Any ATOs not worth it?

[Arbegla]

I've been playing in MIDs a lot and building different characters (mostly Blasters, Brutes, and Scrappers) and I notice that 1) Mids doesn't really have a tooltip on the various ATOs procs and 2) I haven't been able to find good information on them to see if they are worth their salt or not.

 

With the fact we can get the ATOs with reward merits (and the AH has them for pretty cheap anyways) are any of the ATOs NOT worth slotting in any archetype or combination of powersets?

[Yomo Kimyata]

My answer is:  no they are all worthwhile, but then again there are a lot of ATs I don't play very much.  Also, I don't think that 8mm inf or even 100 merits is a lot to pay, so there is that as well.  (Generally you are better off buying them on the /AH rather than spending 100 merits for them.  You are probably better off buying a random Hero pack, getting one or two random ATOs, and converting them directly to the one you want as well.)

 

They fit in many AT powers, have good bonuses (sometimes even good 2 or 3 bonuses) in comparison to other IOs, and they are purty.

[Maelwys]

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Archetype_Enhancements

 

They tend to have very powerful set bonuses; and most of the Procs/Globals are worth it.

 

Of the ATs you mention...

The Scrapper ones are excellent, but need careful consideration where to place them (see here).

The Brute ones are traditionally considered to suck. Although at least one of them has a spot on AFK farming builds.

The Blaster ones are decent. The Mez Protection one is generally considered worth sticking in your T1/T2 blasts so you can use them whilst mezzed.

 

 

I gave a summary of my thoughts on most of them here:

 

 

 

[Championess]

The ATOs are generally good things to slot since you can slot them very early without having to replace them.  Typically for a character I intend to play through most of their levels I look to slot them to a recharge bonus value along with winter sets so I don't have to fuss much with enhancements.

 

Most sets are good, the ones with +recharge I aim for, if it doesn't have that and the proc isn't worth its salt I wont bother with the set.  For instance dommies Ascendancy is a great set but the other ATO of theirs doesnt get you any recharge bonuses and building for perma-dom thats no bueno.  Stalker ATOs with their proc imo is the best followed closely by a lot of others that do right by their AT.  There's very few ATs with subpar sets but there are a few sure.

Edited Monday at 10:46 PM by Championess

[Major_Decoy]

I tend to skip the one set without a recharge bonus on my dominators.

[UltraAlt]

9 hours ago, Arbegla said:

With the fact we can get the ATOs with reward merits (and the AH has them for pretty cheap anyways) are any of the ATOs NOT worth slotting in any archetype or combination of powersets?

 

I use ATOs on pretty much all my characters.

If I don't use an ATO enhancement, it tends to be the proc ... because the VFX does on fit that character's character conception. 

The other reason would be to on use 5 of a set because the bonus for slotting 5 in the same power is good, but I need at that 6th slot for an ACC as I don't think the full set give enough accuracy to that power.

 

For most sets, it seems to me that you need to find that break point where slotting by 2 or 3's give you the greatest bonus that the set can really supply. 

A good example of this is the Controller sets:

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Will_of_the_Controller - slot by 3's

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Hold effects by 3%.

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Immobilize effects by 6%.

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Stun effects by 3%.

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Sleep effects by 6%.

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Confuse effects by 3%.

Three enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Fear effects by 3.3%.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Overpowering_Presence - slot by 2's

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Hold effects by 2%.

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Immobilize effects by 4%.

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Stun effects by 2%.

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Sleep effects by 4%.

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Confuse effects by 2%.

Two enhancements improves the duration or magnitude of your Fear effects by 2.2%.

Neither bonus is all that great but adding +12% to holds (for example) on top of the individual enhancement bonuses makes a difference - especially if the controller has multiple mez types.

[MonteCarla]

I generally don't take Overwhelming Presence for Controllers and Dominating Grasp for Dominators.

 

They provide no +Recharge set bonus, which both classes really benefit from.

They provide a boost to Energy Defence rather than Ranged Defence.

The set bonuses they do give are pretty rubbish for these classes.

They don't boost damage of the power you're slotting.

There's usually something better (Basilisk's Gaze, Stupefy, Malaise' Illusions) anyway, and cheaper.

 

I sometimes slot the single Chance to Spawn Energy Font/Fireball Thingy, but they're pretty underwhelming to be honest.

 

Nearly every other AT, I slot both sets. They almost all provide a +Recharge and +Defence bonus, and max out damage and recharge for the power.  They're pretty awesome.

For Defenders and Corrupters I split the ones with +Recharge for 3 pieces.

[High_Beam]

The Stalker one with the chance to hide hits way more than it misses which means almost guarantees better damage and surviviability.  I always to slot in in my T4 super sneaky death power.

