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What the Devs have said about ED:
CuppaJo (for Positron) - Enhancement Diversification
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(This is a repost due to forum issues. My initial warnings in the first thread did not seem to make any difference. This is your ONLY warning. Abuse of other posters, mods, devs or anyone else will be removed and you will be banned.)
I wanted to give you all a little heads up on something that we've had in the works since March of this year that is finally seeing the light of day soon.
Your questions and comments will help refine the patch notes so that we can make this new system as clear as possible for all players.
As always, we ask that you play and test the changes before crying "DOOOM".
Without further ado...
Enhancement Diversification:
This is a new system being implemented into City of Villains and City of Heroes (when City of Villains launches) to promote the use of more different types of Enhancements in powers. Using a system of diminishing returns, when slotting the same type of Enhancement into a power, you will begin to see less effect of that Enhancement when the bonus reaches a certain threshold. The effectiveness of Enhancements you are slotting in can now be seen in the Enhancement Slotting screen.
What does this mean? Simply, if you are slotting Enhancements and your bonus to a single attribute reaches 70% through Enhancements, you will begin to see a drop in the amount each Enhancement should be giving you. If you exceed 100% bonus, then the drop will be more severe. We have added to the Enhancement Slotting screen a display of how much bonus you are getting from your Enhancements. When you are adding in Enhancements that will be reduced in effectiveness you will be able to tell.
Note that this only affects Enhancements of the same bonus. So you can have a Damage bonus of 66.66%, and an Accuracy bonus of 66.66% (from 2 SO Damage and 2 SO Accuracy Enhancements) and you will not be affected in any way. Adding in another SO Damage Enhancement will not give you a 99% bonus, but a 94% bonus, because the damage bonus now exceeds 70%.
A good rule of thumb is 2 Single Origins Enhancements = No Reduction. 3 SOs = Slight Reduction. 4 SOs = Moderate Reduction. 5 or 6 SOs = Major Reduction
What if I dont have more than 2 SOs of any one type in my powers already? Then you have nothing to worry about, your character will function exactly as they did previous to this feature being added.
Does this affect Dual Origin Enhancements at all? Yes. If you have 5 DOs of all the same type you would normally get an 83% bonus. Because of Enhancement Diversification your bonus will actually only get an 82% bonus. If you have 6 DOs of all the same type, instead of a 100% bonus you will have a bonus of 95%.
Are Hamidon Enhancements affected? Yes. The bonuses that a Hamidon Enhancement gives you that exceed 70% will be reduced. Because of this change, Hamidon (and other dual-purpose) Enhancements are now combinable. You can only combine dual-purpose Enhancements that affect ALL the same bonuses (so you can combine Damage/Accuracy with another Damage/Accuracy, but not with a Damage/Endurance Reduction).
This totally cripples my character! I thought you were done balancing the game? All the Issue 4 and 5 balance adjustments were done with this system in place internally here at Cryptic. All playtests, QA checks, difficulty adjustments and balances have been done with Enhancement Diversification in mind since March 2005.
What if a power only takes one type of Enhancement to begin with? You have a couple of choices. You can respec the character and only go so far as putting a couple slots into the power, or you can go with more slots and eke out a little more effectiveness out of the Enhancements.
How can I tell when I am not getting full effectiveness out of an Enhancement? On the Enhancement Slotting Screen you will now see what bonuses Enhancements are giving you. This will help you make the choice as to what Enhancements to slot over what.
Does it matter what order I slot Enhancements in? No. The reduction in effectiveness is calculated off the total bonus you are receiving, so it does not matter what order you slotted the Enhancements in.
How is combining Enhancements affected by this? Enhancements that are higher level than you give you a bonus above normal Enhancements, if you combine Enhancements to get a higher bonus, this may put you over the point at which a reduction in effectiveness takes place.
