Alpha Slot - Cardiac and Damage resists

I have been wondering a lot about how to respec my sonic/sonic defender, she badly needs one anyway, but the addition of the alpha slot has thrown another little spammer in the works.

Then last night (literally as i was brushing my teeth) I had a bit of a realization. The Devs really did give us the 3rd build for a reason. If I am slot starved and want to replace fitness with powers than need slots, how can I save slots over all.

I fiddled with my spreadsheets, and using the rare/Very rare info from the Going Rogue site to account for what portion will bypass the ED calculations. Using both the 3 Dam resists commonly slotted into the buff shields, and then the idea of slotting just 2 level 50s into them.



Is the basic numbers after accounting for ED. The difference is noticeable with the common Cardiac boost slotted (well that is endrec only, no dam resist), but at the uncommon and higher levels the difference becomes much less. At best 5% for the very rare, but that's the 5% of the base 20% (for the shields) for a actual damage resist difference of 1% in game. A single suitable set-bonus more than makes up the difference.

(for the graphically minded here is a bar chart of the buff)


Right now I have the fairly typical endrec + 3 damres. (level 35s actually right now).
Putting a 2nd/3rd build together once I have the uncommon, and replacing those 4 slots with just 2 damres, is going to free up 4 slots from the 2 buff shields, plus another 1-2 from the toggle shield. (depending if I drop the 2nd endrec I have in there)

Swapping the 35s for 50s admittedly gives a big portion of this help, but after the uncommon is bought and my build adjusted, I'll be 5 slots to the good and with actually higher buff values (31.38% now to 32.66% after).

I'm not a huge fan of any of the damage resist sets, my fire tank who was the other character I was scratching my head over a respec with has a bit of frankenslotting for better endrec, but is Very slot starved. 4 slots for her would allow much more interesting additions for survivability, 6 slots if you account for tough in the same manner.

Just some food for thought

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@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617

I did the same thing on my Bots/Traps MM. I underslotted a few powers in terms of recharge (two level 50 IOs instead trying for 95%) with the intent of using the Spiritual Boost to make up the difference.

Then I realized that Musculature would probably be a better option since it's the only practical way to increase pet damage post level 50. Oh well.

In general though I'll note that the mechanics of the Alpha slot does help SO'd/Frankenslotted builds compared to heavily IO'd builds. To fully optimize for an Alpha build you need to adjust certain enhancement types carefully which is often impractical if you're slotting set IOs.

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Yeah. In this regard I find the alpha boosts fairly intelligently engineered. They do benefit high-end builds who want to use them to eke out every last drop of some already strong stat, but they are far more beneficial rounding out stats that are away from ED max.

The place they don't always have the best synergy is with set bonuses. I have many powers in many characters where underslotting is not a viable option, because doing so would deprive me of set bonuses that are important to me. However, there are some exceptions. Cardiac and Spiritual both provide something that I rarely have ED max slotting for, but would almost always love to be better slotted. This can be particularly beneficial for powers that are six slotted for a particular set bonus, since that pretty clearly denies me frankenslotting opportunities.

On such builds, that means that the benefits of the alpha slot tend to vary widely from power to power, but I have some leeway to choose the boost that gives any given character the best bang. For example, I have a DM/Regen for whom the uncommon Spiritual boost isn't giving ultra-strong benefit on things like Reconstruction or Moment of Glory, because those are already ED-slotted for recharge. But her single-target attacks are six slotted with Touch of Death, which grants a mere ~43.4% recharge. I'm not even going to hit the worst of ED using the Very Rare Spiritual Core with that base. So while my already strong recharge powers aren't going to change a ton, for my attacks, it's like I picked up 30%+ global recharge.

So now, even just the common or uncommon boost, Hasten and my existing global recharge bonus, I'm just a hair shy of being able to run DM's optimal DPS attach chain gaplress. (According to my calculations, I have a 0.2s gap in my chain, and I get confirmation in the form of a "not recharged" woo sound just a tad before that attack goes off.) Combined with a small improvement in my key survival powers, I'm pretty darn happy with the result.

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Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA