The theory and practice of examplaring builds

I've got one mastermind at 50, and one coming along, hitting it tonight or tomorrow. The second in particular, my necro/dark Persephone Ash, is just a thorough delight to play, and I've already dabbled some in doing Ouroboros arcs to see sights I've missed while leveling my various characters, and have helped out some friends with task forces as well as getting my own Task Force Commander accolade.

Since it seems like I'm going to want to do more playing her at lower levels, I've become curious about tips and concerns folks may want to offer about slotting and enhancements for lower-level play. Any un-obvious pitfalls? Un-obvious niftiness? I've been thinking mostly in terms of the stock IOs, but I have a couple hundred million I could throw at neat procs or whatever.

Advise me, please.

Paragon wiki is your friend.

Idk which pitfalls are obvious and which are not.

You need to make a decisions about how low you want to go though. That's for sure.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Exempl...n_Enhancements

There're more or less three zones, 1-20, 21-31, and 32-50.

32-50 everything stays the same except you have to be careful about losing set bonuses. You can slot level up tp 35 IOs and have all of you enhancement values and all of your set bonuses

21-31 your enhancement values are lowered by different amounts for all enhancements which modify the attributes by greater than 20% for a schedule A. This means that to keep your full enhancement values for each attribute, you need to slot lvl 25 IOs (or lower) for dual attribute enhancements (Acc/Dam), lvl 43 IOs for triples (Acc/Dam/Rech), and level 50 for quads (Acc/Dam/End/Rech) because the attribute enhancement values won't be downgraded. For single attribute enhancements (Acc), lvl 50 is the way to go because you end up with more enhancement from a lvl 50 that gets reduced than you do from slotting a single that comes in under the threshold for adjustment. The lvl 50 single attribute enhancement is first reduced to 41.5% and then adjustments are made--so using enhancement boosters or purple set singles is wasted for mal'ing down as they're first reduced to 41.5% for exemplaring calculations.

1-20 your best bet are the PvP IOs, Purple sets (and possibly some store bought IOs?) as they will allow you to keep your set bonuses all the way down. Enhancement values take a severe hit and I am not sure there's really anything you can do about that as the threshholds for the adjustment are very low. So set bonuses are your best bet.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Table_of_Special_IOs

The special IOs are either limited by the lvl of the enhancement itself (LoTG +7.5%s) or they function as long as the power they're in is available. depending on the IO.
Remember that the special IOs which function like set bonuses, and set bonuses themselves work at lower lvls (if the lvl of teh enhancements will allow them to) even if the power is greyed out. So, taking combat jumping @ lvl 49 and sticking a lvl 25 LoTG in it will let you have that bonus down to lvl 22 even though you lose access to CJ @ lvl 45.


http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Invent...Damage_Scaling

Finally, damage procs' damage scales with the level you're exemped to and independent of the lvl of the enhancement itself

Outstanding. Thanks! *off for reading and thinking*

You might have an odd issue.

Mid to low 30s for IOs sets can be very expensive. There are some IOs that you can buy at lvl 50 for 1 million that can cost 20 million in those level ranges. End result a low to mid level build can end up costing much more then the hundred or some millions you have. Especially when your placing high priced bids and hoping it covers when someone places those IOs for sale on the market.

Thanks, that's good to know. Is it from others doing the same thing I'm asking about?

I tend to use lvl 25s and lvl 27s because I like to run some of the SFs that put you at lvl 25. I chose lvl 27 instead of lvl 28 because the cut off for Ouro mishes in that range is lvl 24.

These levels 25 and 27 seem to be a little cheaper than their lvl 30 & 35 counterparts. Of course, that limits your choice of sets. The difference in enhancement values once ED kicks in is not that great.

Many popular sets only go as low as level 30.

So, you really need to make some decisions about what exactly you want to do.

Also check your special IOs. Even if the level of the IO doesn't matter, the prices for the lowest level ones tend to be priced as if it did matter. So, if you're slotting a lvl 50 and the lvl of the IO doesn't matter, search for the cheapest one that still gets you your set bonus (if necessary)

Here's a thread from the SoA forums (Yeah, not a MM but the principles are similar) that's got a lot of information in leveling/exemplaring builds as well.

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=248244

If nothing else, it's a good read with some good basic slotting information.

Hey, handy! Thank you.

A belated question.

There are the Paragon Market IO sets that scale up with the character's level. Do those scale back down for full benefit when examplaring, if it's above the set's minimum level?

Thanks. I expected they would, but I've learned that my sense of what's obviously right may not match all that well with others's.