Some Enhancements give me a 33.33%/16.66%/8.35% bonus, and others give me a different bonus, how are these affected by Enhancement Diversification? There are four categories of Enhancements, Schedule A, Schedule B, Schedule C, and Schedule D. The majority of Enhancements fall into the Schedule A category. This means that an even-level Training Origin Enhancement gives an 8.35% bonus, an even-level Dual Origin Enhancement gives me a 16.66% bonus, and an even-level Single Origin Enhancement gives a 33.33% bonus. All of the examples above assume using Schedule A Enhancements, since these are the most common.
Schedule B Enhancements are things Defense Buff, Damage Resistance, Range Increase and To Hit Buff. These have a smaller bonus because a small shift in these values has a larger impact on gameplay. With these Enhancements a Training Origin Enhancement gives a 5% bonus, a Dual Origin Enhancement gives a 10% bonus, and a Single Origin Enhancement gives a 20% bonus. Enhancement Diversification for these bonuses kicks in at 40% with a severe drop at 60%.
What Enhancement Types are what bonuses (schedules)?
Schedule A Enhancements (33.33%, 16.66%, 8.35%) are:
Accuracy, Confuse, Damage, Defense DeBuff, Drain Endurance, Endurance Discount, Fear, Fly, Heal, Hold, Immobilize, Intangible, Jump, Recharge, Recovery, Run, Sleep, Snare, Stun, Taunt, To Hit Debuff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 70% or more, and a severe reduction at 100% bonus or greater.
Schedule B Enhancements (20%, 10%, 5%) are:
Range, Defense Buff, Resist Damage, To Hit Buff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 40% or more, and a severe reduction at 60% bonus or greater.
Schedule C Enhancements (40%, 20%, 10%) are:
Interrupt
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 80% or more, and a severe reduction at 120% bonus or greater.
Schedule D Enhancements (60%, 30%, 15%) are:
Knockback
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 120% or more, and a severe reduction at 180% bonus or greater
Also - There will be a 12% reduction in endurance cost for ALL powers and a reduction in the debt cap by 50% due to this system.
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Positron Endurance Discount
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With Enhancement Diversification comes a benefit for ALL City of Heroes powers.
Every power, across the board, is getting a 13.33% reduction in its Endurance cost.
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Statesman-RE:Enhancement Diversification
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Why didnt you do it at I5?
First, there were some tech issues. Secondly, because I wanted to test the changes individually (i.e. powers and Enhancements)
I5 on the Training Room provided numerous insights on powers alone!
Youve destroyed my character!
Everyone is entitled to their opinions; I cant deny that. But please wait till you play with Enhancement Diversification before passing final judgment. I think youll find that slotting previously underused Enhancements, such as Endurance Reduction and Recharge Time, really makes a difference.
Youre doing this only after weve pre-ordered CoV.
If we were that Machiavellian, we would have waited until after CoV was out for a few weeks. I wanted to put this change in before hand so that everyone knew the system well before CoV came out.
Our opinions dont matter.
Demonstrably not true. Feedback from players resulted in many changes to the initial launch of I5 Dark Armor Endurance Reduction, lifting AOE limits for certain powers, making Controller pets permanent, buffing Ice Tankers, increasing Hold durations, increasing Instant Healing duration
etc. The forums are a vital place for us to get player input. Data and personal anecdotes only go so far!
Once we get this up on the Training Room server, well be able to start looking at modifications to the system.
Im sick of all these nerfs.
The goal with I5 was to address the base abilities of powers. But as many pointed out on these boards, Enhancements were also a significant problem. In fact, many people suggested on the boards and in PMs that we look into some form of diminishing return.
I already said that I didnt want powers touched any more in a large way after I5. Same is true with Enhancement Diversification; I think we have finished the large scale changes to bring the game into the right borders.
Does this mean no more changes? Id like to promise you that there wont be ANY changes in I7 that are nerfs and that any change is a buff, but thats unrealistic given that there might be bugs, errors, etc. It simply wouldnt be honest. BUT I do promise that I dont foresee any more big swings on how things are done. And I hope that the powers list for I6 has very, very few power patch notes. And I7, and I8, etc.
The least they could have done is given us some sort of carrot with this.
