Castle

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How long did it take for Castle to buff Hover after BABs nerfed it by fixing the bug regarding KB? I wonder if the buff was because data-mining said the number of people using it dropped off, or just because Castle decided it needed it? I hope the latter, because I'd rather not wait for data mining to confirm the obvious.

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Completed unrelated. The two things had absolutely nothing to do with one another.

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If Pet's AI with -recharge causes major lag problem, then it should definitely be fixed.

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You misunderstand: The Up to 50% increase wasn't pet powers. It was EVERY power, from every entity in the game -- it would require sandwiching a new check between calculating all Attribute alterations and applying those alterations in the powers system in general. So every single power in the game just because more CPU intensive, reducing the number of powers that can be processed at any given time. Things like the Zombie Apocalypse or Rikti Invasion would be horrendously affected. Hammi raids might need to be redone again.

That simply isn't a viable solution, despite it being the proper 'code' solution. Oh, it would also eliminate the ability for players to increase the recharge time of powers like Mind Link which don't normally accept recharge enhancements via Hammi-O's or Set IOs (Hasten and Speed Boost would still work, though.)

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This will only affect the recharge of the pets attacks/powers correct? Not the recharge of the characters powers that summon the pets.

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That is correct.

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Actually in i7 pseudo-pets like LS were actually changed to inherent the casters' state. Now rech (ie hasten, speedboost) "may" not have been intended, but I find that very hard to believe that it wasn't known to be happening like claimed.

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Known? Yes. Statistically significant (as in, a noticeable blip in datamining), no. That came later.

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Powers like Lightning Storm, Voltaic Sentinel and Auto Turret are precisely the powers that were targeted by this fix. Making exemptions for them would defeat the purpose, don't you think?

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Castle, if this is true, then the patch note is an outright lie. The patch note claims:
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This change was made to allow pets to correctly cycle through their attacks instead of getting locked on using the same attack over and over and neglecting to use other available powers.


[/ QUOTE ]

If this change was instead to correct LS, VS, and the turret becoming too powerful, it would have been much better if you had just come out and said so. It would also have been nice if we had been notified that this was a bug and that a fix would be implemented when it could. Instead we were lead to believe that this was intended behaviour and slotted accordingly.

I am extremely unhappy with the change. But appreciate your forthrightness. LS, VS, and the Turret became too powerful and now been nerfed. This happens to fix some other pet's AIs as well.

I feel as if we were intentionally mislead by the patch notes inorder to stealth in a nerf.

[/ QUOTE ]

Not an outright lie. The person who wrote the patch note wasn't aware of all the things this was intended to fix. That's one of the main reasons I'm having this discussion: Full disclosure.

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But what about exemptions to this fix. Thats what most of us want to know about. We already know its possible for some exemptions because there have been reports that the defender lightning storm still behaves the same as on live as on test yet the controller/corrupter/mastermind version of the power is now uneffected by recharge. I do think at the very least if you are making the powers not take recharge any more and if they arent able to be targeted anyways then maybe you can up the damage or change the recharge itself. I just really hate for lightning storm to become worthless outside of boss/av fights.

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Powers like Lightning Storm, Voltaic Sentinel and Auto Turret are precisely the powers that were targeted by this fix. Making exemptions for them would defeat the purpose, don't you think?

There has been a lot of discussion regarding this Patch Note:
[ QUOTE ]
• Pet Powers Change:
o Recharge times on pet attack powers will no longer be affected by any outside source. This includes buffs and debuffs. What this means is that pets can no longer have the recharge time on their powers increased by player buffs (like Speed Boost) or their recharge time decreased by player or NPC debuffs. This change was made to allow pets to correctly cycle through their attacks instead of getting locked on using the same attack over and over and neglecting to use other available powers.

[/ QUOTE ]
I wanted to take some time to more fully explain the change and the reasons behind it.

The “CopyCreatorMods” (or “Pet Inheritance”) code was originally written so that things like hitting "Build Up" then casting "Burn" would cause the Burn to do more damage. To my knowledge, most pet powers were set to only accept Damage, Accuracy and/or Status Effect mods. Recharge time was never specifically allowed for pet powers. This happened in Issue 7.

Meanwhile, we have a long standing 'bug' that we cannot fix: Say you have a Damage power that for whatever reason doesn't allow Endurance Reduction. If you slot an enhancement (say, a Hammi-O) which does both, both effects are applied to the power, despite the fact that the power is not supposed to accept Endurance Reduction. We pretty much have let that become "by design" since it cannot be fixed.

