[Guide Referal/Request] Power Slotting Optimization

[WanderingAries]

I'm not entirely sure what this would be called, so I'll go with the above. I also need to note that I'm not actively looking to mess with this, but I'd like something I can read back on later.

 

Essentially, I'm looking for a sort of guide that helps with choosing the "best" case for slotting on a per power basis (not a small request) as I'm notorious for slotting things more than necessary or with Enhancements that end up being pointless. Also, to minimize the headache, let's stick to Regular Single Origin based slotting as I'm more concerned about how effective the actual enhancements are. Sure, there's Mids, but that doesn't seem to help if you don't understand what's pointless or not.

 

I'll try for an example:

Midnight Grasp accepts Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction, Immobilization, Recharge Reduction, and To-Hit Debuff. Now, MY instinct is almost always to go with one of each for powers like this that have a large variety, give or take the amount of Endurance the power seems to take, but it may be that say Recharge Reduction could be pointless as some powers recharge super fast. Taking into account that I generally take triple slotted hasten as my Auto (or not if it doesn't matter), do we have a guide that covers something like this? If not, can we maybe get something that covers a power-by-power as a guide from somebody that understands the numbers very well?

 

Acknowledging that how many slots you allocate depends on the power choices and character focus, I still feel like there has to be a +/- baseline for most powers on what is useful/essential and what is optional/pointless in most cases. A guide like this would be pretty big and likely in a PDF format or split into individual powerset guides.

[EdgeOfDreams]

Baseline SO slotting:

• 1 Accuracy (except auto-hit powers and toggles)
• 3 of whatever the power's primary purpose is (e.g. damage, control, healing,  resist, etc.). More than 3 is pointless due to massive diminishing returns.
• 1 Endurance Cost Redux on each of your most costly powers
• 1 Recharge on most slow attacks
• 3 recharge on stuff like Aim, Build Up, and other long recharge buffs.

For powers like Midnight Grasp that take a ton of different enhancements, you generally want to pick one effect to focus on and only slot the other stuff if you have extra slots. E.g. I would normally slot Midnight Grasp with 1 acc, 3 dam because it is really mainly a damage power. On the other hand, Life Drain is both damage and heal, so it might get 1 acc, 2 dam, 2 heal if I only have 5 slots for it. A sixth slot could be dam, heal, or rech depending on my needs.

 

You can optimize further, but this baseline will get the job done 99% of the time. If you're gonna deviate from it, you should make sure you understand the mechanics well enough to justify the choice.

 

Edited December 20, 2020 by EdgeOfDreams

[LiquidBandage]

5 hours ago, WanderingAries said:

Essentially, I'm looking for a sort of guide that helps with choosing the "best" case for slotting on a per power basis (not a small request) as I'm notorious for slotting things more than necessary or with Enhancements that end up being pointless. Also, to minimize the headache, let's stick to Regular Single Origin based slotting as I'm more concerned about how effective the actual enhancements are. Sure, there's Mids, but that doesn't seem to help if you don't understand what's pointless or not.

 

I'll try for an example:

Midnight Grasp accepts Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction, Immobilization, Recharge Reduction, and To-Hit Debuff. Now, MY instinct is almost always to go with one of each for powers like this that have a large variety, give or take the amount of Endurance the power seems to take, but it may be that say Recharge Reduction could be pointless as some powers recharge super fast. Taking into account that I generally take triple slotted hasten as my Auto (or not if it doesn't matter), do we have a guide that covers something like this? If not, can we maybe get something that covers a power-by-power as a guide from somebody that understands the numbers very well?

 

Acknowledging that how many slots you allocate depends on the power choices and character focus, I still feel like there has to be a +/- baseline for most powers on what is useful/essential and what is optional/pointless in most cases. A guide like this would be pretty big and likely in a PDF format or split into individual powerset guides.

I will provide the tools to figure this out yourself. Only you know how you fight your character (preferred rotations, objective of your character/powerset). 

