Issue #5 - Now Testing

[Signe]

Issue 5: Forest of Dread

New Zone: Croatoa
Croatoa is a 3 hour train ride up state from Paragon City, and was the favorite lakeside vacation spot for city dwellers. For the past 3 years, the train service has been closed due to the Rikti Invasion, but recent happenings have gotten the government to open it back up.

    * To get to Croatoa, heroes can take the Green Line.
    * Locals are asking for heroes of security levels 25 to 34 to investigate recent strange goings on.


New Powers

    * Sonic Blast (Blaster Primary and Defender Secondary)
    * Sonic Debuff (Defender Primary and Controller Secondary)
    * Archery (Blaster Primary and Defender Secondary)
    * Trick Arrow (Defender Primary and Controller Secondary)
    * Electric Mastery (Blaster Ancillary Power Set)


Mission Customization

    * Many existing missions have been updated with hostage escorts, friendly heroes who fight by your side, villain wave attacks and more.


Updated Zone: The Shadow Shard

    * Shadow Shard Maps show the location of each Jump Pad. A dotted line connects the Jump Pad with its end point.
    * A teleporter on Firebase Zulu takes players to any of the other three zones in the Shadow Shard (works both ways).
    * Dr. Scott Wachhorst, a prominent xenobiologist and Portal Corp. leader, willingly purchases Enhancements from players in Firebase Zulu.
    * A renegade Brute, Kallarn, purchases Enhancements with the hope that he might gain enough power to overthrow Ruladak. It can be found in the Cascades.
    * Slarrah, a Wisp who has been converted by Faathim the Kind relieves players of excess Enhancements in the Chantry.
    * Nameless Mystic. An interdimensional mystic feeds off the energy kicked off by the dreaded Lanaru. He happily accepts Enhancements. Found lurking near the Storm Palace.


Updated Zone: Rikti Crash Site

    * The military controls a teleporter in Peregrine Island that connects to one in the entrance of the Rikti Crash Site. Heroes can go back and forth from this point.
    * Col. Barry Woodhouse works for Military Intelligence, gathering info on the Rikti activities. Players can sell excess Enhancements to him.


Updated Zone: Outbreak

    * The tutorial has been modified.


New Badges

    * In addition to new badges associated with Croatoa, many new Achievement badges have been added for those who have exceeded the existing ones.


Experience System Changes

    * No experience debt until level 10.
    * Half experience debt in missions.
    * Experience awards for defeating enemies level 25+ increased.


New Zone Events

    * Steel Canyon: The Hellions are living up to their name and have taken to arson.
    * Skyway City: The Trolls start a Rave (Troll-style) when they find a new supply of Superadine.


