When to spend influence on Enhancements?

[Zolgar]

Ok ignore most of what you hear, especially if you don't have tons of influence.

 

1. Powerlevel to 22 through DFB then group SC missions or positron.

2. Hopefully you'll have 1 piece of orange salvage, sell it for 500k.

 

Buy and craft all the level 25 IOs you want. Don't replace them at all until level 50 then start saving and replacing them with sets.

Only replace the 25 IOs if you have recipe drops or tons of money, replace them as it's convenient or you have plenty of cash. But even then replacing 25 IOs with highler level IOs is barely worth the TIME it takes to go to university and play around with it. Unless you only have one IO of a type in a power, the difference between level 25 and 50 IOs is counter intuitively borderline pointless.

 

Don't listen to anyone talking about 'different schools of thought' it's all BS. just look at the numbers.

 

Perfect example is High Pain tolerance:

3 level 25 IOs = total of 8.68% res

3 level 50 IOs = total of 8.91% res

 

Yeah, don't listen to people. Especially not this guy.

 

He is painting about half the picture for you:

 

Stone Skin, on a brute.

UNslotted: 7.5% resist

3 slotted, level 50: 11.89

2 slotted, level 50: 11.23

3 slotted, 50+5: 12.1

2 slotted, 50+5: 11.74

3 slotted, 25: 11.57

2 slotted, 25: 10.38

 

Switching to 50s end game is a MASSIVE benefit, because it sames you a lot of slots. Even if you're not using sets at all, to get the optimal benefit before Enhancement Diversification kicks in and throttles your benefits, you need 3 slots at 25 IOs, but 2 slots at 50 IOs, switch to 50+5s (which does get costly, I admit) and now your 2 slot return is actually higher than your 3 slot return on 25s.

 

It's also worth noting that the power I used as an example was the most convenient comparable power to the one Prototech uses on the build currently in Pines, and is a power with a terribly low base number AND a resist power which, in case you're not aware, resist enhancers provide a smaller benefit than most others.

 

If I were to switch over to an attack power for these number...

Smite, T1 dark melee on a level 50 brute:

Unslotted: 55.05 damage

3 slotted, level 50: 109.6

2 slotted, level 50: 100.9

3 slotted, 50+5: 112.2

2 slotted, 50+5: 107.9

3 slotted, 25: 105.8

2 slotted, 25: 90.29

 

Bearing in mind of course that that is a tier 1 attack, so has a very low base damage. The benefit you would see from a fire blaster's Inferno would be MUCH higher (though the same comparative numbers, of course).

 

So yeah, it's perfectly viable to stick with 25s the entire way up. There's nothing WRONG with doing it, but there is certainly a quite measurable benefit to not doing so. As I said, even if you don't use sets at all. The difference between 25 and 50 IOs.. At 50, you could easily get away with only 4 slots (even 3, if you have powers that improve your accuracy, like maybe Tactics) in your attack powers, or 5/6 slot them and use those extra slots for things like recharge or end redux or secondary effects (stuns, end drain, etc).

 

Using sets, 50s makes frankenslotting or partial sets much more valuable, too. You can basically cap out everything that matters to you in 3-5 pieces of a set (depending on what type of set it is), at 50s, where you might need 4-6 pieces of the set if you were using 25s.

[THEDarkTyger]

That's why it's a perfect example to my point. Your counter doesn't address diminishing returns where the difference shrinks significantly at 2 and then to the point of irrelevance at 3 for many powers.

 

I even say "Unless you only have one IO of a type in a power, the difference between level 25 and 50 IOs is counter intuitively borderline pointless" so if you just have one IO of a type, yes it can be worth going to a higher level IO in some cases. BUT again we are stuck in the theoretical because the noticeable difference even there is between 25 and 50, you can't get 50 until level 47 right so it's irrelevant to practical reality. Once 47 just wait til 50 and get sets.

 

That's the thing. Because 2 level 50 IOs can get you almost as good as 3 level 25s, that means you have a free slot to play around with. At that point it's about slotting efficiency and variety. True, in some powers it won't help because they only take one type of enhancer. And you should be focusing on kitting out with sets at 50. But in the mean time, mixing things up by changing out for level 50 IOs where you don't have sets yet can still be helpful.

[Erydanus]

Yeah, don't listen to people. Especially not this guy.

You're the one who is missing the point. That dude is saying go ahead and slot IOs at level 25 because it gets you in the ballpark of the numbers you'll be getting at 50. At 50 you can do better but it's not worth waiting.

[Prototech]

That's why it's a perfect example to my point. Your counter doesn't address diminishing returns where the difference shrinks significantly at 2 and then to the point of irrelevance at 3 for many powers.

 

I even say "Unless you only have one IO of a type in a power, the difference between level 25 and 50 IOs is counter intuitively borderline pointless" so if you just have one IO of a type, yes it can be worth going to a higher level IO in some cases. BUT again we are stuck in the theoretical because the noticeable difference even there is between 25 and 50, you can't get 50 until level 47 right so it's irrelevant to practical reality. Once 47 just wait til 50 and get sets.

 

That's the thing. Because 2 level 50 IOs can get you almost as good as 3 level 25s, that means you have a free slot to play around with. At that point it's about slotting efficiency and variety. True, in some powers it won't help because they only take one type of enhancer. And you should be focusing on kitting out with sets at 50. But in the mean time, mixing things up by changing out for level 50 IOs where you don't have sets yet can still be helpful.

 

Yeah you're right I hammered to hard on the point, I think both things are true with some nuance.

[Prototech]

Yeah, don't listen to people. Especially not this guy.

You're the one who is missing the point. That dude is saying go ahead and slot IOs at level 25 because it gets you in the ballpark of the numbers you'll be getting at 50. At 50 you can do better but it's not worth waiting.

 

Thanks, that's the main point I was making.

[Zolgar]

Yeah, don't listen to people. Especially not this guy.

You're the one who is missing the point. That dude is saying go ahead and slot IOs at level 25 because it gets you in the ballpark of the numbers you'll be getting at 50. At 50 you can do better but it's not worth waiting.

 

Except that point didn't come across in his post, and he basically said "All the other posts in this thread are BS" which deserves some snark right the hell back.

[Erydanus]

I'm sorry you didn't understand what he meant by how he was phrasing it. I can see how it could have been phrased a little better. I think I'm pretty good at sussing out the meaning of things people rush to express, but I'm glad we all understand the point now.