Alpha Slot Question

So the first thing I did when I came back from my CoH break was dive into the incarnate stuff. I decided that since my endurance recovery was good, and I didn't have any accuracy issues, I'd just go for as much damage as I could, and chose the Musculature slot. But I was wondering whether the recharge slot might be better.

I run a Claws/SR, and my attack chain is FU -> Slash -> Focus -> Strike (I think that's what it's called, can't really remember). I know that FU -> Slash -> Focus is a better DPS, but it was always unattainable to me because of the +rech bonuses needed.

So to all of you number-crunching oriented fellows out there on the interwebs, would going for the recharge slot help me for single-target DPS in the long run, or is it a better idea to go for the more obvious slot, Musculature?

I would look at it this way...do you have any other clickies that are NOT attacks / direct damage dealers that you rely on to make your character work?

If yes, the over all effect of the RECH on all of your clickies might be better for you. If your clickies are just attacks though, the DMG is probably better.

Secondly, look at the t2 incarnate benefits; that might break any indecision for you. If you don't have Heals or Stuns the Spirtual t2 might not suit your fancy, for instance.


So far I've only gotten two of my 50's incarnated out due to time constraints and being distracted by the Winter Event, my MA/SR scrapper and my KM/EA brute.

I went for END / RES on the MA/SR which works very nicely as I slotted heavily for damage and accuracy and have a LOT of toggles between SR, Tough / Weave, Maneuvers, and Focused Accuracy. Thanks to Stamina, Phys Perfection, and the top end endurance helping IO's the character was always _ok_ on END before, but now I'm glad to say that he's now _great_ on END.

I went for RECH / HEAL on my KM/EA. I've already got 4 LotG 7.5%'s and nearly perma-Haste, but the Incarnate helped me get that much closer to perma. Between Power Siphon and Energy Drain (and Haste for that matter), the character benefits from heavy recharge, and between a lot of Regen boosts from IO, Health, Physical Perfection, and the Heal from Energy Drain I notice the HEAL aspect of the incarnate t2.

I'm going to incarnate out a lvl 50 D3 Defender next, and I'll probably go with Damage for when solo, and RECH / Heal when teamed.

You're not really giving us enough information to be able to accurately determine if the recharge slot would help you more than the musculature ; my gut says "probably not", as the uncommon only gives about 11% unaffected by ED, and if you weren't close enough to do the chain before such a small recharge buff wouldn't do the trick.

Claws/SR. Your only clicks are your attacks. SR has no self heal, and I'm only assuming it doesn't have elude. Mez resist clicks recharge so fast, with any global recharge/hasten whatsoever you don't need that up any more often. Unless you have the medical pool powers, which I don't because i have a self heal with dark melee, the only benefit from recharge is your DPS and the possibility of perma-hasten.
I can't really say whether or not the recharge tier 2 will get you enough to get down to a 3 attack chain, but here's a thought. Once you get the tier 3 with the next issue, you probably will. And nobody can crunch those numbers at the moment. So personally, what i would do if I were in your position. I'd take advantage of the fact that it's actually pretty easy to get a tier 2 incarnate slot. I'd get the damage first, then get the recharge as well. I've gotten multiple tier 2 incarnates on several toons. Some say it's not a good idea, because they want to bank shards. But whatever, I'm not counting my eggs before they hatch, I'm just getting what is useful now.

Besides, i20 is a myth, T2 is is high as they're giving us.

I was more just curious to see if the optimal attack chain for claws would outdo any damage buffs by the Musculature alpha slot. Does anyone know offhand (or have it saved anywhere) what the estimated DPS is of FU -> Slash -> Focus? I was actually going to calculate my DPS later tonight, so I could just compare the two. My question was more out of curiosity than for build advice. I really don't have much of an intention to take the recharge slot as, someone pointed out, I don't have any other powers that would benefit from the recharge other than hasten.

I hope I'm not sounding too noobish. I don't even know if there's a estimated DPS for that attack chain, as I don't delve too deeply into calculations; I'm just assuming. I can post the build I'm using if you guys would like me to and are feeling generous.

Edit: Also, the recharge I have on my Scrapper is 172.5%. I know that whenever I hit Geas and get the recharge boost, it puts me at 202.5% and I have the optimal chain. So I don't think 11% from the tier 1 slot would do it, but maybe the second tier would?

My view on the Alpha is you base your pick on one of two choices: do you want to enhance what you have, or fill up a gap?

For example, a controller who slots hold and immobilize IOs will get the most of Muscular's damage enhancments, as well as getting a boost from the immobilization enhancments. Meanwhile a scrapper with Muscular who's slotting IOs for damage won't reap as much as the controllers from the Alhpa, but still increrase their attack.

On the other hand if the Scrapper slotting Nerve and used IOs with subpar accuracy it'd make up for the IOs shortcoming.

The Going Rouge website has a list of all four Alpha trees and what else they'll boost up.

The tier 2 is actually about an 11% bonus after ED. 33% bonus to your powers, but if your attacks are at ED, which they probably are, then you'll only get 1/3 of that 33% bonus. So it's actually 11% for the tier 2, not the tier one.

At worst, 14.3%, and only if you already have 95% pre-ED enhancement in the power already. Depending on what you're enhancing, you may or may not be near that point. For musculature, you probably are. But for the others, you likely are not that high in very many or any powers, and will get much more, and often the full enhancement value.

I haven't studied everything... but in every situation I've studied I haven't found any way to use the recharge alpha to up DPS by more then adding a damage alpha, either.

The only exception to that the I can see is when you're using the recharge alpha to get a mini-nuke power up more often.... something like shield charge, or rain of arrows, hail of bullets. Shaving a few seconds of those recharge times might make it available at the beginning of every spawn... whereas if it's recharging slightly slower, it may be less efficiantly used on a mostly dead spawn or every other spawn.

edit: adding 1 other use of the recharge alpha for scrappers.... soul drain slotted with guassian's for the positional defense is lacking a lot of recharge, so the recharge alpha slot is another way to add a full 33% recharge to soul drain, which may make a significant difference in total damage output.

What do you think about using a Very Rare 45% Recharge/33% Heal Spiritual boost? That one ignores 2/3rds of enhancement diversification, which I have a feeling could do marvelous things. For one thing, you could get perma-Hasten with a build that has a good amount of Recharge instead of the extreme amount of Recharge needed currently.

Also helps with damage mitigation if you've got a Self Heal power. Not exactly more Damage, but being dead means doing 0 DPS.

2/3rds of 45% is 30%. Would that mean if you had the Very Rare Spiritual boost and ED capped Hasten, you could essentially get perma-Hasten with 30% less global Recharge than is normally needed?

Seems like Succubus Kali would be 10 to 15% short on Recharge with the Very Rare Alpha boost. Not bad at all. Only a few seconds of Hastened downtime I think.

So you don't think the difference between 32.25% less and 25.78% less is a big enough difference to have that third slot on Hasten?