Explain to me: (Musculature) Alpha and the damage cap

One of the characters i run the most is my Night Widow. Yesterday i was reading up on some stuff here on the forums, and one of the things that stood out was which hybrid to choose. A lot of people agreed that assault was a good choice, but then something caught my eye. The damage cap.
Epic AT's damage is capped at 400%, but now i'm wondering, what exactly works towards that cap?
Do enhancement values count? And as such, does the global enhancement from the alpha slot count too?
Or is the 400% just the extra bonus you can gain to your attacks?

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@Treibhireas on Defiant, Exalted and Freedom

Damage buffs, enhancements, set bonuses, etc - everything counts towards that cap.

Also remember that the 400% for EATs includes the base 100%, so really you're looking at room for +300% total from enhancements/buffs/etc.

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Everything except crits and procs counts towards that cap: Enhancement value, set bonuses, Alpha, buffs from powers, inspirations, etc. Enhancement value won't report in your Combat Attributes window, and since Alpha functions on enhancements, it too won't report. Assuming you've got around post-alpha ED cap (which should be around 100-113% for Musculature Core Paragon, iirc...) you will have another ~200% to your practical max damage per power. (Remember that you start at 100%, not 0%.) You can, of course, push yourself all the way to the hard cap via miscellaneous buffs, but because of the way damage bonuses are calculated, you have a softcap lower than the absolute hard cap by whatever your enhancement value is.

http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Limits#Damage

I have no idea what sort of global damage slotting you have, but I as a not-quite-completely-optimized (I can get a lot more out of my build), purpled-out blaster, I have +51% damage as reported out of combat (but with toggles up) in my attributes window. Because of Defiance, in combat I can easily reach +200%, and in rare circumstances (requiring the Gaussian's proc to proc and firing of Build Up, Aim, and the Geas of the Kind Ones accolade) can hard cap my damage.

What it boils down to for Assault Hybrid: If you're at the very high end of damage, take Radial. Otherwise, Core.

Hope this helps.

Addendum: Damaging Interface powers do not count, as they are a proc, not a buff.

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Also helpful for comparison: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/...4VzNvQUE#gid=0

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So if i get this right:
My Widow has his attacks slotted for damage (95% after ED), add t4 musculature to that and each attack is around 125%.
Passive bonusses + assault give another 50%
And to top it off, double stacked Follow Up for another +60%

Which leaves me at:
400%-100%-235% = ~65% from the cap

Nice ^^

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@Treibhireas on Defiant, Exalted and Freedom

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