City of Heroes: PvE Power Changes

City of Heroes: Issue 13 is sure to usher in a host of big changes for players. Senior designer Floyd Grubb will introduce a lot to us about the project including the PvE power changes.

The details are as below:

PvE Power Changes, by Senior Designer Floyd "Castle" Grubb

Preface: Issue 13: Power and Responsibility includes a whole host of development. Not only are there significant new features, but there is also ongoing development to the existing game. A big part of the game is the balance of all the Archetypes, their respective power sets and how they compare. Maintaining a level of equity between everything is a continual goal. In this article, NCsoft NorCal Senior Designer Floyd "Castle" Grubb gives us the scoop on some proposed powers changes that will be in testing with Issue 13. Please keep in mind that there is still the entire testing and revision process to go through with these changes. The team is excited to see how these refinements stand up to player feedback, datamining, and the beta process.

Introduction
For Issue 13, we have a rather wide selection of PvE (Player vs. Environment) related powers changes. These changes focus on either Quality of Life concerns or on powers which were not quite in Balance with others. Below is a breakdown of what we are doing, with the aim to provide insight into the thought process behind it.

Energy Aura
Let's start with Energy Aura for Brutes and Stalkers. Energy Aura has had a poor reputation from the start, and while it is "balanced" with the other protective powersets using the original metrics, it has been shown that those metrics did not take certain key factors into consideration - namely Regeneration and Healing effects. Energy Aura lacked any sort of mechanic which could increase the Health or Regeneration Rate of the character, and did it have any active method of restoring Health to the character using these powers. Additionally, the set had more protection holes than others. To address these issues, the following changes are being made:

• Energy Protection: This power gained a 1.25 scale Toxic damage resist attribute for Brutes and a 1.00 scale Toxic damage resist attribute for Stalkers. Energy Aura, being a typed defense set, had no protection against these types of attacks unless they were 'packaged' with a lethal attack of some sort.

• Energy Drain: Added a 2 scale self heal to each target affected by this power. Un-slotted, the player will recover 2% of their maximum HP per target affected. This can be enhanced to up to about 4% per target. This change was made to offer the power set some minor healing ability to increase their survivability but not offer an overwhelming heal.

Invulnerability
Invulnerability has a few issues, mainly stemming from lack of special resistances and "weak" power choices. Here are the changes that are being made:

• Unyielding: We removed the Defense Debuff from this power. While we still believe it fit thematically, the impact on low level characters was more severe than desired.

• Invincibility: Reduce per target Defense Buff to from scale 0.15 to scale 0.1. The overall result of this and the Unyielding change is, if you have the maximum number of targets in this powers radius, you have the same protection as from Issue 12, but if you have fewer targets, your net defense is higher.

• Resist Physical Damage: Added 25% Defense Debuff Resistance. Increased damage resistance scale from 0.75 to 1.00.

• Tough Hide: Added 25% Defense Debuff Resistance.

• Resist Energies: Added 25% Endurance Debuff Resistance. Increased damage resistance scale from 0.75 to 1.00.

• Resist Elements: Added 20% Movement Slow Resistance. Increased damage resistance scale from 0.75 to 1.00.

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