macskull

This is true and it partially solves the problem, but the enhancement values themselves are still weak at those lower levels.

Hi again, it's me. I don't often start new threads but this has been floating around in my head for a few weeks since a random question about IO effectiveness got asked on Discord and I wanted to finally write things down. So, let's start off by asking a question: Why don't players like low-level IO sets? "But," you say, "I love low-level IOs, I use Explosive Strike and Steadfast Protection and Regenerative Tissue all the time!" And I'm sure you do, but you probably use them just for a proc or unique here or there but ignore the rest of the set most of the time. For purposes of this discussion, we're not talking about those procs or uniques because those have the same effectiveness regardless of what level they are or what level the character is. I assess there are two main reasons players tend to ignore lower-level IOs: The enhancements themselves are extremely weak at lower levels. The set bonuses aren't good compared to what's available at other levels. This post is mainly intended to address the first point, but I propose potential solutions to the second one as well. Onto the first point! Low-level IOs provide poor enhancement values: The above is a quote from Positron around Issue 9 when the invention system was added. It made sense considering the environment of the game at the time, but the TO/DO/SO paradigm hasn't been a thing on Homecoming in nearly three years, and even looking back all the way to the game pre-shutdown, leveling happened a lot faster in the last few years of the game's life than it did in 2007 when inventions were introduced. At any rate, TOs are essentially deprecated to the point of nonexistence on Homecoming, and SOs start dropping earlier (and are available at vendors essentially right away). While the original design intent for IOs was to keep strength parity with non-IO enhancements, that's no longer reflected in reality thanks to the enhancement rework in I27P1. Here's what IO enhancement values look like, both in numeric and visual form: Level Damage % increase from previous 10 11.70% N/A 15 19.20% 64% 20 25.60% 33% 25 32.00% 25% 30 34.80% 9% 35 36.70% 5% 40 38.60% 5% 45 40.50% 5% 50 42.40% 5% Notice anything weird there? Going from 10-15 is a massive increase, going from 15-20 is about half of that, it's a bit smaller from 20-25, and then it drops off a cliff around 30 and is consistent the rest of the way to 50. Here's another example, using Gladiator's Javelin: Acc/Dam (a level 10-50 set, so you get the full range of levels to compare against). Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous 10 7.30% N/A 20 16.00% 5.26% 30 21.80% 1.40% 40 24.10% 0.84% 11 8.30% 13.70% 21 16.80% 5.00% 31 22.00% 0.92% 41 24.40% 1.24% 12 9.40% 13.25% 22 17.60% 4.76% 32 22.30% 1.36% 42 24.60% 0.82% 13 10.40% 10.64% 23 18.40% 4.55% 33 22.40% 0.45% 43 24.80% 0.81% 14 11.20% 7.69% 24 19.20% 4.35% 34 22.70% 1.34% 44 25.10% 1.21% 15 12.00% 7.14% 25 20.00% 4.17% 35 22.90% 0.88% 45 25.30% 0.80% 16 12.80% 6.67% 26 20.80% 4.00% 36 23.20% 1.31% 46 25.60% 1.19% 17 13.60% 6.25% 27 21.10% 1.44% 37 23.40% 0.86% 47 25.80% 0.78% 18 14.40% 5.88% 28 21.30% 0.95% 38 23.60% 0.85% 48 26.00% 0.78% 19 15.20% 5.56% 29 21.50% 0.94% 39 23.90% 1.27% 49 26.20% 0.77% 50 26.50% 1.15% This example isn't quite as egregious, but it does point out exactly how little change there is in enhancement values once you pass level 26: a level 50 enhancement is only 25% stronger than a level 27 enhancement, which is a smaller relative change over twenty-three levels than you get going from level 10 to level 12 (a 28% strength boost). My proposal is simple: now that TOs are essentially nonexistent, don't measure lower-level IOs against them. Flatten the curve, so to speak, to eliminate that large drop-off in effectiveness that occurs as you go below level 27. For generic IOs, the new enhancement values would look like this: Level Damage % increase from previous 10 27.20% N/A 15 29.10% 7% 20 