Powers - General

    * Blasters have a new Inherent ability called Defiance. As a Blaster reaches the end of his health, he starts to dramatically increase his damage.
      Makes the Blaster into a more comic-booky Archetype to play. As he begins to lose a battle, his power increases dramatically, giving him the edge he needs to defeat powerful foes.
    * Blaster hit points increased.
      Overall increase in the survivability of Blasters.
    * Blaster damage cap increased.
      Overall increase in the damage output (and thus survivability) of Blasters. Blasters may need Buffs from other Archetypes in order to reach the new caps.
    * Scrapper damage increased for all powers.
      Our goal is to increase the overall 'Scrappery' nature of Scrappers, making them melee combat masters, but not having Tanker-level defense. This change counters some of the general reduction in defense that Scrappers are seeing with this patch.
    * Controllers will do double damage to a target (non pvp) that is Immobilized, Disoriented, Slept or Held.
      Increasing the non-Pet damage potential of all Controllers. This change is intended to give them a more balanced and even game-play experience throughout all of their levels.
    * Controller AoE Holds, Disorients and Sleeps (and a few others like Quicksand and Ice Slick) recharge times have been doubled and duration cut in half. AoE Immobilize and Phase Shift powers were not affected. Volcanic Gasses duration was not affected.
      Game balance change due to the new increased damage of Controllers.
    * Controller Pets (and Defender/Dark Miasma/Dark Servant) can no longer stack. That is, casting these summon powers before your pet has expired will remove the old pets and spawn new ones.
      Illusion Control/Phantasm can still summon multiple decoys.
      Fire Control/Fire Imps now always summons 3 Imps at your level.
      Illusion Control/Phantom Army now always summons 3 Decoys.
      Pet powers were never intended to have multiple instances out at once. Due to the change in the power, we removed the randomness in the number of pets you get with Fire Imps and Phantom Army.
    * Set a maximum number of targets that can be affected by most offensive powers:
      AoE Debuffs, Ranged cones, and Melee AoE (PBAoE) are set to 10.
      Some Large PBAoE (like Nova) are set to 16.
      Melee Cones are set to 5.
      Ranged AoE damage powers are set to 16.
      Taunts (including Tanker inherent Taunt - 'PunchVoke') is set to 5.
      Buffs are unaffected.
      This will limit the amount of 'herding' done by players to a more reasonable and realistic level.
    * Slightly reduced the non-enhanceable health regeneration buff of Regeneration/Integration.
      The health regeneration component was slightly too high when combined with the other effects of the power.
    * Changed Regeneration/Instant Healing from a Toggle Power to a Click power. Gave it a new animation so it activates faster.
      With almost unlimited Health Regeneration, this power was always intended to be used sparingly. The high Endurance cost was intended to accomplish this, but in the end, only lead to frustrations of running out of Endurance. As a click with a long recharge, its Endurance cost can remain low, and its Regeneration boost can stay high.
    * Fixed Ice Armor/Energy Absorption so it no longer grants less Endurance and Slow protection if used against a higher level foe.
      This is a bug fix. When used against a higher level foe, your buff was lower than normal. Your Endurance Buff and Slow protection will now always be the same, regardless of what foe you use this power on.
    * Increased Super Reflexes/Evasion Defense buff.
      This will help Super Reflexes Scrappers against foes that tend to use AoE powers, like Bosses (who typically have a higher accuracy than minions).
    * Reduced Dark Armor/Cloak of Fear’s Accuracy Debuff.
      With the previous changes to Fear effects, Cloak of Fear's Accuracy Debuff was too powerful.
    * Increased the recharge time and decreased the duration of Pool/Presence/Intimidate. It only affects Lieutenants on a Critical.
      Originally, the recharge and duration of this power were balanced against the old Fear effect (run away). Fear is now more of a control power and much more effective (targets are essentially Held). As such the old recharge time and duration were too powerful.
    * Reduced Duration on Dark Miasma/Fearsome Stare. Increased its recharge time.
      Originally, the recharge and duration of this power were balanced against the old Fear effect (run away). Fear is now more of a control power and much more effective (targets are essentially Held). As such the old recharge time and duration were too powerful.
    * Reduced Duration on Dark Miasma/Petrifying Gaze and increased its recharge time. (Dark Servant version as well.)
      This power was stronger than most Controller Hold powers, and thus too powerful for a Defender power.
    * Added an f/x to Regeneration/Moment of Glory when it expires to indicate your Regeneration is debuffed (this is a visual f/x change only).
      Quality of Life feature.
    * Added an f/x to Elude when it expires to indicate your Recovery is debuffed (this is a visual f/x change only).
      Quality of Life feature.
    * Fixed missing sticky f/x for Radiation Blast/Cosmic Burst Defense Debuff (visual f/x only, no power change).
      Quality of Life feature.
    * Controller/Gravity Control/Lift now does extra damage in PvP.
      Bug Fix.
    * Fixed Ice Blast/Frost Breath damage in PvP (it was set too low).
      Bug Fix.
    * Removed Debuff Defense Enhancements from Spines/Impale (this powers does not debuff Defense, so Debuff Defense Enhancements were not doing anything).
      Bug Fix.
    * Removed Range Enhancements from Spines/Spine Burst (this powers is a PBAoE and has no 'range' to increase, so Range Enhancements were not doing anything).
      Bug Fix.
    * Fixed Warshade Stygian Circle so it no longer gives you less Endurance when you drain and enemy that is higher level than you. Also, it no longer accepts Accuracy Enhancements (they were unnecessary because Stygian Circle is an auto-hit power).
      Bug Fix.
    * Marked Quicksand summonable to not show duplicate icon in the buff tray.
      Bug Fix.
    * Fixed excessive long immobilization effect when casting or getting hit by Transfusion, Transference, Twilight Grasp, and Howling Twilight.
      Bug fix.
    * Updated Energy Blast/Power Burst help (text only, no power changes).
      More accurately describes the power.
    * Some Combat system chat message fixes for Spines powers (text only, no power changes).
      More accurately describes what’s going on.


