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The shop bought enhancements not being as good as crafted ones?

Chyll

By Chyll,
Posted on: 2011-12-11 14:52 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion

 

Posted

So I was looking at the shop bought Ghost Widow stuff and the normal ghost widow stuff, and while the stats are the same, the procs have this 3 times a minute dealio.

So, does this mean that you will be better off going for crafted procs rather than shop bought? Or do shop bought procs scale down better?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Trilby View Post
So I was looking at the shop bought Ghost Widow stuff and the normal ghost widow stuff, and while the stats are the same, the procs have this 3 times a minute dealio.

So, does this mean that you will be better off going for crafted procs rather than shop bought? Or do shop bought procs scale down better?
AFAIK, all the 'shop bought' are attuned - which means they are always equal to your playing level. So if exemp'd for a task force, they adjust with you. If you sk up for a task force, they adjust up with you.

It could easily be argued that they are superior to crafted versions.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chyll View Post
AFAIK, all the 'shop bought' are attuned - which means they are always equal to your playing level. So if exemp'd for a task force, they adjust with you. If you sk up for a task force, they adjust up with you.

It could easily be argued that they are superior to crafted versions.
The general consensus i've seen is that Store Bought Enhancements (SBEs) are actually superior in general to the standard sets. The autoscaling has more overall advantages than disadvantages. The original Dev intent was that SBEs would be slightly less powerful, but i don't think it worked out that way. AFAIK the mechanic for the procs is that their chance to trigger is based on the power's recharge time, so that powers with a longer recharge have a higher chance to proc each time they're used and vice versa. That was the stated design goal when they were first being tested and if it was changed i missed it.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chyll View Post
AFAIK, all the 'shop bought' are attuned - which means they are always equal to your playing level. So if exemp'd for a task force, they adjust with you. If you sk up for a task force, they adjust up with you.

It could easily be argued that they are superior to crafted versions.
No, the Attuned SBEs do *not* adjust by level exemplaring down. Instead, they are subject to Enhancement Exemplar Scaling. They do adjust as you level up.

They have the advantage:
  • Leveling up with you
  • Keeping Set Bonuses down to their minimum level minus 3.


They have the disadvantage:
  • Can not be boosted with Enhancement Boosters.
  • They are Account Bound
  • Second builds built specifically for an exemplared level will still be stronger than a build with Attuned Sets since they can six slot all their low level powers, while a mixed-level toon still needs to spread out their enhancements.

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Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Chyll View Post
AFAIK, all the 'shop bought' are attuned - which means they are always equal to your playing level. So if exemp'd for a task force, they adjust with you. If you sk up for a task force, they adjust up with you.

It could easily be argued that they are superior to crafted versions.
For procs, however, the level of the enhancement doesn't matter, as the proc always functions even when exemplaring, and does not scale with level.

Crafted procs are indeed usually superior to the SBEs, as the store bought versions all use a PPM (Procs-per-minute) mechanic to limit how often they can fire, effectively neutering their use in AoE attacks in many cases.

And yes, set bonuses do function even if you mix crafted and attuned enhancements. The only possible advantage of the SBEs is that they'll scale down to keep the set bonus, but if you can get your hands on a low-level crafted version of the proc it isn't an issue.