Instant Improvements: A Cheat Sheet for IO Enhancements

[Gulbasaur]

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There are a few invention origin enhancements that give you an instant boost to a stat, or add a special effect to an attack. Even if you're not super-mega-tricked out with IOs at level 50, there are a lot that add a lot to your build, starting at about level 10. 

 

Always buy them attuned from Wentworths/The Black Market/The Trading Post - You can access this by typing /ah in most outdoor areas, and in Pocket D. The reason for this is that they scale with your level, meaning you only need to buy them once. Most are a few million inf.

 

The IOs have a bonus that affects you - if you add Steadfast Protection into a power that gives allies more resistance, they won't get the +3% defence from it, only you. There are a small number that specifically only affects your pets, but they are very clearly labelled.

 

IOs also have a level limit, normally between 10 and 30. If you go three levels below the level of the enhancement, the bonus shuts off. 

 

How do I get a few million inf?

Here is a guide. Here is another. Others exist. If you run story arcs or task/strike forces you get reward merits. You can go to a merit vendor and buy stuff through it. Generally, for a bit of cheap cash you can buy enhancement converters and sell them on the auction house, but if you're really clever you can craft cheap enhancements and convert them into ones that sell for a better price. You might not be super-rich, but you'll have enough to afford what you need as you're levelling. 

 

Stacking effects

Generally speaking, you can't have more than five of the same effect from an enhancement bonus. If you use 10 Luck of the Gambler +recharge enhancements, you won't get all 10 bonuses - only the first five count.

 

Some enhancements are unique, meaning you can only have one of them.

 

Survival

The Fighting power pool gives you access to Tough, which takes resistance slots. Combat Jumping, Hover, Stealth, Grant Invisibility and Afterburner all take defence slots. Health can take Healing slots and it is usually better value to put procs in Health than Healing enhancements, in my opinion.

• Steadfast Protection (cheap) Damage Resistance Slot +3% defence

• Gladiator's Armour (expensive) Damage Resistance Slot +3% defence 

• Unbreakable Guard Damage Resistance Slot +7.5% hit points

• Reactive Defences Defence Slot +3-13% scaling damage resistance this gets higher as you lose hit points

• Shield Wall Defence Slot 5% damage resistance

• Preventative Medicine Healing Slot Chance for Absorb shield the chance increases as you lose hit points

• Panacea Healing Slot Chance for small (5%?) heal this also does the same for endurance and is worth taking for that reason alone

• Power Transfer Endurance Modification Slot Chance for small (5%?) heal this isn't unique but only one will actually trigger at a time

 

Put in as many as you can fit into your build. 6% defence is better than it sounds. The two resistance bonuses mean you'll be taking between 8 and 18% less damage from (almost) all sources. The Preventative Medicine proc is sort of an emergency shield and has saved my skin more times than I can count.

 

Additional ones dealing specifically with psionic damage (mainly useful if you're tanking):

• Impervium Armor Damage Resistance Slot +6% Psi resistance - not unique, you can have 5 of them

• Aegis Damage Resistance Slot +3% Psi resistance - unique, you can only have 1

 

Status effect resistance helps you recover from holds, sleeps etc slightly sooner but they do not prevent them from happening:

• Impervious Skin Damage Resistance Slot +7.5%
• Aegis Damage Resistance Slot +20%

 

There are also several +Stealth enhancements. I recommend the Celerity one, slotted into Sprint - it turns it into a low-grade stealth power which is good for travelling round unmolested.

 

Additionally, there are three knockback protection enhancements in the Karma, Blessing of the Zephyr and Steadfast Protection sets. One is probably enough for most builds - Hover can also mitigate knockback to a large extent. 

 

There are several other "chance to heal" and a couple of "chance for absorb" procs... the heal is only around 5%, but the absorb is about 15. I don't regret putting the absorb proc in my hold power, but it's also something I could live without. 

 

It's also worth going for the accolade passive bonuses which can give you 15% extra hit points. With those and Unbreakable Guard, you've got yourself +22.5% hit points, which is pretty notable. Increasing your total hit points also increases your regeneration and the size of absorb shields etc.

