Well, alpha/omega/etc are part of the new Incarnate 'endgame' system; since you're not level 50 yet, you don't have to worry about that.
IOs are... well, less complicated than you might expect, but still pretty complicated. In a nutshell, to create an IO enhancement, you need 2 things - a recipe, and some salvage. Salvage drops from enemies, and comes in three types - common (white), uncommon (yellow), and rare (orange). Recipes, depending on the type, either drop from enemies, can be gotten after completing missions, or are purchased with 'merits' that you get from completing story arcs/task forces. Once you have the recipe and the required salvage, you take them to the university (there's one in steel canyon) and use the crafting table to combine them into an enhancement.
IO enhancements themselves have some differences from standard DO/SO/etc type enhancements. First, they never expire. They still follow the rule that you can't slot more than 3 levels above your current level, but you can have a level 10 IO slotted when you're level 50 and not only will it still work, it'll still have the same enhancement value it did when you were level 10. The total enhancement value provided does varies based on the level of the IO - a level 50 IO will provide more enhancement than a level 15 IO.
Second, IOs come in two varieties - 'set' IOs and 'common' IOs. Common IOs are like SOs - they just provide a single type of enhancement like an SO, although they don't expire. Set IOs are different - you don't just have a 'generic' damage set IO - instead, you have set IOs from, say, the 'crushing impact' melee damage set. Set IOs tend to enhance more than one type of aspect at once - say, acc/dam or acc/dam/end instead of just acc, dam, or end. They don't enhance the individual aspects as much as an SO or common IO, but the *total* enhancement value is usually greater (i.e 2 acc/dam IOs give more total enhancement than one acc and one dam). Finally, set IOs come in, well, sets. If you slot multiple IOs from the same set into a single power, you will get small extra bonuses which vary depending on which set you slot - for example, if you slot three IOs from the 'crushing impact' set into a melee damage power, you will gain a small boost to your maximum HP. Slot a 4th from that set, and you will add a 7% accuracy bonus to all of your powers. Add a 5th and you'll gain 5% bonus recharge on all your powers.
There are two major uses for set IOs. The first is to ignore the set bonuses and just slot lots of double and triple aspect set IOs to get more total enhancement bonus in a power than you could do with SOs, or to get equal to SO performance while saving slots - this practice is referred to as 'frankenslotting', since it usually involves slotting individual IOs from a variety of different sets in a single power. To do this, you generally buy set IOs from the cheap 'junk' sets. These sets are usually less expensive since they don't have good set bonuses, but the actual IOs still provide just as much enhancement. Using this, it's pretty easy to get slotting superior to SO slotting, for pretty cheap. For example, my 'standard' frankenslotting for ranged attacks (Maelstrom's Fury acc/dam, dam/end/rech, Ruin acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rech) at level 30 provides roughly the same enhancement as 2 acc SOs, 3 damage SOs, one end SO, and one rech SO, along with a couple of minor set bonuses.
The second major use for set IOs is for the actual set bonuses themselves. This offers a whole nother level of performance beyond even frankenslotting - you still usually get enhancement values beyond what you could do with SOs, plus you can stack up huge amounts of stuff like accuracy, HP, recharge, regeneration, recovery, defense, etc from the set bonuses. This tends to be much more expensive, as the demand for the 'good' sets almost always vastly outstrips the supply.
Finally, there are certain 'special' IOs that have bonus effects above and beyond set bonuses - these work even if you only have the one special IO from the set. For example, there is the +recovery special from the 'Miracle' healing set, which, when slotted into a power like health, gives you a bonus 15% to your endurance recovery. Most of these are 'unique' so that you can't slot more than one of them on a character.
This page gives a general overview of the IO system, as well as linking to more detailed subpages on various IO topics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...n_Enhancements
For a lot of melee characters now, the new hot thing is to use IOs to 'softcap' your defenses. This refers to the way the tohit formula works - enemies have a base 50% chance to hit, and your defense is subtracted from this. They have a 5% minimum they can't be reduced below, so that means that 45% defense is the practical maximum useful amount of defense - this is the 'softcap'. Melee sets usually can't get that much defense by themselves (for example, fully enhanced SR hits about 30.5% defense to melee/ranged/aoe), but with the addition of extra defense from set bonuses, most sets can be pushed to the softcap and become a *lot* more durable.
If you want to trick out your MA/SR, this is probably the most direct way. Essentially, you'll want to take all of SR except elude (since extra defense doesn't do anything if you're already at the cap), along with combat jumping and weave, fully slotted for defense. That will put you at about 39% defense - add in the steadfast protection special 3% defense IO in tough, and you're at 42%. A few set bonuses from melee and other sets will put you at 45% and into a whole new level of survivability.
