Invention sets

[Ukase]

There are many folks who franken-slot. The idea being that when pursuing a couple of combat stats, it's easier to do when you take 2-3 pieces of this set, and 2-3 pieces of that set. Or just the 3 pieces of one set, and use an HO to get the overall dps numbers, or other numbers like accuracy up to snuff. 

And then there are folks who either really like a full set due to personality reasons, or, really like those bonus numbers when the 6th piece is slotted. 

So, I'm doing a build on a character in a concerted efforted to leave defense alone, and focus more on dps. Some survivability, of course. I mean, it's going to have a patron armor of some kind. (although, none of them are really very good, but better than nothing, I guess)

And many use Mids Reborn. I do. At least, I try to use it. I'm pretty sure I'm not getting the most out of it. But that's another topic. 

I was looking at the enhance portion in mids: 

 

When they design these sets, are they aware that accuracy is low? And that damage is too high? I guess they are, because I don't think there's a set in this game that I've looked at where the numbers were green. Like, not any of them. I went with the full 6 for this set because I wanted that recharge buff. But now, I'm rethinking the entire build to prevent these kinds of diminishing returns. 

But, the thing about diminishing returns, there are still some returns, tiny though they may be. I tried frankenslotting, and if my heart is set on grabbing that extra recharge for no reason other than I want it, it ain't gonna happen. 

Now, I don't know the answer. Not with certainty. But the very rares are also like this. High on damage. Low on endurance and accuracy. Somewhere on these forums, it's probably all been discussed. But I missed it. 

Why can't we have a set that's properly designed with no wasted stats if you use the full set? 

[Erratic1]

4 minutes ago, Ukase said:

When they design these sets, are they aware that accuracy is low? And that damage is too high? I guess they are, because I don't think there's a set in this game that I've looked at where the numbers were green. Like, not any of them. I went with the full 6 for this set because I wanted that recharge buff. But now, I'm rethinking the entire build to prevent these kinds of diminishing returns. 

 

Pretty sure they know and it is meant to be another design hurdle/consideration to keep in mind and met by choice of sets or takinng powers which increase Accuracy/To-Hit.

[MonteCarla]

Pre-IO's, not counting Hami-O's, we had six slots to use for Damage, Acc, End, Recharge etc, with any more than 3 of one kind getting hit hard by ED.

It was fairly common to slot 1 Acc, 1 End, 1 Rech and 3 Damage.
I don't know, but doubt many people slotted 3 Acc or 3 Rech in their attacks.

 

IO sets typically do better than this.
A double like Acc/Dam gives you 2/3 the value for both stats, totalling 1.33 SO's worth.
A triple like Acc/Dam/End gives you 1/2 the value of an SO for each stat, totalling 1.5 SO's worth.

Sets are usually designed so you get maxed (but not hugely wasted) damage and decent values for Acc, End and Rech.
e.g Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact - the most vanilla of sets give you:

  3 * 2/3 + 3 * 1/2 = 3.5 SOs worth of Damage

  2/3 + 2*1/2 = 1.66 SOs worth of Acc, End and Rech.

The damage is a bit over ED, but you can max that if you only slot 5 pieces.
These numbers creep up as you approach 50, to more like 4 Damage, and 2 of everything else.

I think that's the basic logic behind what you're seeing?

 

You do get the odd set that doesn't max out damage easily (Mako's Bite, Artillery). Maybe it would be nice to have more of them?
 

Edited Friday at 11:13 AM by MonteCarla

[WumpusRat]

I don't really see 61% accuracy as "low". It's middle-range. Not everything has to have 95% accuracy, especially on powers that don't have any sort of innate to-hit penalty.

 

But when it comes to sets, the problem is if you design the full set to be "perfect" (90-95% accuracy, 95-97% damage, 90-95% recharge, and 80-95% end), the set could end up being TOO good, depending on the set bonuses involved. Cupid's Crush for instance I always try to fit the entire thing into a power, since the set bonuses are amazing. 

 

Most of the time when I'm building I'm aiming for set bonuses to shore up my resists, defense, or other such things. It's why a lot of my melee characters will 6-slot Touch of Death in their melee attacks, despite it being a 40th level set. Fully slotted, the set bonuses are great, and while it's only got 43% or so accuracy in the set, I tend to have enough +acc and +to-hit in other places in the build to make up for it. 

[MonteCarla]

Yeah.
As a set-slotter, I usually have over 1 SO's worth of +global accuracy, and around 3 SO's worth of +Global Recharge. It more than makes up for what I lose in the powers themselves.

[Hedgefund2]

Purple sets give 59.62% accuracy (unboosted) so 60.95% seems like plenty to me.  

