Where can I read up on the Enhancement Sets?

[Koven]

So, I've been trying to watch videos on builds, and reading about builds, but a lot of them use a lot of shorthand or what I guess is "common knowledge" to experienced players when talking about Sets and how they affect different builds. I don't know anything about sets other than they give you certain bonuses for having so many slotted into a power. I don't even know where to begin to look to better understand how to slot my powers effectively.

 

Is there some master list or primer on how these things work?

 

Thanks so much!

[Snarky]

the best place for detailed info is homecoming wiki.  Enhancement Sets - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki (cityofheroes.dev)

 

There is a metric crapton of information on that page.  just raw data to the unwashed masses.  Then there are all the meta rules of enhancers.  diminishing returns, slotting them at min level -3, getting them attuned, never buying/attuning purple sets, and on and freaking on.  There is a lot to know.

 

You will make mistakes.  It is okay.  You will make less than good builds.  It is okay.  I just switched to Blasters from Brutes. (I build and/or steal builds for great brutes)  I am just starting to realize my Blaster build has been working against me after a couple months.  Still kills stuff great.  Time for a rebuild lol.

 

Play the game, run builds from good builders.  Do things you like.  There are a very few optimal Archetypes and builds.  Speedrunners build insanely tight.  So do some farmers.  My style is roller derby through the streets of "Escape from Los Angeles"  It is ugly and fun and once in a while I learn something.

 

You are asking questions in the right place at least.  As you settle on an Archetype the forum for that archetype should have a few helpful people and can be searched for conversations on the topics you are looking at.  

 

Have fun.  Seriously.

[Koven]

2 minutes ago, Snarky said:

the best place for detailed info is homecoming wiki.  Enhancement Sets - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki (cityofheroes.dev)

 

There is a metric crapton of information on that page.  just raw data to the unwashed masses.  Then there are all the meta rules of enhancers.  diminishing returns, slotting them at min level -3, getting them attuned, never buying/attuning purple sets, and on and freaking on.  There is a lot to know.

 

You will make mistakes.  It is okay.  You will make less than good builds.  It is okay.  I just switched to Blasters from Brutes. (I build and/or steal builds for great brutes)  I am just starting to realize my Blaster build has been working against me after a couple months.  Still kills stuff great.  Time for a rebuild lol.

 

Play the game, run builds from good builders.  Do things you like.  There are a very few optimal Archetypes and builds.  Speedrunners build insanely tight.  So do some farmers.  My style is roller derby through the streets of "Escape from Los Angeles"  It is ugly and fun and once in a while I learn something.

 

You are asking questions in the right place at least.  As you settle on an Archetype the forum for that archetype should have a few helpful people and can be searched for conversations on the topics you are looking at.  

 

Have fun.  Seriously.

Great stuff! Thanks so much for the quick reply! I guess I'll be spending my day off trying to absorb this info. haha

[Zhym]

Here are a few guides that might help:

 

 

 

 

 

[Doomguide2005]

     All I can add is Snarky and Zhym are hitting it out of the park with their advice.  It's hard, really hard, to screw it up so badly so as to make something unplayable bad.  Adding to that with the relative availability of respecs plus a build planner, well just jump in, experiment, learn as you go, ask questions and most of all have fun.  Between her creation in i3 and Sunset I probably planned out, rebuilt, tore apart rebuilt again my Main's build a couple dozen times.  Some done way back when with pencil and paper then a whole bunch more times in Mids.  And until my computer pushed up daisies the process was ongoing here on HC.  Playing around in Mids, trying to improve my builds and more importantly perhaps trying to improve others builds as well as dissecting those builds got me to my current proficiency and even there there's a huge difference between my knowledge about SR, Empathy, Earth Control etc. and how to build a solid Warshade or Water Blaster (hint it was a Claws/SR that started in i3 and I've never yet run a Warshade beyond the 20's).

