Brainstorming ways to make low level invention sets more relevant

[Yomo Kimyata]

Ever since SOs were made available at low levels, the raw enhancement power has made them the go to for those who choose to afford them.  As a result, low level invention sets have mostly become irrelevant, in my opinion.  Sure, there are plenty of useful set IOs still, but for the most part those are procs or from a very limited number of sets that have good set bonuses.  That's fine and good, but I'd love to try to come up with some ideas to:  1. make those recipe drops something more than vendor fodder; and 2. maybe add some diversity in builds.  I don't doubt that I'm one of the only people who cares about this, but hey, that's where I am today.

 

Ideas:

- revamp some of the set bonuses.  Slip in a little more +def, or +res, or +recharge?

 

That's all I've got for now.  Anyone else have any ideas?

[lemming]

Maybe something helpful in End Management since that's often more a struggle at lower levels.

[Psyonico]

I think there are quite a few sets that go almost completely unused outside of frankenslotting

[Biff Pow]

Every set should go up to level 30 at least. Not sure why they capped some at 20.

 

New, useful set bonuses like +ToHit (instead of Accuracy) and mez protections.

 

Adding Accuracy and Damage to some mez sets so you can use the whole set without gimping the power.

[biostem]

What if the base values of all IOs, (generic or set ones), never dropped below that of their level 20 or 25 equivalents?

[High_Beam]

Let me ask this, how long are most players staying low level.  Factoring out the farmers which seem to litter the airspace, you can get to level 12 super quick from a couple of DFB.  1 or2 Task/Strike Force and you are creeping up on 20.  A Kill Most Yin and you are now mid 20 and approaching ability to slot in the 30 (bottom).  So three days of solid play with very little risk getting you to slotting the higher level stuff.

 

So why would you spend cash on things you are gonna use for a few days.  You wouldn't.  This puts you right back to the original issue, using procs or franken slotting. 

 

So the only solutions to drive a demand towards the product is to either make leveling harder and longer (phrasing) so that more time is spent at those low levels thus facilitating an increase in demand for lower level Set IO.  But you would have to kill farms straight up and you knowhow that conversation ends.

 

Or you make the lower level enhancements significantly more valuable  by slotting them, like crazy numbers,  High demand bonuses for low need (3 slot max) placing high defense or end recovery or resist as bonus in low instead of a full six (cause low level wont have much of anything sis slotted).  But then that totally knocks the higher level ones out of use.

 

So that means you have to develop a maximum level to slot and after that it becomes useless thus like 25 or 30 where the highers pick up.  This forces the buy of the newer high level stuff.  That mechanic could be worked but again now you ask why spend that money if I wont be able to keep these bonuses which I am gonna outlevel super quick still.  So you a cap is not going to help.

 

Perhaps the solution is to overhaul the Set IOs as a whole.  First and foremost make them all 10-50.  Then reduce the duplicative sets.  Evaluate the focus needs.  Perhaps move some into a general category, slot anywhere, or make franken slot families, common use procs all in one bag or maybe make them count across.  Or make certain ones that can be slotted up to X times (LotG Global, Perf Shift End, etc) only allowed to be slotted once. But that last part would cause riots.

 

Now an evaluation of sets, a possible modification of some, perhaps the level equalization, those could work without breaking much and thumbs up there.  But I see no real gain in putting time and energy into trying to make low level set IOs more appealing or marketable.

[Greycat]

I wonder if part of it is (or was) a thought of "These set bonuses are more relevant at these levels without being overpowered, and we can make a higher level set for mid/end game stuff."  (I seem to recall - though it may be shaded with familiarity for some sets - more things like "0.75% defense" bonuses in lower levels, for instance.)

 

Which leads me to wonder if they can be more level aware and bump those values up as you hit certain benchmarks. (And, conversely, down as you exemp down past certain levels.) Adds a level of complexity, though.

[Biff Pow]

10 minutes ago, biostem said:

What if the base values of all IOs, (generic or set ones), never dropped below that of their level 20 or 25 equivalents?

