[CO] Ask Cryptic: Supernatural Review

In this edition of Ask Cryptic, we put your questions about the
upcoming changes to the Supernatural power set to the design team. Read
on to learn more about Champions Online.

Q: Mr.Funsocks: Is the lunge from various mobs (Dogz, Trey
Kings, and Vamps all have it) going to be added? Is that Pounce?

A: Ame: I'm not exactly sure what you are
asking here - if you're just asking about the animation, then yes - the
new Bestial Supernatural power, Pounce, is using that animation, which
looks mighty awesome.

Q: AngelOfCaine: With the existance of the "0 point"
advantage on enrage (Growth), why isn't this tactic used on more powers
to capitilize on CO's "ultimate customization" trend? I mean, if 0 point
advantages are only going to represent "cosmetic" changes, why not
expand on this avenue of customization?

A: Ame - The implementation of doing this is
more complicated than most of our customization options are. Each 0
point advantage requires the creation of another power in our editor.
Some of them are fairly easy to do (the Enrage one happens to be
reasonably easy) but some other options that we've seen requested for
this (changing the FX that come from a power for example) would require
making a duplicate of the power, which introduces the bad possibilities
of the 0 point version of the power actually functioning differently
than the normal version of the power. Basically - it is a lot of
overhead while also adding in risk to our support of the powers, so we
only do them seldomly.

Q: noviere - Currently, the animation for Bestial Fury starts
off with open hand/claw swipes, and then turns into punching. Will this
be changed so all of the "swings" look like claw attacks?

A: Ame: Yes, as part of the Supernatural review,
Bestial Fury is now all claw swings, all the time.

Q: quixotic1: Will the melee changes be pushed through at the
same time as this supernatural pass?

A: Stormshade: Yes, these are all part of the
upcoming Super Powers Patch, which should be heading to PTS very soon.

Q: Silverspar: According to the review the aspects were
significantly changed. How were they changed? Did you condense them down
into just two, one for infernal the other for bestial? Are they still
toggles that use energy every minute? Are their effects more useful?

A: Ame: They got a big change, yes. There are now
only 2 aspects - Aspect of the Bestial and Aspect of the Infernal. They
are still toggles, but the effect of the toggle is much simpler than the
old effect. They don't cost energy per minute, they instead affect your
energy generation and usage in a similar manner to how travel powers
affect your energy generation/use. The redesign was intended to make
them more useful, definitely.

Q: Shadowrat: With the pending changes to Cloud of flies
and it getting more attention, will this power be boosted to a point
where it can stand on its own or will it have a bonus mechanic added to
it that differs depending on the active Aspect?

A: Ame: The new version of Cloud of Flies (now
called Pestilence) does not interact with the Aspects in any direct way.

Q: bascott - Supernatural Power is an innate passive that you
can rank up (I think it's the only one that can be ranked up.) Are
there any plans to change it so that it is like the other innate
passives?

A: Ame: No, we don't have any plans to make it only
have 1 rank. We have improved the benefit of ranking this power up as
part of the Supernatural review.

Q: Blackstream: How are you guys planning on fixing the pvp
problem of melee where ranged damage is at least as high as melee
damage, and if you don't want to get hit by a meleer, you can just walk
backwards?

A: Akinos: Our hope is that many of the melee
changes made during the melee review will alleviate the “ranged vs
melee” problems in all aspects of gameplay. New lunges that can be used
more often and have control aspects to them. Slightly longer default
melee range. No movement lockdowns on charge up melee powers. Soon, even
if you do miss, you won’t lose energy or trigger cooldowns (most of
which have also been removed).

Melee damage has always (at the very base level before buffs, etc)
been higher than ranged damage, but now melee players will have a few
more tricks up their sleeve to boost their damage (Brawler role, new
melee passive in Martial Arts). All in all, we hope to see an
improvement in melee play across the board, PvE and PvP.

More details in the Melee
Dev Diary!

Q: UVee: Since there are more claw powers being added, I'm
guessing one will be Tier 0 to go along with the melee energy builder of
Supernatural (currently we have the melee energy builder and the ranged
chain power as defaults). Will we also see a new energy builder for the
chain sets, maybe not now, but in the future? Also with this, when
creating a new character will we get a choice of "Infernal" (chains) or
"Bestial" (claws) when selecting a framework or will it remain just as
"Supernatural"?

A: Ame: Yes to pretty much all of these questions.
You will be able to choose Infernal Supernatural or Bestial Supernatural
at character creation. Bestial uses Bestial Fury, and Infernal has a
new ranged Energy Builder, Infernal Bolts.



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