Couple of things didnt get posted. Were cutting Endurance costs by 12% across the board (to ameliorate the effect that Enhancement Diversification has on Stamina). Were also cutting the Debt cap in 1/2 . Yep. In half.
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Statesman-RE:Enhancement Diversification
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Scrappers and especially Tankers will be hurting badly, and that's after their defenses already took a severe hit. There was already talk wondering if Tankers were useful. Are they going to be tenable at all with these changes?
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Our playtests have shown that they fare just fine. But hey - that's what the Training Room is for!
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What benefit does this bring to my play experience?
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We feel that the game ends up being more fun - players will learn the benefits of other types of Enhancements.
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OK, so it seems obvious that respecs will be a part of this update.
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Definitely.
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what does the debt cap have to do with these changes?
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To be honest, nothing. Players have long complained about "perma-debt" and thus I thought I'd add this in.
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It was very misleading to tell people that the I5 changes were then end of the powers changes, using wording to open the loophole for changing enhancements. Is there no one at Cryptic that suggested that was the case? I would have at least mentioned it in the hallway.
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Actually, pohsyb said that very thing to me - in the hallway! That's my bad if it's misleading - my intent was to tell people that their powers themselves won't change anymore. In my mind, Enhancements were a different category.
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In general, Cryptic does not explain the thought process behind a change - they reiterate the perceived need for the change. We the playerbase are shooting in the dark as to what your thinking was when you made a change, and as a result, cannot really craft a targetted response to the core rationale. Because a lot of the "tweaks" you describe weren't actually asked for by the majority of people giving feedback, its hard to say the change was driven by feedback.
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Sometimes changes are driven by a few people, sometimes by a lot (Dark Armor, Ice Tanker...). Not really sure how to tell people one way or the other - though I'm willing to here suggestions!
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Statesman-RE:Enhancement Diversification
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Day_Dreamer
But how do you plan to deal with single-enhancement powers and powers that naturally gravitate towards a specific sort of enhancement -- like all resistance and defense powers, especially passives?
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At the moment, those particular builds have an advantage in that they can use those extra slots on something else. We'll be looking at the Training Room and the forums for feedback and suggestions.
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Silas_Dark
If you look at the Enhancements that exist in City of Heroes, there are far too many of them that are of very limited usefulness (or not useful at all).
Others, which in theory would be potentially interesting or add some variation to a power (ie. Disorient Duration or Knockback) simply don't have enough of an effect (or the right kind of effect) to be worth slotting. the game itself encourages people to use the same 10 Enhancements (the "Power 10") more than any other, simply because they're the ones that are the most readily available.
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ALL Enhancements are available through Contacts...are you suggesting putting them in the store? The only reason why we didn't, originally, was to prevent the nightmare of scrolling through hundreds of Enhancements...
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CatMan
Will powers that have a long recharge be compensated?
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In these cases, I think most players will slot several Recharge Enhancements to compensate for anything lost by Hasten.
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Statesman RE: Lies and the Lying Liars that tell them
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I apologize if people thought I was misleading them by saying "no more big power changes." In my mind, powers and Enhancements are two different systems (they really are in terms of data). It certainly wasn't my intent.
Secondly, we didn't put out info about Enhancement Diversification out earlier because 1) we hadn't nailed down the exact system and 2) we didn't want to announce changes until they were on the Training Room. Until something can be tested, it isn't "real" yet - I'd hate to say something is coming when it isn't. Skills is a good example of this; we designed it. It seemed ready, but it ended up not being ready.
Thirdly, I CAN say unequivocally that we have NO other major changes planned. A few posts have asked that specifically.
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Statesman RE: Lies and the Lying Liars that tell them
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Positron stated I4 AND I5 changes were balanced with ED in mind. You just stated the system for ED hadn't been nailed until recently (and it STILL isn't in the training room).
What gives? How can there be balance when the system wasn't finalized?
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As I said, we did do internal testing with simulated ED results - but we didn't have the UI and final numbers. I learned after Skills never, never, never mention a system until it's really "in" the pipeline. We hope to get ED up on Training Room later this week.