[MoonSheep]

1 minute ago, High_Beam said:

The Stalker one with the chance to hide hits way more than it misses which means almost guarantees better damage and surviviability.  I always to slot in in my T4 super sneaky death power.

 

i was just about to post and say how much i enjoy both the stalker ATOs

 

the chance for build up is such a nice boost also

[Uun]

Looking at the procs:

• The Energy Font summoned by Overpowering Presence proc and Fiery Orb summoned by Dominating Grasp proc are quite bad. While good in concept (11 pts of damage in a 15 ft PBAoE every 4s), they are summoned next to you and are quite fragile. Somewhat mitigated by the fact you can have multiples out at the same time.
• The Brute's Fury proc (gain 5/7 Fury) is garbage.
• The Opportunity Strikes proc (gain 147.5/210 Opportunity) is pretty lame.

[tidge]

@Uun identified the ones that I will skip (unless I specifically need one or more set bonuses). Energy Font/Fiery Orb can be cute, but there is almost always a better use for that slot.

 

The best are the Scrapper ATOs, after thos... probably the Stalkers, VEATs and Tankers... but generally they are good.

 

As for set bonuses: I will share one trick relating to Dominator ATOs and set bonuses. I have one (perma)Dominator that already has five +10% recharge bonuses from purple sets, so I use the non-superior Ascendency of the Dominator set to get +8.75, since the superior set's bonus of +10% would be wasted.

[CoeruleumBlue]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

Looking at the procs:

• The Energy Font summoned by Overpowering Presence proc and Fiery Orb summoned by Dominating Grasp proc are quite bad. While good in concept (11 pts of damage in a 15 ft PBAoE every 4s), they are summoned next to you and are quite fragile. Somewhat mitigated by the fact you can have multiples out at the same time.
• The Brute's Fury proc (gain 5/7 Fury) is garbage.
• The Opportunity Strikes proc (gain 147.5/210 Opportunity) is pretty lame.

 

Overpowering Presence and Dominating Grasp are good. I checked my characters and I slotted 5 out of 6 of those because the 2nd set bonus improves all of your control effects and the 5th increases your Recovery. I tend to think the Fiery Orb on Dominating Grasp can be kind of silly though since it's a fireball and you can't recolor it so you just have big orange fireballs regardless of what your power sets are, but also, it's literally a pet proc and multiple can come out at the same time. If you only want to use the pet proc or you only want to use the pet proc and one other for the set bonus to control powers, cool, but it's literally a pet proc, like a damage proc, but it's a pet.

 

The controller and dominator sets are literally some of the best ones, maybe I'd change the cosmetics and make Overpowering Presence and Fiery Orb have a recharge bonus instead of defense but that's probably done for balance reasons. I have a ton of other sets with recharge bonuses and some that just have procs, you probably don't need every single set to have a recharge bonus but there are probably plenty with 5/6 or 4/6 recharge bonuses you could slot there if you only want the first or first two in the set. 

Edited yesterday at 05:18 PM by CoeruleumBlue

[Uun]

11 minutes ago, CoeruleumBlue said:

If you only want to use the pet proc or you only want to use the pet proc and one other for the set bonus to control powers, cool, but it's literally a pet proc, like a damage proc, but it's a pet.

The damage from Energy Font/Fiery Orb is a fraction of what you get from any other %dmg proc.

[JediDave]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

As for set bonuses: I will share one trick relating to Dominator ATOs and set bonuses. I have one (perma)Dominator that already has five +10% recharge bonuses from purple sets, so I use the non-superior Ascendency of the Dominator set to get +8.75, since the superior set's bonus of +10% would be wasted.

I never thought about that, that's a good loophole, especially since most ATOs are already good value at orange. I don't frequently have room for 5 separate purple sets, but I'll for sure remember this trick on doms.

 

 

Another thing I like is on brute/scrappers getting the 3pc bonus twice for 10% smash/lethal defense on a set that's lacking it. I know, I know, low DDR and all that, but on WP and Bio particularly, the 10% from those and 5% from a winter set gives a solid 15% s/l defense on sets that are specifically lacking that typal defense. Even if it gets debuffed later, it reduces the alpha considerably. My old TW/Bio and StJ/WP benefitted a lot from that split. 

 

MM ATO split 3 ways gives 30% recharge, which I think is kind of common knowledge at this point. 

 

Defender and Corruptor splits give 20% recharge for slotting 3 and 3. 

 

The one I'm constantly torn on is the Tanker 6 slot resistance bonus, because you get resistance, but then the proc chance goes down considerably with that much recharge aspect, which is then dropping your resistances. 