 

I'd make level 10 IOs equal to a -2 SO, level 20 equal to an even level SO, level 30 to a +2 SO, etc. Level 40 to 50 would be better than SOs, giving an incentive to maybe mix some with set IOs.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, Biff Pow said:

I'd make level 10 IOs equal to a -2 SO, level 20 equal to an even level SO, level 30 to a +2 SO, etc. Level 40 to 50 would be better than SOs, giving an incentive to maybe mix some with set IOs.

Another idea could be to make level 1-20 IOs automatically attuned to the character, so they grow as that character does...

[Jacke]

@Yomo Kimyata and @Psyonico are correct.  There's a whole lot of IOs that aren't worth crafting or slotting (outside of Completists who stay a long time at lower Levels).

 

Further to what @High_Beam said, a Toon can do 4 DFBs (to get all the bonuses) with a 2XP Experience Booster and get to L20 quite easily.  There's also other ways to level almost as fast and pick up things like Safeguard Missions along the way.

 

As for what I'd like to do about IO sets, I'd say do this:

• Make all sets L10 to L50 and have a full set of 6.
• When the bonuses are poor, make them better, but different, as well as covering bonues not previous covered.
• With +3 SOs now easily available from L5, adjust the Exemplar Effects on Enhancements to reduce the reductions.

But the problem with all of these is they are forms of Power Creep.  They'd have to be looked at very carefully by the Powers Devs.  They would also interact with other things and proposed changes in the game.

 

So I don't expect movement on them soon.  Until then, all they are is Auction House fodder.

 

 

[BasiliskXVIII]

What if attuning IO sets simply allowed them to function to your level regardless of their level range? It wouldn't be cheap to keep them relevant if you wanted the set bonus, but if there are balancing concerns about having more desirable set bonuses available at lower slotting requirements, then at least the additional cost required to make them function well at higher tiers of play would help counteract that.

 

For me, the big thing that is appealing about this idea is that it would open a lot more options for the less commonly-used IO sets, such as the various debuff sets. Maybe the "Discouraging Words" set isn't something that every ToHit power is clamouring to use, but at least having it as an option would give it a lot more relevance than its current status as an IO set that spans levels 10-20. Even soloing, I can get through that in an afternoon. Just having one more set relevant at 50 would increase the number of ToHit Debuff sets by 50% (33% if you count the accurate debuff sets too) Making all of the lv10-20 sets would double the current options.

[Greycat]

7 minutes ago, Jacke said:

So I don't expect movement on them soon.  Until then, all they are is Auction House fodder.

 

... which does bring up another point. Is it time to go through, look at the sets (especially the early ones and/or least used ones - how many snipe sets in general get used?) and remove them from the drop table? Since some people may want to use them, or frankenslot with them, keep them available at a vendor or vendors, but start a project to revamp or replace them en masse? (Granted it'd take time to do, this wouldn't be Patch Day = a thousand sets moved to a vendor, with replacements in the drop table, after all.)

[BasiliskXVIII]

29 minutes ago, Greycat said:

 

... which does bring up another point. Is it time to go through, look at the sets (especially the early ones and/or least used ones - how many snipe sets in general get used?) and remove them from the drop table? Since some people may want to use them, or frankenslot with them, keep them available at a vendor or vendors, but start a project to revamp or replace them en masse? (Granted it'd take time to do, this wouldn't be Patch Day = a thousand sets moved to a vendor, with replacements in the drop table, after all.)

I'm inclined to say that making the practically unusable sets into something usable, even if it's just in those circumstances where you hit your cap on 3.75% Ranged Def sets, and you would be looking at the trivial 0.625% Ranged Def on Pulverising Fisticuffs just to eke out a tiny bit more, if it didn't cap out at level 25, would be a good first step in this. It would at least help sort out "what's not used because it's garbage" from "what's not used because it's impractical?"

 

Honestly, the more I think of it, the more I wonder if IOs even need levels. I don't know what the general consensus is on this, but for my part, I'm not seriously looking at set IOs (with the exception of procs) until I can slot level fifties anyway. Having an IO for every level in a given level range might have been fine on live, but there's a lot less supply and demand happening on Homecoming. So why not just get rid of all of the leveled IOs, and have one recipe for each set that's attuned as soon as you craft it? If the worry is about catalysts losing their place, then maybe the IOs can level up with you but don't scale down unless they're catalysed. Being able to use my drops as I get them because the recipe I get at level 30 is just as good as the one I'll get would be a lot more fun than selling them off, and would make buying expensive salvage pieces a lot more appealing. .

