page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Bio Armor Adjustments

[Uun]

12 hours ago, ScarySai said:

Like, go try and solo +5 arachnos on a bio character without any insps or barrier and try to tell me its overpowered, lol.

See my post above. Did not go well against Arachnos or the updated Nemesis.

[Uun]

18 hours ago, Maelwys said:

Stalker/Brute:


(that's -10% Res, -5% Def which is considerably higher than the predicted values for a Tanker, let alone a Scrapper)

I'm getting -11.33% res and -5.67% def on my brute. I assume the difference is due to the new brute res/def modifiers. Based on the patch notes it should be -6.375% res / -3.1875% def.

 

[ScarySai]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

See my post above. Did not go well against Arachnos or the updated Nemesis.

 

Not surprising at all.

[DrunkFlux]

On 12/6/2025 at 12:02 PM, Kranik said:

Tongue-in-cheek or not…Yup.

 

I just finished slotting out a DB/Bio Stalker and if these changes roll out it’ll probably just get deleted outright. 

Bummer.

 

I have a DB/bio stalker I've had and had maxed out for years, and i'm pondering rerolling her to something else with regen myself, just because of how these changes will effect her and her theme.

I suspect many people will abandon bio armor 100% until the changes are brought back to something more reasonable.  it doesn't even have much in the way of debuff resistances, so anything that has any kind of a counter to its abilities can shut it down, and its even vulnerable to to-hit debuffing and enemy defenses.

[arcane]

strange that a powerset ever got so good that soloing +5’s from difficult enemy groups without inspirations or destinies is the only way to make it look flawed, especially when none of those metrics account for its offensive advantages 🤔 glad they’re cleaning that up now i think about it

[DrunkFlux]

59 minutes ago, arcane said:

strange that a powerset ever got so good that soloing +5’s from difficult enemy groups without inspirations or destinies is the only way to make it look flawed, especially when none of those metrics account for its offensive advantages 🤔 glad they’re cleaning that up now i think about it

 

He's being hyperbolic.  But in all seriousness, bio armor kind of depends on destinies to hold itself together at high levels, as I mentioned its always been vulnerable to defense cascades due to effectively being willpower in that it has smash/lethal/toxic(rather than smash/leth/psi) resist and only defense against elemental damage types and energy damage types.  Its actually very difficult to plug its holes with IOs, in the same manner as it is to plug willpowers holes with IO's. 

Arachnos widows have a huge -defense in some of there psionic attacks, so they can "crack" a bio armor easily.  Radiation damage types also crack it easy.  Many tank veterans also consider bio armor very weak largely due to it not handling late game content that well or custom AE archs with lots of debuff effects.  It's strong at low-mid levels and against "brute force" mobs(that is, mobs with zero effective debuff effects such as the pre-patch old council, and cimerorans to a degree ect).  It also loses when it needs to make to-hit roles against enemies with high defense(and loses decisively to at that) or lots of -tohit such as circle of thorns ghosts(of which it has no proper defense against, requiring focused accuracy or targetting drone or ageless radial to enable many of its powers to hit).

This is all from LIVE, btw, not the upcoming patch changes.

[ScarySai]

There's a reason you don't really see bio doing that well in 801 tests compared to the others.

[Night]

Individual powers, powersets, archetypes, enemies, everything aside from maybe Hard Mode TFs and repeatable Incarnate missions should be balanced around the idea that the player will be running on SOs, not IOs, not simple IO builds or min-maxed ones. If it takes you 400 million inf and hours of grinding to make a character supremely powerful, and even then not against everything, then that is good, dedication and planning should be rewarded.

[Nayeh]

These changes are trash. Leave Bio alone, nobody asked for this you power-hungry Devs..

Edited December 8 by Nayeh

[Sebastian]

Yeah these changes are way too harsh

will be dropping bio in favour of dark, stone, shield. 

[aethereal]

Regardless of overall power level, I think it's a real shame to get rid of the differentiated effects of hitting living and dead targets with DNA Siphon.

 

Using DNA Siphon on the optimal mix of living and dead targets was a somewhat rare feeling of gameplay nuance and finesse in a game that's often very logistical: high level play in CoH is often just about your build, with set-and-forget powers that let you AFK in the middle of a mob, safely.  But DNA Siphon was the antithesis of that, not just clicky but rewarding clicking in a way that was reactive not just to your health level but to a particular moment in your attack on a spawn.  There's not a lot of that in this game and I think we should preserve what there is.

[Maelwys]

I've posted this on the Discord already, but copying here for completeness/visibility:


 

(i) The Offensive Stance Debuffs are definitely borked. My Tanker on Open Beta is currently being subjected to -13.33% Resistance and -6.66% Defense rather than -7.5 Res and -3.75% Def. Last I checked it was working fine on Scrappers but much too high on all four of the other ATs (Tankers/Brutes/Stalkers/Sentinels).
Although the -resistance is (correctly) "unresistable" now, at least.
 

---

 

(ii) The hit to Parasitic Aura's regeneration/recovery buff uptime (45s/270s --> 30s/300s) is hurting it a bit too... but I can kinda-sorta understand that since it's in line with the other T9 armor set changes. 
 

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(iii) However by far the biggest pain at present is DNA Siphon. On Live, the recharge is 90s and the regeneration buff lasts for 30s. On Test, it's supposed to have adaptive recharge up to a maximum of 90s. Which sounds fine in theory.
However the current recharge mechanic on this appears to be BROKEN. It is adding too much recharge for each enemy hit, and it also does not appear to be correctly respecting recharge aspect slotting nor global recharge.
 