Powers - Global Defense Decrease
In order to facilitate a more balanced game for the higher level characters (Level 25 and up), the defensive abilities of several powersets has been adjusted so that they are more in line with one another. Lieutenant, Boss, and Elite Boss villains have had their To Hit values reduced accordingly to work with these defensive changes.

    * Reduced all Archetypes’ base ability with Damage Resistance and Defense powers.
    * Reduced Defense rating of Force Field powers (Deflection Shield, Insulation Shield and Dispersion Bubble).
    * Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Concealment/Stealth. Defense bonus suppresses if you attack.
    * Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Flight/Hover (and Kheldian Combat Flight).
    * Reduced Damage Resistance bonus from Pool/Fighting/Tough. Increased its Endurance Cost.
    * Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Fighting/Weave. Increased its Endurance Cost.
    * Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Leadership/Maneuvers.
    * Reduced Defense bonus from Pool/Leaping/Combat Jumping.
    * Increased the Recharge Time and Decreased the duration of Pool/Presence/Invoke Panic.
    * Pool/Speed/Hasten no longer buffs Defense.
    * Reduced Ice Armor/Frozen Armor Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Ice Armor/Wet Ice Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Ice Armor/Glacial Armor Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Ice Armor/Energy Absorption Defense Bonus and set its max number of affected targets to 14. Added an Endurance Buff to the Caster for each affected target.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Temporary Invulnerability Damage resistance bonus.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Resist Physical Damage resistance bonus.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Resist Elements Damage resistance bonus. Added resistance to Toxic.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Resist Energies Damage resistance bonus.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Unyielding Damage resistance bonus. Increased its Defense debuff.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Invincibility Defense and Accuracy bonus. Increased its max number of affected targets to 14.
    * Reduced Invulnerability/Tough Hide Defense bonus.
    * Reduced Stone Armor/Rock Armor Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Stone Armor/Brimstone Armor Damage Resistance.
    * Reduced Stone Armor/Crystal Armor Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Stone Armor/Mineral Armor Defense Bonus.
    * Reduced Dark Armor/Cloak of Darkness Defense bonus.
    * Reduced Super Reflexes/Focused Fighting Defense buff.
    * Reduced Super Reflexes/Focused Senses Defense buff.
    * Reduced Dark Miasma/Shadow Fall defense bonus.
    * Reduced Storm Summoning/Steamy Mist Defense Bonus.
    * Set some of Illusion Control/Superior Invisibility Defense bonus to suppress if you attack. Reduced its overall Defense bonus.
    * Reduced defense bonus of Illusion Control/Group Invisibility.
    * Increased Ancillary Pool/Force Mastery/Force of Nature recharge time.
    * Reduced Ancillary Pool/Psionic Mastery/Mind Over Body damage resistance.
    * Reduced Ancillary Pool/Electric Mastery/Charged Armor damage resistance.
    * Reduced Ancillary Pool/Munitions Mastery/Body Armor damage resistance.
    * Reduced Umbral Aura/Absorption damage resistance.
    * Reduced Umbral Aura/Shadow Cloak Defense bonus.
    * Reduced Luminous Aura/Incandescence damage resistance.
    * Reduced Defense and Damage Resistance values of defensive Temporary Powers appropriately based on above changes.


