Some practical questions around IOs and diminishing returns

[jubakumbi]

It sounds like this thread won’t hold any further interest for you, then...at least not until you hit level 50 and want to dig deeper.  It’s all about having fun, so if that works for you, great!

 

While I sense your PoV, the question posed is around practicality.

 

In a very real sense, it is practical to slot IOs past the point they start to hit the diminishing returns.

That diverged as to _how_ the _most efficient_ and _cost effective_ way to hit diminishing returns might be, from my PoV.

:)

 

From a practical standpoint, 3 Damage works fine and I can get to the point of diminishing returns with just 'plain' IOs.

 

The side bar about the most efficient way to hit diminishing returns is a different thing, and immediately hit the whole 'well you just' about using /ah.

Very engaging and interesting for anyone wanting to use the /ah effectively, IMO.

[Chance Jackson]

3 of any lvl 50 IO doesn't make any sense, are people really suggesting that slotting?

[Prototech]

Hi community!

 

So I've been making assumptions around IOs based on in game chat and these forums. Now that I've been back for a bit and experimented with the game+pines it seems to me that people have strange ideas around IOs. It's like the most common approach is highly theoretical and doesn't take into account realistic or economic scenarios while leveling. To summarize my own thoughts before getting into it.

 

[..]

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

what is your goal here?  What are you hoping to achieve with your post?

 

Original goal was to find out if I was missing something, and if not start a better conversation around IOs than what is most common in game and even on this forum a lot of the time. It's since become a fun conversation about that process of leveling and selecting an enhancement path. Sort of obvious if you read beyond the first post.

[Prototech]

3 of any lvl 50 IO doesn't make any sense, are people really suggesting that slotting?

 

All the time, someone told me you could slot 5 in theory just the other day. "Rule of 5" they said as if it was common knowledge. "May not be wort more than 3 unless you're trying to really max something", completely nuts.

 

EDIT: even better now that I realize you pointed out that even 3 makes no sense ESPECIALLY level 50s, beyond common for people to go 3 even at 50. Make no sense unless you have an extra just laying around and an empty slot with nothing else to go into it.

[Prototech]

That’s my recommendation for casual min-maxing - cheap set IOs, don’t worry about set bonuses, sell everything else on the market as soon as you get it.  You can pop up the auction house with /ah in any zone besides a base, so a quick sell off is faster than going back to a vendor to sell off excess inventory, and you’ll usually get more Influence that way.

 

Sure, if I find them I craft appropriate sets for bonuses.

While leveling, and realy in general, I want to type '/ah' as few times as I can. :)

 

Played plenty, tricked out plenty of characters back in the day.

I am one of those players that would never look at an MMO market interface again if I could. :)

I would be fine and happy with all recipes being in the workbench and having to get components through focused hunting, for example.

I would be fine and happy with all enhancements just dropping, so you knew to farm X to get Y IO even.

 

To re-iterate as well, I just don't _care_ how much inf I spend on doing these things easily w/o have to make a list, leave the base, buy the things and come home to cook...that's just not my thing...I build what I have and use it, making an accounting task in the middle of playtime is not my thing...

After playing the game, I get more stuff and I can make more things, repeat.

It's all just ephemeral points in pretendy funtime.

 

If I play a character to 50 and I really like it, then I will sit down for a weekend and make a 'final' build.

Did that for a half a dozen characters on Live after years of playing, had 30+ 50s.

 

The more sublte point I guess I am trying to make is that while interesting to a degree, gaining that extra % to feel uber just took me a weekend I could have been killing pixels...or leveling the next idea...

 

Yeah sure but that kinda shows why you can go with the simple mindset of just getting cheapo 25s and slot two of each of the type you want, biggest bang for the buck and time. I was never interested in the one % and that was one of my points, I want the 30% and 20% anything else is a waste of time and effort until sets come into play.

[Chance Jackson]

3 of any lvl 50 IO doesn't make any sense, are people really suggesting that slotting?

 

All the time, someone told me you could slot 5 in theory just the other day. "Rule of 5" they said as if it was common knowledge. "May not be wort more than 3 unless you're trying to really max something", completely nuts.

 

EDIT: even better now that I realize you pointed out that even 3 makes no sense ESPECIALLY level 50s, beyond common for people to go 3 even at 50. Make no sense unless you have an extra just laying around and an empty slot with nothing else to go into it.

That is crazy to me.