 

There are a number of enhancements that increase your health regeneration... I'm slightly apprehensive to recommend these as they have a much more significant impact on archetypes that don't have problems surviving, but Regenerative Tissue gives you 25% Regeneration, which the highest you can get from a single IO. This will help you recover between fights a bit faster and stay upright in longer fights, but probably isn't enough to keep you from dropping without other methods of protecting yourself. 

 

Recharge

This is global recharge - it makes almost all your powers recharge faster. For reference, Hasten gives you +70% recharge.

• Luck of the Gambler Defence Slot +7.5% recharge  - you can have up to five of these, giving you a +32.5% recharge bonus as well as enhancing defence. If you have any defence powers, this is a very good use of a slot. There are a number of "one-slot wonder" pool powers like Grant Invisibility and Combat Jumping that you can take late in levelling just to use one of these enhancements if recharge is your goal.
• Force Feedback Knockback Slot Chance for +100% recharge for 5 seconds - if you have a lot of knockback powers, this can help keep your recharge generally quite high. For Kheldians, energy blasters, force field controllers, fortunatas etc, this can be quite noticeable. AoE powers are a good candidate for this - you only need it to proc on one enemy to get the effect.

 

Endurance

As a general rule: put an endurance reduction enhancement into the three attacks you use most often. Even if you run a lot of toggles, you might be better slotting your attacks for EndRed because of how often you use them than just doing the toggles.

• Panacea Healing Slot Chance for small (5%?) endurance boost.  

• Miracle Healing Slot +15% endurance recovery.

• Numina's Convalescence Healing Slot +10% endurance recovery. 

• Performance Shifter Endurance Modification Slot Chance for 7.5% endurance boost. 

You can put the Healing ones in Health and Performance Shifter in Stamina. Panacea and Performance Shifter are the best value mathematically. All four are more powerful than standard IOs under most circumstances.

 

The accolade bonuses, mentioned above, can give you an extra 10% endurance. This also effectively improves endurance recovery by 10%.

 

Damage and Extra Effects

There are a few Chance for Build Up procs, which give you a damage and ToHit bonus for five seconds. Gaussian's is the only one I'd bother with - I'd usually put it in Build Up to make it even more build-uppy, but if you team a lot or are a Mastermind or Crab Spider you can slot it into Tactics as having more teammates including pets means it'll go off more often (it checks each person affected by Tactics separately, so more teammates = more Build Up procs) and you can kind of treat it like a critical hit mechanic. I have it in Build Up on my Stalker and Tactics on my Widow.

 

There are a variety of damage procs you can put into your powers. These are a chance to do a set amount of additional damage. I'm not going to list them all, because you can look them up on the auction house and there are a lot of them. Check what enhancement sets a power can take on the enhancement screen and then use the filters to find a proc that suits your power. They generally start at level 10 for ATOs, 20 for control powers and 30 for attacks. 

 

Some general advice:

• Generally speaking, a power that does very low damage is a good candidate for a proc as you'll get more bang for your buck than you would adding another damage enhancement. If it does very low damage, adding an enhancement is still only enhancing a very small number, but a proc will add a flat amount of damage. 
• You can add it to some powers that do no damage, turning them into a weak attack. 
• It's also a way of sneaking round the diminishing returns of multiple enhancements, so you can add even more damage to an already very high damage attack. 
• AoEs have a lower chance for it to trigger on each enemy to compensate for the fact that it hits a lot of targets.
• If you put a proc in a power with a slow recharge, it's almost guaranteed to go off, which is a good way of adding damage to things like nuke attacks or AoE holds with long cooldowns. 
• Some pets can take procs, although they scale a bit weirdly for MM pets. As pet builds tend to be tight, I'd read a more detailed guide before dropping 10 million on procs for pets.

 

There are also procs for status effects like hold and disorient, but they tend to be low magnitude, meaning they won't actually hold (or disorient) anything that's worth the effort. The Lockdown set has a +2 Mag Hold proc for 8 seconds, meaning you can upgrade a weaker hold power, albeit randomly. You won't be hitting Dominator levels of control, though. 

