City Of Heroes Issue 16: Developer Diary

Spreading the Joy – Powerset Proliferation in Issue 16
By: Floyd Grubb – Senior DesignerFor Issue 16, we wanted to proliferate more powersets; at least one per archetype.  In looking at which sets to shift around, there were a number of considerations that had to be examined.  There wasn’t a specific rule, it was more the circumstances of development which really guided the decisions.  As the art team was busy with Powerset Customization, we tried to stay away from sets that required too much animation or FX work.  We also wanted to fill in matching Themes where we could, like with adding Assault Rifle and Traps to Defenders and in other instances, we wanted to fill in highly requested options, such as adding Claws to Brutes.  In the end though, there are just far too many aspects to cover individually, but I’d definitely like to highlight some examples..Tanker & Scrapper: Electric Armor and Electric Melee
The original plan was just to proliferate Electric Armor and to use this opportunity to make some survivability adjustments to the set at the same time. To that end, we renamed “Conserve Power” to “Energize” and added a small self heal and short duration regeneration buff to the power.  During testing, we realized that Energize came too late in the lifetime of a character to truly be useful, so for the new versions of the powerset, we swapped the progression of Lightning Reflexes and Energize (Brutes and Stalkers do not get this advantage, unfortunately).  Ultimately, we decided that we really wanted a thematic match for Electric Armor on the attack side of the fence, and added Electric Melee to the mix as well.Dominator: Earth Assault
Earth Assault began life as a training exercise for Jonathan “Sunstorm” Courney.  Shortly after he began working here, he decided to build a new assault set for Dominators in order to help familiarize himself with the powers system.  He spent some time picking the powers, dreaming up new ones and testing them, and in general just doing some really innovative and crazy things with them.  After a while, he decided to take his test bed and turn it into something that could be released to the fans.  This led to a lot of rebalancing, rebuilding, and when he was finally satisfied with it, he pitched it to me.  Although it’s taken awhile for it to be implemented, we’re happy that we’re finally able to include it with Issue 16. 
  
Earth Assault, like other Assault sets, combines a good mix of Ranged and Melee powers.  It has a healthy dose of soft control, good damage, and with Mud Pots – one of the best Damage Auras available.Earth Assault:
1  Stone Spears
2  Stone Mallet
4  Tremor
10  Hurl Boulder
16  Power Boost
20  Heavy mallet
28  Seismic Smash
35  Mud Pots
38  FissureAdditionally, we also conducted a mini-proliferation pass on the Ancillary and Patron Power Pools, adding 5th powers to most Pools and adding Blaze Mastery for Scrappers.  This has been something which people have been asking for since Fire primaries and secondary’s were given to them. We hope that all these new powersets and combinations will provide our players with even more ways to enjoy Paragon City and the Rogue Isles so Go!  Hunt!  Kill Skulls!