Let My Invention Sets G(r)o(w ... to Level 30)!

[Redlynne]

There are a number of Invention Sets that are ... how should I put it (politely?) ... GIMPED BY DESIGN.

I am referring specifically to the Invention Sets that cap out at a lower Level than 30.

 

According to Paragon Wiki these sets are:

 

Melee Damage

• Bonesnap (10-25)
• Pulverizing Fisticuffs (10-25)

Ranged Damage

• Far Strike (10-25)
• Salvo (10-25)

Knockback

• Volley of Velocity (10-20)
• Explosive Strike (10-20)

Taunt

• Annoyance (10-20)
• Triumphant Insult (10-20)

Defense Debuff

• Exploited Vulnerability (10-20)
• Achilles' Heel (10-20)

Endurance Modification

• Adrenal Adjustment (10-20)
• Energy Manipulator (10-20)

ToHit Buff

• Encouraged Accuracy (10-20)
• Rectified Reticle (10-20)

ToHit Debuff

• Discouraging Words (10-20)
• Deflated Ego (10-20)

 

Because none of these sets is "allowed" ... by design(!) ... to reach as high as Level 30, and thus "SO strength" enhancement values for their pieces, all of these sets are rendered WORTHLESS for slotting as sets.  At best, a proc can be harvested from the sets that have one, while the rest of the set NEVER GETS USED.  I'm reasonably certain that if the Level 40+ PCs were datamined, the number of characters slotted with any part of these sets that isn't a proc would fall under the rubric of Limit --> 0 for those of us who have encountered calculus in our lifetimes.

 

There is simply NEVER a "useful" case to be made for using any of these sets AS SETS to be slotted, simply because they're underpowered BY DESIGN thanks to the Level Cap of 20/25 placed on these enhamcements.  Let's not mince words here ... THIS IS JUST DUMB ... plain and simple.

 

 

 

So what do I recommend as a remedy?

 

Change the upper boundary limit on Levels to be minimum 30 for ALL invention sets.

Change the 10-25 sets to instead be 10-30.

Change the 10-20 sets to instead be 10-30.

DONE.

It's really that simple.

Modify the Level bounding parameter(s) on 16 invention sets, so as to allow them to reach "SO grade" enhancement strength on their non-proc enhancements.  If they stopped being GIMPED BY DESIGN then people might be inclined to start using them (heresy, I know).

 

For example ... Far Strike and Salvo are the ONLY ranged set IOs to feature actual Range enhancement within their sets(!).  All other Ranged Damage sets feature no Range enhancement in their sets whatsoever.  But because these sets are limited to Level 25, they will always provide a "substandard enhancement value yield" at all times relative to other options, effectively making these sets "worthless" ... even for frankenslotting.

 

 

 

I presume that the original design plan at Cryptic, when Positron was designing the Invention System, was to have a sort of "gear progression" going on with the invention sets ... meaning you start with the lowbie/weak stuff and then replace them with stronger/more powerful sets over time ... which makes sense in the context of 2006 when looking at the item progression towards BiS (Best in Slot) itemization that was the motivating factor behind playing World of Warcraft's endgame raids.  The problem is ... this idea DOESN'T WORK in a City of Heroes context where inventions don't need to be replaced every 5 Levels like TOs, DOs and SOs do, because the inventions are designed to be "forever" enhancements.  Once you craft it and slot it, it's good forever.

 

The only other context that I can imagine applying here is that these sets would make sense for someone who liked to Exemplar a lot (as in, ALL the time they were playing) and wanted to use sets that wouldn't lose their bonuses ... but even that doesn't make any sense since the set bonuses are Gimped By Design too, offering wimptacular bonuses that no one is (ever?) going to consider worth the effort of even crafting any of these IOs, let alone using them in a build (unless it's a proc, which is a completely different value set).

 

In other words, this looks like a result of a poor design decision by Positron VERY early in the process of creating the invention system that just simply never got revisited (because, seriously, who cares about these worthless sets, right? for a touch up later.  Given the demands of wanting/needing to craft just the Common IOs in the 10-25 Levels, "wasting" useful salvage on the IOs for these sets makes next to no sense whatsoever (except for the procs, which are useful when frankenslotted so as to jettison the remaining balance of their host set).