 

Contagious Confusion has a chance to confuse a fairly high number of targets within a fairly high radius without drawing aggro. It is quite expensive, but if you're feeling rich it's worth getting. I actually wish there were more procs like this - it's so unique.

 

Sudden Acceleration has an enhancement that converts knockback to knockdown, which can turn annoying powers like Gale or Bonfire into very powerful control powers. The (expensive) Ragnarok set has a Chance for Knockdown proc that you can put into a power like Caltrops, which can make it into a more useful control power. 

 

Pets

There are several enhancements that add to the survivability and utility of your pets - note that they affect your pets, not you. Masterminds will get the most use out of them, but certain other builds (crab spiders etc) may also see a lot of benefit. 

 

These create an aura around the player in a 20 foot aura, so keep your pets close: 

• Edict of the Master, Call to Arms and (Superior) Command of the Mastermind (MM's only) add 5% pet defence 

• Sovereign Right, Expedient Reinforcement and (Superior) Mark of Supremacy (MM's only) add 10% pet damage resistance (not psionics)

 

Smaller bonuses (probably not worth it unless you have slots to spare):

• Soulbound Allegiance Pet Damage adds a chance for your pet to get a Build Up effect
• Commanding Presence Pet Damage resist taunts/placates

 

Be warned, though, slotting for pets is often tight so you may want to think carefully about these. Try not to lose too much damage at the expense of survivability.

 

Archetype Origin Enhancements

Each archetype has two sets of enhancements unique to them, and each of those sets has one enhancement with a special effect.

 

You can take them all at level 10 and then upgrade them at level 50. In most cases, they slot into an attack, although Masterminds have to put them in pets. Unless specified, they only trigger when the attack they're slotted into is used. 

 

Some are very, very good, some are nice but you can skip them until much later. The set bonuses for the ATOs are almost always very good, so definitely think about them later on. 

 

The following are noteworthy:

• Both Stalker ATOs are very powerful. Slot the Chance to Hide one in Assassin's Strike for double criticals and the Chance to Recharge Build Up anywhere it fits, then put Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control Chance for Build Up in Build Up itself for double build up a few times a minute. Get them as soon as you can afford them.
• The Form Empowerment one for Kheldians is a flat upgrade - get it when you can afford it. The other one you can leave until later. 
• The Scrapper and Brute ones are a flat upgrade - get them when you can afford them.
• The Defender, Blaster and Corruptor ones are handy.
• The Soldiers of Arachnos fear proc works well in an AoE. Their toxic damage works like a global proc - it can go off in any damage power. Get the toxic damage one as soon as you can afford it. Get the fear proc one eventually and put it into an AoE attack for some damage mitigation.
• Controllers have an energy font and Dominators have a fiery orb, which are small, short-duration pets that lots of people find underwhelming. Apparently they work best in AoE status effect powers.
• Tankers with lots of resistance can probably skip the Chance for Res one, although the Absorb one is pretty good for anyone. Defence-based tankers should take both. 

 

If, like me, you left Live before the IO system came into full force, you might think "fizzle this shizzle, it's all too complicated" - it's not that bad, and hopefully this will help you get started. Any questions, please @ me and I'll try to help.

 

 

Thanks to Veelectric Boogaloo for pointing out the Mez resistence and regen IOs and Erydanus for the specifics of the Stalker ATO. 

Edited December 26, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Shred Monkey]

I saved this on my file of things I need to remember on each toon.   Good write up.

 

One question... you said there are "a few Chance for Build Up procs,"   I only know of the Gaussian's.  Are there others?

[Yomo Kimyata]

Another way to make a few million inf.  It says so in the title!  Working on the sequel now.

[Gulbasaur]

2 hours ago, Shred Monkey said:

I saved this on my file of things I need to remember on each toon.   Good write up.

 

One question... you said there are "a few Chance for Build Up procs,"   I only know of the Gaussian's.  Are there others?

Ranged Damage has Decimation and Pet Damage has Soulbound Allegiance. I played a bit with the Decimation one and it procced so rarely I dropped it. If you've got a short and quick attack chain it might be worth it, but otherwise it's a bit underwhelming.