[Excraft]

1 hour ago, High_Beam said:

Let me ask this, how long are most players staying low level.  Factoring out the farmers which seem to litter the airspace, you can get to level 12 super quick from a couple of DFB.  1 or2 Task/Strike Force and you are creeping up on 20.  A Kill Most Yin and you are now mid 20 and approaching ability to slot in the 30 (bottom).  So three days of solid play with very little risk getting you to slotting the higher level stuff.

 

So why would you spend cash on things you are gonna use for a few days.  You wouldn't. 

 

Speaking for myself, this is exactly what I do.  I'm spending a couple of hours at most sub level 30.  It simply isn't worth the time or resource investment to create and slot IOs that I'm not going to need after a couple of hours.

 

I can see people using these sets for characters they may want to keep in a specific level range by turning off XP and running through all the content at a given level before moving on.

[UltraAlt]

4 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

Ever since SOs were made available at low levels, the raw enhancement power has made them the go to for those who choose to afford them. 

 

I really don't deal with the low level IO sets myself.

They cost what they cost at this point based on their usefulness.

 

I'm going to assume you are talking about IO sets that have a low maximum level.

 

My experience is that IO sets sub 20 or 30 something just don't yield percentages of stat increases that come anywhere near that of an SO.

I generally am putting 2 ACCs in almost every power unless that exceeds 2.0. I want to make sure that I'm hitting a large percentage of the time.

So putting in an SO that adds some 30% versus 20 or three enhances of an Set IO's that can't even reach that percentage of increase doesn't make sense.

 

And then there is the number of slots available at the lower levels.

 

Personally, I never saw a use of the lower level IOs other than some sense of self prestige one my feel from having the inf to slot them. (Again, I haven't really looked into the price of slotting low-level cap set versus slotting SOs)

 

I will say that I'm almost alway slotting a Panacea proc as soon as I think I can pick a slot for it at level 10 or higher.

[UltraAlt]

2 hours ago, Psyonico said:

I think there are quite a few sets that go almost completely unused outside of frankenslotting

 

I think I can easily say that I have not frankenslotted an IO sets enhancements less than 5 times. I'm thinking maybe one of the brute or tanker ATO sets (off hand I think that there is a corruptor one that I might contemplate 6 slotting, but often times the proc for this set doesn't fit with my character conception so I don't use it)

 

That is to say, only slotting IOs from the same set in a powers available slots - which may be the broader definition for frankenslotting versus slotting IO set enhancements from more than one IO set in a power.

[FupDup]

Do the following things. 

 

1. Expand their max level range up to level 50. 

 

2. Reduce their minimum level in some cases because it's pretty silly how stuff like ATOs, Winters, and PVPs can be equipped starting at level 7 but some of these lowbie sets need you to be mid-level to start using them, at which point they're already beyond obsolete. 

 

3. Improve their set bonuses, prioritizing characteristics that are underrepresented in each category (i.e. S/L defense and resistance in ranged damage). I would prefer to handle this as giving these lowbie sets two tiers of weak bonuses instead of having one tier of strong bonuses like good sets have (for flavor/differentiation), but I won't get too picky here. 

 

4. Somewhat optional, fill up the sets to 6 pieces, adding unique/spicy procs where possible. 

 

Here is an example of what I'm talking about. Let's go with Volley Fire because why not. Here is the current version of the set that is virtually useless:

 

 

Here is a hypothetical prototype of what a buffed version could look like:

 

Edited Wednesday at 10:56 PM by FupDup

[Apogee]

2 hours ago, High_Beam said:

Let me ask this, how long are most players staying low level.  Factoring out the farmers which seem to litter the airspace, you can get to level 12 super quick from a couple of DFB.  1 or2 Task/Strike Force and you are creeping up on 20.  A Kill Most Yin and you are now mid 20 and approaching ability to slot in the 30 (bottom).  So three days of solid play with very little risk getting you to slotting the higher level stuff.

