CoX: Powerset Proliferation and I16

Getting all the powersets spread out between CoV and CoH (and the complementary classes therein) continues in I16, as this article notes. A couple it focuses on:

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.

The Electical powers are fun, and I’m glad to see them both being proliferated this way.

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 Fissure

Cool. Not so much into the Doms, but it seems a perfect fit.

Additionally, 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.

I always find the Ancillaries interesting. I’ve had characters where, thematically and functionally there was nothing in the Ancillaries I wanted or needed. I’ve had others where it filled in a valuable complementary gap (e.g., Controllers getting some sort of armor). And still others where it just meant more fun in the theme (Miss Crackle has taken the electrical one, and now get an additional cone of zappiness to go with the rest of her electical attacks — glee!).