 

 

 

Anyway, something to think about as being a low hanging fruit that would be easy (presumably) to update.

[PaxArcana]

2 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

"SO strength" enhancement values

Common IOs give teh same bonus as a +3 SO at level 26.  At level 25, the difference is so negligible that it can be ignored.

 

A +3 SO, or a Level 26 Common IO, provides 33.3% enhancement; a Level 25 Common IO provides 32.0% enhancement.

[Vanden]

7 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

Common IOs give teh same bonus as a +3 SO at level 26.  At level 25, the difference is so negligible that it can be ignored.

 

A +3 SO, or a Level 26 Common IO, provides 33.3% enhancement; a Level 25 Common IO provides 32.0% enhancement.

A +3 SO gives 38.3, not 33.3 33.3 is an even-level SO. IOs don't reach +3 SO strength until 39 or 40. (39's a little under, 40 a little over).

 

As for the suggestion, it seems alright, although I still don't think it's going to improve the use rate of those sets much. The set bonuses tend to be very weak, giving mostly Tiny and Small-level bonuses.

Edited September 26, 2019 by Vanden

[TheAdjustor]

I like it but I would have  all sets  go from 10-50 and just call it a day.

[Lost Ninja]

2 hours ago, TheAdjustor said:

I like it but I would have  all sets  go from 10-50 and just call it a day.

Too many sets already, remove all the low level ones entirely (if there are procs (like Steadfast & Karma) move them into a different set) and make all the current 30-50 sets extend down to 10 instead.

[PaxArcana]

7 hours ago, Vanden said:

A +3 SO gives 38.3, not 33.3 33.3 is an even-level SO. IOs don't reach +3 SO strength until 39 or 40. (39's a little under, 40 a little over).

 

As for the suggestion, it seems alright, although I still don't think it's going to improve the use rate of those sets much. The set bonuses tend to be very weak, giving mostly Tiny and Small-level bonuses.

Mea Culpa; you are entirely correct.

 

However, that would mean that you would need those IOs to be much higher than level 30, to keep pace with "just SOs".

 

A Level 39 Common IO (schedule A) gives 38.2%; a Level 40 gives 38.6%

[Redlynne]

10 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

However, that would mean that you would need those IOs to be much higher than level 30, to keep pace with "just SOs".

Level 30 is adequate for reaching Level 27 slotting which allows "SO strength" enhancement values to be in effect when Exemplared down to Level 24.

Not at +3 SO strength, granted ... but I wasn't getting greedy with my request.  ^_~

[PaxArcana]

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy if all sets were 10-50, just for the simplicity of it.

 

And normalize the set bonusses, too, of course.

[DR_Mechano]

1 minute ago, PaxArcana said:

Personally, I'd be perfectly happy if all sets were 10-50, just for the simplicity of it.

 

And normalize the set bonusses, too, of course.

This, never understood the point of certain sets not going all the way to 50.

[PaxArcana]

1 minute ago, DR_Mechano said:

This, never understood the point of certain sets not going all the way to 50.

Levelling used to take longer.  There was no DFB, no DiB, no AE.

 

And I think those lower-level sets were intended to be used when IOs of those levels were appropriate.

 

...

 

Which is damned stupid, if you think about it.  The odds of completing any one of them, without massive use of the Auction Hall (and, massive bankrolling by a sugar-daddy alt) are so low as to be indistinguishable from zero ... which is why most people back then decided "screw those sets, I'll just use Commons until I get the GOOD sets!"

[DR_Mechano]

Not to mention most of them are only 4 or 3 sets, sometimes 5 if you're lucky with set bonuses that seem rather...meh... Out of the low level melee sets only Kinetic Combat offers any really decent bonuses. And it seems like Steadfast protection was designed entirely to be broken apart and never used as a full set.

[Zepp]

Let sets cap out at 50. Most of the set bonuses are lower than the higher level sets, so they are already weaker by design. There are, however, some situations where one might wish to slot the proc(s) and one more from the set. This is generally a bad idea for sets like Steadfast Protection, whose Three Slot bonus is reasonable, but slotting a level 30 end/res is not so hot. Or if someone wants the bonus damage from the Achilles two slot...