 

Look at your character's combat attributes to gain an understanding of where your character stands as a whole. Powers -> Combat Attributes -> Base

Look at your recovery and recharge numbers and see how using some of your powers impacts that (Hasten, anything that impacts recovery, etc). Then look at your ToHit and Accuracy to get an idea of the likelihood of your attacks to land (Aim or BuildUp or Tactics, etc). 

 

Look at the detailed information of your powers in question (Right click -> Info). Get an idea of how much endurance is used each time you fire it. How long it takes to recharge and figure out roughly how often you use the power (in a frequent rotation or only in emergencies). Look at the Accuracy. Is it above or below 1.00? (if below, it might be worthwhile to invest more ACC in this power) (if above you might get away with just a single ACC enh). AoE powers typically fall into the 1.00 or below category (T9 nukes can be exceptions). Look at the damage numbers too then pay attention to what you see with your eyes when you fire it. Look to see if the CC effects (immobilize in this case) takes effect in a tiered manner. Some effects can have partial augmentation by enhancements (half is a static effect while half can be augmented by enhancements). 

 

All of the above can be used to judge how many slots you want/need in a power (from a generic IO standpoint). If IO set (bonuses or procs) are in consideration, that impacts slotting too. If your are a primary damage dealer, focus on damage. If the power seems to lean heavily towards debuffing, think about slotting for that. Level 50 IOs provide 42.4% to the stat (look up Enhancement Diversification), so two of those will get you to 84-ish percent. A third enhancement will slam hard into the Enhancement Diversification curve (three 42.4% will output 98%ish, wasting a good chunk of that third enhancement's potential). So consider purchasing some of those +1 enhancement augments (via reward merits) and just tweak those two enhancements until you get close to 95%. You'll essentially get three enhancement's worth of output from just two enhancements. 

 

You can go even further by potentially slotting Hamidon enhancements (they impact more than one aspect of a power). Some powers like Fortitude benefit from Recharge, Defense and ToHit. there is a Hamidon enhancement that impacts all three aspects, so slotting three of those essentially slams those aspects of the power into the Enhancement Diversification curve (it is like having nine Single Origin enh slotted into one power for only three slots). Not all powers can leverage enhancements like that, but there are some good candidates out there if you look for them. 

 

Also think about what Alpha incarnate power you might want to take (as it lets you punch beyond the Enhancement Diversification barrier). If you slot for the same stat(s) as the Alpha, you can have the potential to be even more effective at certain aspects. 

 

If you have a rough understanding of what your powers do to enemies it will help you recognize when someone is debuffing your target (or buffing you). If you know ahead of time that a debuff or buff is going to occur, you can time/sequence your powers to take advantage of it. 

[ScrewlooseCohh]

Last time this question was asked

 

 

 

[KC4800]

To say there is one optimal slotting that is best is really a naive undertaking. It depend on all your other power choices. It also depends on who you want to fight and what they are bringing to the table.

 

 

[LaconicLemur]

34 minutes ago, KC4800 said:

To say there is one optimal slotting that is best is really a naive undertaking. It depend on all your other power choices. It also depends on who you want to fight and what they are bringing to the table.

 

 

 

Actually, someone has already built an AI (Artificial Intelligence) with Mid's to do this. And while "it depends" is correct; there's also a function of "it works for 80% of gameplay" which makes it quite a feasible undertaking.  

 

To the OP: if:

• you're looking for SO slotting, then all the posts here give you a good generic start. A short version is also in my guide; where you might find some other useful tidbits.
• you want to explore IO slotting, you can play with the said Mid's AI. I find it does need you to have a basic idea of how IO's work (read Gulbasaur's guide to jumpstart your learning), and a fair bit of willingness to learn and try stuffs. It does make for interesting builds. I've taken a few and tuned them to what I want. It doesn't beat the slotting the best builders accomplish; but it brings the average person's attempts closer to the best builders' efficiency.