31.00% 7% 25 32.90% 6% 30 34.80% 6% 35 36.70% 5% 40 38.60% 5% 45 40.50% 5% 50 42.40% 5% Note the increase in effectiveness is still stronger at lower levels, but not significantly so, and the current conventional wisdom of "level 25 generic IOs are slightly weaker than an even-level SO while level 30 generic IOs are slightly stronger" doesn't change, but it does give people a reason to slot lower-level generic IOs without feeling like they're wasting that slot on a piddly 11.7% bonus. Now we compare that to our level 10-50 set acc/dam piece, mirroring the 27-50 pattern of a roughly 1% effectiveness increase per level: Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous Level Damage % increase from previous 10 17.60% N/A 20 19.60% 1.03% 30 21.80% 1.40% 40 24.10% 0.84% 11 17.80% 1.14% 21 19.80% 1.02% 31 22.00% 0.92% 41 24.40% 1.24% 12 18.00% 1.12% 22 20.10% 1.52% 32 22.30% 1.36% 42 24.60% 0.82% 13 18.20% 1.11% 23 20.30% 1.00% 33 22.40% 0.45% 43 24.80% 0.81% 14 18.40% 1.10% 24 20.50% 0.99% 34 22.70% 1.34% 44 25.10% 1.21% 15 18.60% 1.09% 25 20.70% 0.98% 35 22.90% 0.88% 45 25.30% 0.80% 16 18.80% 1.08% 26 20.90% 0.97% 36 23.20% 1.31% 46 25.60% 1.19% 17 19.00% 1.06% 27 21.10% 0.96% 37 23.40% 0.86% 47 25.80% 0.78% 18 19.20% 1.05% 28 21.30% 0.95% 38 23.60% 0.85% 48 26.00% 0.78% 19 19.40% 1.04% 29 21.50% 0.94% 39 23.90% 1.27% 49 26.20% 0.77% 50 26.50% 1.15% Again, the effectiveness increase is higher as level gets lower, but the abrupt drop-off in effectiveness is gone. This change doesn't suddenly make lower-level IOs powerful - they're still weaker than SOs until the mid-20s - but it does make slotting them worthwhile if you don't want to constantly pay to upgrade your SOs every few levels. Now, this still doesn't quite solve the problem with low-level IO sets, because even though those enhancements would now be more effective, we run into our second issue: set bonuses. Low-level IO set bonuses are weak. There's not much beating around the bush here. Whether lower-level sets were intended to be something you got while leveling and then replaced, or I don't know, there's not much logic behind the set bonuses being weaker because that just incentivizes players to either not slot them at all, or just replace them later, turning them into throwaways which sort of defeats the point of the IO system. I don't intend to give a solution to this issue here, merely offer a few suggestions as options: Get rid of the "tiny" category of set bonuses and make them all "small." Rework lower-level IO set bonuses to provide effects that lower-level characters with fewer slots need - recharge time, recovery, accuracy, and hit points are ideas that potentially come to mind. As an example, maybe a set provides 6.25% global recharge time with only two slots. That sounds like a lot but a lower level where slots are at a premium maybe that's exactly what that level 15 character needs. Yes, level 50 characters could also utilize this to get extra bonuses with fewer slots invested but the thought process here is the lower-level enhancement values would mean a need to decide between set bonuses and enhancement value. "But you could use boosters," you say, and that brings me to my final point... Something's gotta give. Enhancement boosters are really powerful. They've come up in dev discussions a few times as examples of things that were probably marginally okay when they were a cash shop item, but now everyone can get them very easily, and they're very powerful. You can boost an enhancement's effectiveness by 25%. In a real example, that means a level 30+5 provides enhancement values greater than a level 50 enhancement. In order to help keep things balanced with new, more powerful lower-level enhancements, the amount of bonus a single booster provides would be reduced from 5% to 3%, for a maximum boost of 15%. This means a 50+5 generic IO would provide 48.76% enhancement instead of the 53% it does now, which is a minimal impact but does at least somewhat address boosters (which, let's be real here, are going to get nerfed at some point).