When it comes to planning out builds, the best tool out there is Mids' hero designer. This lets you plot out entire builds, all the set IOs and everything, and calculates and displays all the relevant totals for you. You can also export prettily formatted builds to post here on the forums for critique. It's an invaluable tool if you want to make any serious use of IOs. You can get mids here: http://www.cohplanner.com/
I'm not at my usual computer, so I can't post a build right now, but I'm sure someone can help you with a specific build for MA/SR that hits the softcap.
@MuonNeutrino
Student, Gamer, Altaholic, and future Astronomer.
This is what it means to be a tank!
I would suggest waiting until 50 to worry about slotting invention sets. Continue slotting SOs if you want as you level. However, as mentioned above, common inventions can be used instead of SOs so that you don't have to replace them as you level.
Get Mid's from the link mentioned above and play around with it. Look at other builds on the forums to get an idea of what people can do with their characters. The "totals" part of Mids' is the part you may want to focus on, as it describes overall bonuses a build can achieve. Don't forget that individual powers have slotting requirements to be useful or as effective as you may want them to be. For example, slotting Hasten with 3 recharges is fairly standard.
Quote:
Wow amazing reply. This is one of the most dedicated/thorough replies I've ever received in my internet history!|
Originally Posted by Muon_Neutrino
Well, alpha/omega/etc are part of the new Incarnate 'endgame' system; since you're not level 50 yet, you don't have to worry about that.
IOs are... well, less complicated than you might expect, but still pretty complicated. In a nutshell, to create an IO enhancement, you need 2 things - a recipe, and some salvage. Salvage drops from enemies, and comes in three types - common (white), uncommon (yellow), and rare (orange). Recipes, depending on the type, either drop from enemies, can be gotten after completing missions, or are purchased with 'merits' that you get from completing story arcs/task forces. Once you have the recipe and the required salvage, you take them to the university (there's one in steel canyon) and use the crafting table to combine them into an enhancement. IO enhancements themselves have some differences from standard DO/SO/etc type enhancements. First, they never expire. They still follow the rule that you can't slot more than 3 levels above your current level, but you can have a level 10 IO slotted when you're level 50 and not only will it still work, it'll still have the same enhancement value it did when you were level 10. The total enhancement value provided does varies based on the level of the IO - a level 50 IO will provide more enhancement than a level 15 IO. Second, IOs come in two varieties - 'set' IOs and 'common' IOs. Common IOs are like SOs - they just provide a single type of enhancement like an SO, although they don't expire. Set IOs are different - you don't just have a 'generic' damage set IO - instead, you have set IOs from, say, the 'crushing impact' melee damage set. Set IOs tend to enhance more than one type of aspect at once - say, acc/dam or acc/dam/end instead of just acc, dam, or end. They don't enhance the individual aspects as much as an SO or common IO, but the *total* enhancement value is usually greater (i.e 2 acc/dam IOs give more total enhancement than one acc and one dam). Finally, set IOs come in, well, sets. If you slot multiple IOs from the same set into a single power, you will get small extra bonuses which vary depending on which set you slot - for example, if you slot three IOs from the 'crushing impact' set into a melee damage power, you will gain a small boost to your maximum HP. Slot a 4th from that set, and you will add a 7% accuracy bonus to all of your powers. Add a 5th and you'll gain 5% bonus recharge on all your powers. There are two major uses for set IOs. The first is to ignore the set bonuses and just slot lots of double and triple aspect set IOs to get more total enhancement bonus in a power than you could do with SOs, or to get equal to SO performance while saving slots - this practice is referred to as 'frankenslotting', since it usually involves slotting individual IOs from a variety of different sets in a single power. To do this, you generally buy set IOs from the cheap 'junk' sets. These sets are usually less expensive since they don't have good set bonuses, but the actual IOs still provide just as much enhancement. Using this, it's pretty easy to get slotting superior to SO slotting, for pretty cheap. For example, my 'standard' frankenslotting for ranged attacks (Maelstrom's Fury acc/dam, dam/end/rech, Ruin acc/dam, dam/end, acc/dam/rech) at level 30 provides roughly the same enhancement as 2 acc SOs, 3 damage SOs, one end SO, and one rech SO, along with a couple of minor set bonuses. The second major use for set IOs is for the actual set bonuses themselves. This offers a whole nother level of performance beyond even frankenslotting - you still usually get enhancement values beyond what you could do with SOs, plus you can stack up huge amounts of stuff like accuracy, HP, recharge, regeneration, recovery, defense, etc from the set bonuses. This tends to be much