[Snarky]

I am frankenslotting my corr ATO sets 3/3/3/3. Although, i actually put 3/3 in the nuke and have the other two 3s in two different sets.  I am oushing range for my cones.  Dark has a lot of cones including the beautiful fear cone. When not nuking i joist out and AoE cone everything. The to hit debuffs in each cone, even when the DPS is minor, it just is solid.  
 

the build is quite frankenslotted to get +range bonuses and then pump good values.  Not “worried” about chasing many things like softcap def or a “perfect” rech number.  Just decent set bonuses that help, great values on what the powers do, and lots of range.  
 

Dark Dark Corr is already a powerhouse.  I just need to enhance it. The added range is the one way i have seen that stands out as a way to make it more effective.  I will, of course, take intuition alpha for +20% range / +33% dam

Edited Friday at 01:23 PM by Snarky

[tidge]

The set boosts for Accuracy end up on top of the base accuracy of whatever power the set is slotted in... without even considering any global boosts to Accuracy or ToHit.

 

The Purple sets typically have fewer "Accuracy" boosts, but it is common that 4-slotting a Purple set gives a +15% global Accuracy bonus. A character can have up to 5 of any one such bonus, so +75% global Accuracy from such bonuses is a possibility.

 

 

[Hedgefund2]

To the above point, Cupid's Crash includes 11% global acc in the 4th slot.  I've been playing an Ill dom that 6 slotted Cupid's Crush in PA.  I'm pleased with the results. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

7 hours ago, Ukase said:

Why can't we have a set that's properly designed with no wasted stats if you use the full set? 

 

Tradeoffs exist in order to dissuade min-maxxers from zeroing in on one optimal framework.  You can frankenslot to whatever you are looking for in particular.

 

Example:  generally, when I am looking at a standard defense power like Weave, where the two relevant enhancements are defense and endurance reduction, how I look at it will depend at least slightly on what is going on with the rest of my character.  I find most of the defense set bonuses underwhelming, and I don't want to "waste" slots on a power to six-slot something like Reactive Defenses unless that character really could use a single example of that set bonus.  So I usually go with LotG proc (attuned) and 2x lvl 53 Cyto.  But not always.  I remember a Energy Armor scrapper I had that simple had too many slots, so I found myself doing things like 5 slotting defense powers for a tiny tiny incremental bonus.

[Psyonico]

6 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

that simple had too many slots,

What a problem to have!

[Major_Decoy]

Honestly, without adding any new set bonuses, I think it'd be nice if all the sets had two or three new enhancements added to them.

[FupDup]

Set bonuses are typically inferior to procs, at least in powers where procs are applicable, so there's definitely room for improving what you get from sets without even touching the meta. 

 

One thing I'll note is that low recharge enhancement can actually be a good thing if the set has a proc in it, because of extremely bad game design that punishes your PPM for slotting recharge. I think that there should be more sets like Positron's Blast where you can 5-slot it while keeping the full PPM. Accuracy and endurance reduction, however, are definitely fair game for more cowbell (and other attributes like range and stuff, also like Positron's Blast). 

I'd definitely like to see the Cupid-style proc boosting mechanic proliferated to other sets, prioritizing underused sets of course (i.e. purples probably don't need it). 

Edited yesterday at 02:12 AM by FupDup

[Biff Pow]

60% is decent Accuracy. In situations where you're missing a lot, it's usually +ToHit that you want (or ToHit Debuff resistance), not more Accuracy.

[Hopeling]

16 hours ago, Ukase said:

Why can't we have a set that's properly designed with no wasted stats if you use the full set? 

There aren't enough stats to go around. Fully enhancing acc/dam/end/rech would be 400% total pre-ED, and in your screenshot for example, the four pre-ED values in that set only add to 349.8.

 

You usually don't need or even want all four of those stats ED-capped, anyway. Damage usually, recharge occasionally, acc and endredux you just need "enough" and even just 60% is routinely more than enough. And if a set needs all 6 pieces to cap its damage at 50, it's going to be terrible at level 30, and heaven forbid you run less than 6 pieces.

 

The original devs in particular seemed to very deliberately design sets with weaknesses, like Obliteration having very high recharge (and giving a recharge bonus) but little endredux. I don't know that this really had the effect they wanted overall, since in a lot of enhancement categories there are still sets that are obviously better than the others, but it doesn't seem fair to say that a set is only "properly designed" if it's perfect with no downsides or tradeoffs. Making a build is about tradeoffs. One of those tradeoffs is deciding if you want that 6th slot just for the set bonus.

Edited yesterday at 03:14 AM by Hopeling

[MTeague]

Keep in mind, it's not that that hard to get an extra +21% accuracy to all powers just as a freebie by slotting other IO sets. You may not Need all your acc bonuses to come from a given slotting directly in that power.  Also, there's Tactics, and Build Up, and Defense Debuffs, and other ways to make sure you're fairly reliably hitting. 

 

And also keep in mind, the dreaded "natural 1" / occasional manifestation of XCOM accuracy. Sometimes you just gonna miss. 

