Purple I/O Boosting

[Snarky]

When boosting a set of Purples I am curious as to the effect when you exemplar down. Do these still stay "attuned"  is the +5 basically squished in relation to the rest of the enhancement value squish 1/1, or does the +5 go away at 49?  

[Hedgefund]

The boosting isn't a level adjustment, it's a multiplier to the enhancement effect.  The reduction for exemping is the the usual as shown here: https://hcwiki.cityofheroes.dev/wiki/Exemplar_Effects_on_Enhancements

 

So, a +5 Dmg purple, which is 66%, if slotted by itself in a damage power would about half that, (.33ish) at level at 18.

[Hedgefund]

Hm, step 2 in that link:

2. The Maximum Bonus Cap. If your Exemplar level is 45 or less, each individual benefit is first capped at 41.5%. This is an extra step done before the normal reduction. If your Exemplar level is 46+, skip this step.

throws a monkey wrench in how simple my example was.  I haven't bothered to see this in action myself, but based on this the .66 would be adjusted down to .415, then reduced by about half to .21 (ish).

 

[Luminara]

23 minutes ago, Snarky said:

Do these still stay "attuned"

 

Yes.  Even if you only boost one enhancement in the set, all of the bonuses are still applied when exemplared.

[Mezmera]

5 hours ago, Snarky said:

When boosting a set of Purples I am curious as to the effect when you exemplar down. Do these still stay "attuned"  is the +5 basically squished in relation to the rest of the enhancement value squish 1/1, or does the +5 go away at 49?  

 

Yes purple and pvp IO bonuses are automatically attuned so you should always look to boost them to 50+5 for maximum value even when exemp'd.  

[Echo Night]

What about boosting at lowers levels. For example: My Pain troller has a full set of Preventative Medicine in Nullify Pain (lvl 1 power). If I boost 5 of the 6 that have stat changes, does the +5 boost remain in affect no matter how high I go in content? Or, is there some wonky level cap above the power? Also, what about boosting LotG's +grchg that don't have set partners? Same deal?

[tidge]

On 1/30/2022 at 7:27 PM, Mezmera said:

 

Yes purple and pvp IO bonuses are automatically attuned so you should always look to boost them to 50+5 for maximum value even when exemp'd.  

 

Almost always? If I am specifically trying to keep %damage proc rates maximized (and have "enough" global recharge) in a specific power, I usually avoid boosting the (Purple, PVP) Enhancement pieces that give Recharge. For me, this is a complete judgement call. For example, if a power is already below 20% for the %proc rate because that build uses 4+ pieces of a Purple or PVP set in an inherently fast cycling power, I will almost always boost every piece in the set anyway.

[Yomo Kimyata]

10 hours ago, Echo Night said:

What about boosting at lowers levels. For example: My Pain troller has a full set of Preventative Medicine in Nullify Pain (lvl 1 power). If I boost 5 of the 6 that have stat changes, does the +5 boost remain in affect no matter how high I go in content? Or, is there some wonky level cap above the power? Also, what about boosting LotG's +grchg that don't have set partners? Same deal?

 

I haven't actually tested this, but here's how I think it works.  

 

You can buy Level 20 PMs, and boost them to +5.  I don't remember offhand what that enhancement level works out to be, but I suspect it is well below level 50 base enhancements.  You can slot these at level 17 and they will provide the same benefit all the way to 50 and beyond.

 

You can buy level 50 PMs, and boost them to +5.  You can slot them at level 47, but if you exemplar below that level you lose all benefits of the slotting?  This is what I think happens but I've never bothered to test it.

 

If a set runs to 50, I'll almost always get an attuned version because, well, I prefer the way they look.  If I'm using a set that caps before 50, like Cloud Senses, I'll often buy them at 30 and boost them to +5.  I rarely exemplar below 27, and if I do it's almost certainly because I'm on a team and I can afford to lose the benefits because, lol, I'm on a team and I could be a rikti monkey and no one would notice.

 

LotG +rech have both a defense element that scales by level and a recharge element which does not, so generally you are best off getting it at max level (or attuned).

