Definitions and How it applies.

[Vlardoom]

Greetings all,

I may be having senior moments, but I keep getting confused about some wording in this game.

Been around a long time but I got caught/misunderstood certain terms and how it applies to its use. 

Can I get some help on what they mean and how it applies in the game? Searches turn up too many links.

 

In particular how enhancements, sets, incarnates and powers secondaries work.

i.e. Regeneration means hit point regen not endurance, not time to next power use. So, is this the same as 'recharge'?

So okay then what or how do you get endurance growth ?recharge? recovery (I thought health)? or is it only reduction type names?   

 

From Wiki -

Retired Aspects
This section contains information that no longer applies to the current version of City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
There are several Enhancement aspects that have been retired and combined into new ones. The currently known ones are:

Cone Range, which was incorporated into the Range aspect;
Endurance Drain, and Endurance Recovery, which were merged into the Endurance Modification aspect; So I need end mod for end recovery??
Team Defense, and
Self Defense, which were merged into the Defense Buff aspect

 

 

Regeneration -

Recovery -

Resistance -

Defense -

Recharge - Recharge Reduction - Reduces Recharge Time. I assume of power availability.

Heal/absorb -

 

Please feel free to add other questionable definitions.

I am sure others may come up.

 

Thank you,

Vlardoom

[Albion]

9 minutes ago, Vlardoom said:

Greetings all,

I may be having senior moments, but I keep getting confused about some wording in this game.

Been around a long time but I got caught/misunderstood certain terms and how it applies to its use. 

Can I get some help on what they mean and how it applies in the game? Searches turn up too many links.

 

In particular how enhancements, sets, incarnates and powers secondaries work.

i.e. Regeneration means hit point regen not endurance, not time to next power use. So, is this the same as 'recharge'?

So okay then what or how do you get endurance growth ?recharge? recovery (I thought health)? or is it only reduction type names?   

 

From Wiki -

Retired Aspects
This section contains information that no longer applies to the current version of City of Heroes/Villains. It is provided for historical purposes.
There are several Enhancement aspects that have been retired and combined into new ones. The currently known ones are:

Cone Range, which was incorporated into the Range aspect;
Endurance Drain, and Endurance Recovery, which were merged into the Endurance Modification aspect; So I need end mod for end recovery??
Team Defense, and
Self Defense, which were merged into the Defense Buff aspect

 

 

Regeneration -

Recovery -

Resistance -

Defense -

Recharge - Recharge Reduction - Reduces Recharge Time. I assume of power availability.

Heal/absorb -

 

Please feel free to add other questionable definitions.

I am sure others may come up.

 

Thank you,

Vlardoom

VERY BASIC definition, others will give you surely the finest details:

Regeneration is the ticks your Health is going to be getting refilling without any external help.
Recovery is the same for your Endurance (Slotting End Mod enhancements is gonna make your End number larger).
Recharge affects your powers cooldown, can be for each individual power or global for all of them.
Defense is how much you are going to avoid getting hit.
Resistance is how much you are going to avoid damage once hit.
Heal is how much you gonna recover someone elses or your own health actively.
Absorb is how much damage is gonna get soaked up (as in not reaching your health bar).

[TheZag]

Albion beat me to it.  Heres my almost the same reply anyway.

 

Incarnate powers are a whole big explanation.  There is some good information in the guides section.

 

Secondary effects- powers that damage and do something else.  That something else is the secondary effect.  An example is a power that does damage and slows an enemy,  the slow is a secondary effect

Regeneration- is how fast health is naturally increasing

Recovery- is how fast endurance is naturally recovering

Resistance- affects how much damage you take when hit by an attack

Defense- affects if an attack hits at all

Recharge- how quickly an ability is available to use again

Heal/absorb- how much a power heals or how strong an absorb shield a power makes

 

Endurance drain powers and endurance recovery powers are both improved by the endurance modification enhancement.

 

Healing powers and absorb powers are both improved by heal/absorb enhancements.  A healing power with no absorb will not gain absorb from a heal/absorb enhancement.  Health regeneration powers are improved by heal/absorb enhancements.

[Ukase]

Regeneration is the rate at which your character regains hit points outside of direct healing. Take the Rest power, for example. If you "Rest", your regen with an SO slotted is essentially capped. You're regaining your hit points as fast as your character can gain them. 

So - what impacts this rate? Good question. What you slot in Health, certain unique IOs, and certain Set Bonuses. For example, Pounding Slugfest, a level 15-30 Melee Damage set, if you slot at least two of those in the same attack, your regeneration rate is increased by 8%. 

Well...8% of zero is still zero, right? The good news is, unless you're being debuffed, every character has at least some level of regeneration. The higher your Hit Points, the higher your regen rate, as far as the number of hit points you actually regain per second. 

For example: A corruptor's Max HP...1606 or so. A tank's is much higher, usually double that, or close to it, depending on build, about 3k, 3200. The cap is 3600 or so.  A tank's 8% will give that tank more hit points recovered per unit of time than the corruptor's 8%. 

