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Episode 35 – News, i13, and IO Sets Feature

Today we have news, details on Issue 13, and Part One of Fantastic Foe’s feature on IO Sets!

In This Episode:

Click through for the full IO Set Feature text

IO Set feature, by Fantastic Foe

[Awhile] ago, I suggested as a possible follow up to your IO
feature that you present what IO sets to look into if you were to try
and beef up a specific attribute of a character. You cleverly put the
job onto me (my boss calls that reflection, an art form perfected by
Wally in Dilbert) and suggested I submit something.

For my first research attempt, I decided to target Movement and
Recovery, two aspects that are probably better improved by picking
powers, but I like having options… and you can still pick Stamina
and Swift, and drop the bonuses from IO sets on top. Ignore ED! You
know you want to!

But I digress.

Okay, my basic goal was to look into cheap set pieces that provide a
bonus very quickly, only requiring 2 set pieces to provide the bonus.
Here’s what I found.

IO Set Pieces for Movement (in particular, running speed):

For comparison’s sake, unenhanced Sprint provides a 50% running speed
boost when toggled, unenhanced swift provides 35%. (If I’m wrong on
these percentages, please point it out… I’ll handle the mockery as
best as I can…)

The following IO sets provide bonuses to Running speed when 2 or more
set pieces are in a power:

Ranged Damage: Maelstrom’s Fury +3 % Run
Sniper: Exploit Weakness +2% Run
Healing: Regenerative Tissue +4% Run
Resist Damage: Aegis +5% Run
Hold: Ghost Widow’s Embrace +5% Run
Stun: Stagger +2% Run
Knockback: Kinetic Crash +3% Run
Melee: Focussed Smite +3% movement
Ranged Damage: Thunderstrike +4% movement
Pet: Brilliant Leadership +2% movement
Sleep: Induced Coma +3% movement
Knockback: Force Feedback +5% MOVE (Run, Flight, and Jump)
Endurance Modification: Performance Shifter +5% MOVE (see above)
To Hit: Gaussian’s Syncronized Fire Control +5% MOVE (see above)
Melee: Kinetic Combat +5% movement (see above)

Overall, there are enough large 4% and 5% bonuses that stacking can
can yield some nice results, particularly the ones to increase all
movement powers by 5%. Hover in particular is better when improved by
25% (that would be enhanced Hover, unenhanced hover would still be
painfully slow…)

The availability of the sets vary, the latest is
available at level 25, and none of the sets were prohibitively
expensive (in that at least 2 recipes where relatively cheap to
purchase. I admit to not delving too deeply into the economics.)

IO Set Pieces for Recovery

For comparison’s sake, unenhanced Stamina boosts endurance recovery 25%.

The following IO sets provide Recovery bonuses when 2 or more set
pieces are in a power:

Melee: Bruising Blow 1%
PBAOE: Cleaving Blow 1%
Ranged Damage: Thunderstrike 2%
Targeted AOE: Positron’s Blast 2.5%
Sniper: Calibrated Accuracy 1%
Sniper: Executioner’s Contract 2%
Sniper: Extreme Measures 1.5%
Pets: Commanding Presence 1.5%
Pets: Blood Mandate 1.5%
Heals: Harmonized Healing 1.5%
Heals: MIracle 2.5%
Resist Damage: Steadfast Protection 1.5%
Resist Damage: Impervium Armor 2.5 %
Defense: Kismet 1.5%
Defense: Gift of the Ancients 2%
Confuse: Befuddling Aura 1%
Confuse: Cacophony 1%
Confuse: Malaise’s Illusions 2.5%
Slow: Tempered Readiness 1.5%
Stuns: Razzle Dazzle 2%
Stuns: Stupefy 2.5%
Flight: Soaring 1%
Taunt: Triumphant Insult 1%
Endurance Modification: Adrenal Adjustment 1%
Endurance Modification: Energy Manipulation 1.5%

The remaining +recovery set IOs are all in endurance mod sets, and
require 3-4 set pieces, so Frankenslotting is possible, and can even
be combined with +recovery bonuses from the 2-piece End Mod sets.

Endurance Modification: Efficacy Adaptor (3 IOs required) + 1.5%
Endurance Modification: Performance Shifter (4 IOs required) + 2.5%

Overall, there are many sets that do provide an endurance recovery
boost. Sadly, the percentages are very small, and the stacking limit
of no more than 5 bonuses can hit fast and hard. That being said, it
should be relatively easy to hit +10% recovery, and some sets that can
frankenslot recovery boosting set IOs should easily hit 16-20%. Most
of the sets are relatively cheap to get at 2 pieces, except for the
Defense sets (which are usually small sets overall.)

These seem like small bonuses for the effort. I’d have to do an
in-depth analysis to support or refute that statement, and that is
beginning to seem like real work, In general, this might be of value
to people who despite triple-slotting Stamina still have endurance
issues, or people who choose not to take the Fitness path and instead
maximize endurance reductions and want even more endurance relief.

Beyond the sets above, there are very very expensive Purple IO sets,
available only as level 50 IOs that confer 4% recovery. These sets
are:

Melee: Hecatomb
PBAOE: Armageddon
Targeted AOE: Ragnarok
Confuse: Coercive Persuasion
Sleep: Fortunata’s Hypnosis
Immobilization: Gravitational Anchor
Stuns: Absolute Amazement
Hold: Unbreakable Constraint

These individual sets are Unique, so you couldn’t stack 5 Hecatombs,
but with time, patience, and influence, you could (okay, depending on
your build…) slot 5 from the above list and add +20% to your
recovery. Nice.