[LaconicLemur]

 

Here's my personal heuristic for alting. I don't always do this exactly, but in general how I'd like to go about things:

 

(0) Decide if you're just being casual, experimental, or want to have a go at some form of min/max
(0) If you're going to have a go at min/max, make sure you have Mid's installed.
(1) Decide if you want to min/max for group or solo play, or mix both. 
(2) Decide if you want to min/max for damage, resistance, defense, buffs, or debuffs. See choice #1 to further narrow what powers you what
(3) Pick your AT or your powers, taking into account your choices for #1 & #2 (**  this is super subjective, so best is to research or try for yourself)
    Mostly group min/max: Tanks, most defenders, some blasters, some brutes
    Mix of group and solo viable min/max: All the rest
(4) Decide how to use and how much of the bonus effects of ALL THREE Incarnate slots. And what mix you want given your choices for #1- #3
(5) Slot your IOs as you level based on the guidelines already provided by others in this post. 
(6a) Optional: Research builds in AT sub-forums to the level of OCD that is appropriate
(6b) Optional: Run Mid's AI and give it relevant baseline parameters
(6c) Create builds for leveling and also "final build version 0"
(7) Get to Level 50. Get to your version 0. Play version 0 for a few game days. Keep in mind how much version 0 depends on your choice for #4.
(8) Tweak your version 0 based on playing it, if necessary
(9) Tweak keeping in mind the choices you made in #1 - #2. If you significantly change your mind, you're usually better off rerolling a new alt.
    

Edited December 20, 2020 by LaconicLemur

[WanderingAries]

Nice, all good things to look into when I get a chance.

 

I've been around since i2, but somewhere around i13 (I think) I took a break for a little while and kind of lost a lot of understanding. I tend to get most of the concepts, but, like many, get lost in the numbers more often than not. I do know that there's always been some powers where you kind of want one of each slotted and others where just a recharge is sufficient as the power doesn't seem to give a good reason to slot anything else (the trade-off between slotting your attacks vs lesser powers). I'm not sure I'll Ever get into sets  TBH as I'm pretty casual and tend to Solo (unless requested otherwise), so I've mostly dealt with SOs for simplicity. Well, that and the upper tier powers.

[Biff Pow]

My problem with basic SO slotting is that one Accuracy SO feels like too little, and two is too much. So my recommendation is to break the rules a little and use one Acc/Dam IO (from any set) to balance that out. Then add one Accuracy, two Damage, one End Reduction, and (if six slotted) a Reduce Recharge or some increase control/debuff.

Edited December 20, 2020 by Supertanker

[WanderingAries]

On 12/20/2020 at 6:38 PM, Supertanker said:

My problem with basic SO slotting is that one Accuracy SO feels like too little, and two is too much. So my recommendation is to break the rules a little and use one Acc/Dam IO (from any set) to balance that out. Then add one Accuracy, two Damage, one End Reduction, and (if six slotted) a Reduce Recharge or some increase control/debuff.

Yep, that's "Stage 2: Advanced Slotting" :p

[DoctorDitko]

The first step in advanced slotting is admitting you have a slotting problem!

I tend to overslot for Accuracy, because whiffs are not fun. (Ask me about Sands of Mu, aka Multi-Whiff, if you have a few hours.)

I know you specified SOs, but honestly there are IO set procs/uniques/etc that are well worth the trouble to research.

One-slot wonders can benefit from boosted IOs, as well.

Edited December 22, 2020 by DoctorDitko

[WanderingAries]

On 12/21/2020 at 7:01 PM, DoctorDitko said:

The first step in advanced slotting is admitting you have a slotting problem!

I tend to overslot for Accuracy, because whiffs are not fun. (Ask me about Sands of Mu, aka Multi-Whiff, if you have a few hours.)

I know you specified SOs, but honestly there are IO set procs/uniques/etc that are well worth the trouble to research.

One-slot wonders can benefit from boosted IOs, as well.

Heh, I tend to slot Acc first, then DMG, then Rech in most cases that have them. I remember well before the temp attack powers when that was a more deadly issue than it is now. Now a days, you use the temp attacks as your attack chain fillers as you level up.