Now, you combine the two things...and suddenly, pet powers which were never meant to have recharge be altered (Lightning Storm is a great example here) are firing off much faster than intended. For a long time, we didn't notice, but then we introduced the Recharge Intensive Pet IO Sets and suddenly HUGE amounts of Recharge were available to certain pets.

We tried a few alternatives, which essentially ended up making RIP IO's broken for several months in a variety of ways. One day, while discussing this, another programmer who was looking at AI issues came over and began talking to me about the fact that one of the issues causing aberrant AI behavior was the powers recharging too quickly. Again, we tried some things, but ultimately, the change that is on the Training Room now ended up being the only viable fix. The alternative, as I understand it, would be to fix that long standing bug I said we couldn’t fix. That would result in up to a 50% increase in server CPU time in the Powers computations, though and that simply isn't a workable solution.

So, that’s the background. There is no other solution that we are currently able to implement at this time.

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Thug Bruisers Hand Clap should now cause Knockdown, rather than Knockback.

[/ QUOTE ]
Woot! Even if he's still too dumb to go into melee without hand-holding, at least this'll help him to stay there.

[/ QUOTE ]It does 1.67 knockback through all levels, so it's still not knockdown, sadly.

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Yeah, the scale was changed, but not the table. I fixed that this morning.

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Will all the travel pools be this way? Like can I take Fly, Super Speed, Super Jump, Teleport all on one toon and not take the previous power or is this a one time thing for one pool?

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All.

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Castle - is the 60 month badge planned to be the final vet reward or is there going to be more after it?

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To the best of my knowledge, future veteran rewards are planned. However, I'm not on the rewards team, and don't know that answer as a certainty. Positron would have to give a difinitive answer.

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<QR>

Question: Can I take, say, Whirlwind at level 6 as well?

It'd be silly to do so, but I want to know if that's possible.

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No, the final tier powers like Acrobatics and Whirlwind still have the normal requirements both in terms of level and power selections.

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Will all the travel pools be this way? Like can I take Fly, Super Speed, Super Jump, Teleport all on one toon and not take the previous power or is this a one time thing for one pool?

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All.

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I wonder if the tier 4 power will still require that you pick 2 before it, or if it will only require that one?

[/ QUOTE ]

Still requires 2.

Very nice!

One of the folks in my Supergroup posted a pic of your robot, so I had to track down this thread to comment on it.

When NCsoft acquired the 'City of Heroes' Franchise last October the number one goal was to see it grow to new heights, and set new limits to the Hero and Villain genre. In planning for growth we took our time to interview hundreds of candidates throughout all departments of the studio, to date the expansion is impressive.



Today we are happy to introduce two of our bright young stars to the community.



In order of appearance to the team:



Jonathan "Sunstorm" Courney joined our team early this year and has proven to be an instrumental player in several disciplines. Jonathan started his industry career doing various projects ranging from testing, programming and level design. In Issue 13 Sunstorm has been key in working out powers under Castle, and working on the Base forefront. When he lets his hair down you can find Jonathan actively involved in the following hobbies: Video Games, Hiking, Martial Arts, Game Modding/Programming, Writing, and nearly anything Sci-Fi. Join the community in a warm welcome to Sunstorm here!



Today Sunstorm will be shedding some light into the upcoming Base changes and repricing structures. You can catch up on that discussion here, and if you are a Base Editor, Sunstorm has been reading your feedback here! You can find response to the questions posed here: Issue 13 Base Q&A



Also Please Welcome…



Phil "Synapse" Zeleski hit the ground running with lightning quick reflexes. Agile and skilled Phil has been working on our Powers & Design Teams. Phil has been an avid Pen & Paper player and his creative writing and sense of playful style combines with his quick wit and organizational skills to pack a powerful punch. Join the community in a warm welcome to Synapse here!



Synapse has been called into action to respond to questions about the Merit Rewards being introduced here in Issue 13. He is currently responding to many of the questions collected in Issue 13 Feedback. You can find Synapse's response to the questions posed here: Merit Rewards: Q&A



We value all our team members’ efforts and we feel confident in you as a community to welcome these two Heroes officially to our Development Team. Please join with us in welcoming them on board and unveiling some of their hard work for 'City of Heroes.'

Castle

I should note, the above numbers are for Scrappers. Looking at Tanker values, I see some interesting differences. Perhaps, this is the part that I've overlooked.

Please note which version of shields you are playing when you respond: Brute, Scrapper or Tanker. It appears to make a large difference.