Well darn, there goes my "incan a league full of Pain Dom characters with Enforced Morale queued up onto a trainer" plan.

One of the base buffs is a recovery increase. There's no corresponding regeneration increase though.

They become un-damage-able at some point, so it's not possible to defeat them.

You won't catch me without Super Speed + Combat Jumping on all my PvE builds (except maybe a Kin or Tac Arrow Blaster). Or my farmers where I don't need one and just use Infiltration on the off chance I have to move more than a few hundred yards. But... I'm already taking Hasten on everything, so Super Speed's a no-brainer. Combat Jumping is a great IO mule but it also gives movement control that you can't get anywhere else outside of a few specific powers I already mentioned, so that's going to get picked anyways too. Adding that ability to jump to moderate heights occasionally with Super Speed has helped with some of the lack of vertical movement, but there's still P2W and day job jet packs that cover the 5% of cases I can't get somewhere with SS+CJ. If I felt like mixing it up, I'd start taking the teleportation pool, but... sorry, I'm stuck in a pre-Fold Space world.

So... kind of. Blasters got a bunch of new secondaries post-shutdown but for the most part those were just taking existing powersets and mixing them together to get Blaster secondary sets. The stuff that really set Blasters over the top - higher HP cap, sustain powers, 80ft tier 3 blast range, fast snipe (with range bonus the other ATs don't get), crashless nukes... that stuff was all part of Issue 24 so the current dev team isn't really responsible for it. Ageless Radial partially solves that, as does teaming with a few other powersets like Shield, Dark Affinity, and Forcefields, but for the most part outside of specific mobs the need for DDR on a Blaster is kinda overrated.

The Scrapper is still going to do more damage in melee, but Blasters have strong melee attacks for a reason. At any rate, the Blaster is way more likely to get suddenly deleted from existence by stray mez or pulling aggro which I think balances out the damage potential.

If I wanted to ignore half my AT's potential I'd play a Sentinel.

I cannot believe I didn't know about this keyboard shortcut until I saw this post. I tend to run to my SG base to vendor enhancements, common recipes, and salvage between farming runs when I'm in the mood for that, and this saves me so much time.

Oi Enchantica, tudo bem?

Is this thread a troll thread? I'm not sure it isn't. Mind is a pretty solid Dominator primary despite the lack of a pet, but it's not anything to write home about on a Controller.

Burn is missing the upfront damage in PvP on all melee ATs and Sentinels. The DoT works normally. The Blaster version of Burn works correctly.

Saying it needs to be fixed implies something is broken. Now, don't get me wrong, I would love if Cold shields could be affected by Power Boost. It wouldn't affect me at all because I wouldn't respec any of my characters to get PB, but if a player chose to do it a set that's already S-tier would be... I dunno, S-plus-tier? Multiple posters in this thread (and the multitude of other threads linked earlier) have discussed why it is not possible for Cold shields to be boosted barring significant changes to the way the game is coded. OP's initial reason of wanting PB to work on Cold shields was that Force Fields has boostable defense (and why that's the case has been exhaustively discussed here and elsewhere) and Cold can't put out the same defense numbers but OP also overlooks that defense is... kinda Force Field's entire bag while Cold has a huge array of things and the defense is only a small part of that.

Did the leader have the mission set to regular rewards or Architect rewards?

It's not a bug. It's how the game handles damage and resistance, and "fixing" it wouldn't be possible without a lot of work that, quite frankly, isn't worth it.

Holy necro Batman. I've watched an Ice/Fire in action and Banana Man's 2.5-3 minute clear times are accurate but this whole thing is largely an exercise in academics now as page 5's changes to the way aggro works dramatically increase incoming damage and I'm not sure the Blaster in question will survive the extra damage anymore. Sure, you can still farm on a Blaster, but it's not faster or more efficient than a Brute or Tanker like it used to be.

The info window for Empyrean Merits incorrectly states they can be traded for Reward Merits.

facepalm That’s the same damn thing.

Neither is autohit. The power is autohit when you execute it but the power you execute just summons a pet that does the actual damage, and that portion is not autohit and has a base accuracy of 1.0x. You can verify this both in CoD and ingame by looking at pet hit rolls in combat logs (or by trying to hit a group of waaaaay higher level critters and watching as only a handful of the ticks actually land before you get sent to next Tuesday).

I mean, you would just damage yourself and not heal anything because that’s how Absorb Pain works.

I don't get this, Cold Dom is just as good a set when solo as it is on a team. Even if the shields were removed from the powerset and it only had 7 powers it would still be one of the best support sets in the game instead of just the best.

(The fun part is this was a level 50 Cyto but I had like 11 extra in storage so why not make it a nice even 53?)

Me being bored and people being wrong on the internet go together like chocolate and peanut butter.