[joyispunkrolex]

This is also, lest we forget, 'playing a ehole separate game'. :)

Nothing wring with it, but that is not why I play CoH, to be super-shopper, I play to be a Super. :)

 

If you're not worried about it, don't be worried about it, but now that we have /ah and /vault, it's easy enough to pop up the UI and make a few million in support of another alt or SGmate. Even better if you have the 10M (or the relevant badge) for the Portable Crafting table.

 

I have a level 12 Dominator who, thanks to a few lucky drops while soloing, is permanently sitting by the Mercy Island Black Market with about 400 million inf now. I log in, collect my money, email myself bundles of 10M or so and make my next set of purchases and sales. Takes about five minutes once a day. It's not fun in the same way as running a BAF, but I think it's fun, especially for knowing that it's purely from running the market.

 

I'm perfectly willing to consider the market a part of the game and finding strategies that work for it can be a good time as well. I think we used to call it Market PVP.

[MunkiLord]

There is a lot of general statements being made here. Slotting three of one type of level 50 IOs absolutely makes sense if it helps you reach certain goals. If you are a Scrapper or Blaster and want to maximize your damage with generic IOs, then add that third damage. If you want Hasten up more often, slot that third recharge.

 

edit: Works the other way too. If your particular character goal isn't focused or high damage, then perhaps that slot could be better used elsewhere.

[MunkiLord]

Other great example: ANY damage power but let's use Knockout Blow from SS

148 base damage

2 25 damage IOs = 243 dmg

3 50 damage IOs = 295 dmg

 

50 damage is nothing to sneeze at in this case BUT, what about the free slot I get? I can slot 6 total and would much rather have 2 recharge and 2 accuracy for this heavy hitting power. Hitting twice as often and more accurately is way more valuable than the 50 damage per hit.

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

 

Missed this initially, but I think seeing it as 50 is the wrong way to look at it. It's 20% more damage, which is significant. Depending on the power a second recharge could indeed have a dramatic impact on damage too, but will a second accuracy increase the powers overall damage by 20%? That is extremely unlikely.

[wjrasmussen]

Hi community!

 

So I've been making assumptions around IOs based on in game chat and these forums. Now that I've been back for a bit and experimented with the game+pines it seems to me that people have strange ideas around IOs. It's like the most common approach is highly theoretical and doesn't take into account realistic or economic scenarios while leveling. To summarize my own thoughts before getting into it.

 

[..]

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

what is your goal here?  What are you hoping to achieve with your post?

 

Original goal was to find out if I was missing something, and if not start a better conversation around IOs than what is most common in game and even on this forum a lot of the time. It's since become a fun conversation about that process of leveling and selecting an enhancement path. Sort of obvious if you read beyond the first post.

I  feel you are full of yourself.  You want to fix the game due to your genius insight.

 

[jubakumbi]

I'm perfectly willing to consider the market a part of the game and finding strategies that work for it can be a good time as well. I think we used to call it Market PVP.

 

No worries, my best man hit the 2B cap back in the day in less than a month.

He had to trick out all of his characters with the best bling just to have room to bleed off the inf eventually.

He loved it.

 

I just want people to know all you really have to do is 'play as you would' in the current HC server versions and you will get enough resources to build what you need to beat the content.

 

Many of these discussions lead people to think there is only one way to a goal, just lending my viewpoint.

 

I read the forums a ton and glean a lot of information that in turn allows me to spend less /ah time in game, because I know what will/won't sell, etc. already.

I know _how_ to make the 'big money', but from my PoV there is little _need_ to do so, thankfully.

 

WIth MMOs in the state they are now, new MMO players often literally think the _only_ 'viable' way to play the game is to rush toward the kind of min/maxed builds we talk about and therefore a burning _need_ to gain these items, when in CoH, things work differently, IMO.

 

The game affords us the luxury of getting to 50 on what we find and/or tricking out to our desired power level, yet never forcing much of it all.

Even at 50, a good player beats a good build IMO. :)

[Sunrunner]

All the time, someone told me you could slot 5 in theory just the other day. "Rule of 5" they said as if it was common knowledge. "May not be wort more than 3 unless you're trying to really max something", completely nuts.

 

"Rule of 5" is a descriptor of how set-bonuses stack, I thought.  Am I mistaken?

[MunkiLord]

You're correct.

[eiynp]

I dunno who you're going to for advice OP, but the advice I see repeated constantly is 1) craft level 25 IOs at 22 2) use those till 50 3) never slot more than three of a type

 

I can't remember that I've ever seen anyone in help chat, the discord, etc suggest any of the crazy stuff people posting here (five IOs of a type? what?)