A quick clarification on what I mean by Frankenslotting:
You can’t Frankenslot a power if you are slotting more than 4 IOs from one set.

Obviously, you can 5-slot from one set, and then fill the final
available slot with a set IO from a different set, that is still
Frankenslotting. What I should have said: if you want to get IO set
bonuses from more than one set placed in a single power, 4 IOs is the
most you can slot and still be able to slot IOs from a different set
and get bonuses, since you always have to slots at least 2 IOs from a
set to get any bonus.

That might be obvious, but from the way I was saying it in my emails,
that 4 IOs was the max for frankenslotting, it was unclear.

That’s all for now. Hope this is somewhat useful, let me know if you
would like Combat Bonuses from IO Set features delivered in any other
way, or at all, or with more or less detail.

Thanks again for the great podcast.
Pat aka Fantastic Foe

20 replies on “Episode 35 – News, i13, and IO Sets Feature”

I hear that this Fantastic Foe guy is a clown. But I guess I’ll listen to the ‘cast anyway.

Yay! New audio distributed via the interwebs!

Fantastic Foe a clown? You sir CLEARLY don’t know his lore! Long ago in the time before time (also referred to by scholars as the Pre-timinig). The neanderthal Vandar Adg was caught in a blast created by an irradiated space meteor which granted him immortality and extreme intelligence. Further research into key moments in comedic history. From creating the mammoth poo-based flaming bag of poo to the time he travel to the future to put a quark imbued rotary inductor in Vice Chancellor Vediolon’s office. He has and will always be the true prankster.

P.S. Also, You may say that his origin seems just like a rip off of Vandal Savage but you’d be wrong it’s completely different *cough*

Yay new cast. OK, so I wasn’t first, but fifth is pretty cool, kindof like the Fifth Element, pretty cool. Anyway, great cast. Looking forward to the next cast.

Hmmm, well now I have to come up with an origin story for Nailbunny.

C and V, thanks for all the supplemental material about the mission architect. I can’t wait to create a mission where the heroes have to face the villain super-speedster written of by Homer, a fiend who disappoints women worldwide, Two Second Trojan.

I hope that the IO set/percentages end up linked from the show notes, or if you prefer, I can post them. Your call.

Your pal (and according to Nailbunny a knuckle-dragging immortal funnyman)

Fantastic Foe

Well, you see, there is this Spore thingy. It’s made a lot of PC gamers vanish. Even I can barely maintain this reality for a few minutes at a time.

HOLY COW, a bio with background music! Awesome!

Was listening at work with my earphones and came to the fight sequence…. It’s really hard to explain to non listeners what had me ROFL!!!!

(mumbles to self – I take one day off to watch 20 episodes of Iron Chef and this is what happens…)

Anyway, great to get new material. Still listening to it so maybe I’ll have some notes later , but in the meantime…

!TSAC WEN YAY

(think Bizaro-world, so since I’m at the bottom of the comments, and it’s backwards, it’s actually first and reads correctly, y’see…)

Nod – Iron Chef = BEST. SHOW. EVER. Your absence is hereby excused.

FF – can’t wait for the rest of your feature. I have a defender who is in serious need of some IO set love and I can’t decide what to do with her.

Oh and does anyone know if the Carnie costume that Viv mentioned in a female model? My PPD hardsuit is cool but it turns me into a dude. I even say HUH! when I jump, instead of huh!

Yay new cast and all that. I’ve only gotten to listen to a bit so far so more comments to come I imagine. Insofar as the special $5 jet pack is concerned, it MAY be just a rental. That’s the way the power is currently coded. So to make it permanent (which they might) would require recoding the power so anyone who has it gets to keep it AND then being sure to give it back to anyone who had it before. If new players using the $20 card to get into CoX, have to pay another $5 to keep it while those who’ve never had it can grab it permanently for just the $5, it would be a bit unfair I think. Certainly not insurmountable issues, just things they have to do to make it a one-time charge and be fair to all players.

And the carnie code is for the female version from what I see on the official site. There was a temp costume for both the harlequin and strongman made for Halloween ’07 but the code looks like it just unlocks the harlequin one judging by the official announcement.

Another great cast. Excellent job FF on the IO sets, I can’t wait to hear the rest. Sorry for the short voicemail I got shy all of the sudden.

I got the 20 dollar card the first day we received them at Best Buy. You probably already know it includes the game and the pack is active for the 30 days free you get the purchase! It’s a really neat deal really. Now I bought the card to try out the pack because my discount made it 12 bucks but it is pretty fun to perma-fly like crazy…….My villain had to strip it off a pathetic hero though. (Only reason I could justify wearing a red white and blue jump pack) Random fact of the day number 367: A Slayer is a dwarf who has been dishonored and search to regain that honor through glorious death in battle!

YAY! Thanks for posting a link to the full text of the IO feature on the front page. WOOHOO! ME AM PUBLISHED!

I finished up and discovered you guys had a new one out. Excellent! I’m already working through that one. Hope to see the next one out just as I finish it. I mean, it’s not like you guys have anything better to do right? And with FF writing your material, it’s easy! No I’m not *twitch* addicted *twitch* or anything. I can quit any time I want. I just don’t want. Stop looking at me like that.

Anyways, nice part one of the IO coverage. My ultimate IO plans don’t generally concern themselves with the small 2-piece bonuses. I’m usually after the meatier ones found deeper in the sets but I do sometimes grab small stuff like that if it’s relatively cheap and I’m not ready yet to embark on grabbing the big sets I plan to use for real. The cheap bonuses are small but every little bit helps.

And the ring announcer bit was very funny. I’ll be chuckling over that for a good while.

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