 

However, Tactics and the Gaussian proc have an unexpected synergy as it can proc off all your teammates, including any pets, every 10 seconds. This means that on a team of 8, it will proc about 50% of the time every 10 seconds, meaning you get nice little damage and ToHit boosts every now and again. If you have a mastermind with pets out, that goes up to about 85% chance for build up every 10 seconds, which is a nice little bonus. It's not amazing as +80% base damage isn't life-changing, but for a one-slot wonder it's pretty powerful on builds where you either have a lots of pets or expect a lot of teammates.  

 

I didn't want to list every proc there was, but this is a nice little bit of loophole abuse that it'd be a shame not to take advantage of if you run tactics.

[Erydanus]

Regarding the Stalker ATO chance for build up: this is a global and you can put it into any attack, not just one you use a lot. In fact AoEs have a very high chance of triggering it, I've found.

 

Secondly if you happen to have Aim or Build Up but don't happen to be running tactics, especially with a big team; like, say you're a stalker who soloes, it turns out the Gaussian proc fires off at a very high rate off of these kinds of powers; its probably around 66% chance. Which means that there's a very decent chance you'll fire off build up and get Double Build up. 

 

Finally a note about the energy font power. This one was a little tricky to get a grip on and has a low proc rate and are really only likely to trigger very occasionally on most single target attacks. However, it seems to work well in AoE immobilizes as they're slightly slower recharge and they hit a lot of targets. The pets have about 500 hit points and emanate a small AoE stun field. I've seen one of them shut down 3 even level council minions at the same time for about 8 seconds. For some controllers this is greatly helpful, and others, not so much. It really depends on your exact build and play style.

[Gulbasaur]

56 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

Regarding the Stalker ATO chance for build up: this is a global and you can put it into any attack, not just one you use a lot. In fact AoEs have a very high chance of triggering it, I've found.

 

Thanks, I thought this was the case but I couldn't remember. Have updated it above. 

 

56 minutes ago, Erydanus said:

Secondly if you happen to have Aim or Build Up but don't happen to be running tactics, especially with a big team; like, say you're a stalker who soloes, it turns out the Gaussian proc fires off at a very high rate off of these kinds of powers; its probably around 66% chance. Which means that there's a very decent chance you'll fire off build up and get Double Build up. 

Yeah, that one proc has two weird synergies. Double Build Up is great, and the stalker loophole makes it fairly ridiculous as you can reliable stack it on crits, but the tactics one is also counter-intuitive in how it works, but in a good way. It has very good single-slot value. 

 

I've seen reports that the +100% recharge proc in some pseudo-pet powers that do knockback over time goes often pretty much continually, as another weird interaction. I can't find the thread now that it came up in originally. 

 

I'm sure there are other procs where you can circumvent a mechanic with another mechanic, but those two proc bonuses specifically are worth knowing about. 

Edited November 12, 2019 by Gulbasaur

[Machariel]

On 11/5/2019 at 5:06 PM, Gulbasaur said:

Ranged Damage has Decimation and Pet Damage has Soulbound Allegiance. I played a bit with the Decimation one and it procced so rarely I dropped it. If you've got a short and quick attack chain it might be worth it, but otherwise it's a bit underwhelming.

I really like the Decimation proc in, specifically, Dominator snipes.  Good writeup overall!  I should also point out that the status resistance IOs are pretty meh due to the way status resistance works - 100% resistance will cut the duration of a mez in half, so a 20% resistance is. . .. pretty meh and IMO not worth the slot.

[Troo]

Excellent post.

[Gulbasaur]

Updated with Power Transfer and other small bits.

Edited November 17, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Warmagon]

On 11/5/2019 at 9:18 AM, Gulbasaur said:

• Performance Shifter Endurance Modification Slot Chance for 7.5% endurance boost. 

You can put the Healing ones in Health and Performance Shifter in Stamina. Panacea and Performance Shifter are the best value mathematically. All four are more powerful than standard IOs under most circumstances.

