Metabolic Acceleration and Endurance Reduction enhancment

[cohRock]

The Atomic Manipulation power Metabolic Acceleration says it will take an endurance reduction enhancement, but the toggle appears to use no endurance.  The Info on the power does not show endurance cost.  Looking at the character attributes tab (accessed above Powers; not sure of actual name), the endurance usage does not change regardless of whether the toggle is on or not.  Is this just a bug, or is there some use to putting an endurance reduction enhancement in it?

[Nemu]

There is no need to put end reduction in it. It's your recovery/regen sustain toggle and most people slot it with either heal or end mod enhancements, or both.

[cohRock]

@Nemu thank you.  Any reason not to 6-slot, with 3 end mod and 3 healing?

[Nemu]

Good question. You will need to look at the numbers and decide for yourself how many slots you want to throw into it. Most blaster sustains except for drain psyche and energize offer the same regen/recovery bonuses so this is a comment on those collectively.

 

Let's look at the regen portion first, because people tend to get hung up on healing and prioritize that over any other attribute if a power has a heal component.

 

At level 50 with no slotting at all, you can achieve anywhere between 22-28 HP  ball park regened per second with Metabolic Acceleration turned on, the actual numbers vary with how you choose to build your set bonuses and whether you have the extra HP accolades or not. If you 3 slot MA with heals to the ED CAP your regen bumps up to 30-35 HP regened per second. So on average 8-9 more HP regened per second. So you have to ask yourself in a tough fight is that extra 8-9 more HP gained per second really going to help you on an AT with relatively low HP and relatively low defenses (ignoring what you can achieve with IOs)? To put the nail in the coffin there are plenty of enemy powers that nullify your regeneration completely, so all that slotting and any regen set bonuses that you intentionally build for become useless in an instant.

 

Endurance on the other hand, everyone has end issues. MA unslotted will yield 1 extra end recovered per second and fully slotted can yield a bit over 2. That's pretty huge. No other ATs have this kind of free endurance sustain. These blaster sustains can make endurance a non-issue for a lot of blaster builds (not my fire/elec though lol). If it's not conventional wisdom that you should take these sustains at level 20 when they become available, it should be.

 

Finally let's throw in IOs and build goals into the mix. There are generally 2 schools with blaster builds, extreme recharge or defense. Extreme recharge builds will burn through endurance pretty fast because recharge, defense builds run a lot of toggle which also suck endurance. Defense builds also mean you get hit less, so in those cases where 1 in 20 attacks actually manage to land on you do you really need that extra 8-9 HP regened per second? In both cases if you had to prioritize slotting of MA I think the choice between heal and endmod becomes pretty clear.

 

I see the regen portion of the sustain as a nice side perk, the real winner with the sustains is the end recovery.

 

FYI I typically slot these toggle sustains with 6 piece pre-emptive optimization for the minor recharge bonus and most importantly, the ranged defense bonus at 6 slots. Because I typically build my blasters to thrive in melee and all of them have S/L/Ranged softcap. And I can tell you with authority that has far more impact on survival than squeezing 8-9 extra HP regened per second out of my sustain.

 

[srmalloy]

2 hours ago, cohRock said:

@Nemu thank you.  Any reason not to 6-slot, with 3 end mod and 3 healing?

From playing with my own builds, three level-50 common IOs will push you into ED, netting you +95.9% for either Healing or Endurance Modification. Replacing three level-50 IOs with two boosted 50+5 IOs will net you 91.9%, saving you two slots while only losing 4% increase, something that can be made up with set bonuses. Or you can go for a hybrid approach if you're not using a Numina Regen/Recovery IO elsewhere and slot it with two 50+5 End Mod IOs, one 50+5 Heal IO, the Numina Heal, and the Numina Regen/Recovery (both attuned). That gives you the Numina 2-piece set bonus of 12% Regeneration on top of the straight enhancement bonuses.

[Furiant]

Not to derail but I see this 'ED' term everywhere but never see it spelled out. Can someone please explain it?

[nihilii]

https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Enhancement_Diversification

 

Short version: the more you enhance a power for a particular aspect, the more you run into diminishing returns with that aspect.

 

This hits especially hard once you reach ~95% worth of enhancement.