Help! Returning player, overwhelmed by IO sets...

Hey there guys, I'm a returning player from somewhere around issue 8. I've spent the last two weeks reading up on everything that's changed and all the new systems, during which time I've also gone back to VIP and have been having a blast in game. The only thing that I feel like I dont have a handle on at this point is the IO sets.

I started a dual blades / regen scrapper who is currently just over 30. When he hit 28 I decided to blow a few million and replace all his SO's with the basic lvl 30 invention IO's so that I wouldnt need to replace them again, and have been adding 30 IO's as I level.

So, the questions I have at this point are:

When do I need to start considering slotting set IO's?

Is that something that should wait for 50, or am I missing out significantly by avoiding them at my level?

If I get them at lvl 30, do I need to be looking at replacing them with 50's, or is the difference negligible?

As a dual blades / regen, what sets do I need to be looking at using, what uniques, and how do I focus on recharge bonus (aiming for perma hasten)?

Thank you all for your help!

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Count Chaos - lvl 50 Energy/Fire Blaster
Chaos Fallen - lvl 28 Warshade
Felise - lvl 17 Fire/Radiation Controller

You believe yourself a god? Fine. I'll show you pain
only a god could imagine or endure...

Welcome back and glad you're having a blast!

My reply is not intended to be the be all end all response at all, but I thought you may just gain a little bit of comfort from my own experiences (quirky as they may be).

You don't need to get into the IOs at all. Don't get me wrong, you don't need to avoid them either and they do provide benefits...
But... I don't use them beyond what you've been doing. I get the standard IOs so that I don't have to deal with my enhancements diminishing as I level and needing to be replaced. So, yep, that is a great practice and, as far as I am concerned, you are doing it right!!
I don't avoid them for any reason other than I just don't seem to find enjoyment in dealing with them and figuring out which, what and all that. It's not that complicated, but it just seems slightly over the border of what I find fun during my limited happy fun play time, haha... And, fortunately, it hasn't cost me any fun at all. I have a blast when I play and I survive, contribute and succeed without any problems.

A lot of people seem to wait until they are level 50 to truly lay out their full IO set builds, but some do it earlier. There is certainly no right or wrong answer there.
Another big way to get the benefits of using IOs is to do what some call Frankenslotting, where you just focus on what aspects you want to enhance and pull them from different IO sets instead of going with 5 or 6 of a complete set. You can get rather high amounts of enhancements by grabbing a bunch of damage/recharge/accuracy IOs from different sets and combining them together. Throw in one or two different ones from the same set and you'll also get a small set bonus too. (Hope that made sense)


Bottom line... if you're having a blast, you're not missing anything!
And there's no right time to start. Do you have Mids? That's an extremely handy tool for planning builds and having a look at things!

Best of luck and I'm sure you'll get plenty of other replies in here with great suggestions.

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I enjoy IOs, but I don't generally make a religion of them.
The majority of my characters get by on generics, augmented by highly useful stuff like Karma -KB, Miracle +rec, Celerity +stealth, and the occasional proc.

I do have a few heavily IO'ed level 50s, but they're the exception rather than the rule.


A few general observations:

If you want to start IO'ing before you hit 50, you're going to run into supply problems. Given the speed people level at these days and the fact that all of the serious farming takes place at level 50, there just isn't much IO supply at the lower levels.

Example, I've been messing around with Cathode Ray, my beam rifle/radiation corrupter. He would be an obvious beneficiary of high ranged defense, he's got a lot of single target ranged damage attacks, so the Thunderstrike set was an obvious fit.

The problem was his level when I started shopping- 28.
Supply of those recipes & even crafted IOs in the 30-ish range was negligible.
I've been actively working on this project for several weeks now, spreading lavish bids across multiple levels, and I've only managed to fully slot two powers.

I got him up to 40 on 2xp weekend, which will make things easier, but the rule of thumb is the higher the level, the easier a time you'll have finding the stuff you want.


As for what to slot, I usually start with the question "what makes sense?"

For Ray, who's all about range and debuffs, ranged defense was obvious.

Pretty much any character will benefit from global recharge, so that's another thing I look for.

