IO's, SO's and ED

I am still trying to get the hang of working with IO's. I have played on and off and mostly before IO's (believe it or not), and I am sick of being mystified by them and am trying to dig in and get things straightened out.

I noticed in MIDS trying to do an IO set with Ghost Widow's Embrace, that even if you did the whole set of 6, there was no way to reach the 94.93% ED hold duration you get from 3 hold SO's. You end up ED capped at 73.78%; of course, you get all the other stuff, like the set bonuses and recharge, and etc.

My question is a two parter:

1) I guess the other benefits, like the set benefits and having the other things like recharge and range buffed make up for losing 20% to the hold itself?

2) Why is it literally imposable to use set IO's to reach the same level of power as a particular type of SO's? Is it because #1, the other things make up for the loss?

I am confused, because I just sort of assumed that if you used a set, you would be outstripping using SO's in every way, but technically, if you really cared about one thing, like say hold duration in this case, SO's would technically do that one thing better. Is that correct?

I suppose I am missing something, and I am sorry if I am just dense.

Thanks.

#2 is incorrect in it's assumption. Several sets allow you to well surpass the enhancement levels that you'd get from just using SOs. For instance, many of the damage sets, or resistance/defense sets allow you to hit well over the level of 3 SOs worth of enhancement in the powers.

As such, #1 becomes a trade-off. some sets offer better bonuses, but less enhancement value. Whether those bonuses are good enough to justify the trade-off will be up to you and what your goals are for the character.

Edit: Heh, Scooped by Memphis Bill.

Of course, it is also possible to use Set IOs but ignore Set Bonuses completely and just chose the Enhancements you want from each Set... So you could select Hold/Recharge IOs (for instance) from different sets and stack up a huge total enhancement. This approach is called 'Franken-slotting' and can be especially effective in the late teens and early twenties.

Actually, Franken-slotting can be be effective at any level, but in those early days, it's hard to get a meaningful Set Bonus and useful Enhancement at the same time.

Be Well!
Fireheart

You really need to look at each set. You can't make generalizations since many sets will exceed the ED cap in some areas.

For the most part, Holds don't really need ED cap anyway. The hold only needs to last long enough for the foes held to be defeated or the power can be re-applied, and that isn't very long most of the time today. The classic SO slotting for AoE Holds is 2 Acc, 2 Hold, 2 Recharge. None of them capped, but good values in the three most important attributes.

In the mini-guides in my sig, there's one on frankenslotting. It is true that SOME sets have unavoidable built-in limitations; Mako's Bite is an example, where you can't quite get to 94% damage. However, some other sets (Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact being two classic examples) get you all the damage you could want, plus quite a lot of acc, recharge, and end reduction even without counting the set bonuses.

For a good general rule, one part of a "triple" is about half an SO. One part of a "double" is about 2/3 of an SO, so three Dam/Rech is roughly "two damage, two recharge" .

The definitive detailed guide to frankenslotting was written by Capn Canadian (the spelling may be off on his name)- it had "cheapskates" in the title, and that's how I always found it with /search.

If you care about set bonuses, you're all of a sudden going from "a few hundred thousand per IO" to "five to ten million per IO" (for fifty to eighty IOs)- or more if you want to totally make yourself unrecognizable- but you can do some dramatic things at that price level. The biggies:
* Recharge- hugely trendy, so hugely expensive, although purples have taken a lot of the pressure off here.
* Defense- also very trendy, although many times it comes in cheap uncommon sets like Thunderstrike and Red Fortune. If you start getting close to the softcap in something your whole playstyle shifts to "I am unvulnerable!" Then you get mezzed and learn how wrong you were, but you're still way ahead. However, getting 45% Defense is not a casual thing to do.
* Regen- was trendy for a while, not so much now, but still tends to be expensive. If you build up 80% Regen bonus, that's like a whole nother slotted Health.
* Damage- not terribly trendy, but you can kinda get Assault for free if you want. Often bundled with other attractive bonuses.
* Recovery- easy, cheap, and I find it very handy.
* Accuracy- there are a lot of ways to get Accuracy these days, but I think it's still worth making sure you have at least one global Acc bonus somewhere in your build. Often bundled with other attractive options, so often expensive.

There are a lot of IO set bonuses which look like crap, and are. You can tell the bonuses are crap because people are giving away the IO's. . . so if you can frankenslot with those, you win.

There's 2 ways to play with Set IOs:

- mix and matching individual pieces from different Sets to maximize the attribute boost numbers on a per power basis (called "frankenslotting" in forum slang) or

- collecting enough of the pieces of a Set to get the Set's set bonuses you want. Note: you don't need get/use all 6 pieces of a Set all the time. Since individual set bonuses are dinky, typically, you'll be trying to collect the same set bonuses from several Sets for several powers. So that when they're stacked, you'll get an extra SO or more boost that applies to every relevant power in your build. Most people work on getting +defense, +recharge, +accuracy, or +recovery.