[carroto]

As has already been stated, the set bonuses tend to be so weak on those that is it really a problem that they don't go to 30 or beyond?  Is anyone really going to start slotting them if they do?  They're only use is for low-level frankenslotting and I doubt that extending them will change that.

 

However what it will do is increase  the amount of worthless garbage in the higher range drop pools.  People often set a lower bound on their random recipe rolls of 30 or higher because they want to exclude those worthless lower-level sets.  This change would further clutter up a range that already has a lot of stuff no one wants.

 

I would go a different direction to make those sets more useful.  Change their salvage requirements.  They are for low-level characters, but many of them require rare salvage.  Back on live when most low-level rare salvage could be had on the AH for 5-6K, that wasn't a big deal.  But now that everything is unified, a low-level character has to come up with half a million inf to craft a single IO.  That puts them out of reach for anyone not twinking with a higher level alt.

[Replacement]

1 hour ago, PaxArcana said:

Which is damned stupid, if you think about it.  The odds of completing any one of them, without massive use of the Auction Hall (and, massive bankrolling by a sugar-daddy alt) are so low as to be indistinguishable from zero ... which is why most people back then decided "screw those sets, I'll just use Commons until I get the GOOD sets!"

I remember when IOs launched, we didn't bother with these lowby IOs even then.  It felt like a trap to pull together all that salvage and recipes and have a build that was DO-power.  

 

I mean, sure, the level 25s are SO-ish, but by then, you have better sets to choose from.

[EyeLuvBooks]

When Crafting launched I argued that having some sets that literally sucked compared to others was dumb and unnecessary. The most common response that I got was 'There will always be some sets that are not as good.'

 

Um...why? IMHO there is ZERO reason why you can't have 4 and 5 piece sets, all of which are good but just make them good at different things.

 

1) Melee set that improves Recharge, Defense and Damage with some kind of proc.

2) Melee set that improves Recharge, RESISTANCE and Damage with a different kind of proc.

 

Etc etc

 

Now ALL of the sets are more or less equally desirable depending on whether you have a Defense or Resistance (and go into Regen?) character.

 

However, now we're way past this point IMHO. I think if we simply enable the smaller (4 piece) sets to go to lvl 40 and the larger sets to go to 50 I'd be happy with it. Should they likely be rebalanced so that we can please stop having 4 sets that are great and 12 that are junk? Sure but as the OP said it doesn't help to be too greedy with requests.

[Zepp]

9 hours ago, carroto said:

As has already been stated, the set bonuses tend to be so weak on those that is it really a problem that they don't go to 30 or beyond?  Is anyone really going to start slotting them if they do?  They're only use is for low-level frankenslotting and I doubt that extending them will change that.

A weak set bonus is better than no set bonus. It should be better to two-slot Achilles than to slot the Achilles proc and another non-Achilles IO.

[Purrfekshawn]

l would be glad to have ALL the available sets' max level increased to lvl 50. That would give SO much extra options without any losses to efficiency. It's a pity it's likely not going to happen 😥

[WumpusRat]

I'm pretty sure you can get 50th level versions of the lowbie sets on pineapple. I'll have to double-check when I'm home tonight to see if the values are the same as other 50th level sets, but I'm 99% sure that I've given myself like 50th level version of sets like steadfast protection, kinetic combat, etc.

[RikOz]

This level capping on IO sets, combined with a lack of obvious in-game information, led to me mistakenly downgrading one of my characters yesterday.

 

I can't remember the "yellow" set name offhand, but my character was level 45, and I wanted to start replacing that "yellow" set with an "orange" set. I had found a recipe for one part of what appeared to be a suitable "orange" replacement: the Damage/Recharge piece of Decimation. I crafted the IO as a level 40, and slotted it in place of the Damage/Recharge piece of the the "yellow" set already slotted. That yellow IO was level 41. I then applied a catalyst to the new piece to attune it, expecting that now it would scale to level 45. Oh, no it didn't. Only now did I find out, in the Attunement text that only appeared after applying the catalyst, "This IO scales to level 40".

 

Well that's just great. I spent 500k on the rare salvage I needed, then spent 20 Merit Rewards to buy the catalyst, to downgrade an IO.