Enhancement Boosters

[Arbegla]

Why are these things so expensive? Is it because they can only be bought via merits? Are they in super packs?

[Yomo Kimyata]

You got it:  merits or super packs.

[Ukase]

On 8/10/2021 at 5:36 PM, Arbegla said:

Why are these things so expensive? Is it because they can only be bought via merits? Are they in super packs?

Expensive? They're cheap! They're free, really. Just buy the winter packs, you'll have more than you know what to do with. They were burning a hole in my character email until I finally decided to use a fraction of mine on my badge characters. So tedious, so annoying the boosting. And the payoff for them is marginal. But, marginal gains add up. 

[Sakai]

Boosting is super tedious, especially if you are doing pretty much all of your IOs. The trick to speed it up is to change to windowed mode, shrink the screen and go to town. Less mouse traveling speeds things up substantially. 

 

Still boring as all hell though 😥 

[Arbegla]

On 8/14/2021 at 9:44 AM, Ukase said:

Expensive? They're cheap! They're free, really. Just buy the winter packs, you'll have more than you know what to do with. They were burning a hole in my character email until I finally decided to use a fraction of mine on my badge characters. So tedious, so annoying the boosting. And the payoff for them is marginal. But, marginal gains add up. 

 

Eh, expensive is relative i guess. They are/were going for about $1,000,000 a pop, but when you need somewhere in the ballpark of 200 of them, they add up fast. I use them a lot on low level sets to get more enhancement value, and on purples.

[Ukase]

I've never bought one. But I have used thousands that I've gotten from Winter packs when they're on sale. I don't even count them as something to negate the cost of packs. One Winter-O plus a catalyst recoups the investment of the pack at full price. And, since I've gotten the packs on sale, for me, the boosters are basically free. 

That said, I only use them on characters that will get a lot of play time. 

 

[Luminara]

On 8/14/2021 at 7:21 PM, Sakai said:

Boosting is super tedious, especially if you are doing pretty much all of your IOs. The trick to speed it up is to change to windowed mode, shrink the screen and go to town. Less mouse traveling speeds things up substantially. 

 

Still boring as all hell though 😥 

 

It was sped up recently.  5x boosting takes about as long as 1x used to take.  Click click click click click done.

[Aeroprism]

And those are used only for IOs, right?  I mean, sets are attuned so... 

 

Unless I'm missing something.

[Luminara]

1 hour ago, Aeroprism said:

And those are used only for IOs, right?  I mean, sets are attuned so... 

 

Unless I'm missing something.

 

All IOs can be boosted if they're not attuned, and the only IOs attuned by default are ATOs and Winter IOs.

 

I typically boost the */End (Dam/End, Hold/End, Confuse/End, et cetera) purple IO when I'm slotting purple sets, because I also typically only slot 5/6 of those sets, leaving out the single-attrib IO, so boosting that */End IO red-lines the primary attrib and improves endurance management.  That works because purples function identically to attuned IOs without requiring the attunement process or locking out boosters.  No loss, all gain.  PvP sets function that way, too, so they can be boosted if you're not using them as attuned sets.  Otherwise, I do skip boosting unless it's common IOs or franken-slotted/single-slotted IOs (such as an End/Run in Sprint, or three Def/End in a Defense power), because I prefer attuned IO sets (really makes the leveling process so much less frustrating than it ever was in the past).

[Aeroprism]

9 hours ago, Luminara said:

 

All IOs can be boosted if they're not attuned, and the only IOs attuned by default are ATOs and Winter IOs.

 

I typically boost the */End (Dam/End, Hold/End, Confuse/End, et cetera) purple IO when I'm slotting purple sets, because I also typically only slot 5/6 of those sets, leaving out the single-attrib IO, so boosting that */End IO red-lines the primary attrib and improves endurance management.  That works because purples function identically to attuned IOs without requiring the attunement process or locking out boosters.  No loss, all gain.  PvP sets function that way, too, so they can be boosted if you're not using them as attuned sets.  Otherwise, I do skip boosting unless it's common IOs or franken-slotted/single-slotted IOs (such as an End/Run in Sprint, or three Def/End in a Defense power), because I prefer attuned IO sets (really makes the leveling process so much less frustrating than it ever was in the past).

 

Thank you for the complete explanation.

 

Is the boosting process worth it on a casual character? Or is it more something of a high-end, high results build?

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, Aeroprism said:

Is the boosting process worth it on a casual character? Or is it more something of a high-end, high results build?

 

It's primarily min/maxing, but it can be useful from a casual approach.  Dropping a few boosters in the right places can help get you over an endurance management hump, for example, or give you enough extra slots to take and use an "I just want this because it's fun" power that you otherwise would've skipped due to lack of slots for it.

[Aeroprism]

16 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

It's primarily min/maxing, but it can be useful from a casual approach.  Dropping a few boosters in the right places can help get you over an endurance management hump, for example, or give you enough extra slots to take and use an "I just want this because it's fun" power that you otherwise would've skipped due to lack of slots for it.

 

Oh nice!  It`s something I never see done in Mids so I assume it comes with a better understanding of the late-game.

[tidge]

As others have written, the boosters aren't really that expensive unless you are doing something like maintaining an alternate build with 50+ boosts (because most content prefers attuned enhancements)... and even then if you play packs or grind merits you should be able to slowly build up your supply. The diminishing returns of enhancement diversification will make many of the boosts marginal anyway, and it is far more likely that only a small number of enhancement pieces in specific will not be subject to ED, no matter the build, if you are min-maxxing by most measures.