And to those who think I'm couching my apologies a little too much - I'll be straightforward. I'm sorry. I should have tried to understand how things would be perceived. That's an oversight/error on my part. I thought Enhancements and Powers were two different things, but many players don't see it as such. While I may have been *technically* correct, clearly players thought I was expressing a different spirit: no more nerfs. I should have known that.
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Statesman RE: Lies and the Lying Liars that tell them
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Thanks Statesman, as an aside: when you say "NO other major changes planned" does that apply only to players or to both players and NPCs? In my mind tweaking villain damage/resist/defence/etc would be major in light of the changes that have been made Issue 5 and forshadowed in ED for Issue 6 (assuming I6 is part of CoV's release).
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No plans to make villains harder or easier.
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Statesman RE: Lies and the Lying Liars that tell them
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Notice how he said "villians" and not NPCs? I love how they drop a bomb on us and then only respond with 1 or 2 lined posts.
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Um. We're not changing the NPC's either.
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Statesman - Re: Please tell us the real Reason for ED
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1) For almost a year, Statesman has though the level 30+ game was imbalanced. He thought it was too easy. Offensive heroes caused so much damage and defensive heroes were so tough that there was no need for buffs or debuffs. Pure offense (blasters and scrappers) and pure defense (tankers), with perhaps an empath as a safety net, were enough to dominate the end game.
2) Statesman has always been happy with the low to mid game (levels 1-25). He felt they were properly balanced and challenging.
3) the difference between the low/mid game and the high end game is the proliferation of Single Origin enhancers and the dramatic effect they have on powers once they are 6 slotted.
4) solution: insert a soft-cap on enhancer-based power-magnitude, thus causing heroes suffer more damage, and cause less damage. This makes buff/debuff powers more valuable and leaves room for the vaunted skill system with room to provide a tangible, measurable benefit.
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Let's add a few more...
3.1) Players focused on just a few types of Enhancements alone; the usefulness of secondary effects was overlooked.
3.2) We wanted to be able to vary the % of Enhancements moving into the future. With ED, we now can have a single Enhancement that boosts Damage by 50%. Players can't horde many, many copies of said Enhancement, because there is still an ultimate cap.
3.3) We wanted to curtail the constant powers analysis more; we wanted to set a balance standard and move towards it.
And that's the reason(s).
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Statesman - Re: Something else States said about I5...
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As I've already said, there's little use calculating ED into ANYTHING until it goes to the Training Room. It could have easily ended up on the scrap heap (see Skills). Until something is on the Training Room, I don't like avoiding it (Skills being the classic example).
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Statesman - Re: Apologies and amends.
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Statesman, how do you reconcile this with these two points?
* ED, as currently implemented, will slow down levelling from I5 speeds - damage cut by 1/3 will slow killing speeds, while most defenses also cut by 1/3 will increase downtime.
* As of I5, you said that you were happy with the then-current levelling speeds - to the point where you buffed villain XP to compensate for the I5 changes.
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Fair enough...You've got some pretty big assumptions here - namely that you'll be gaining XP at a much slower rate. It hasn't been my experience at all internally; but we'll keep an eye on it.
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Statesman - Re: Please tell us the real Reason for ED
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a single enhancement worth 50%?????
whats the point that means that if we can get on we can only have 1 before ED takes effect. there are not that many options to put in the powers
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Some powers have few Enhancement choices - that's true. But many don't. In those cases, one could s
Let's take "Charged Bolts" for example. It has the following Enhancements permissable:
Accuracy Boost
Damage Boost
Endurance Discount Boost
Range Boost
Endurance Drain Boost
Recharge Boost
It's unlikely right now that someone would spend a single slot on each of these aspects...even with ED. But with some high level Enhancements - it's possible. A high Damage Enhancement frees up slots to boost something else.
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Statesman - Re: Please tell us the real Reason for ED
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You are not going to be able to ever curtail power analysis. Powergamers enjoy powergaming, and they WILL analyze the powers you put into the game. The harder you make it for them, the less accesable you make the game to non-powergamers. I do not think that trade is worth it.