[Yomo Kimyata]

1 hour ago, Major_Decoy said:

Honestly, without adding any new set bonuses, I think it'd be nice if all the sets had two or three new enhancements added to them.

 

No, they should add some really nice 8 or 9 piece bonuses, and then people will lose their minds because they can't get them.

[Major_Decoy]

38 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

No, they should add some really nice 8 or 9 piece bonuses, and then people will lose their minds because they can't get them.

I don't disagree, but the current team doesn't seem to engage in that sort of adversarial game design.

[Vanden]

17 hours ago, Ukase said:

I was looking at the enhance portion in mids: 

 

I think it's worth pointing out that these numbers aren't accurate; 6-slotting Cupid's Crush at 50 gives only 113.95% damage enhancement before ED, not 129.85%. Something's wrong in the Mids database.

[kanga]

I don't mind individual sets having low accuracy, because normally during the course of a build I will end up with many global accuracy bonuses, so it works out pretty neatly in the end. 

[Scarlet Shocker]

I think @Erratic1 hit the nail on the proverbial right there

 

10 hours ago, FupDup said:

Set bonuses are typically inferior to procs, at least in powers where procs are applicable, so there's definitely room for improving what you get from sets without even touching the meta. 

 

I've never heard this before. Is there actual data to support this? My (admittedly limited) understanding of Procs is  that they have a very individual performance and a lot will depend on the proc itself but the idea of a single piece being better than the set is... weird.

 

9 hours ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

No, they should add some really nice 8 or 9 piece bonuses, and then people will lose their minds because they can't get them.

 

I genuinely love this idea. Not to add to confusion but the idea that if you have say 10 pieces and you perm the best (up to) 6 from that you could technically give a power a different flavour to suit your personal needs.

 

You couldn't obviously have a set bonus for slotting all ten pieces in a single power but you could potentially have the ability to slot 4 of the pieces in 3 different powers even if most of those are Uniques.

[FupDup]

1 hour ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I've never heard this before. Is there actual data to support this? My (admittedly limited) understanding of Procs is  that they have a very individual performance and a lot will depend on the proc itself but the idea of a single piece being better than the set is... weird.

Usually, the more veteran players tend to load up their eligible attack powers with as many damage procs as they can, at least for the powers that have a decent proc rate. Powers with lower proc rates might be used as a source of global recharge/accuracy bonuses to help the proc'd powers work. 

 

Loading up pure sets in everything is still viable in the sense that the game's difficulty is low enough that you'll still be able to complete almost anything that way, but proc bombed builds are mathematically better because damage is the name of the game and non-damage stats like defense can be outsourced to teammates and/or insps.

 

At the risk of going off topic, the issue is that most set bonuses don't actually raise your maximum ceiling for those stats, they just bring you closer to the same ceiling that everyone else has (in other words, raise the floor). Meanwhile, damage procs give you a way to surpass your standard damage ceiling. A Blaster built for softcapped defenses has the exact same upper limits for def, res, HP, etc. as a Blaster with 0% defenses, but the 0% Blaster has a higher damage ceiling that can't be replicated from inspirations or teammates. If I were to make the game again from scratch, I would add some kind of way for set bonuses to interact with your max caps, i.e. resistance bonuses might slightly increase your max res cap to a particular damage type, so that non-offensive investment couldn't be completely replaced by outside sources (which of course would entail rebalancing the default res caps, etc). 

 

...But this is definitely way too much for a game as old and established as this one, I'm just ranting for academic purposes. 

Edited 22 hours ago by FupDup

[tidge]

On 7/11/2025 at 10:56 AM, Hedgefund2 said:

To the above point, Cupid's Crash includes 11% global acc in the 4th slot.  I've been playing an Ill dom that 6 slotted Cupid's Crush in PA.  I'm pleased with the results. 

 

Try the set in Phantom Army!

[Hedgefund2]

Um, that's what I said I did in the thing you quoted.

[tidge]

2 hours ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

I've never heard this before. Is there actual data to support this? My (admittedly limited) understanding of Procs is  that they have a very individual performance and a lot will depend on the proc itself but the idea of a single piece being better than the set is... weird.

 

When considering %damage procs, my general rules are:

• If the base recharge is below 15 seconds, the only %proc included will be part of a set I want to slot. (because rates will be bad)
• If the power is a single-target, the only %proc included will be part of a set I want to slot.
• If the base recharge is longer than 90 seconds, the only %proc included will be part of a set I want to slot. (because recharge is probably more important than the %proc)

It is possible to get better performance by working around the margins of the above rules, and considering the context of what the power is actually doing for the character (and power chain) but I find those to be a good foundation. I certainly have characters that break some of these rules of mine.

 

1 minute ago, Hedgefund2 said:

Um, that's what I said I did in the thing you quoted.