Recovery is another biggie- I don't seem to play any end-light sets, so +rec set bonuses are always welcome, along with pricey trinkets like the Miracle & Numina uniques.

I really like the option to stealth a mission, so everyone gets a Celerity + stealth.

And I hate knockback like poison, so *all* of my squishies get a Karma -KB.


For more complicated stuff, grab Mid's and fiddle around, but you can get quite a bit of extra performance just using my half-***** "slot stuff that sounds good" approach.

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The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.

My City Was Gone

Thanks for the info guys. I think I'm going to wait til 50 before I start seriously worrying about the sets, and just get the lvl 50 versions at that point if they are indeed the most widely available.

So now I'm messing around in mids trying to figure out what I can manage slotting for recharge. I could be missing something, but it looks like as a dual blades/regen scrapper I cant get anywhere close to perma hasten. As far as I can tell my only real options are the spiritual alpha slot and the two LoG's that I can drop into combat jumping and weave if I take those. With three slots in hasten, that puts me at 22s away from perma.

Assuming I'm not missing something obvious, I'm more or less ok with that result. In that case I'll probably drop hasten altogether and try for decent global recharge and recharge in the powers themselves. The next goal on that approach then would be perma Dull Pain. I cant quite seem to get there either though :-/ I suspect I must be missing something. Can someone point me in the right direction or post a mids build that works?

Thanks again guys!

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Count Chaos - lvl 50 Energy/Fire Blaster
Chaos Fallen - lvl 28 Warshade
Felise - lvl 17 Fire/Radiation Controller

You believe yourself a god? Fine. I'll show you pain
only a god could imagine or endure...

The thing I like about frankenslotting (while levelling, or period) is that, if you do it right, you're using cheap sets. And then if you have to throw out your current IOs because you're slotting the good stuff, you only lose cheap sets.

... what's wrong with 22 seconds away from perma-hasten?

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Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.

So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.

Well if you're looking for specific build advice, you can go to the Scrapper forum and ask for advice, or post the build you've got in the build critiquing sub-forum.

Still, if you have the slots available, you should 5-slot your healing powers with Doctored Wounds. The 5-piece bonus is +5% recharge. You can also slot attacks with Crushing Impact, which also gives 5% recharge for five pieces.

NOTE: There's the "Rule of 5" that comes into play here. If you have more than 5 of any kind of bonus, anything after that is negated. So if you slot six sets of Crushing Impact or 3 CI and 3 DWs, the sixth set of bonuses won't count!

There's also the Scrapper ATO set, which gives 8.75% recharge for 5 pieces.. however, you can only slot this set once per character.

If you feel like 6-slotting Confront, you can get a 7.5% recharge bonus from Mocking Beratement. This 7.5% bonus will NOT conflict/count against the 7.5% bonus you get from LotGs!

Part of the fun part of the IO system is sometimes taking odd powers to "mule" certain IOs or sets. For instance, skipping an attack power and an armor power to put 2 stealth powers into your build so you can slot LoTG: +Recharge into them. Or perhaps something more useful. Weave, CJ, Maneuvers, Hover, and Afterburner are also options.

Hope this is helpful!

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-STEELE =)


Allied to all sides so that no matter what, I'll come out on top!
Oh, and Crimson demands you play this arc-> Twisted Knives (MA Arc #397769)

This would be my advice if you feel like picking up IO sets in your level range. The difference between level 30s and level 50s isn't huge when it comes to sets. If you are playing the game normally, having the extra ooomph as you level up is nice. And (this might be getting more into the weeds than you need) lower level set IOs are good if you plan on exemping down frequently. Supply can be limited, but my advice would be to put in several low-ball bids on recipes 32-36 (adjust it upwards as you level) for doctored wounds and crushing impact. Maybe 100-300k a recipe. If you have extras, you can craft and sell them for 1 million plus. It just takes patience. Salvage in that level range can be expensive, the 41s+ are cheaper to craft when it comes to salvage.