Powers - Villains

    * Reduced Lt. Accuracy (ToHit).
      This is to limit the severity of defensive adjustments made to some powersets.
    * Reduced Boss Accuracy (ToHit).
      This is to limit the severity of defensive adjustments made to some powersets.
    * Reduced Elite Boss Accuracy (ToHit).
      This is to limit the severity of defensive adjustments made to some powersets
    * There is a new low level Circle of Thorns minion, The Guardian.
      Power sets for CoT minions slightly redesigned.
    * Higher level Circle of Thorns Minions should no longer repeatedly cast the same debuffs over and over, nor should they stack them on top of already existing Debuffs of that type.
      Bug Fix.
    * Some higher level Circle of Thorns minions are exhibiting new powers.
      Power sets for CoT minions slightly redesigned.


UI

    * Contact names now appear a different color from other NPC names.
    * There is now a new option to disable dragging powers around in the power tray.
    * New slash commands:
      /reply - replies to the last person who sent you a /tell.
      /tell_last or /tl - sends a tell to the last player you sent a /tell to.
    * Improved text editing on Character ID screen.
    * Options menu rearranged slightly for ease of use.

[Strazos]

Wow....someone get back to me when they figure out if the grind has been lessened at all. I can't deal with it in the upper 20's, and I LOVE my scrapper.

[tazelbain]

That seems like a huge rebalance in the game.
Nerfed herding; good; I hated that and I am a fire tank to boot.

[Signe]

I'm not sure if the grind will be lessened at all.  Them's a load of nerfs.  I'm pretty sure it'll warrant a free respec when it goes live, though.  I've re-copied some of my char's to the Test Server, however, and will give it a go, although I'm more anxious to fiddle with archery.

[schild]

I don't trust this update.

[eldaec]

Um, wow.

I may be missing something, only working from these notes and not practical experience, but, controller damage = almost zero. Almost zero x 2 = still almost zero. The aoe and pet nerf seems a terrible price to pay for that.

Also, I don't understand how non-perma IH with reduced Int regen is viable. Though I guess we'll see when we know more about the damage increase, it would certainly suggest a big playstyle change if the extra damage makes regen viable despite the nerf. This would appear to  more than halve regen survivability; it's hard to believe they doubled damage?

I don't like the idea of a 16 or less aoe target limit at all. The taunt limit of 5 sounds utterly crazy, I don't understand how full group aggro can be controlled under these conditions? And only hitting 16 targets with aoe holds for only 50% of the duration? /shudder

[Signe]

I agree, eldeac.  It's obviously going to change the way some people play their characters.  A free respec is warranted but I'm not sure it'll be enough.  They obviously want to limit the number of groups we can handle.  This will definitely interfere with people who like to primarily solo. (like me) Trials, where the mob groups are very large, will become awfully difficult, I think.  I'll probably even have to put my difficulty slider back down to 'heroic' for some of my characters.  Except for the new content and a couple of other things, I'm afraid Issue #5 might not be very pleasant.

[shiznitz]

I haven't played in a long time but 16 was still a lot of mobs when I did. The whole herding thing was seriously lame.

[Horik]

Thank god herding is going away. My tanker were not fun to play with the near constant herd requests I was getting. Setting a mission to stupid difficulty, pulling the entire map, and coming out without a scratch was incredibly asinine. I don't visit the official forums but i bet the posters there are making the BNet kiddies look like fucking MENSA members right now.

[eldaec]

Picking out the sane posts on the offcial boards, first tests seem to be showing that scrapper nerfs are just about workable because of the accuracy reduction of mobs, and because of the relative boost that single target damage has had compared to aoe.

Controllers are really dying out there, losing 75%-90% of their aoe hold effectiveness in return for an irrelevant damage increase. Pet, damage, and hold changes taken together would appear to mean fire and illusion, which started as the strongest sets, would lose the least. Gravity, with no area-target powers, single-pet-per-cast, and no damage to speak of, would be weakened the most despite already being the weakest set on the live servers.

In reference to something said above, 16 mobs won't cover a single spawn for a decent size group. For damage you can work around this, for taunt (set at a limit of 5) and cc/debuff (set at 10) it would appear to be unworkable. If the numbers were damage : 50 targets, debuff/cc : 50 targets, taunt : 30 targets, it would still deal with herding - but without breaking the game elsewhere.