 

So why would you spend cash on things you are gonna use for a few days.  You wouldn't.  This puts you right back to the original issue, using procs or franken slotting. 

 

So the only solutions to drive a demand towards the product is to either make leveling harder and longer (phrasing) so that more time is spent at those low levels thus facilitating an increase in demand for lower level Set IO.  But you would have to kill farms straight up and you knowhow that conversation ends.

 

Not everyone teams.  I have close to 200 alts and I have never once run a DFB.  I don't run TFs generally either and then only with characters that can reasonably solo the TF.  I don't run double xp, nor do I level up by door sitting. Getting into the 20's takes some time, not a lot of time, but more than a few play sessions.  Longer still for my Goldside characters (of which there are many) because of the time spent not earning xp at all.

 

Not saying you are wrong for there are many ways to level up in the game.  My point being, not everyone races to 50 (or 30, or 20), and not everyone has a team to carry them through the lower levels.  I've tried slotting some low level sets but usually use SOs until level 22 (with the usual uniques thrown in when available).  I can generally deal without full sets at lower levels but options are always nice to have.

[Paradox Fate]

It probably also helps to remove the rare salvage requirements on those sets as well, since I felt it weird asking for that type of salvage when the 3-pt. bonus is a mere +0.75% Max HP and they cap out at level 25.

[lemming]

4 hours ago, High_Beam said:

Let me ask this, how long are most players staying low level. 

For my characters, I do have a couple that I'm slow leveling (one is at 9, another at 29) and outside a few low level procs they use ATO or SOs.

 

That is definitely the minority, but it's nice having some lower level ones that can then be swapped out later.  

[Snarky]

1st step would be to make them go to 50.  so the enhancement values are not sub par on high level.  after that you have to be careful, any serious bonuses will possibly unbalance things

 

honesty, just a few more sets for build choices in general would be much appreciated.

[tidge]

So a couple of reactions:

 

I'd like more enhancement options that span the entire range of levels.

 

I kinda like that the level ranges exist, for converter roulette.

 

[Ulysses Dare]

A simple* solution to enhance the value of low level sets would be to raise their upper level. Since their bonuses are smaller, they won't displace the higher level sets but slotting them is a lot more attractive if they don't top out at level thirty. Or even worse, twenty.

 

 

*Conceptually simple, I have no idea how difficult it would be to code.

[Techwright]

On 12/18/2024 at 3:53 PM, Jacke said:

 

 

Further to what @High_Beam said, a Toon can do 4 DFBs (to get all the bonuses) with a 2XP Experience Booster and get to L20 quite easily.  There's also other ways to level almost as fast and pick up things like Safeguard Missions along the way.

 

 

This is exactly what I have been doing and I have been doing so to power past the end drain teen levels.  SO changes have smoothed that somewhat, but if low sets added a +end bonus, as someone suggested, I would be willing to use them without the START 2xp boost.  One thing it might make interesting: gold side content with xp gains turned off to focus on story. Having a tricked out character would be a boon for this.

[Yomo Kimyata]

I'm pleased that this topic has struck a chord, at least with a bunch of the forum regulars!

 

I'm very hesitant to suggest any sort of power creep, because that's something that I am not in favor of (although, let's be honest, that's how we got to this stage with the SO promotion).  And I actually like the system as it is with its weird level restrictions and sometimes overlap and sometimes not; sure, I cannot recall ever having bought and slotted a piece from Smashing Haymaker, but that doesn't mean we have to buff that set or extend its level range.

 

Above, people have described their personal play styles and what kinds of changes would work best for those play styles.  But none of those playstyles are universal and there is a big population that isn't describing their playstyles.  I'll be honest, what I'd really like is for building to get more complex with more tradeoffs.  Now, I'm definitely biased as well, partly because I don't care about upgrading my SOs every level or buying a full set of ATOs for my level 10 characters.  But I find it boring, and it would be sweet if I could, for example, frankenslot three pieces of Smashing Haymaker that would get me some sort of debuff resistance at the cost of losing other set bonuses.