You can put a proc like that in Stamina or Health and it will just go off?  Wow, I thought they had to be in something you turn on or otherwise use.

[Mageman]

On 11/5/2019 at 7:18 AM, Gulbasaur said:

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Archetype Origin Enhancements

Each archetype has two sets of enhancements unique to them, and each of those sets has one enhancement with a special effect.

 

You can take them all at level 10 and then upgrade them at level 50. In most cases, they slot into an attack, although Masterminds have to put them in pets. Unless specified, they only trigger when the attack they're slotted into is used.

How do you upgrade them? For example: Brute's Fury - how do you upgrade it to Superior Brute's Fury. I thought you have to swap it out.

[Gulbasaur]

5 hours ago, Mageman said:

How do you upgrade them? For example: Brute's Fury - how do you upgrade it to Superior Brute's Fury. I thought you have to swap it out.

Use an enhancement catalyst. You do it the same way you combine enhancements. Click on the enhancement and it'll open a new screen, giving you the option to use the catalyst.

On 12/23/2020 at 5:25 PM, Warmagon said:

You can put a proc like that in Stamina or Health and it will just go off?  Wow, I thought they had to be in something you turn on or otherwise use.

Yes - if it's a power that's always on, I think it has a chance to proc every 10 seconds.

 

@Warmagontagging you because I originally didn't see your question and I'm not sure if you get an alert from an edited post.

Edited December 26, 2020 by Gulbasaur

[Zandishere]

On 11/5/2019 at 10:18 AM, Gulbasaur said:

There are also procs for status effects like hold and disorient, but they tend to be low magnitude, meaning they won't actually hold (or disorient) anything that's worth the effort. The Lockdown set has a +2 Mag Hold proc for 8 seconds, meaning you can upgrade a weaker hold power, albeit randomly. You won't be hitting Dominator levels of control, though. 

As a Controller player, I would just like to point out that this +2 stacks with whatever Mag is already applied. So if you put it on a +4 Mag hold, you get 8 seconds of +6 --or if there was already another effect like immobilize or sleep (even from other players or pets) it stacks. If you put these on two different powers, they can stack with each other as well. Plunk down the 2 or 3 slots in the Controller Archtype sets to get bonus to all holds/sleep/immob... and consider what that gets you. And even if it doesn't effect the boss when it goes off, that is 8 seconds where another effect may add enough Magnitude to lock him down --every second he isn't attacking is one where you are. It also has a nice visual effect I love. Everyone loves a good locked down set of targets for their big AOE.

 

 

[brasilgringo]

Great post, thanks for doing this.  A couple things I've heard (for confirmation).

 

The Preventive Medicine + Absorb proc will trigger even if it's not in an auto-power but slotted in a regular power, without that power having to be used, like for example the first power of the Sorcery pool that can buff others. If true (and I think it is), it is useful for one-slot powers that take Heal IOs that you normally wouldn't go out of your way to slot even with a regular Heal IO.

 

The Gaussian Build-Up proc apparently can be slotted into the /Invuln power (Invincibility?) on Scrappers and maybe tanks that takes +to hit IOs and scales with mobs around you, which apparently also scales its chances to fire.  As Stalkers don't get scaling-with-mobs chances on this power, it doesn't work for /Invuln on Stalkers.

 

Credit to @Sir Myshkin that slotting the Decimation build-up proc into Lightning Storm on a /Stormie can proc a lot (almost every time) when you first summon Lightning Storm - and since that proc affect you the summoner, it gives you 5 secs of build-up to use your nuke or other powers after summoning.  Good times.

Edited January 13, 2021 by brasilgringo

[NihilXAOS]

As a note, I find the minor holds, though they don't last long, can be wonderful in mitigating scrapper-lock. It holds minions long enough to finish them before they run off.

[Gulbasaur]

On 1/21/2021 at 8:19 PM, NihilXAOS said:

As a note, I find the minor holds, though they don't last long, can be wonderful in mitigating scrapper-lock. It holds minions long enough to finish them before they run off.

Truth!

 

"I'll deal with you in a minute" is a useful trick to have up your sleeve.