I'm looking at Shields since so many folks seem unhappy with them. Here's what I am seeing:

Endurance cost is on par with Super Reflexes, and is cheaper if you only consider personal defense, rather than group defense.

Using SOs, and taking Phalanx Fighting, average admittance is roughly twice that of Super Reflexes (48% vs 30%) if you have no allies near you. With 1 ally within 8', admittance drops to 42%, and with 2 allies within 8', admittance drops to 36%.

When you then add in the Health (and commensurate Regeneration increase) coupled with the Damage debuff on enemies in the Against All Odds radius, then look at the survival time measurement something odd happens: Despite having worse Admittance values compared to SR, the survival line for Shields is actually higher -- for a 60 second period, it would take 104.99 dps to kill a Shields character with no allies within 8' compared to 93.7dps to kill an SR character.

Additionally, Against All Odds is increasing the Shields characters damage output by scale 1 + scale 0.55 per enemy up to 10 within 8' radius. Grant Cover is granting a Team Defense Buff and the set comes with a built in attack.

I've played the set, in the ITF with a group, I've solo'd, and duo'd, and have not found it to be a bad set.

How do your experiences differ from our play testing, math, and experiences?
What areas should we be looking at in this equation to make the Shields balanced but not over powered?
What would you do to keep Shields balanced and not overly powerful but also reasonable for endurance?

Edit: Clarity

The damage numbers you are seeing in the Real numbers tool are not accurate and in no way final.

EDIT: Kurgain: No, the Suppression on Travel Speed is based off of MAX speed, not Base Speed.

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Being the target of an attack: 2s

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Castle, can you elaborate on this please? Does this mean if I'm the target of a PvP attack, my movement suppresses whether I'm hit or not? Or does it suppress only if I'm hit? Or what happens?

I hope I've read this wrong!

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No, you read it correctly. Bring the target of attack initiates suppression on you. This is to prevent you from super speeding away while the attacker is stuck in his attack animation.

EDIT: I should note that the new PVP Travel Suppression is not as slow as existing PVE Travel Suppression. In all cases, it reduces your speed to approximately "Sprint" speed.

Issue 13 PvP Powers Changes
By Floyd “Castle” Grubb

Hello again everyone. Last time, I told you about the PVE powers changes we have planned for Issue 13. This time, we're going to talk about PvP.

Player vs. Player combat (PvP) is a fun topic. Currently, we have a small portion of our players actively engage in PvP on a regular basis. We think this is in part due to problems in how PvP is implemented in our game. We want to take some steps to help make Player vs. Player encounters more attractive to a larger group of players, while at the same time opening up more "character build" options for the existing dedicated PvP players. This is a challenging issue to tackle, given the scope of the proposed changes, but we feel the time is right to address these issues.

Our first step was to look at what archetypes (AT) were actually doing in PvP. What we found was there are two distinct different PvP categories: Zone PvP and Arena PvP. This isn’t very surprising, since we originally wanted there to be differences between the two. However, the actual differences were different from what we'd initially planned. Zone PvP was less hyper specialized and formulized than Arena PvP. Zone PvP is more open to new PvPers, but more likely to see the new PvPer 'griefed' and driven out of the playzone (often, never to return.) Arena PvP by contrast, is much more civil but has a huge barrier to entry -- if your character isn't up to par, you are not likely to contribute much.

We wanted to spend time working on revamps for the existing PvP zones; but due to the massive amount of work involved we’ll need to address this in a future release. That meant that we had to focus almost entirely on Base Raids and Arena PvP. We did a lot of work on Bases, Raiding and the Cathedral, but we have to save that for later -- those are all works in progress for a future update. Arena PvP, though, was a self contained area which could be isolated and worked with. It also provides an excellent testbed for Base Raids, since the two are at least in the most basic terms similar. That's where we focused our attention.

We began by looking at the disparities that existed, and discussed how to address them. Ultimately, we decided that in order to allow better competition between the AT's and powersets, we needed to take some drastic measures. We decided that a different rule set needed to apply in PvP than in PvE. By changing the basic rules, we hope to encourage a greater variety of character builds in Arena PvP, and ultimately in Base Raids and Zone PVP.

At the core, many of the power effects are the same: Heals still heal, attacks still deal damage, and holds still hold. However, the new system makes a number of adjustments that should be friendlier to a wider range of AT's and skill levels. The goal is for players to be able to bring any AT and powerset combination into PVP and to be competitive and have fun! Furthermore, with the Issue 13’s Multiple builds feature, players can design a PvP specific build and not have it affect their normal character.