 

ed: oh, I see. The 'rule of five' doesn't refer to individual IOs, it refers to the restrictions on similar set bonuses (i.e. you can only have five of a given bonus.) It has nothing to do with common IO slotting

[jack_nomind]

All the time, someone told me you could slot 5 in theory just the other day. "Rule of 5" they said as if it was common knowledge. "May not be wort more than 3 unless you're trying to really max something", completely nuts.

 

Rule of 5 is really a thing -- but a different thing.  You can benefit from at most 5 of any specific set bonus (e.g., you could slot ten different sets that all gave you a 1.5% hp set bonus boost, but you'd only benefit from five of them.  However, you could have five 1.5% boosts, and five 1.13% boosts, and benefit from all of those).  The person who told you that was probably a bit mixed-up.

[DSorrow]

Are there people just slotting all basic IOs at 50? To what end? To save money? I'd be surprised if that's actually cheaper than a low end IO build in the current economy.

 

90% sure a low end set IO build will end up being, at worst, the same cost for much better enhancement values even if we disregard all set bonuses. Let's consider that a level 50 character has access to 26 powers (24 primary/secondary/power pool + health/stamina) and 67 slots for a total of 93 open spots for enhancements. A level 50 IO costs around 500-600k to craft (recipe+crafting costs) or about 200-300k to buy crafted so filling those 93 slots with generic IOs is going to cost somewhere around 20-30 million. If instead you go for lvl 30-40 uncommon set IOs you can often get each individual recipe for less than 100k, spend 50-100k on crafting for a total of 150-200k per enhancement, your max price for full low-end set IOs should be around the same as lvl 50 generic price bottom.

 

Slightly more trouble to find the uncommon sets that aren't in demand, check which split IOs you want and then craft them, but any character should end up with significantly better enhancement values and an assortment of set bonuses for a smaller inf investment. I'd never go for a lvl 50 generic IO build.

[Prototech]

Hi community!

 

So I've been making assumptions around IOs based on in game chat and these forums. Now that I've been back for a bit and experimented with the game+pines it seems to me that people have strange ideas around IOs. It's like the most common approach is highly theoretical and doesn't take into account realistic or economic scenarios while leveling. To summarize my own thoughts before getting into it.

 

[..]

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

what is your goal here?  What are you hoping to achieve with your post?

 

Original goal was to find out if I was missing something, and if not start a better conversation around IOs than what is most common in game and even on this forum a lot of the time. It's since become a fun conversation about that process of leveling and selecting an enhancement path. Sort of obvious if you read beyond the first post.

I  feel you are full of yourself.  You want to fix the game due to your genius insight.

 

Not a single comment about fixing or changing the game in this entire thread. Not sure where you got your assumptions from but they can't be reasonably drawn from any of my posts.

 

Take your personal issues elsewhere.

[Prototech]

There is a lot of general statements being made here. Slotting three of one type of level 50 IOs absolutely makes sense if it helps you reach certain goals. If you are a Scrapper or Blaster and want to maximize your damage with generic IOs, then add that third damage. If you want Hasten up more often, slot that third recharge.

 

edit: Works the other way too. If your particular character goal isn't focused or high damage, then perhaps that slot could be better used elsewhere.

 

There is such a thing as opportunity cost. You mentioned accuracy, a better example could be recharge. A second recharge vs a third damage seems a better option in almost any scenario for dps. Accuracy could be a better option as well as you can get more than a 20% increased chance to hit on reds which is more than 20% damage over time. Even better, if you still have end issues leveling to 50 then cost reduction could be your biggest dps gain, change third damage in all powers to end reduction and suddenly you don't have 5-10 second pauses in long fights.

 

Goals are irrelevant here if they are based in flawed assumptions.

 

Edit: meant to also copy post under yours and address both

 

I don't disagree entirely here, just adding caveat.

[Prototech]

All the time, someone told me you could slot 5 in theory just the other day. "Rule of 5" they said as if it was common knowledge. "May not be wort more than 3 unless you're trying to really max something", completely nuts.

 

Rule of 5 is really a thing -- but a different thing.  You can benefit from at most 5 of any specific set bonus (e.g., you could slot ten different sets that all gave you a 1.5% hp set bonus boost, but you'd only benefit from five of them.  However, you could have five 1.5% boosts, and five 1.13% boosts, and benefit from all of those).  The person who told you that was probably a bit mixed-up.