[Zhym]

Also, at a very basic level: any IO set is going to be better than SOs or IOs.  For example, slotting a six-slotted attack power with common IOs can get you about +97% damage and +42% each to accuracy, endurance, and recharge at level 50.  An uncommon IO set will give you roughly 97% damage and 69% to accuracy, recharge, and endurance, plus a whole bunch of bonuses to your combat stats.  Those bonuses may seem minor, but they can really add up when most of your powers are slotted up with IO sets.  As @Snarky and @Doomguide2005 said, it's almost impossible to screw up slotting.  Which sets you have matters much less than having sets at all.  The wiki page is great for figuring out what the bonuses from each set are.

 

Some people get into "frankenslotting," where they mix and max sets to maximize certain bonuses.  Others are fans of making "proc monsters," which maximize damage through "proc" enhancements that add bonus damage.  But that's advanced-level slotting.  Even basic slotting will improve your character tremendously.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Zhym

[A Cat]

Another thing to remember is that messing up while slotting is generally not a huge waste. You get 5 respecs for free if you get to level 50 (one per 10 levels). There are also unslotters you can get on the auction house for around 120k which is relatively cheap. Everything can be sold for near the amount you bought it for (you do lose out on the listing fee) but generally the consequences are light. 

[Blackbird71]

14 hours ago, Koven said:

So, I've been trying to watch videos on builds, and reading about builds, but a lot of them use a lot of shorthand or what I guess is "common knowledge" to experienced players when talking about Sets and how they affect different builds. I don't know anything about sets other than they give you certain bonuses for having so many slotted into a power. I don't even know where to begin to look to better understand how to slot my powers effectively.

 

Is there some master list or primer on how these things work?

 

Thanks so much!

 

I completely get the confusion; when I first got into working out my builds, the shorthand was one of the biggest obstacles to understanding what was supposed to be in the builds.  Unfortunately, most people posting builds are just exporting the info from Mid's Hero Designer, and that's the format that Mid's Hero Designer uses for the Enhancement names.

The best thing that worked for me was to actually download the various builds and then load them into Mid's; then I could see for myself what the enhancements were by mousing over them and getting all the details of what they do.  Understanding the use of the enhancement sets and how they work together then became a process of seeing what other enhancements could fill the same slot (again, using Mid's for this), observing how this affected the character's Totals in Mid's, and reading the explanations of those who posted more information than just a build in the forums.  

The learning process takes time, but after a bit of research and playing around with a few builds, you become familiar with a lot of the common IO sets, some of the shorthand, and the reasons for picking one set over another in a given type of power.

Mid's Hero Designer:  ❚❚ Mid's Reborn: Hero Designer - Forum - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)

[Doomguide2005]

     Indeed the shorthand can get rather cryptic..  There's lots of shorthand involved in the names of enhancements.  Writing out "Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control" 6 times is, well, word clutter which in itself gets problematic.  Sometimes even as much as I've used Mids I'll see something that I don't quite recognize and what I'll do is go to the wiki page on enhancements and just start looking at what the shorthand might be for.   It's a little bit like looking at license plates and trying to figure out what clever thing the owner was trying to say with their personalized plate.

[Ukase]

I think 99% of all my builds have these. 

 

 

   Or in hover, if not Combat Jumping. The enhancements are: Shield Wall 5% resist (all), Kismet Accuracy (6% toHit buff) and LotG 7.5%/Defense 
Two of them may be slotted at level 7, the other at level 22. 


In Health is the Panacea +hitpoints/Endurance, the Miracle +recovery, Numina's +regen/+recovery. Should be all you need for extra endurance. 

In Stamina, I've got the perf shifter +end, and end mod.

 

 


In my armor, or a resist buff power, I'll have the Glad Armor 3% def (All) and the Steadfast Protection 3% def(all)/Resistance. Because the Steadfast gives resistance, too, I'll use attuned so my characters can still get the benefit as I level up. I exemp a good bit, so using the actual level is a disadvantage, unless I use two builds. (which I don't like to do) 

 

  Lastly is the 7.5% HP from Unbreakable Guard. 