Since people here have expressed interest in archery....

Trick Arrow

Entangling Arrow : Single Immob
Ice Arrow : Single Hold, -Rchg
Glue Arrow : Aoe slow
Flash Arrow : Aoe blind (reduces range to melee)
Poison Gas Arrow : Aoe weaken
Acid Arrow : Single -def, DoT
Disruption Arrow : Aoe -res
Oil Arrow : GToE knockdown, DoTs triggered by fire damage.

Archery

Snap Shot : Minor dmg
Aimed Shot : Med dmg
Fistful of Arrows : Cone med dmg
Blazing Arrow : Med lethal dmg + Fire DoT
Aim
Explosive Arrow : AoE dmg
Ranged Shot : snipe
Stunning Shot : single dizzy
Rain of Arrows : gtaoe moderate DoT

[Glazius]

Wow....someone get back to me when they figure out if the grind has been lessened at all. I can't deal with it in the upper 20's, and I LOVE my scrapper.

Early reports suggest that experience ramps up in the post-20 game, doubling or tripling current levels by the end-game. Heroes fully slotted with SOs are going to become a rarity except at higher levels, as enhancement drops (the primary source of income if sold to the right vendors) will remain constant or even fall as people get more XP from lower-level villains with less chance to drop.

Also, the wave assaults and escort components should help with the monotony-of-missions issue.

All in all it looks like you're going to be fighting weaker mobs but dropping them quicker for better rewards. Scrappers took a hit to resistance and defense but in return received a fairly sizable damage boost.

Controllers' double damage under crowd control gives them about 20% more base damage than blasters, and many of their targeted damage powers (single target CC or just damage) currently operate at tanker efficiency. No report yet on whether pets will also receive double damage, but based on what some people are reporting from the Arena (which does Controller damage boosting on a similar level) it seems likely. I'm hoping they significantly drop pet recharge now that you can only have one set, for quick recasting after map switches and suchlike. I do agree that the five controllers who don't already run perma-hasten will probably take it up to get the AoE controls recharged faster.

No one's come back with hard numbers on villain accuracy, but _arch_villain accuracy hasn't suffered any in the wake of hero defense and resistance debuffs. Here's hoping that archvillain fights won't be just a matter of perma-taunt + 10 minutes of damage spam.

I'm betting that what they put out on the test server now is the absolute minimum effectiveness they want players to have, based on some internal metrics or something. Like so many other aspects of the tested game, it's probably going to be buffed significantly before it hits live.

Just keep in mind if you _do_ test that you _should_ be looking at your XP bar and not the color of villains you take on. Especially in the endgame where white villains now reward you like red ones used to.

--GF

[kaid]

Not really sure how that controller change will play out. The damage buff only effects their own power damage not anything pets do. I have not played the high level game much recently and there must be something really messed up if they are taking a wack at the aoe holds/sleeps/mezes. That said unless you are herding which is I think what this change was ment to address in a lot of areas I just use my single target holds mostly anyway. I sprinkle in my aoe holds as needed but generally I do a majority of my control with my single target holds which are not effected.

I would be curious if this change makes early game soloing with controllers less eye stabby.

kaid

[kaid]

Oh I forgot to mention that after just looking at the sonic buff and attack sets there is some nifty stuff there. All the sonic buff set is mostly a clone of force field but resistance instead of defense. The attack set is almost all cone attacks that are smashing damage -resists.

If you got a couple sonic blasters or defenders you could start putting out some crazy freaking damage as you put the mobs resists into the basement.

Having a couple sonic defense guys depending on the magnitude of their resists boosts could turn everybody into mini invuln tanks.

The main downside of the sonic buff set is it has almost ZERO powers that affect the caster. But get a pair of them and damn that is going to be some sick poop.

kaid

[Jealous Deva]

Controller damage is 50% of blaster damage.  50% * 2 = 100%.  Not too bad, though of course they only have single target attacks. But I think even with one pet controllers will still be the #3 single target damage class, not bad at all, especially since they have access to defender pool resist debuffs to jack damage up even further.