 

Just goes to show how the effect of information spreading deteriorates it completely over time.

[Prototech]

I dunno who you're going to for advice OP, but the advice I see repeated constantly is 1) craft level 25 IOs at 22 2) use those till 50 3) never slot more than three of a type

 

I can't remember that I've ever seen anyone in help chat, the discord, etc suggest any of the crazy stuff people posting here (five IOs of a type? what?)

 

ed: oh, I see. The 'rule of five' doesn't refer to individual IOs, it refers to the restrictions on similar set bonuses (i.e. you can only have five of a given bonus.) It has nothing to do with common IO slotting

 

I think I'll start auto filtering now as I see it but seen so much nonsense on disc and in game it's hard to believe. Other people in this thread are confirming too.

[jubakumbi]

Just goes to show how the effect of information spreading deteriorates it completely over time.

 

As the new servers have become more known/popular, the misinformation has gathered at a similar rate.

More people, more whacky misinformation.

 

Funny and sad all at once.

[DSorrow]

Just goes to show how the effect of information spreading deteriorates it completely over time.

 

As the new servers have become more known/popular, the misinformation has gathered at a similar rate.

More people, more whacky misinformation.

 

Funny and sad all at once.

 

It's probably a combination of experienced and new people with CoX's somewhat quirky mechanics when it comes to enhancements. "Rule of 3" with standard enhancements is easy to mix with the "Rule of 5" of IO set bonuses while you're still kind of confused about whether you can still slot a Crushing Impact Acc/Dam in 10 different attacks if you want to but not 2 in the same attack. Compound this with people who knew a lot about the game back in the day, forgot a bunch over the 7 years it was gone but are still quite confident in their knowledge and spread misinformation with good intentions (I'm most likely guilty of this too).

[jubakumbi]

It's probably a combination of experienced and new people with CoX's somewhat quirky mechanics when it comes to enhancements. "Rule of 3" with standard enhancements is easy to mix with the "Rule of 5" of IO set bonuses while you're still kind of confused about whether you can still slot a Crushing Impact Acc/Dam in 10 different attacks if you want to but not 2 in the same attack. Compound this with people who knew a lot about the game back in the day, forgot a bunch over the 7 years it was gone but are still quite confident in their knowledge and spread misinformation with good intentions (I'm most likely guilty of this too).

 

In my world, the term is 'trust but verify'. :)

[Chance Jackson]

Other great example: ANY damage power but let's use Knockout Blow from SS

148 base damage

2 25 damage IOs = 243 dmg

3 50 damage IOs = 295 dmg

 

50 damage is nothing to sneeze at in this case BUT, what about the free slot I get? I can slot 6 total and would much rather have 2 recharge and 2 accuracy for this heavy hitting power. Hitting twice as often and more accurately is way more valuable than the 50 damage per hit.

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

 

Missed this initially, but I think seeing it as 50 is the wrong way to look at it. It's 20% more damage, which is significant. Depending on the power a second recharge could indeed have a dramatic impact on damage too, but will a second accuracy increase the powers overall damage by 20%? That is extremely unlikely.

Sure if the comparison is 2 lvl 25 IOs vs 3 lvl 50 IOs but if you are looking at 2 lvl 50 IOs that is 83.32% enhancement which gets you 272.2 dmg & extra lvl 50 IO will barely get you more than 20 more points of damage!

[Prototech]

Other great example: ANY damage power but let's use Knockout Blow from SS

148 base damage

2 25 damage IOs = 243 dmg

3 50 damage IOs = 295 dmg

 

50 damage is nothing to sneeze at in this case BUT, what about the free slot I get? I can slot 6 total and would much rather have 2 recharge and 2 accuracy for this heavy hitting power. Hitting twice as often and more accurately is way more valuable than the 50 damage per hit.

 

Am I crazy here? Do most people just not get it or do I not get it?

 

Missed this initially, but I think seeing it as 50 is the wrong way to look at it. It's 20% more damage, which is significant. Depending on the power a second recharge could indeed have a dramatic impact on damage too, but will a second accuracy increase the powers overall damage by 20%? That is extremely unlikely.

Sure if the comparison is 2 lvl 25 IOs vs 3 lvl 50 IOs but if you are looking at 2 lvl 50 IOs that is 83.32% enhancement which gets you 272.2 dmg & extra lvl 50 IO will barely get you more than 20 more points of damage!

 

I should have used 2 in the example, not sure why I used three. Example is even better with 2.