 

I always boost common level 50 IOs, because I so rarely use them. Typical uses are:

• a level 50+5 Endurance Modification (dark blue) in Stamina, if I invest a second slot after Performance Shifter (or have that piece elsewhere, depending on the AT/power choices)
• two level 50+4 Recharge in Hasten (If I'm feeling rich and bored, I might boost these to +5 but the difference is negligible)
• A single level 50+5 Recharge behind an Aim/Build Up power when I am only investing 2 slots (with the first going to the Gaussian's %Build Up proc)
• Level 50+5 Defense pieces (typically 1, never more than 2 on very specific builds) in certain powers... usually Defense powers are mule-ing a LotG +Global Recharge, and I like to eek out a little more Defense than just going for a 2-piece LotG set bonus. This is the sort of thing that is very dependent on the build, and works best for auto powers or spawned pets (FFG) as toggles typically benefit most from a Defense/Endurance combination.

Another subtle use:

• a level 50+5 Damage piece in low-level attacks that have a Hold component <-This is subtle and depends on the power's base damage, but since attacks with holds can take a lot of %damage procs, I have a small number of builds. This is another subtle choice, as the %damage procs that work at low levels often come from sets that also have a straight damage piece that can be boosted and still work at almost all levels, keep reading...

PVP sets and Purple (very rare) sets can also be boosted with no affect on exemplared content. My general practices (accepting the diminishing returns) are to:

• Boost the heck out of Resistance and Defense pieces; e.g. Shield Wall, Gladiator's Armor. Boosting these gets you closer to the point of diminishing returns faster, and can end up saving your build precious slots. I rather like the 2-and-3-piece set bonuses for these as well, so boosting pieces to back up the excellent Globals is a no-brainer. I should note that ONLY the global pieces are unique, so there is nothing from slotting multiple groups of (for example) boosted Resistance and Resistance/Endurance if you feel like it. I want to note that the Shield Wall set includes a Defense/Recharge piece that will contribute to improved recharge times for Mind Link/Link Minds (as opposed to a HO).
• Boost the non-recharge pieces in attacks which rely on %damage from procs. The recharge can hurt %proc chances, so you have to do the math to check just how bad this is affecting your DPA. some powers have such long recharge times that it barely matters. Some powers have such low %proc chances that you may give up a little bit of %proc chance to improve something like Endurance per activation (for example) because PVP sets typically have something like Damage (or Accuracy)/Endurance/Recharge pieces.

 

Rando comment not specific to Boosters: I don't do deep scrubs of posted builds, but every once-in-a-while I see a build that uses (attuned) pieces in powers taken at low levels that will "cut out" (that is, the set chosen doesn't provide enhancement below a certain level). This can have a serious affect on a character's effectiveness in exemplared content, especially if difficulty is turned up in lower-level missions. The auto-attuned pieces (ATO, Overwhelming Force, Winter), common IOs, PVP and Very Rare sets are essentially "immune" to this effect, so you should keep this in mind when choosing to boost. I always give a pass on low-level choices of Aim/BuildUp that multi-slot (attuned) Gaussian's, because that set is a particularly tasty one to multi-slot and if the choice is to multi-slot it there is very rarely a "better" power to invest for all those pieces.

 

Advanced Problem set:

 

Once you get comfortable with the use of boosted pieces, and the relative trade-offs (including set bonuses) you will likely find yourself considering Hamidon-origin (HO) enhancements to enhance multiple elements of a power using a small number of slots. Unfortunately HO cannot be boosted except by combining them with similar types (including synthetics and titan pieces) and can only be boosted up to level 53. There are a small number of corner cases (IMO) where an HO (or two) is a better choice than one (or two) IO or a piece from a set. YMMV.

[Yomo Kimyata]

So...

 

thanks in part to this thread I took a deeper look into this market.  Now, since boosters come from merits or super packs, we should look at comparables for a value play.  Since 5 converters would buy you either one booster or 15 converters, you might expect that boosters would trade for roughly 15x the amount that converters do.  If they traded at 20x, then everyone would stop printing converters and start printing boosters, and if they traded at 10x no rational actor would convert merits to boosters when they would get a better haul from selling converters.  And lo and behold, that's about right.  You can probably sell oodles of boosters at 1mm, which translates to selling 15x oodles of converters at 66,666.  I believe that the converter market is probably deeper and more liquid, but the basic math works out ok.

 

But I realized that very few were actually listed for sale, and when I bid crept I got over 5mm with no success.  That's madness!  But just like yellow salvage, people aren't interested enough in the market to offer product at "market" levels.  And that's fine.  Why in the world would anyone pay 5mm for something they could buy with 5 merits?  Why indeed?

 

So a few days ago I put in bids for a few hundred boosters at 1.2mm, just to see how long it would take to fill.  When I checked in a few hours later, I had bought them all, and I was feeling a little foolish for overpaying by almost 20%, but that part of the experiment was done.  Then I put some of them up for offer at around 5mm, just to put some liquidity in the system.  I was bemoaning my wasting of AH slots, because, again, why in the world would anyone pay 5mm for one of these?

 

I just logged in to find this:

 

 

And the only reason I noticed was that I was clicking each Get Inf button and after the first 5-10 it hung up because it wouldn't let me over the cap.

 

So, yeah, I don't know why people do what they do, but ain't nobody getting this back!

[Sakai]

Wasn't me this time so I am happy about that. 

[Black_Assassin]

so you made 1.2B from 22 enhancement boosters. That is something special

[iBot]

Curiouser and curiouser.  I have dabbled a few times into boosters but always return to converters.  Just seems as you said "six of one, half dozen of another".  <shrug>