There are still a number of balance factors which we are working through; the prevalence of Phase Shift type defenses, "caging" and "Spiking" to name a few. These are things we are working on in the beta process to find the correct balance.

So, without further ado, here is the list of the current changes and how they were implemented. Please keep in mind that there is still more testing and tuning to be done.

Diminishing Returns
Nearly all attributes characters have are now subject to Diminishing Returns. The specific numbers vary from attribute to attribute, and from class to class (it's easier to Buff Resistance and Defense on a Tanker, than on a Blaster.)
* In general, a single buff will have near full effect, while additional buffs begin to offer less and less benefit. Example: Under the old system, Aim + Build up might provide a combined 67% To Hit buff, while under this system it provides a combined 49% To Hit Buff.
* The calculation is based on the sum of all buffs, so the order the buffs are applied in does not matter.
* It is important to note that the Real Numbers tool will not always report the results of diminishing returns accurately, at least initially. This is specifically true of Damage Buffs, which always display the Pre-Diminished value.

Melee Attacks
* Changed Melee Range to 7'. Since this is essentially a buff, this effect will be present in PVE as well.

Travel Powers
* PvE Travel Suppression continues to work as it has since it was introduced. PvP Travel Suppression will be handled differently, however (see below.)
* All Teleportation and Summonable Teleportals are Disabled while PvP Travel Suppression is active.
The Duration of Movement Suppression in PvP is now variable based on the most recent suppression event applicable to the character. In case of multiple events applicable on the same server tick, only the longest value is applied.
Suppression events are:
Activating a foe TargetedRange (range > 7') damaging Power: 3s * Sum of damage scales.
Example1: Power Bolt has a damage Scale of 1.0 (0.1 + 0.9) resulting in a Suppression Duration of 3 seconds.
o Example2: Power Burst has a damage scale of 2.12 resulting in a Suppression Duration of 6.39 seconds.
* Activating a foe Targeted Melee (Range >0' && Range => 7') damaging Power: 2s* Sum of damage scales.
o Example1: Swipe has a damage scale of 0.76 resulting in a suppression time of 1.52 seconds.
o Example2: Eviscerate has a damage scale of 1.99 resulting in a suppression time of 3.98 seconds.
* Activating a foe targeted Range debuff or control power: 3.5s
* Activating a foe targeted Melee debuff or control power: 2.5s
* Placing a Location Based Entity: 4s
* Activating a self or friend targeted Heal power: 4s
* Activating a Friend targeted Buff power: 4s
* Being the target of an attack: 2s

Control Powers
Control power changes are fairly extensive. The goal here was to make control effects less binary in nature. The shorter durations of status effects, combined with the change from status Protection to Status resistance means that these powers will now how impact on a PvP situation more frequently, but are no longer quite as severe a deciding factor.
* For Controllers: Change Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations.
* For Dominators: Change normal control Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations. Change Domination control Duration base to 4 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attribs. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations. Change Magnitude bonus from +3 to +1.
* For ALL OTHERS: Change control Duration base to 2 seconds for Stun, Sleep, Hold, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confuse, Untouchable, Intangible attributes. Duration of Status Effects (Hold, Sleep, etc.) no longer scale by level; instead they have fixed base durations.
* For Tankers: Change Taunt to a fixed 6 second duration.
* For Scrappers and Brutes: Change Taunt to a fixed 4 second duration.
* For the Manipulation Pool: Change Taunt to a fixed 4 second duration.
* For Stalkers: Change Placate to a fixed 10 second duration.
* For VEATs: Change Placate to a fixed 4 second duration.

Buff and Heal Powers
* A Heal Event now imposes a 25% Resistance to further heals on the character, regardless of source. This Resistance to heals will last for 15 seconds, and stacks with itself. This means that if you are healed 4 times, no further healing will affect you until the resistance duration ends.
* Status Protection attributes for all statuses except Knockback and Knock up changed to Status Resist. For example, a Tanker running Unyielding at level 50 has 12.975 points of protection in PVE, while in PVP he has 129.75% Hold Resistance. That will convert an 8 second hold into a 3.48 second hold.

Damage Powers
* Powers now calculate damage based on their activation time, instead of their recharge.
* Lower activation time powers get a slight bonus to damage, due to chaining low damage powers being difficult in PvP.
* Longer Recharge time powers also get a slight damage bonus, so higher level powers with long recharge times deal extra damage.
* Damage has been adjusted for all AT's, reducing the damage gap between each AT.