Just means that controllers are more where they should be offensively, which is about slightly weaker than defenders pre-pets and even with defenders post-pets rather than vastly weaker pre-pets and vastly stronger post-pets. 

I think the aoe nerfs are way too much and will probably be fixed.

This is something I think we'll need to play with to see how bad it is.

Dark defender nerfs are something I think everyone saw coming.  The set was just head and shoulders above everyone with the damage boost and 3 pets. We'll see how it comes out.


The tank and scrapper defense nerfs are about what I thought they would/should be, except there appears to be a typo with invuln where the 1 got dropped from resist elements/energies which gimps those resists(everything else get reduced to 80%, but those were cut to a third).  Hopefully that'll get fixed though.

Defense nerfs were needed.  Now defenders can actually, you know, defend, rather than ff defenders being useless to SR or invuln and pretty much all defenders being useless to pretty much all tankers.  Especially now that we have resist based defenders.

If the defense nerfs bother you too much grab a sonic guy, that's what they're there for.

Blaster damage increase was very needed. 
Scrapper damage increase was very needed.
Now both of these classes should be consistantly outdamaging tanks and controllers, which is a good thing as it makes these classes actually have a point.

XP has been boosted SEVERELY.  Not sure what the magnitude is post-25, but half debt is huge.


Power sets all look damn usefull.  The jury is still out, but sonic seems rather nice from my limited playing.  Both blast sets look like good solid ice/energy style single target sets with some control/utility.

Defender sets are of course up in the air at this point.  Sonic seems hugely ally-centric, not a bad thing but you can sort of see why tankers and scrappers having capped resists would make this pointless and how the devs would have a problem with that.  Trick arrow seems like a decent storm/dark/rad type controll/debuff set, we'll have to see how it stacks up.

Electric mastery for blasters has a lot of good powers, maybe even a bit much but we'll see.


All in all I think it's not a bad update, and the sky-falling cries are a bit premature, except over a couple of issues like invuln and controller aoes.

[Strazos]

Hmm...I would consider playing again, if....

I wasn't going into my final semester

and

If I had people to run missions with on a consistent basis.

[Glazius]

As far as XP rewards go, when you get to the 40s whites are a little worse than oranges on live, yellows are even with reds on live, and oranges are better than purples on live. So if you soloed on Invincible, you can solo on Heroic for comparable swag, or maybe Tenacious if you still want to throw down with bosses.

--GF

[eldaec]

Controllers won't come near blaster/scrapper damage, not because of the base values of attacks, but because controllers don't have enough attack powers to chain.

I would agree with the 'sky isn't falling' assertion with regard to all manner of solo activity, the aoe problem won't bite there, multi-pets aren't really necessary there, and running away is a more reasonable tactic in solo. It's the large group vs crowd of villians situations that these issues will cause problems (which is also easily the most fun thing to do in CoH).

They need to bump up (more than double) the proposed aoe limits. Increasing recharge time on controllers aoes is probably sensible, but reducing duration at the same time isn't. On pets, one-out-at-a-time is a sensible provision for illusion and fire, it needs to be reversed for earth, ice, and most espeicially gravity.

Oh, they should also change the AI to encourage the villians to spread out a little, that would be a more effective and more fun way to limit aoes and gtaoes than any of this nonsense.

[eldaec]

The recent changes to various powers had these specific goals:

1) Create a balance between Defense and Resistance power sets.

2) Ensure that the buffs provided by Controllers and Defenders are always useful. In other words, players generally can only reach the cap with buffs from other players.

3) Make Heroic missions fun and Invincible missions tough. Some builds could go through supposedly difficult missions barely taking any damage.

4) Keep the same leveling speed. I’ve got no problem with the current leveling speed; we increased mob XP to make sure that people level as fast as they’ve always done.

Inevitably, some people decry the changes. How can these changes possibly add to my fun? I agree that fun is a subjective thing – so I’ll describe a little more fully our point of view.