[Luminara]

9 hours ago, Echo Night said:

What about boosting at lowers levels. For example: My Pain troller has a full set of Preventative Medicine in Nullify Pain (lvl 1 power). If I boost 5 of the 6 that have stat changes, does the +5 boost remain in affect no matter how high I go in content? Or, is there some wonky level cap above the power? Also, what about boosting LotG's +grchg that don't have set partners? Same deal?

 

If you +5 a bunch of level 20 IOs, yes, they'll perform like level 25 IOs, they'll continue to perform like level 25 IOs all the way up to 50+3, and you'll keep the set bonuses.  But they won't perform like level 30 IOs, or level 50 IOs, whereas attunement will allow them to do just that.  You'll be shorting yourself potentially critical attribute increases in the long run by boosting them instead of attuning them.  And if you boost them at any level above their minimum, you'll be locking yourself into that level as the lowest level at which you can exemplar without losing the bonuses conferred by those IOs in the set.  Attuned, they'll function as whatever level you're currently at, and not drop bonuses until you exemplar below the minimum level for the entire set.

 

Yes, the same applies to LotG +Recharge IOs.  You can boost them, but you're better served by using attuned ones instead.

 

You also save merits/inf* by attuning them, if you do it by unslotting and selling them on the market, then buying the same IOs in the attuned version.  Whatever losses you might incur from the sales are more than offset by the costs of boosters and catalysts that you won't have to purchase.

[Echo Night]

So, if the PM's are level 50 and slotted into Nullify Pain (which means they are level 2? or level 5?) and then boosted to +5, they will only carry that boost to level 7 or 9? This can get so confusing. Generally I just attune all but the rare purps, but lately, I've been trying to understand more about game mechanics.

[Luminara]

22 minutes ago, Echo Night said:

So, if the PM's are level 50 and slotted into Nullify Pain (which means they are level 2? or level 5?) and then boosted to +5, they will only carry that boost to level 7 or 9?

 

The +X boosts will apply all the way down to level 1.  The enhancements will perform as though they were 5 levels higher.  Example: if you do exemplar down to level 1, those enhancements will perform as though they were level 6 (which, the way exemplaring hammers enhancement values below level 25, equates to "not much better").

 

The set bonuses on those level 50 Preventative Medicine IOs will be lost at level 46, when you go more than three levels below the level of the IOs.

[Echo Night]

8 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

The +X boosts will apply all the way down to level 1.  The enhancements will perform as though they were 5 levels higher.  Example: if you do exemplar down to level 1, those enhancements will perform as though they were level 6 (which, the way exemplaring hammers enhancement values below level 25, equates to "not much better").

 

 

Thank you. Saved me millions of inf and time. My intentions were to boost everything I could on my new troller.

[Major_Decoy]

26 minutes ago, Luminara said:

 

The +X boosts will apply all the way down to level 1.  The enhancements will perform as though they were 5 levels higher.  Example: if you do exemplar down to level 1, those enhancements will perform as though they were level 6 (which, the way exemplaring hammers enhancement values below level 25, equates to "not much better").

 

The set bonuses on those level 50 Preventative Medicine IOs will be lost at level 46, when you go more than three levels below the level of the IOs.

Okay, I logged on Bad Decisions Man to test this. I bought two common defense IOs, one level 20 and one level 25. This was a bad idea because the numbers are smaller so the difference will be less obvious. I boosted the level 20 by 5, so it went from 15.4% to 19.3%. I did not boost the level 25, it stayed at 19.2%

 

Those two numbers are quite close, but I'd expect that, if it was just "A level 20 +5 enhancement behaves like a level 25 enhancement" that those numbers should be identical.

 

Just for further example, I got a common level 30 recharge reduction enhancement, stuck it in confront, and boosted it to 30 +5, and it went from a 34.8% bonus to a 43.5% bonus.

A level 35 recharge reduction enhancement, for comparison, provides a 36.7% bonus.