 

So, any time you can increase your character's hit points without sacrificing other attributes, it's a wise thing to do - i.e. Task Force Commander, Portal Jockey, Freedom Phalanx Reserve Accolade powers all boost HP. 

Recovery is the same thing as regeneration, only for Endurance. Endurance can often be interchanged with Stamina. 

Resistance is what limits the incoming damage you're going to get hit with. A tank's resist cap is 90%. 
So, if an NPC hits the tank with a 1,000 points worth of damage, because the tank resists 90% of that damage, they only take 100 hit points worth of damage. 
The higher the resistance, the less damage they take. 

Defense is the ability for a character to avoid being hit. The higher your defense, the greater the chance that you avoid being hit. If the npc attacking your character dishes out 1000 hit points of damage, but you have 45% defense, then there's only a 5% chance you get hit. The Wiki can break all that down. It can be quite confusing. 

Recharge is how fast/slow a given power will be able to be used again. Hasten, for example, has a base recharge of 450 seconds. "Base Recharge" is the length of time that has to elapse before the power can be used again if there are no enhancements in the power, nor are there any other set bonus recharges, or external buffs to recharge. (Speed boost, Accelerated Metabolism, for example) 
Some players, I have no idea what game calls it a "Cool down", but they use that term interchangeably with recharge. 


Heal/Absorb are two different things, but they do work in conjunction. 
If your character has 200 hit points of your total of 1606 Hit points at the moment, and I use Heal Other on you with my emp, you will go from 200 hitpoints to about 900 hit points. 

If you have an absorb shield, it acts as a temporary extra amount of hit points. Hoarfrost, for example, unslotted, will give you a 29.9% heal, as well as a 29.99% absorb shield. 


Hope that clears things up. They're good questions. If my answers are not clear, I encourage you to ask for more information. 

 

[Vlardoom]

Great answers and thank you all.

Have a fun day.

 

[PeregrineFalcon]

Good morning, Vlardoom. Let me see if I can touch on all of your questions.

• Accuracy enhancements do what they say they do. Just FYI, you almost never want more than 1 of these in a power.
• Defense enhancements lower the chance an enemy will hit you. All enemies have a 50% chance to hit you, and you subtract your defense from their chance to hit. So if you have 10% defense then the enemies will only have a 40% chance to hit you. Also, their chance to hit you cannot be lowered to under 5%. So 45% defense will lower their chance to hit to the 5% floor, which is why 45% is called the "soft cap."
• Endurance Reduction enhancements reduce the endurance cost of your powers, both click powers and toggles.
• Endurance Modification enhancements increase your endurance recovery and increase the amount of endurance you drain from enemies, if you have a power that does that.
• Heal/Absorb enhancements increase your Regeneration, which is hit points. And increase the level of Absorb you have, if any.
• Recharge enhancements reduce the time it takes a power to recharge. The formula is complicated. More is better.
• Resist Damage enhancements lower the damage from a hit by a %. So if you have 25% resistance to lethal damage and a Council Raseri Nacht Ubermenchen Heckenschutze hits you for 100 points of damage then you'll only take 75 points of damage.

Also, there is a thing called "Enhancement Diversification." It's not mentioned anywhere in the game, but it's a very big deal. Short version, you should never put more than 3 of the same type of Enhancement into a power.

 

Certain enhancements are crafted, they are called Invention Origin enhancements. Some of those are part of a specific named set. They work pretty much like equipment sets in other MMOs, the more of a set you have equipped the more of the set bonuses you'll get.

 

I don't understand what you mean by "power secondaries."

 

Incarnates are a long story. I recommend reading this thread by Robotech Master (/e salute).

[macskull]

While everyone has answered the OP's question, it's also worth pointing out the game isn't always consistent with its own definitions or how it displays data.

[Fira]

I came here to basically say what macskull did. Don't put as much thorough thinking into precise in-game wording as you might in some games with similar building complexity.

 

The game power wording and info routinely confounds ToHit and AccMod in particular when they're nothing alike. Other obvious contenders include debuff resistance and secondary buffs.

 

Then there's a couple powers that are blatantly wrong, misleading or incomplete even in power details. An easy example is Barrier Destiny which lists only full resist buffs but not def.

[macskull]

On 1/6/2022 at 3:23 AM, Fira said:

I came here to basically say what macskull did. Don't put as much thorough thinking into precise in-game wording as you might in some games with similar building complexity.

 

The game power wording and info routinely confounds ToHit and AccMod in particular when they're nothing alike. Other obvious contenders include debuff resistance and secondary buffs.

 

Then there's a couple powers that are blatantly wrong, misleading or incomplete even in power details. An easy example is Barrier Destiny which lists only full resist buffs but not def.

The tohit/accuracy discrepancies are kind of funny to me because there are a few places ingame where the devs acknowledge they aren't consistent about it and say they're working on fixing it. I've maintained for a very long time that while CoH is a pretty casual-friendly game because of how easy it is to just pick up and play, it's remarkably casual-unfriendly as soon as you start digging around under the hood and trying to figure out how the game actually works.