Higher my CR, weaker I get...

So recently I was on a hunt for the Psycho Jester outfit for a character on my alt account as I wanted them to actually LOOK like a jester in motley... much thanks to the suggestions in the other thread. But the thing I noticed while spending a day trying to take advantage of the double marks for raids and whatnot is that the higher my cr got the weaker I seemed to become.

Every piece of gear was salvaged and dumped into my might augments and I ended up having to spend 160 of those marks for cyborg r4 to try and offset the horrific power drain my powers caused. Not so noticeable when soloing, unless it was a tough fight but very noticeable on those raid mobs/bosses who are bags of health. I had to re-do my loadout to something less aoe centric in a vain attempt to keep my power drain under control with cyborg at r4. It was pretty ugly and I went from middle of the damage charts to 2/3 from the top. Every foe seems to get stronger while I am not keeping up and am getting weaker. I have the t2 augments unlocked so had those all in my gear the same as I do on my main account etc... had trans card at 80 to get the crit bonuses and yes I know it drops your damage but it just seems weaker than I'm used to. I'd need another 200ish source marks to get a strat card to 80 also for those extra dot ticks of damage.

Character is mental by the way but I had similar issues, though slower leveling on an electric character too. Don't really want to have to run an omega and cyborg just to deal with this kind of thing.

Anyone else notice this?

Well your SP/Augments/Artifacts/mods bleeds through the clamp. Do you think the boss health/stats are increasing the higher in the tiers you go?

Were you in stat clamped content? I have absolutely experienced what Imaginos has experienced in stat clamped content. I avoid stat clamped content for this very reason. I stay in end-game content where I belong to avoid the stat clamp tax. It's all punishment for being successful.

Power cost is tied to your CR, so the higher your CR goes the higher the cost is to use your powers. Have you been doing feats to increase your Skill Points alongside increasing your SP? If you're just getting higher and higher CR but not getting enough SP to increase your power pool then that could be the cause of you draining your power bar. You need to invest your SP into Might & Power.

Generally speaking, I find that if your CR goes up quickly while your origin augments, artifacts, and SP don't go up as quickly, yes you will feel "weaker". That has always been true for me.

That's why when I use a CR skip on my toons, it goes to those that I know I do not plan on using outside of seasonals or open world or event mode, unless I'm actually planning on dedicating time to bring up their origin augments, artifacts, and SP. Even with the clamp I find that having a much higher CR is fine (at least for me). I don't die & if I know the mechanics going in, I definitely don't hurt a run--sometimes I've saved some runs due to knowing what to do when others clearly did not.

The only toons that are "battle ready at level" are ones where their origin augments, artifacts & SP are reasonable for their CR (and in some cases due to the fact that I'm purposely not raising their CR much, their auguments/artifacts/SP are well above what would be expected for their CR). There are only so many hours in the day. I have 25 toons on US PS/PC & 6 on US Switch, so only some get dedicated time (none on the Switch do).

Mind you, I consider myself relatively average so I prefer to have all of my artifacts over 80 before considering myself "ready" (and sometimes at least at 120 depending on the role I'm playing & how "well" I am at using the powerset). The clamp doesn't affect me in terms of being able to contribute & complete things, but endgame will kill me on my alt that isn't ready. I have two endgame toons. My main (351 CR) is fine in endgame (and I'm still using the Flashpoint adaptives to run everything). My alt (341 CR) that just got to endgame last week that only has 200-something SP, 200-something origin augments, and artifacts that just did the 100 breakthrough can't handle endgame (or Tier 6 outside of solos; no duos as I hate being obviously "carried") right now. So, that alt runs event and Tiers 1-5 until I get that alt up to par for me. My main can run anything (except elite--but I don't put in time for that for a variety of personal reasons) just fine.

If my own power bar is dipping like crazy, I’ll start to go in and smash my weapon combos. That helps me a lot on my toons with little sp and high power cost. Lastly, I don’t think it’s worth it to constantly run out of power just because my rotation needs to be this. It is painful when that happens.
What’s your Mental loadout?

As others have said, power costs is attached to your CR and it significantly is impacted as you go up. It also is affected by the quality of the gear, though I don't think that happens in EEG clamp content.

Also, EEG gives bonus buffs to players who are being clamped UP. So while you are below the threshold, you actually ARE stronger. When you start to reach the threshold, you will lose that buff.

Yeah as I leveled my CR I was still ending up in most of the same raids and they were almost all stat clamped after a specific point. The few I did that weren't stat clamped I still had issues but not nearly as severe.

