Kala

First off, thank you so much for doing this! It's really great to have a web resource for this stuff, especially for those of us who don't have easy access to Mids 100% of the time and didn't otherwise have a resource at all. I'm genuinely excited that this exists now and I can already tell it's going to be incredibly useful for me. Do you have any sort of raw data or source code that you're willing to or plan to make available? I haven't reliably been able to find comprehensive mob power and resistance data before now, and I think it would be possible to do some across-the-board analysis regarding things like the efficacy of damage types or defenses, or calculating how well any given powerset matches up against various mob groups. It seems like your data would be set up to be able to answer those questions programmatically, but I'm not seeing a great way to do that, short of using your internal endpoints as a makeshift API, which doesn't seem ideal for either side of things.

Every IO set has a level requirement, and if you want to slot set IOs at that level you absolutely can. The earliest ones you can even slot at level 7. That said, set IOs aren't cheap and if you don't have a level 50 character to earn inf for you, and you don't want to learn how to earn money playing the market, it's probably going to be cost prohibitive to get stuff like a full set of ATO enhancements, or even get into sets much at all. The "good enough" approach is to just slot regular crafted IOs starting from level 22 (lower level crafted IOs don't give you enough stats to carry you to 50, but 25s are sort of the breakpoint). Then when you get more slots at higher levels, slot level 30s (or higher if you want), but don't replace the 25s unless you respec. General attack slotting recommendation for attacks you're using is one accuracy, three damage, and then end reduction and recharge in the last two slots as needed, or put the slots elsewhere. This is for base 1.0x accuracy powers; those with lower base accuracy may need more accuracy slotted. ED is the system that basically says don't slot more than three of one type of bonus in a single power as a rule of thumb, but I won't break that down fully here. In addition to that, slotting the high value one-off set IOs is good. That's the Performance Shifter proc in Stamina. Panacea proc in health if you can afford it, or otherwise Miracle recovery there. Both of those if you're really hurting for endurance, and also Numina's if you're still hurting afterward. Typically, every character wants a setup of 2-4 of these to help with endurance management. Other solid one-offs are the Kismet accuracy proc (actually gives ToHit, which is better than accuracy), the two global +defense IOs that go on resistance powers, either KB protection or stealth in a travel power, and as many Luck of the Gambler global recharge powers as you have powers to put them in and inf to buy them with (but not more than 5). These are all nice, but not as important as the endurance management stuff. Always buy attuned enhancements off the auction house. Sort by the level range 1-1 and buy the ones that don't have a number on them. These will level with you, so it's like replacing crafted IOs with higher level ones every level, but you don't have to do it or pay for it. That's sort of the general basic plan. The following is here to provide information if you're interested, but you're fine leveling to 50 (and after) if you don't do any of it. I won't address full-on mids buildcraft and set bonuses, but I will say that if you want to consider slotting set IOs sooner, pick them for their main overall bonuses and try to pick ones that modify several attributes, all of which you want. Do this primarily for the powers that you like using a lot, like your best attacks, or your control set's important AoE mez. As a rule, the more stats an IO modifies, the better its overall effectiveness. Slotting two damage/recharge IOs is like slotting 1.25 damage IOs and 1.25 recharge IOs. If you want both damage and recharge, this is great. If you get a four attribute enhancement and you want all four things, it can be really good. One stat: 1.0 effectiveness per stat, 1.0 overall Two stats: 0.625 per stat, 1.25 overall Three stats: 0.5 per stat, 1.5 overall Four stats: 0.4375 per stat 1.75 overall Beyond this, set IOs offer the same stats as crafted IOs, so a level 25 set IO that does only damage will have the same bonus as a level 25 crafted damage IO, but with the set IO you can get it attuned and maybe pick up a set bonus. Whether it's yellow or orange has no effect on the stats it gives, only the level and the number of different stats on it. The cheaper IO sets you can even get for like 500k each; these probably don't have great set bonuses but you can get multiple stats on one enhancement, which as mentioned is more efficient, and you can get them attuned so they level with you (up to their level cap, anyway, which may only be 25 or 30 for cheaper sets). As you reach higher levels, or just feel like you know enough and have the inclination to sit down and do it, you can put together a full set with mids, targeting your goals and set bonuses and such, then work toward what you've planned. Fully planned set IO builds are leaps and bounds ahead of a regular crafted IO or SO setup. And again, if you know what you want, or a little of what you want, and you have the inf, you can start in on this at fairly low levels if you want to, and once you get into the 20-30 range there's not much you can't slot.

I don't think it's necessarily an issue. The game shouldn't need to be balanced around SOs or IOs at all. You should be able to set your difficulty to what you can handle, and the better your build, team, etc, the higher you set it. This adjustable difficulty is core to making a game where no one really cares about game balance. You don't need a balanced game in the first place if anyone can run at an appropriate difficulty for their situation. The larger problem is this system is failing when the default becomes +4x8 and even that is still too easy. I'm not sure if allowing a higher level adjustment would fix the issue, or if fully optimized builds break the game mechanics entirely in ways that adding levels can't adequately resolve. But if there is any real answer to the question of how the game should be balanced, I think we need to take a look at the difficulty system, something that should prevent us from even asking that question in the first place, and evaluate why it's failing to do so.

It seems like the problem this change is trying to solve is that slow snipes aren't great, and the mechanic for getting them to fast snipes is a little strange and non-obvious. I think this is a reasonable thing to try to address. However, fast snipes are fine and enjoyable for players as they are. They work well and aren't overperforming, and the reason this is getting so much pushback is because they are being nerfed as a side effect of buffing something else. But if fast snipes aren't overperforming, there's no reason to nerf them. A more direct solution would just be to buff slow snipes without touching existing fast snipes. One obvious way of doing this is just removing slow snipes from the game and making all snipes fast always, and then repurposing the To-Hit requirement to do something else instead, maybe on a sliding scale to make it less dependent on high-level buildcraft. Another drop-in solution would just be to make the speed scale down with your To-Hit rather than being a hard breakpoint, with an extra jump upon hitting the threshold. That way, the goal of crafting builds to meet that threshold remains, but snipes become more broadly usable for builds that don't meet it. The use of slow snipes as a high damage combat opener is an interesting idea, and I do think it's worth considering, but I also think that's a separate change that should be considered on its own merits separately from solving the problem of "snipes aren't very good if you don't have enough To-Hit".

Assuming that you continue to get the exact same amount of exp at each level (I'm not super experienced with the game, but I don't think that's true, and getting more exp as you gain levels would just make the change less notable), the DFB change means: Getting to level 12 will take ~1% longer than before. This is negligible. Getting to level 15 will take ~7% longer than before. Not completely negligible, but won't make any practical difference. Getting to level 18 will take ~20% longer than before. Will make a practical difference, but not a significant one. Getting to level 20 will take ~42% longer than before. Getting to level 22 will take ~61% longer than before. DFB hasn't been removed from the game, and people using DFB to level to level 15-18 shouldn't really notice a huge difference. That's around the point where you may want to start looking for other ways to quickly level, of which there are plenty. You can also just keep running DFB if you want, it still gives exp (and if you already have a group that wants to run it more, you still save the time it takes to form a group for something else). For anyone not so great with numbers, here are inverted percentages as an indicator of "how big the nerf is overall" relative to the initial graph which goes level by level. Level 12: 1.5% nerf Level 15: 6.5% nerf Level 18: 17% nerf Level 20: 30% nerf Level 22: 38% nerf