Some builds can team up with a number of other players, set their reputation on Invincible, enter a map and singlehandedly defeat the spawns intended for a large group. Even worse, the player barely receives any damage. He mindlessly sets his toggles and hits the same attacks over and over to eliminate the mass of mobs. The key word here is mindlessly – there’s no need to “strategerize” or plan out attacks and defenses.

And that’s the key. I was playing a certain handheld game and I reached a “boss” level. I must have fought that boss a dozen times before finally beating him. I was so happy I actually cheered (sadly, I was on a plane at the time and I think I made everyone nervous, but that’s another story altogether). Now this experience isn’t a perfect analogy for City of Heroes. After all, no one wants to be defeated a dozen times! But what this does underscore is that games need a challenge for players to overcome.

Therein lies the enjoyment; players need to make decisions that ultimately decide their fate. When players don’t need to make decisions, a game becomes stale and ultimately boring. Tic-tac-toe is a good example of this. Sure, it presents a reasonable amount of strategy when we’re children, but once we understand the basics, we stop playing. There’s simply nothing new to learn.

In the case of City of Heroes, I’d like the standard Heroic missions to be relatively straightforward, but Invincible missions require more thought and planning. That’s the purpose of the mission difficulty slider. At the same time, we needed to create a balance among the Archetypes so that there’s a role for each. No single build or Archetype should be quantifiably “better” than another; each might be circumstantially better because of certain power sets. But the real difference should lie in the hands of the player – his skill and strategy.

As always, feel free to play on the Training Room server and post your experiences! This sort of feedback helps the game get better and better.

[Alkiera]

My BS/Invuln scrapper is level 40.  I copied him over to the test server yesterday, and started a mission which contained level 40 Rikti.(it was a 35-40 mission, so the mobs were capped at 40, despite my being set on Unyielding difficulty)

The scrapper damage boost was an across-the-board 12.5% increase.  My big attack, Headsplitter, went from 360ish damage to just over 400.  A few of the sets, I know claws was mentioned specifically, had individual powers adjusted up as well.

My resists were hit HARD.  On live, I have capped smashing/lethal resist, and others are mostly 50%.  On test, the numbers are more like 48% and 16%.  And my defense is a LOT lower now, as they removed defense from hasten, and reduced all other sources of defense(namely combat jumping and invincibility), AND increased the defense penalty for running Unyielding.  If Uny wasn't all of my status protection, I might consider not running it... but the practical immunity to root/sleep/hold is too useful.  On test, a lvl 40 boss could hit me fairly regularly, whereas on Live, I had to turn off CJ and Invincibility to collect damage/resist data.

The exp changes are approximately a 30% boost for even-cons.  I was getting for evens what I remember getting for +2s a week or so ago.

All in all, Sword Crusade takes a LOT more damage, tho fights seem to end faster due to the higher damage output, I may have to look into respecing into more healing for between fights.  I was still able to solo rikti bosses pretty easily.  Taking a lot more damage is not so bad when you took practically no damage before.

Alkiera

[Jimbo]

I tried out a Archery Blaster and Trick Arrow/Archery Defender tonight.  They were pretty fun but endurance hogs.  I had fun on test with the new balance mobs, didn't seem to out of wack for me.

[kaid]

I think the changes are probably good ones in the long run. As my main is a force field defender I like the fact that people cannot cap their defense skills by themselves which made me useless. About the only good powers force field has is slathering on defenses but previously while this was great with scrappers other defenders and controllers it was just redundant if you ever had a tank. They rarely ever got hit before anyway so really had little need for the howling bubbles.

Heheh one thing that makes me shudder though is a forcefielder and a sonic buffer in the same group. The freaking noise from that pair is going to be enough to make homer go something something.


kaid

[Strazos]

Hey, I like noise in CoH. It was part of the charm.

[Polysorbate80]

It appears to definitely be a 'work-in-progress'.  The available numbers seem to show that (for scrappers) Dark Armor fully slotted provides about 55-65% resistance to energy/negative energy/fire cold, 33% to toxic, 50% to smash/lethal, and 80-ish to psi, while Invulnerability now gives about 60% to smashing/lethal and 20% to everything else (except still 0% for psi).  It also appears it may actually be detrimental to run Unyielding, since the resistance provided is overcome by the huge defense penalty.