I try to fit these in every build I make. Some builds...it may not fit, but for the most part, I make them work. Recently, I've also been trying to fit a full set of Reactive Defenses as well. 

[Blackbird71]

These are the sorts of threads where I read the OP, then I read the responses, and I wonder how many of them actually read the OP and understood the question(s) being asked.  😜

 

Or even the thread title, for that matter...

Edited August 16, 2021 by Blackbird71

[Snarky]

21 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

These are the sorts of threads where I read the OP, then I read the responses, and I wonder how many of them actually read the OP and understood the question(s) being asked.  😜

 

Or even the thread title, for that matter...

A leetle Snarky I might say lol.  Most of the responses are generally trying to help.  A question like this falls into the category “I am not sure what to ask because I am lost in the subject”.   So polite conversation and tidbits of advice get the ball rolling in the right direction 

[Blackbird71]

5 minutes ago, Snarky said:

A leetle Snarky I might say lol.  Most of the responses are generally trying to help.  A question like this falls into the category “I am not sure what to ask because I am lost in the subject”.   So polite conversation and tidbits of advice get the ball rolling in the right direction 

 

A bit, perhaps.  But when someone asks specifically for resources to read up on the basics of slotting and what Enhancement shorthand means, and people reply with links to Inf-making guides and specific IOs to use, I do begin to wonder if people read with the intent to understand.

Edited August 16, 2021 by Blackbird71

[Ukase]

5 minutes ago, Blackbird71 said:

 

A bit, perhaps.  But when someone asks specifically for resources to read up on the basics of slotting and what Enhancement shorthand means, and people reply with links to Inf-making guides and specific IOs to use, I do begin to wonder if people read with the intent to understand.

That's fair. 

[oedipus_tex]

Here's a quick and dirty version of it:

 

 

There are three numbers you want to memorize: 32.5%, 40%, and 45%. Each represents a specific Defense threshold:

• 32.5% is one purple inspiration away from soft cap
• 40% is one Destiny Barrier lowest-ebb away from soft cap
• 45% is the actual soft cap

 

In general when selecting set bonuses you want to cover at least a few Defense vectors. How realistic that is depends a lot on the class you're playing. But there is almost no build that can't at least get to 32.5% Ranged defense. If you do that and for the most part slot your other powers intelligently, you're fairly well on your way to understanding how builds work. Once you've gotten used to that concept, thats when you can start to branch out more and look for other set bonuses.

 

You get these bonuses by putting a bunch of slots in powers. You can get some initial ideas by looking at other people's builds.

 

(You are also going to get some people telling you the numbers I provided aren't realistic for X Y Z reason. They're right; in more advanced builds there's more to consider. But those thresholds are a good starting place for making it less overwhelming to learn.)

 

 

 

There's also a holy bible of sorts that's worth noting:

• If you have a power that can be slotted for Defense, put a Luck of the Gambler +Recharge there. You can do this up to five times per build. If you have open power pool picks its often worth taking a Defense power just for this proc.
  • In fact Defense and Recharge are intimately linked. This is why I suggest starting with Defense builds and learning from there. Learning how to stack bonuses to build Defense teaches you the skills you need to branch out.
• It's pretty much biblical truth at this point that every build slots Steadfast Protection and Gladiator's Armor procs in a Resistance power. These two procs together provide +6 Defense to all. Starting out learning builds, find your Resistance power and put these slots in first. 
• Your first builds won't be epic. That's fine. When you respec you get your enhancements back, and there are enhancement unslotters you can spend merits on. Dont worry too much about nailing it on the first try. Some of my toons have been respecced upwards of 10 times, and still I spot things I can change from time to time.

Edited August 16, 2021 by oedipus_tex