Resistance Powers
* Each AT now recieves a bonus resist buff while in PVP, in order to set each AT closer in overall survivability. This resist primarily reduces up the gap in hitpoints between lower hitpoint AT's and higher hitpoint AT's
* Epic armors and Tough (Pool Power) now provide resistance to all damage types while in PVP.
* Any armor set lacking a type of resist or defense will now provide it while in PvP zones.

Taunt Powers (NOTE: These changes are effective in PVE as well! They are essentially accross the board buffs which should give greater crowd control ability to those who possess these power.)
* Add 75% Range Debuff to Tanker Taunt (full aoe)
* Add 75% Range Debuff to Scrapper Confront (and equivalents.) These remain single target.
* Add 75% Range Debuff to Brute Taunt/Confront powers. The Range Debuff should have radius outer set to 0 so it only affects the main target.

Classes Tables
* Increased MAX RESIST value for all status effect attribs. This means status resistance effects will have more meaning. This also affects PVE.
* IncreaseRange STR MIN value to 25%. This means no player or critter powers range can be decreased to more than 25% of its original range. So, an 80' attack can never be debuffed below 25'. This also effects PVE.

So, there you have it. A whole slew of changes for you to chew over, plan around...and test on the Training Room! We still have a lot of testing and tuning to do. While our initial playtests are showing these changes to be fun, we’ll ultimately look to broader playtests to validate the changes.

Here's hoping you all enjoy it!
Floyd 'Castle' Grubb

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3. What is suppressed during a mez: Anything that is not a status protection will get suppressed. Exception: Kheldian flight will still fly, but speed is suppressed. Kheldian forms don't drop. Suppressed team buffs are suppressed for teammates.

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So, I just listened to this.

Castle: "There are some exceptions to that, like if you're in Nova form your flight won't get surpressed. Your fly speed does, but you will still stay hanging in the air, you just can't move.

Question: "Now is that true for regular Fly for other characters?"

Castle: "That is true for Combat Flight, but I don't think it's true for Flight".

While he could certainly be referring to only the Kheldian Combat Flight power here, it's worth noting that the internal name for Hover is also Combat Flight, so it is possible that he's also talking about Hover.

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Good catch. You're correct. Also, I double checked Flight and Group Flight -- in all cases the FLY attribute does not suppress, so you stay floating in mid-air.

(QR)

1) Yes, outright changing powers is bad. Unfortunately, it's the only way we *could* proceed that met with the goals we had in mind, the technical limitations presented and the timeframe allowed. I hate "building cottages" but it was the only path in this circumstance.

2) I misspoke re: Weapon Mastery getting Focused Accuracy. It's Targeting Drone. Functionally, it's *identical* to FA, it just has the visuals and display name of TD.

3) Web Grenade is the power that is being replaced in Weapon Mastery.

4) Yes, various PPP's now have access to FA.

I'm certain a complete list of the changes will be up here on the forums within an hour of Beta starting (soon!(tm)) and I'm looking forward to the feedback (positive AND negative) at that time.

City of Heroes - Issue 13 Power and Responsibility

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.


Kheldians

Peacebringers and Warshades, as Archetypes, have an interesting history and reputation among players. It seems as if no one is neutral about them -- they are either loved or hated. This isn't much of a surprise; they were always meant to require more player decision making and compromise than the base Archetypes. However, certain technological restrictions combined with the "facts" of high level play ultimately proved that the Kheldians were even harder than originally expected. With Issue 12's introduction of the Villain Epic Archetypes, we took some time to re-evaluate where the Kheldians were and what we wanted to do with them. Here is what we are planning:

• Cosmic Balance: This power now functions while shapeshifted -- Dwarf and Nova forms gain the same benefits as human form.

• Dark Sustenance: This power now functions while shapeshifted -- Dwarf and Nova forms gain the same benefits as human form.

• Gleaming Bolt, Glinting Eye, Gleaming Blast, Luminous Detonation, Shadow Bolt, Ebon Eye, Gravimetric Snare, Shadow Blast and Dark Matter Detonation: Increased base Range to 80'. This makes Human form Kheldians ranged capabilities more useful overall. The 80' range meshes more evenly with other Ranged AT's capabilities.

• Peacebringer AT Multipliers: increased Human form Melee Damage multiple to 0.85, increased Human form Range Damage multiple to 0.8 and increased Dwarf Form Melee Damage multiple to 1.0.