My subscription runs out the end of this month, I think I'll wait to re-up until I see how this all shakes out.

[Phred]

Looking at the changes to regen it seems to me this is the death of regen scrappers. With no defense or damage resistance at all, a regen scrapper isn't going to last long against any hard hitting mob and instant healing being a click rather than a toggle, with a built in delay to the start of healing sounds incredibly useless. Sure am glad I didn't get sucked back with the free week they gave us a while back.

[eldaec]

Most regens since I4 don't run IH full time anyway, Int is enough these days for most situations.

The original wording made me think regen would be unworkable too, but testing has shown that IH is up often enough to use in case of problems, though you probably need to slot Recon more than you used to, and Dull Pain is more important than ever. Overall, I am more annoyed at the effect max-targets had on my spines powers than I am worried about regen.

Oh, we can't solo AVs anymore /shrug; well, maybe terra.

[Big Gulp]

My subscription runs out the end of this month, I think I'll wait to re-up until I see how this all shakes out.

I haven't played in months now and having tried the recent update on test on my buddy's account I don't think I will.  Sonic and archery just don't do much for me.  Maybe I'll give CoV a try, or hell, I could finally get into WoW since it would seem I'm one of the last people in the western world to do so.

[Polysorbate80]

... it would seem I'm one of the last people in the western world to do so.

I've avoided WoW successfully so far, but I too may have to break down and give it a try.  Dunno, maybe I'll dig some of the old junk off the shelves.  Haven't fired up Starcraft for a year or two...

[CmdrSlack]

I have also avoided WoW so far.

I guess that's a trifecta of sorts now.

[Alkiera]

Apparently over this week they got enough data, they've started making changes to some of the changes on test...

Invuln/Unyielding is having its base energy/elemental resists upped somewhat, Smash/Lethal will stay low.  Also, the crippling Def debuff will be reduced to it's old(Live) level of 5%.

The Trick arrow Defender/Controller set is being messed with quite a bit, devs feel it is 'too controllery' for a defender set.

'Sonic Debuff' will now be 'Sonic Resonance', and will have a choice of a debuff at level one, rather than 2 group-only buffs.

Some other minor bugs with various changes are in line to be fixed, as well.

Alkiera

[Signe]

I was reading about some of that, too.  We might just end up with something that hardly resembles what I'm playing with on test, at the moment, if we're lucky.  Heavy tweaking is definitely needed.

[Horik]

Perhaps the anal raping of the FF defenders will stop too. Personally, the year+ of goodwill and trust Cryptic has earned is being pissed away in the space of a week.

[kaid]

Hehe at least they realised that the strobe light fields from sonic are getting changed man they were a bit much.

kaid

[Glazius]

Perhaps the anal raping of the FF defenders will stop too. Personally, the year+ of goodwill and trust Cryptic has earned is being pissed away in the space of a week.

Because of what they're doing on the _test_ server?

What space logic is this?

--GF

[Signe]

Maybe he just wanted to use "anal rape" in a sentence and prison is too scary.

[Alkiera]

Perhaps the anal raping of the FF defenders will stop too. Personally, the year+ of goodwill and trust Cryptic has earned is being pissed away in the space of a week.

Because of what they're doing on the _test_ server?

What space logic is this?

--GF

Yeah, the "ZOMG!!! THE SKY IS FALLING, ALL MY CHARS SUX NOW I AM QUITTING COH!!111!11" on the forums is hilarious.... given the stuff on test has been there about a week, and will probably be there a good 2-3 more weeks, at least.  Issue 5 isn't slated to go live until August.  In fact, the devs as of Friday posted several changes that should be hitting test Soon, including some changes to Unyielding to make it less stupid.  I'm waiting to test my scrapper again until that hits test.

If this stuff was on live, maybe I could see the "ZOMG!!!11" reactions.  But it's on test.  Devs made a buncha changes, and have only just recently gotten enough data to see how it's affected the game...  It's insanity to complain already, especially if you haven't played on test.

Alkiera