Champions Online : Dev Diary: Supernatural Powers Review

Champions Online Powers designer Chris "Arne" Matz sheds some light on the upcoming review of the game's Supernatural powerset in this latest dev diary published on the official Champions Online website.

Chris first describes the process he goes through when reviewing any particular powerset, which includes checking all the basic properties of the power ranging from cost, to aoe duration, range, etc. If these values are all correct, he then moves on to the next step, which is to scour the forums for feedback and checking the numbers that Cryptic Studios data mines internally.

He discusses the process even further, but you're not interested in that. You want to know what's being changed!

Read below for the (not so) shortlist:

• Shred: A melee hit with a chance to make your target Bleed.
• Pounce: A ranged lunge that knocks down your opponent.
• Frenzy: A melee cone 3 hit combo that Enrages you on the third strike.
• Howl: A PBAoE Enrage buff and Fear debuff.
• Massacre: A hard hitting strike that knocks down your foe.
• Condemn: This power had an error its damage calculations that caused it to do far less damage than it should have been doing. This error reduced the base (tap) damage of the power, and the new tap damage is greatly increased. As charge damage includes tap damage, the total possible damage of this power has increased as well.
• Venomous Breath: A few changes were made to bring this more in line with other cone attacks. Maximum targets has increased from 3 to 5, cone angle was reduced from 90° to 45°. As a result of the angle change, the cost was reduced and the damage was increased.
• Devour Essence: This power got a fair amount of work. It was using the incorrect tables for the heal it did, and fixing this caused a roughly 17% reduction to the amount of healing it does. However, the damage it deals has been increased by 10%, it now lasts a maximum of 8 ticks instead of 6, and the 15 second recharge has been removed. A handful of other minor changes were also made.
• Iron Cyclone: Got a handful of minor adjustments, including the recharge being removed and the maximum periods increasing from 4 to 6.
• Bite: Charge time reduced from 1.33 to 0.83 seconds.
• Pestilence: (previously Cloud of Flies) No longer requires targets to be below 80% health.
• Pestilence: Range increased to 10 feet.
• Pestilence: Damage dealt by this power now increases as the targets health decreases.
• In addition to the changes to power functionality, several powers have received FX updates.