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Oops. My bad - I meant OUR powers analysis - constantly tweaking individual powers without any overarching goal.
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Statesman - Re: Lies and the lying liars that tell them
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Jeesh...you're not kidding! Reading posts like these make me surprised he bothers to post here at all!
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Honestly, most devs don't post on their forums. There's various reasons why - but I've never subscribed to them (probably because I'm not from the game industry, really).
Here's what I keep in mind:
1) Players are paying customers.
2) They are entitled to their opinions.
3) It's easy to fly off the handle when you care.
4) Players who care isn't really a bad thing.
5) It's easy to type things in anger or haste.
I've met many posters at conventions who've written some vitriolic, personal attacks. Inevitably, they're patient, kind and intelligent. They really don't mean these things personally, because they don't know me personally. It's just that they felt strongly on an issue and posted quite passionately.
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<a href="" target="_blank">Statesman - Re: Lies and the lying liars that tell them</a>
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If anyone from Cryptic is reading this, clarity would be good. Is the intent to have it go live on CoH when CoV goes live?
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Never. ED is scheduled to go to the Training Room within a week (if not much sooner). We were going to do the announcement then...
In an ideal world, we'd have timed the CoV and CoH patches at the same time (unfortunately, this was impossible)...but as soon as people started posting info about it on the CoH forum, it made sense to announce it before it was on the Training Room.
Several people have noted that ED will "inevitably" cause a slowdown in leveling. That's why we're putting this up on test; internally, we didn't notice a change. There's a variety of reasons for this (less Endurance cost, slotting of different powers that reduced downtime, etc.), but I wanted to see the effect on the Training Room. I'm more than happy to increase XP should ED slow stuff down too much...
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Statesman - Re: A 2nd chance and a suggestion to the devs
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It's quite possible the reduction in endurance and the debt cap were supposed to be in the announcement. Positron's post on the CoV boards was looking for ways to refine the announcement. Since we've been told the endurance reduction is already built into CoV (not sure about the debt cap) he likely didn't feel the need to mention it there. He never got the chance to edit his post, because CuppaJo was forced into posting it, as is, on these boards.
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Yes, they were...the hurried nature of things kinda threw things out of whack.
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Statesman - Re: Anything in I6 besides ED, PVP , and Bases?
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To clarify:
Bases are NOT in I6. Bases are a CoV feature...
We'll be posting the features list for I6 "soon."
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Statesman - Re: Anything in I6 besides ED, PVP , and Bases?
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Are you saying only CoV owners can build bases?
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You cannot enter or build bases without CoV. You cannot participate in Base raids without CoV. CoH players will gain prestige and Salvage (I think) that they can contribute to the Super Group...
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Positron on CoV - Enhancement Diversification
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Blasts like fire that have no secondary effect that can be slotted,
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Damage, Endurance Reduction, Range, Accuracy, Recharge Rate, that's 5 different effects right there. 3 of which play directly into Damage Per Second (Damage, Accuracy, Recharge).
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Positron on CoV - RE: Post by Posi on CoH Boards
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My question is, if they had planned this END reduction and the halving of debt to go along with ED, why was it not patched with the ED? Seriously.
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CoH players will have it patched with ED.
CoV players have had the reduced endurance for... I think 2 weeks now (it was ready before ED was for CoV).
That's why the post was on the CoH boards.
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and oddly unlike most ppl i dont mind ED the only ppl who whine about it are ppl who go like
"Hey my Invunubility tanked Babbage"
or
"My Sniper attack can one shot"
or
"I used to be able to solo AVs"
or
"Slot in 5 Damage and 1 acc for all attacks"
or
"6 slotted Stamina solves everthing"
well I feel unaffected by ED i used 4 damage and 2 acc enhancements in all my attacks and i have NEVER EVER
EVER! have gotten stamina
so ppl you can whine and beg and plead to the mods saying "let me solo AVs again"
yet just get used to it I have felt nothing from ED
but this is a very good explanation on ED very good for the type of ppl i have mentioned above(like the invulnarbility guy)