As others have said, there will be trade offs, but that's what makes build design interesting. Decisions will have to be made and compromises taken. Then after a few months, you'll read something and then you'll want to rebuild to try it.

Note: unless you have a huge stash of Inf, you may want to build based on what Set IO pieces you can realistically get a hold of. For most beginners, this usually means going with a frankenslotted build until you can afford better. If you're not in a rush and have a personal SG Base where you can store enhancements in, you can try putting in bids at the Market ahead of when you need them.

Thanks for all the informative responses.

It's looks like it's true that I did make some assumptions from just the one set, but my spider sense was tingling enough to post about it and it looks like my assumptions needed some correct'n.

Let's see if I can summarize properly:

Sets vary in how maxed out an aspect of a power can be, so maybe Ghost Widow's Embrace doesn't get you to SO ED Hold, but perhaps Set X gets you to SO level Damage, etc. It varies and you can't assume.

Common IO's can be used to achieve SO like values in just one aspect, but at the expense of set bonusess *and* you become narrowly focused on just that aspect. This would only be done in a very particular cases and would cost you set bonuses. This I assume is not really done often if at all.

Frankenslotting (for example two slots by two sets in four slots) can be used to really hone in on the very special case of really wanting to highlight just two aspects or if you want two by two bonuses, or you dont have the resources to go deep into purchasing a full set. This is also cheaper, I am guessing because you don't go for the more exotic set pieces and can use lower end sets.

The reason you see full sets in medium to high end builds is that once you can afford it, buffing so many aspects and getting so many bonuses is worth it much, much more than becoming some kind of mono maniac about just one aspect of a power being 15% off of some SO based yardstick.

Please let me know if I am still misaligned with the general wisdom.

Thanks.

Edit:

PS. One other questions: What level of IO's do people usually start buying while leveling or working on the funds to go get the 50's. I know you can buy the 25 IO's but the say 35 IO's would get you locked in at a slightly higher %.

Frankenslotting is a lot more flexible than you are giving it credit for.
TL;DR version- you can enhance EVERYTHING with NO penalties.

Mathy version:
I'm going to give my favorite example, which I've beaten to death round here: a five-slotted ranged power. We will use [about] level 35 IO's, which give [about] the same performance as a +1 SO if you're looking at a generic (that only enhances one thing). A "triple" gives exactly half the performance of a "Single" in EACH category.

FIVE SO's: Acc, Dam, Dam, Dam, Rech or End (your choice).
FIVE IO's:
Thunderstrike: Acc/Dam/Rech, Dam/End/Rech = 1/2 A, 1 D, 1 R, 1/2 E
Ruin: Acc/Dam/Rech = 1/2 A, 1/2 D, 1/2 R
Maelstrom's Fury: Dam/End/Rech = 1/2 D, 1/2 E, 1/2 R
Generic: Dam = 1 D
Total: 1 A, 3 D, 2 R, 1 E

Seven "SO's" worth of power in five slots. And you get a small set Recovery bonus for having a pair of Thunderstrikes.

Warnings in next post.

And now the warnings:

1) You have to plan ahead to get good prices on Salvage; you have to plan ahead to get midlevel recipes AT ALL. And often, you have to put up bids on the level 32, 33, 34, 35, 36 and 37 recipe to get even one of them in a weekend. Marketeers refer to "BUY IT NAO" syndrome, which costs you millions of inf more than you needed to pay.

2) You still sometimes get spiked by salvage prices. Mostly, yellow recipes use white and yellow salvage. However, (for instance) Air Burst is a weak, unimpressive, ranged AOE set that you wouldn't expect to cost you much. But Air Burst: Dam/Rech needs an orange salvage that costs around 2 million inf. Everything else combined is like 300K. There's another hole in the budget.

Thanks again for all the great responses. It's helping to really clear things up.

I think it will also help to get off the sidelines and being willing to make a mistake or two. You can only connect so much from forum reading wit out actually working things in game and getting the experience of learning by doing.

I can't offer advice as good as some of the excellent posts here, but I can be nitpicky and tell you you're actually better off using SOs until character level 35+. At that point store-bought SOs are +0/+1 to you (depending on if you combined them with old SOs) and 35 IOs are equal to a +1 SO. If you team much, and so level at a decent clip, it makes the most sense to wait until you get to 37 before bothering with IOs. This is all IMO and referring to common IOs of course.