• Warshade AT Multipliers: increased Human form Melee Damage multiple to 0.85, increased Human form Range Damage multiple to 0.8 and increased Dwarf Form Melee Damage multiple to 1.0.

• Dwarf Form: You may now shift into Dwarf Form even while Held, Slept or Stunned.


Toggle Powers

One important additional piece of development to mention, that is especially relevant to Kheldians and their toggle powers is: in Issue 13, Toggles are no longer shut off due to Hold, Sleep or Disorient effects. This is a major gameplay change, and it is not restricted to Kheldians, but instead applies to all non-offensive player toggles. As part of changes in Issue 13, when a player is affected by a hold, sleep or stun, any toggle power they are running will continue and will still draw endurance from the character. However, some or all of its effects may be suppressed until such time as the hold, sleep or stun is removed. For example, if you are held while in Black Dwarf form, all of your Damage Resistance values, your recovery bonus and knockback protection are suppressed, while your hold, stun, sleep, immobilize and confuse protections remain in effect. Monitoring your stats with the "Real Numbers" tool is a good way to check which aspects of a toggle are suppressed and which are not.


War Mace

An ongoing project over the last several issues has been bringing War Mace up to performance par with other powersets. The last set of changes got us close, but still not to where we want to be. Here are the changes:

• Clobber: Reduced Recharge Time to 16 seconds and alter damage scale and endurance costs to match using the standard formula. This means it it now a pretty hard hitting attack, with a damage scale of 2.92 and a base endurance cost of 15.18. Since this is now classified as a Damage power rather than a control power, the base duration of the Stun effect was reduced from scale 10 to scale 5.

• Shatter: Reduced Max Targets Hit from 10 to 5.

• Crowd Control: Increased Max Targets Hit from 5 to 10.


Misc

There are numerous smaller changes going into Issue 13. While you all will get to see the final product in what makes it into the patch notes, there are a few other changes I want to let you know about.

• Fiery Aura Temperature Protection: Now provides 20% movement reduction protection.

• Dark Melee Midnight Grasp: This power has been rebalanced to provide the majority of it's damage as a front loaded sum (scale 2.21), followed by a shorter, small damage DOT. Overall damage has increased, as has the amount of damage done on a 'Critical.’

• Energy Melee Barrage: We increased the effectiveness of this power by increasing Damage per Activation. We increased Recharge time from 2 seconds to 6 seconds and change the damage and endurance costs accordingly. The smashing component of the damage is now 2 hits of scale 0.5 damage, and the energy portion is now 2 hits of scale 0.16 damage for a combined scale 1.32 damage.


These are the highlights, and there are several other changes which are still in a state of flux (stalkers Claws, for instance.) I hope you all like the changes. We are really looking forward for this all to hit the Training Room so you folks can bang on them and tell us how the changes feel! Your feedback is critical for these and other changes that we make to the game.

Floyd 'Castle' Grubb
Senior Designer

EDIT: Corrected damage scale on War Mace Clobber. I said it was 2.29, when it is actually 2.92.

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How on earth will that work for the people that took the powers you are taking out and like them?

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Simple.

You log in to find your Stalker Snipe now builds a small cottage.

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Ok. That made me laugh. Gold Star for you!

BTW, most of the follow up questions being asked are things I cannot answer until the beta starts. Sorry, guys.

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All joking aside - it was said elsewhere that Power Balancing changes wouldn't affect PvE at all.

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I think either what you read was incorrect or you misunderstood. I'm quite certain the PVE specific changes that were made for I13 will affect PVE, while 95% of the PVP changes have no effect on PVE (I say 95% to hedge my bets, actually.)

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What I'd like some clarity on is a statement by Castle where he says the powers will be just like they were in PVE, and in PVP enabled zones they will have a nerfed performance.

My question is if a given power that only buffs me gets a PVP nerf, does that mean when I go to a PVP Zone for PVE reasons (Shivans, Nukes, RV prestige hunting) that my powers are similarly nerfed?

This might be a serious issue with some folks who love their APPs.

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I'd love to make such a statement for you, but it'd be a lie. The changes for APPs/PPPs are more widespread.

The basic tack we took was "if the power is not being taken by the players, replace it with something that is." So, a number of formerly heroside only powers are now available on villainside, and a number of powers have been replaced by something we feel will be more useful in general.

I'll be very interested in seeing the reactions to the new lists in Beta.

As for the PVP zones, yes, doing PVE content there will be harder.