 

And as stated above, I think stalker and scrapper are the two biggest proc boosts to overall build performance. Scrappers take some more strategy/planning to maximize, but even winging it gives a big boost. Meanwhile the stalker one ALMOST makes me want to try kinetic melee for constant BU refreshes from the proc, and the guaranteed T9 refresh from the other proc. Almost.

[Coyote]

I like the Orb ATOs on a few Dominator powers that are PBAoE, since it pops up in the middle of the enemies if you're already there attacking with the power. Especially on ones with shorter recharge, since that's where normal %Dam procs drop in chance, while the Orb ATO only needs to fire on one target to summon it. I also like the set to run 2 pairs of the IOs in order to boost control duration for multiple OTHER powers, especially if they're going into a control power in which I might only want to put 1-2 slots. It's a way to squeeze out extra control duration in Holds or Confuses if you want to try to perma-control AVs, or a way to get extra control duration into a control power where you're using most of the slots for proc-bombing.

[Championess]

33 minutes ago, JediDave said:

Meanwhile the stalker one ALMOST makes me want to try kinetic melee for constant BU refreshes from the proc, and the guaranteed T9 refresh from the other proc. Almost.

 

Pairing that ATO proc with Concentrated Strike's BU refresh instead of critting extra damage most times is overwhelming and hard to keep up with all of the BU's you can pop off.  I'd rather CS crit extra damage and somehow the set allowed you to incrementaly increase damage as you're attacking.  In a vacuum instant refreshing BU instead of critting extra damage is a neat idea.  But with that ATO its more than redundant.  The only reason to play KM is for how great its AS is, that's it.

[High_Beam]

4 hours ago, Uun said:

Looking at the procs:

• The Energy Font summoned by Overpowering Presence proc and Fiery Orb summoned by Dominating Grasp proc are quite bad. While good in concept (11 pts of damage in a 15 ft PBAoE every 4s), they are summoned next to you and are quite fragile. Somewhat mitigated by the fact you can have multiples out at the same time.

My ears pop at how badly the Fonts suck.

[Clave Dark 5]

14 hours ago, High_Beam said:

My ears pop at how badly the Fonts suck.

I took them on a Dom recently for theme and changed their names to fit that theme, but yeah, they didn't bring anything else to the table for me.

[Bionic_Flea]

The ATO sets I find not worth taking are the Sentinel ones.  Not only are the procs underwhelming, so are the set bonuses.  The only bonuses I would crave are defense and recharge and those are tied to the 5th and 6th slot.  While not technically an ATO, Entomb is my next least used Superior set.  The +absorb proc isn't that great, IMO.  If it behaved like Preventative Medicine and went off automatically when low on health, that might make it into rotation.  While the set bonuses are OK, it suffers from the same problem that all the other hold sets have: no damage enhancement.  

 

We could really use a universal mez set that included damage in it's pieces.  Acc/Mez, Dam/Mez, Dam/End/Mez, Acc/Dam/Mez/Rech, and some kind of non-damage proc.  Maybe universal +2mez (hold, stun, confuse, immobile, fear) that could stack with whatever it was in, but also get in a different effect.

 

I would tier ATOS as follows:

 

Stalker/Scrapper (truly game changing)

Blaster/Corrupter/Defender/Tanker (reinforces and supports the ATs roles(s))

MM/EAT/HEAT (you'll probably want to slot these, but maybe break them up)

Brute (You'll probably also slot these in pairs or trios, but more for enhancement values than procs)

Dominator/Controller (You might slot as a set, broken up, or just skip one or both entirely)

Sentinel (why bother)

 

 

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Bionic_Flea said:

The ATO sets I find not worth taking are the Sentinel ones.  Not only are the procs underwhelming, so are the set bonuses.  The only bonuses I would crave are defense and recharge and those are tied to the 5th and 6th slot. 

The range bonuses for 2/3 pieces are pretty useful for sentinels. They give you 20% +range with the superior versions if you take both.

[Bionic_Flea]

The only time I really want range is when I am specifically building for range, like my Psy/energy blaster or Symph/Dark/Cold controller (lots of cones).

 

I am not saying they are useless, I just don't find them useful for the way I build and play.  And that includes not making a ton of sentinels.  I hope you Uunderstand.

[JediDave]

2 hours ago, Bionic_Flea said:

...

Dominator/Controller (You might slot as a set, broken up, or just skip one or both entirely)

...

 

 

I do try to get a 6 slot on these for the recharge and range defense. If I build for defense on either Doms or Trollers, it's usually just ranged and I stay out of melee. Granted, the other ATO set for each AT is usually ignored, but one in each is AT decent. If I'm not going for ranged defense, I still usually 5 slot for recharge and use the troller proc in a power that has limited proc options, typically aoe cc that has no damage and can't use the TAoE or PbAoE set procs, or something that has a minute+ recharge time so the +recharge aspect isn't hurting