more expensive, as the demand for the 'good' sets almost always vastly outstrips the supply. Finally, there are certain 'special' IOs that have bonus effects above and beyond set bonuses - these work even if you only have the one special IO from the set. For example, there is the +recovery special from the 'Miracle' healing set, which, when slotted into a power like health, gives you a bonus 15% to your endurance recovery. Most of these are 'unique' so that you can't slot more than one of them on a character. This page gives a general overview of the IO system, as well as linking to more detailed subpages on various IO topics: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...n_Enhancements For a lot of melee characters now, the new hot thing is to use IOs to 'softcap' your defenses. This refers to the way the tohit formula works - enemies have a base 50% chance to hit, and your defense is subtracted from this. They have a 5% minimum they can't be reduced below, so that means that 45% defense is the practical maximum useful amount of defense - this is the 'softcap'. Melee sets usually can't get that much defense by themselves (for example, fully enhanced SR hits about 30.5% defense to melee/ranged/aoe), but with the addition of extra defense from set bonuses, most sets can be pushed to the softcap and become a *lot* more durable. If you want to trick out your MA/SR, this is probably the most direct way. Essentially, you'll want to take all of SR except elude (since extra defense doesn't do anything if you're already at the cap), along with combat jumping and weave, fully slotted for defense. That will put you at about 39% defense - add in the steadfast protection special 3% defense IO in tough, and you're at 42%. A few set bonuses from melee and other sets will put you at 45% and into a whole new level of survivability. When it comes to planning out builds, the best tool out there is Mids' hero designer. This lets you plot out entire builds, all the set IOs and everything, and calculates and displays all the relevant totals for you. You can also export prettily formatted builds to post here on the forums for critique. It's an invaluable tool if you want to make any serious use of IOs. You can get mids here: http://www.cohplanner.com/ I'm not at my usual computer, so I can't post a build right now, but I'm sure someone can help you with a specific build for MA/SR that hits the softcap. |
I downloaded the planner and I'm going to play around. For now I guess I'm aiming for Weave (I already have combat jumping). Somethings tells me I will regret not mixing Katana or Broadsword to SR (for parry).
Btw should I remove Aidself?
Thanks for the help
Quote:
|
Originally Posted by Syntax42
I would suggest waiting until 50 to worry about slotting invention sets. Continue slotting SOs if you want as you level. However, as mentioned above, common inventions can be used instead of SOs so that you don't have to replace them as you level.
Get Mid's from the link mentioned above and play around with it. Look at other builds on the forums to get an idea of what people can do with their characters. The "totals" part of Mids' is the part you may want to focus on, as it describes overall bonuses a build can achieve. Don't forget that individual powers have slotting requirements to be useful or as effective as you may want them to be. For example, slotting Hasten with 3 recharges is fairly standard. |
Quote:
If you're softcapping, Aid Self is useful for the moments when you DO get hit, as you'll pretty much be taking them at full damage unless you have Tough on at the same time, or are already low on health (in which case, you'll receive scaling resistances which go higher the lower your health gets, up to 45% resists to all except Psi at like 10% health).|
Originally Posted by Pet77
Wow amazing reply. This is one of the most dedicated/thorough replies I've ever received in my internet history!
I downloaded the planner and I'm going to play around. For now I guess I'm aiming for Weave (I already have combat jumping). Somethings tells me I will regret not mixing Katana or Broadsword to SR (for parry). Btw should I remove Aidself? Thanks for the help I guess I'll use common inventions and/or SO enhancements for now. Thanks! |
With the entire Fitness pool which is now an inherent pool (meaning you get all four powers in it automatically at level 2), you should have more room for powers which you may not have considered before.
Ideon's Paragonwiki page
Member of Paragon/Rogue Knights
Arc: 60092 - Supa Rumble in the Park
"Keep living the dream, and never let any jerk tell you what to do."
-- High-Roller
I came back after a long break and I want to respec my MA/SR heroine. All this IO/Invention thing is gibberish to me. I don't understand and this Alpha/Omega slotting. I am overwhelming with so many things. I come from time when a 2 acc SO and 3 dmg SO = the best build. But now you guys talk about gibberish things that I don't understand Ikmp'sjd and things like that.
Can someone help me build my MA/SR so it won't be gimped (since she only uses SO now) and kindly explain what I need to know what what's a "must have" thing. I hear people add enhancements to auto-powers like Healing for "special" effects. I want to know what I should not miss regarding building my character.