Crushing Impact and Doctored Wounds both give a +5% recharge bonus if you have them 5-slotted. You can stack this bonus 5 times. +recharge is great on Regeneration scrappers. As others have mentioned, it isn't a bad idea to pick up a power or two just to drop a LOTG +recharge in; that's a pretty useful power right out the box. You have several click powers that are key to survival, and the more often they are up the stronger your defenses are.

Building for +defense is another strategy that will have good benefits, but it can be *very* expensive. One tactic is to focus on S/L def (since this gives protection against the most attacks). 45% def is considered optimal for normal content, but any amount of extra defense will add to your survivability. If you take CJ and Weave (maybe 2-3 slots in weave), you can stick a Steadfast Protection +3% Global Defense in Tough (it is quite expensive, but if you run some AE missions and roll tickets in the bronze 10-14 range you'll probably get one as well as other decent things to craft and sell) then you'll have something like +10-12% Def, which is similar to having a small luck on you at all times. One trick you could do to get some extra +def in would be to take 2 of your PBAOE powers and slot them with 3 eradication, 3 scrapper ATO set. That (with weave, CJ, and the Steadfast +3% Def in Tough) would give you ~17-18% def to s/l/e/n. You'd notice a pretty substantial boost to survivability at that point solo in normal content, and on teams you'd be well-prepared to benefit from any team +def buffs. (The closer you get to 45% the better, but even if you can get 15-20% it will still make a big difference).

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Thanks again for all the info guys, you've been very helpful. I've managed to get a build that has genuine perma hasten, but the recharge rates on everything now almost seem excessive :-p I'm gonna try another build to see if I can soft cap defense, and then squeeze whatever recharge in that I can.

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Count Chaos - lvl 50 Energy/Fire Blaster
Chaos Fallen - lvl 28 Warshade
Felise - lvl 17 Fire/Radiation Controller

You believe yourself a god? Fine. I'll show you pain
only a god could imagine or endure...

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Welcome back.

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The development team and this community deserved better than this from NC Soft. Best wishes on your search.

Yes - welcome back!

Mids is also a great help for figuring out "how important" an IO actually is.

For example, Scrapper Weave slotted with a LoTG Def/+Rech, Def/End & Def plus a normal End redux IO gives +5.57% defence at a cost of 0.24end/sec when slotted with L35 enhancements, vs +5.78% defence for 0.19end/sec at L50. Using a more extreme example, Instant Healing with 3 L50 recharge IOs recharges in 283.7s, whereas it recharges in 287s with L35s. That's 4 seconds difference on a power with a huge recharge (650s), or 0.4 of a second on something with a 65 second recharge.

With that in mind, my "process" for levelling is slightly different - but it doesn't make "better".

I generally level a toon to 22, then fill up with L25 IOs. I start running Tips and SSA's to generate Hero merits which allow me to buy & slot the rarer IOs that aren't level dependent (LoTG +Recharge, Numina proc, Miracle proc etc).

Once I get to anywhere between 35 & 45 I start building my "IO" toon on my dual build - referring to my Mids build and either crafting drops, or keeping my eye on the market for cheap recipes I can slot. Previous posters are right - they're not so prevalent <50 but they also nowhere near as pricey and you're not in a rush because you only have 3 slots to fill every 2 levels and you have your vanilla IO build that works just fine. Waiting until after 35 pushes me out of the high "PvP" band and for me, the enhancement differences between 35 & 50 are small enough for me not to worry.

As that second build looks like its starting to take over effectiveness from my regular-IO build, I make a permanent swap to that 2nd build. I then use a respec to clear out my original L25-IO build and dump the enhancements in my base. Those enhancements are now ready for the next alt to hit 22.

This works for me because:
a) I have a lot of vetspecs per character that I'll never need (although you only need 1 per character for this method)
b) I have a solo SG base with a 2nd (Premium) account "inviter".
c) I have 30 enhancement slots/character (you need 33-38 slots for a non-kheld @22, so this is enough in 1 respec to almost outfit a new L22 toon)
d) Marketing isn't as much fun as playing (for me!) and I just need to craft a few new enhancements per toon, minimising time in the market and maximising time spent playing. (If you want to make the money as you level - Organica's thread makes great reading)

Hope this helps. It's just another angle to look at. No way is the "right" way.

-H

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