 

If you divide this out, you'll see that 19.3% is about 125% of 15.4% and 43.5% is 125% of 34.8%.

 

So I suspect that each +1 is actually a 5% multiplier to the efficacy of the enhancement. (Also, it turns out that +5 boosting a level 30 enhancement provides just slightly better performance than an unboosted level 50. So any enhancement with a minimum level of 30, if you don't care about cost, you're better off buying at level 30 and +5 boosting. You'll get the set bonuses over the same level range and ever so slightly better performance)

Edited February 12, 2022 by Major_Decoy

[Luminara]

3 minutes ago, Echo Night said:

Thank you. Saved me millions of inf and time. My intentions were to boost everything I could on my new troller.

 

My personal rules for boosting are:

1. If it's a common IO and I'm not at the cap for whatever it does, I boost it.  I have a single ToHit Debuff common IO slotted in Rise to the Challenge on my main, and it's boosted to +5 (the other five slots are occupied by 5/6 Panacea).
2. If it's a */End purple IO, I boost it.  I do not boost any other purples, only the */End.  Purple sets offer more than enough Accuracy, Recharge and * (the specific attribute for the set, like Hold or Damage) for all purposes, but shaving a little endurance usage off of these powers is never a bad thing.
3. If I'm frankenslotting the power, I boost the frankenslot IOs.  If I take Stealth and slot it with 3 Def/End IOs, for example, I boost all three of those.  It's like getting an extra IO without the slot cost.

I'll break these rules in a heartbeat if doing so will achieve a desired outcome, such as perfecting a gap-less attack chain, but I tend to stick to them for most of my characters and slotting approaches.

[Yomo Kimyata]

28 minutes ago, Major_Decoy said:

 

 

So I suspect that each +1 is actually a 5% multiplier to the efficacy of the enhancement. (Also, it turns out that +5 boosting a level 30 enhancement provides just slightly better performance than an unboosted level 50. So any enhancement with a minimum level of 30, if you don't care about cost, you're better off buying at level 30 and +5 boosting. You'll get the set bonuses over the same level range and ever so slightly better performance)

 

This is correct, according to the Wiki and your diligence, thank you.  I think people use a shortcut of assuming a 20+5 is exactly the same as a 25, and honestly, for all intents and purposes it's pretty close.

[Major_Decoy]

1 hour ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

This is correct, according to the Wiki and your diligence, thank you.  I think people use a shortcut of assuming a 20+5 is exactly the same as a 25, and honestly, for all intents and purposes it's pretty close.

Yeah, but a level 10 +5 and a level 15 +5 are both worse than a level 15 and 20 respectively. 20 +5 being just ever so slightly better than a level 25 is kind of the crossover point.

[Greycat]

4 hours ago, Luminara said:

You also save merits/inf* by attuning them, if you do it by unslotting and selling them on the market, then buying the same IOs in the attuned version.  Whatever losses you might incur from the sales are more than offset by the costs of boosters and catalysts that you won't have to purchase.

 

... though I tend to have enough boosters and catalysts sitting around, I don't remember the last one I had to purchase...

[Mezmera]

On 2/12/2022 at 5:23 AM, tidge said:

 

Almost always? If I am specifically trying to keep %damage proc rates maximized (and have "enough" global recharge) in a specific power, I usually avoid boosting the (Purple, PVP) Enhancement pieces that give Recharge. For me, this is a complete judgement call. For example, if a power is already below 20% for the %proc rate because that build uses 4+ pieces of a Purple or PVP set in an inherently fast cycling power, I will almost always boost every piece in the set anyway.

 

Yes it's a give and take if and where you want to +5 pieces the ones that give recharge since they'll go messing with your proc calculations.  If I'm specifically looking to use a power for procs then yeah I'll take this into consideration.  Most of my powers  carry at least a set of 5 of purples and pvp IOs though.  

Edited February 13, 2022 by Mezmera

[arcane]

If I am trying to retain the max proc rate, I will attune purples knowing it does nothing. Because having an enhancement neither boosted nor attuned makes the build look incomplete and I simply can’t have that.