuracy in his holds, since missing with them would mean he takes more damage.

Prior to level 20, IMHO accuracy is far more important than damage, and you should slot Acc first. However, recently a buff was added where low level characters start with a higher chance to hit, and it scales down to 75% at level 20, just like their damage starts at 100% and scales down to whatever the AT's damage mod is. (Or up, for Scrappers and Blasters)

This basically means you don't really need to worry about Acc until 10, you can slot either 1 or 2 Acc DOs until 22, and then upgrade to 1 or 2 SOs depending on how often you fight purples.

I suggest Frankenslotting. Frankenslotting is slang for using invention IOs from multiple different sets to get them cheap and to push more enhance into your powers. Set bonuses are generally ignored in favor of just squeezing more enhance into a power. This is most often done by folks leveling up since IOs dont expire.

It is relatively cheap (though time consuming) to Frankenslot and get good accuracy, ED capped damage and some recharge/endredux on the side. Mid 20s I was able to get my
most important powers frankenslotted for a total of about 50-150k inf per power.

Go for yellow recipes so rare salvage isn't needed. Rare salvage for tier 2 or 3 recipes can cost a million or more per salvage.

Don't buy the first recipe you see that has the combo of enhances you want. One set may cost 100k for an acc/dam while another has them going for 5k. Also make sure to check lower leveled versions of the same recipe if one is cost prohibitive. Often a recipe at the max level costs considerably more than the recipe just one level down. One level down isn't likely to be a noticeable decrease, most of the time you lose about .3% enhance.

From a strict numerical efficiency standpoint, the most efficient thing to do is to slot *equally* accuracy and damage unless or until one of them hits a cap and you lose the benefit of one of them. Which is generally going to be accuracy slotting.

So, if you are fighting even con critters without defense (above level 20) your base tohit is 75%. Slotting one even SO will increase that to 75 * 1.33 = 99.75% which is capped to 95% tohit. So more than one doesn't help, and so you should slot one acc and one damage if you have two slots, and then more damage if you have more slots, if you are talking about SOs.

If you happen to be level 20 and no longer benefiting from beginners luck tohit bonuses, but still slotting DOs, then you should slot 1acc1dmg if you have 2 slots, 2acc/2dmg if you have 4 slots, and then more damage if you have more slots.

But as Jade_Dragon mentions, this depends on base tohit. If you are fighting +2s constantly, then your base tohit will be 56%. You can benefit by up to two full SOs worth of enhancement (about). Technically, best efficiency slotting at that point is 2acc/2dmg, and then more damage, unless you have tohit bonuses.

Another option, especially now that fitness is inherant (and thus potentially opening up another Power Pool) is Leadership->Tactics. fully-slotted, this will grant you probably around a 12% to-hit bonus, (base 7% for blasters, more for defender/controller-types), which will bring up your targeting nicely. It's also an added benefit of affecting all your teammates, thus making the entire team more effective.

Alternately, just go with IO bonuses. If you're a blaster, go with Thunderstrike - it's got good Acc to begin with (40%, I think), and it grants an additional 9% Accuracy bonus when you've got four of them slotted. So assuming you're got at least 3 Single target attacks, you end up with an additional +27% Accuracy.

Personally? I pretty much do what has been stated already in this thread:

1. don't bother slotting anything up through lvl 12.

2. dual-slot Acc DO's starting at lvl 12.

3. If I've got the cash (and I usually just e-mail it to myself from one of my other toons), get the low-level SO's from Penny's Dad just north of the dam.

4. At lvl 22, start crafting IO's - 1 Acc, 1 End, 1 End, 3 DMG. by this time I've probably got Tactics already, so I'm not really hurting for to-hit bonuses.

5. Start collecting the relevent IO set bonuses, as I go up in levels.

i think you may have opened a can of worms with that question. i'd shoot for overall enhancement values more than anything. it may be useful to figure out what value caps your to-hit for the enemies you typically face. for procs (numi, miracle, etc) and lotg's i like to get the lowest level possible so i can exemp and retain their benefits. the difference between crafting lvl 50 io's and lvl 35 (or 25, or whatever) is not that huge in terms of cost (as i perceive it). i'd try to slot the highest level enhancement possible when frankenslotting. also, IO's not divisible by 5 (lvl 25, 30, 35, etc) are often quite a bit less expensive.

edit. kismet 6% may help.

