The Enzyme Nerf Cometh

One plus is that I never again will have to question what to reward to get from a STF or LRSF.

I'm seriously considered deleting a 50 over this, something I have never done. I didn't think it would effect me this much, but it really does take a lot of enjoyment out of playing my DM/SD. I enjoyed him because he was consistent. He wasn't hurt by most debuffs, didn't have a mez defense, and had solid damage. I know, SR was weaker than SD in every aspect, but now I have no intention of ever playing one of my characters again and I am currently in the process of stripping said character of all enhancements. It is too bad I can't strip his incarnate powers down too.

This is the character I soloed a MoITF in under an hour with, who was able to beat every Preatorian AV, and who soloed most of the GMs in game. I invested a lot of time and effort into him, and now that effort is largely wasted because I cannot, with any combination of enhancements or incarnate powers, get him to the level he was once at or replicate any of my feats. I'm glad I switched to my TW/Elec Brute, because my relationship with that character is over.

I will still keep a few Dam/Acc and Dam/Range HOs, but I basically have downgraded them to the category of Kinetic Crash and other "bad" IO sets. Little to no utility for most of my builds, and certainly not better than other options in 90% of cases. General rule of thumb is that IO sets will always be a better option if you have room for them. Which is sad IMHO.

I knew this day would come, and already started transitioning builds from enzymes to cytos starting late last year.

Luckily, for powers slotted with 2 HO's and 1 LotG 7.5 (Lv50), the difference in enhancement value is not very much at all. High end builds can expect to lose ~1% defense which you can make up by overslotting elsewhere.

The only build of mine that really needed working over was (ironically) my SR, who had so many def powers she was way over the LotG cap and relied on 2x enzymes for slot efficiency.

Well, I can't say I didn't see it coming. Fortunately for me, I only use Cyto's in my builds anyway and not Enzymes or membranes - never felt comfortable "cheating" the values, even if it wasn't explicitly a bug.

Has anyone confirmed that membranes no longer work in AD, on beta/test???

The patch note is worded very carefully.

If the wording is meant to be taken exactly as it is written, Enzymes will not buff defense because they do not say they buff defense. Likewise, Membranes will not buff DDR, because they do not say they will.

If the wording is actually correct, slotting Membranes in Widow Mind Link should not be affected by this, because Membranes in that power are enhancing things they say they enhance.

This is not worded like the Alpha Slot. The Alpha Slot will not enhance things that a power does not accept enhancements for. Spiritual Alpha does not enhance Mind Link, because Mind Link does not accept basic Recharge enhancers. This is not worded like that.

It is up to testing to determine if the wording is as correct as it is specific. I should be able to find out tonight.

This will make almost all hamios obsolete. :/

So to get this straight on my dm/inv the enzyme exposure slotted in invincibility(for example but take any of my defense and pool defense powers) is no longer gonna do anything

This is very bad.

Where does this leave DM/Invulnerability on the most survivable list now?

In my opinion, this has a fairly minor effect on Invul's peak performance. From a single powerset impact, where this change has the biggest effect is on Shield, not Invul, because it prevents these HOs from buffing Defense Debuff Resistance (DDR). The impact on many builds is that a they will have to spend more slots to get the same defense, or accept some loss in defense slotting.

To give you some idea, here are combinations found in many of my current builds. (Numbers given include ED.)

Enzyme, Def/End IO (50), LotG:+Rech(25) [~60% defense enhancement ]
Enzyme, Def/End IO (50) [~49% defense enhancement]
Enzyme, LotG:+Rech(25) [~45% defense enhancement]

About the closest I can get by replacing the Enzyme only is to slot in a nother level 50 Defense/End piece (from a different set if I already have one) and use Enhancement Boosters. You can also trade out low-level LotG:Recharge IOs for higher-level ones. Using all of them pretty much keeps me where I was. Using some of them will get me pretty close, but not exactly where I was, depending on which slotting regime we're looking at. See below.

Def/End IO (50+5), Def/End IO (50+5), LotG:+Rech(50+5) [~60% defense enhancement]
Def/End IO (50+5), Def/End IO (50+5), LotG:+Rech(25+5) [~52% defense enhancement]
Def/End IO (50+5), Def/End IO (50+5) [~40% defense enhancement]
Def/End IO (50+5), LotG:+Rech(50+5) [~40% defense enhancement]
Def/End IO (50+5), LotG:+Rech(25+5) [~35% defense enhancement]

So we can still get there if we're willing to obtain boosters and possible give up some recharge bonuses while exemplared.

Edit: I realized while out at dinner that the above is silly for not simply plugging in a Cyto. In fact a ++ Cyto and one +5 Def/End IO will be the best combination slotting under the new change.

Expect Cyto prices to rise, as others have observed.

Interesting, I now really want to know why San decided to bid on Membranes after hearing about this earlier today.

I hope this fix wouldn't affect players from joining the Hamidon raid. It's one of the few events in CoX that I and many others enjoy.