I don't have many mods for my generator due to none dropping and you can't buy them off the vendors or craft them anymore, so I'm sure that added to it and my SP are lowish for sure but that shouldn't matter as I'm fighting similar things over the last couple days. I hit 210 finally and 60 sp, not really that far off from a 290 skip and 77 sp and I really expected more from cyborg at R4 as my other characters of higher cr/sp/mods seem to get more bang for their buck from cyborg at R4. Not sure what else I'm missing or why it was SO noticeable on this character. My augments are probably too low for my current CR due to not enough gear dropping or salvaging to raise them up and I didn't really do anything anyone else does when leveling, so it seems to me that this would be a rather common occurrence for other people too. My mods are at 127ish and all might.

Yeah this seems to be the case that I've experienced. I too don't consider myself more than an average player and try to get my arts up to 80 at the bare minimum and on a few strive for 160 if the artifact really needs it like the grimorium.

No this was purely leveling for access to a costume look on an alt account so no feats outside of what was gained in various raids and cr leveling.

Right now the mental loadout is Horrific Visage, Mass Terror, Pyrokinesis (used to be tk bolt but too costly), TK, Tk Shield, Invis.
Invis I have a heal, bastion, the sleep attack and another shield to keep from getting tk knocked out and to help with pickups.

Mostly I solo and that's fine but wow did I feel the pain leveling up so fast during raids and buying some gear from Tempus.

My advice is that you spend some SP in might too, as you gain might and power, and spend some of them to gain HP as well. This will increase both your durability and your powerbar.

Also, spend some SP to get a multi-hit attack of whatever weapon you are using, as weapon attacks generate power based on hitting the enemy. Attacks like HB`s electric bolt and TH`s Doomspin do wonders to regenerate power.

Unless you spec into Hybrid, Superpower suppresses the power regen with weapons.

It might put less pressure on your Invisibility vulnerability by using the hand mod called Stealth Mod — at least that way, 1) your Invis won’t be interrupted and 2) you won’t waste power. Not much else to do about our heavy power cost. /shakesfist

I thought that too and I'm a play from the tray / superpower spec. It feels unbalanced a bit when I can do a couple rotations and I'm oop with cyborg at r4 (and yes my 3 generator batteries were at 90%). Does it even matter if it's 1 generator battery or all 3 being over 50% btw? Nothing in the ingame help says anything about that. The information in this game is so lacking in so many areas.

Youve been in clamped content with me, and know it isnt that bad.

Power regen is based on how big your power pool is. The larger your pool, the faster you regen.

The reason why the higher CR you start to feel weaker (outside of the Clamp) is because at a certain point, they expect you to have a certain number of skill points, have generator mods equal to the content you are running, augments leveled to a certain point, etc. Because they implemented this system way after, up to a certain point, they sort of give you a freebee on power regen. I think it was about T4 ish CR. (Old T4.) They also recommend your Skill Points be at the same level at your CR. I would assume the same with augments too.

Yeah that's pretty unreasonable in today's faster paced content and makes sense as to why I'm having issues, regardless of Cyborg at R4, which helps a bit but not nearly enough. I hardly got any generator mod drops as I did all those raids and the few I did were pretty weak compared to the gear that also dropped. If the devs really want people to be viable as they level then things like those generator mods should drop in addition to the gear choices you get, not in competition with them, especially as nothing in the game states what levels this stuff "Should" be at in regards to your current CR.

Thanks for the post.

Yeah, there are some elements that are inconsistent. Especially with the generator mod system.

BTW, there are a few options that can help. I prefer using the chest mod that reduces power consumption by 5%. Also, if you are non pet class, probably best not using a power pet, like Robot Sidekick, as power regen is reduced some.

I hear you there! I use that chest mod on everyone. Just too good to pass up and don't have many who use the pets due to that impact on energy regen, though having something that keeps fighting for you if you get stunned/juggled is always nice. Thanks for the tips!

Your mistaken about how power works.
The reason u dont have an issue solo but do have an issue in raids is because theres a natural regen in effect when your in solo content. In a raid, that goes away IF theres a troll, the game expects the troll to give at least some power offsetting.
Basically all this is to say the troll isint ulling their weight as a generalization BUT, any good dps can account for this. I assure you, if u dial in a “raid loadout”, the buffs an debuffs the troll provide is far better and more beneficial than more power.

My suggestion is practice with dif loadouts for these different situations. You can adapt.