City of Heroes PvP changes explained at length

Floyd 'Castle' Grubb clearly does not know the meaning of fear. He's now unveiled a detailed breakdown of the foreshadowed changes to powers in City of Heroes PvP, and they're so radical it will probably be like playing a different game. Are these changes for the better? Once Issue 13: Power and Responsibility goes to Open Beta, we'll be sure to join in with the testing, because we can't wait to find out.

We already knew about the changes to mez protection (removed in PvP) but the changes go far, far beyond that. For example, simply being the target of an attack is enough to suppress your travel power for two seconds, though suppression won't be as severe as it currently is in PvE.

Buffs are subject to a 'diminishing returns' system, meaning no more stacking buffs for huge increases to ToHit or damage. Even healing is changed, with each successive heal giving you 25% resistance to healing for 15 seconds, so that 4 heals in close succession would make you immune to healing for the duration. Healspamming will no longer be a viable tactic.

Among the other changes are the addition of a range debuff to Taunt powers (a change that carries over to PvE) whereby taunting debuffs the range of powers by 75% - a change that was in fact suggested by the playerbase. Damage powers now calculate damage based on activation time rather than recharge, while all ATs become tougher and more resistant to damage while in PvP, leading to an increase in overall survivability. They're also a lot closer to each other in terms of damage output.

There's good news in there for those who have been waiting anxiously to see if Base Raids, Items of Power and the Cathedral of Pain Trial would ever be re-implemented. Castle as good as confirms outright that they will: 'We did a lot of work on Bases, Raiding and the Cathedral, but we have to save that for later -- those are all works in progress for a future update.' The four PvP zones are also set to receive revamps in a future issue.

There's a dedicated Arena PvP community on the US CoX servers, and many of them are agog at this news. Castle's stated goal in implementing these changes was 'for players to be able to bring any AT and powerset combination into PVP and to be competitive and have fun!' To a dedicated PvPer, that could well look like excessive democratization, taking away from the few for the benefit of the many. But then, if PvP is to be opened up to a whole new audience who had shunned it before, perhaps that's what needs to happen.