I'll also point out that IMHO, 2 attacks well slotted with 5 Enhancements will stand you better than 4 attacks with only 3. It's a delicate balance, of course, but you don't want TOO many attacks you're trying to split slots between. Concentrate on the ones you use the most, and leave fillers to just use up time. Or even better, use Brawl when you're sitting around waiting for attacks to recharge since it uses no End.

You also don't really need Acc or End in the attacks you use only as fillers, as they aren't used that often.

Thank you for your assistance, all. It sounds like I'm doing fine then. Assuming my playstyle preference and fighting lots of higher levels: 2 ACC up to 22-27 or so when I can get some level 25-30 IO's to start swapping out the ACCs if I go the Frankenslotting route. As much as I love Mids, and hear everyone can afford these sets, I've never been able to store up the INF or patience to build out bunches of complete sets for the global bonuses.

Well, if you go with level 50 Generic IOs...

2 ACC/2 DMG/1 RCH/1 ENDRED

Pretty close to the ED cap on ACC and DAM right there. Not the top, but nothing to big to worry about.

If you need to make the money to affort frankenslotting just look to level 25 basic IOs. That is a level that a lot of folks choose to fill in regular IOs so they sell quite nicely. I personally find damage to be a good one. Almost everybody slots it and yet Brass and Inanimate Carbon Rods are cheap to aquire if yoiu have a little patience. Crafting and selling those can net you quick and easy profits that will cover low level frankenslotting easy.

Even better is having one or more characters with all the good level 25 IOs memorized that you can use as shopkeepers. Whenever you are looking for a little extra inf you can just craft and sell for a while and then mail the inf to your current character, and as a bonus you get to make all the level 25 IOs you need for your various builds cheap... especially things like Endmod, Recharge, and Endurance that you tend to still use a few of even after frankenslotting. Using an alt to make, sell, and mail the IOs is handy because it means you aren't tying up a bunch of slots on your active character.

I'll offer a few thoughts here:

I always plan to slot my attacks with Acc/Dmg at 60/90% minimums.

To do that efficiently, Frankenslotting is, hands-down, the best way to achieve
it.

Bear in mind that an L25 Acc/Dmg IO gives a 20% improvement to each category,
so 2 of those (1 each from different sets) gives 40% to both Acc and Dmg which
clearly outperforms a +3 Acc SO and Dmg SO in the same slots, and they
exemplar nicely too.

The next thing to think about is additional improvements. In 5 slots, with
SO's or Common IO's, you can hit my 60/90 targets easily. However, that's
all you can get (ie. 2 Acc, 3 Dmg = 66/99 not counting ED in those 5 slots)

Frankenslotting, however, will allow you to meet the 60/90 targets, and
still add an SO's worth, or more (depending on what, exactly, you slot) of
Rch and/or Erdx, both of which have a big effect on DPS & DPE, and
consequently, overall performance.

Thirdly, and this is important for three reasons, is global ToHit. So, adding
a Kismet 6%, and global Acc bonuses from set slotting, can be quite helpful
when you start fighting the +2 mobs, AV's, GM's with better defenses, or
add some help against debuffs, or boost your Vet attacks (SoMu, Nemmie
etc) to the soft Acc cap. That latter, is easily dismissed, by most, but I
can tell you that it is quite effective for a SS/WP Brute during the rage
crash.

Finally, I'm going to differ from the Goddess of Math's approach a bit, but
it may just be a case of "6 of one", "half dozen of the other", and say I
prioritize Acc slotting over Dmg slotting at early levels where the shinies
are at less than SO strength. I want to get to the Acc softcap of 95% as
quickly as possible. Firstly, because extra damage does no good if you
whiff on the attack. Secondly as she mentions, it matters in terms of the
streakbreaker, and thirdly, it's better on the endurance picture (although,
with inherent stamina, that is less of a concern these days).

So, early on, I'm always trying to get at least an SO worth of Acc soonest
(3 L10 Acc, IO's or 2 L15 Acc IOs) before switching to my typical 60/90
Frankenslotting.

Maybe that's overkill, but I really, really hate to miss more than the math insists on.


Regards,
4

PS> Does anyone PvP anymore? If you do, you want more Acc there also
as most players have much better defense than any PvE critters.

I usually use sets or frankenslot to try getting both accuracy and damage high. When I'm on SOs, though, I go 1 acc/3 damage. If I'm solo, I'm fighting even cons and 1 acc is enough. If I'm on a team, chances are very good somebody's throwing out a big -def, like Radiation Infection, Quicksand, Freezing Rain, Sleet, or radiation blasts, or that there will ToHit buffs getting thrown around. Usually, I have something from that category, myself.