Interesting. I’ve also seen a different recommended setup for E10+ difficulties, which was 4 crit 2 crit power 2 hit. Which of two would be more damaging?
I believe they’re very close in damage, but 4 crit loses more CD self-heals. It’s roughly 39% crit 170% crit power vs. 46% crit 135% crit power (66% vs. 62% damage increase, 2 crit power being higher) but then the 7% loss in energy generation (0.09 energy/sec, with Cold Silver Dice) trims out some of that advantage, and abilities that buff crit power (Demolish passive, that one head tali) also benefit from the higher crit rate.
Running 5 2 1 is still viable but you are basically taking it out of your crit chance (glances are the counterpart of crits, 5% glance chance subtracts directly from your crit chance, afaik) so going to 5/1 and 2 hit is the option to materially increase your survivability.
According to SWLCalc, using maxed out red weapons plus all purple lvl 30 4pip talismans with maxed out 4 pip glyphs and maxed out signets would put the character in E10 range of IP but not overstep it. Of course, the journey to maxed out glyphs and signets while only having purple talismans must be very slow and tedious since you’d climb E-ladder so slowly you’d be stuck with small distillates for a very long time. And I have no idea if such a set-up would be better in damage and/or survivability then more conventional “all red lvl 1” you could expect between 1000 and 1100 IP.
You can check out the difference in combat power for the same IPs but different setups using SWLCalc too, remember. Plus if it was a case of being able to reset or reduce your IP, you could grind up to e17, then twink your character out without trouble when you dropped your IP again.
It can be slightly annoying to have the ‘max IP’ thing when a huge chunk of my IP is from a weapon I don’t use in DA, while the weapon I actually have equipped is significantly lower powered.
I feel like any substantial fix for these sorts of issues would be extremely open to gaming things, though.
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