As an example versus One Single Hostile Target:
With 89.9% local and +125% global recharge; it should be 11.91s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/3.149). But it's actually 36s.
With 89.9% local and +55% global recharge; it should be 15.31s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/2.449). But it's actually 46s.
With 0% local and +125% global recharge; it should be 16.67s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/2.25). But it's actually 50s.
With 0% local and +55% global recharge; it should be 24.19s (20s base plus 17.5s for the first target = 37.5s, multiplied by 1/1.55). But it's actually 1m14s.
(Testing performed on my Bio/Staff Tanker on OB) 

The recharge appears to be the same regardless of the number of mobs hit with it. And it's also simply too darn long.
 

In practice; on Live after defeating a big batch of foes, my Tanker can trigger DNA Siphon every ~30s (90s recharge time reduced to 28.58s with slotting/global recharge) and gain a 30s duration regeneration buff. Which ends up being effectively permanent, so helps to keep their HP bar topped up. On Test I would expect to be able to do the same thing (since it's supposed to cap out at 90s recharge time) but it's at most jumping down to ~36s after power activation instead of ~28s.
I can understand there being a tiny bit of discrepancy here due to the way adaptive recharge takes a moment to actually kick in... but 8 additional seconds for DNA Siphon to become available again is owch-inducing. I'm having to try to rely on Ageless and multiple Force Feedback procs (yuck) to bring it back down under the 30s mark.
 

In addition; the regeneration buff granted by DNA Siphon appears to be missing the "does not scale with enemy level" flag.
vs a Level 50 mob in PI (-1 to me) it's giving my Tanker +5.55HP/Sec.
vs a Level 1 mob in Atlas Park (-51 to me) it's giving +30.00HP/Sec.

 

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(iv) Also worth noting that Evolving Armor is (apparently incorrectly) granting +regeneration whenever I'm in Offensive Stance; not just Efficient Stance.
Which is very slightly offsetting the other negatives but still appears to be unintentional so I'm mentioning it here for completeness sake! 🙂
 
 

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(v) Finally - Ablative Armor.
It seems to be working as intended... unless you try and activate it again before the first instance has worn off. Which is the same headache it's had on Live for years and appears to be a long-standing bug with +Absorb stacking in general (Rad Armor's "Particle Shielding" suffers from the same issue). 
The first +Absorb instance will give full effect... but the second buff instance applies before removing the first and will encounter the Absorb limit (100% of your base HP) and so grant a reduced Absorb figure. Then the original buff instance finally vanishes, leaving you with less absorb than you had previously.
In practice, this rarely matters in combat as your absorb buffer is long since depleted before you trigger the power a second time. But I've encountered multiple cases where a Bio armor toon has it set to autofire and ends up with artificially-reduced Absorb before leaping into a big GM/AV fight.
((Again, this one is at least a long standing bug. See here and here)) 

Illustration:
(Live)
First Instance:

Second Instance:

(Test)
First Instance:

Second Instance:


Tanker Base HP at level 50 = 1874.07
1727.36+146.71=1874.07
1067.63+806.44=1874.07 

Whilst the version on Test is not providing as big a chunk of +Absorb (since it's working off your BaseHP now rather than your "boosted" MaxHP) it's still more than capable of running up against the Absorb limit with that 2nd application. 
 

Edited December 8 by Maelwys

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

12 hours ago, Nayeh said:

These changes are trash. Leave Bio alone, nobody asked for this you power-hungry Devs..

 

Correction.  The power devs are hungry.

 

Calling the changes trash is OK if that is your opinion.  Name calling the devs or anyone else is not.  It's also not very persuasive.  Testing the changes and providing the results of those tests with screenshots, videos, math, or other documentation (See post above this) is much more likely to influence change.

Edited December 8 by GM_GooglyMoogly

[arcane]

The most offensively potent armor set in the game needs to be able to tank the stupid 801 missions nobody cares about to not be called terrible. Now I’ve seen it all.

 

Maybe feedback is better received when it’s based in reality? Dunno.

[GM_GooglyMoogly]

Don't start, Arcane.

[arcane]

15 minutes ago, GM_GooglyMoogly said:

Don't start, Arcane.

Sir yes sir! Everyone must be able to solo everything with zero difficulty or the powers team is terrible, sir! Everybody be excellent and have a happy Monday, sir!

[Maelwys]

FWIW, it's been confirmed by a Dev (although I shan't name them just in case Moogly Googlies me! 😛) that the Offensive Mode debuffs, DNA Siphon recharge and Evolving Armor +regen are all bugged currently on Open Beta. So expect a fix for those in due course.

((It won't take the sting out of the Parasitic Aura changes, but there should at least be a little positive clawback to baseline survivability whenever those fixes land!))

[Maelwys]

1 minute ago, arcane said:

Everybody be excellent and have a happy Monday, sir!

[Auroxis]

FYI, the offensive adaptation damage procs scale based on the combined damage from buffs and enhancements. However the base damage is significantly lower than before, so don't expect a huge difference. At the damage cap you're dealing 50% more damage than before, and with just SO's you're dealing 50% less damage than before.

[ScarySai]

If you really want people to play other sets besides bio, perhaps its high time you address the runner Ai?

 

Playing a set without a taunt aura as a scrapper is just a pain in the ass. So among other reasons, its another reason to gravitate towards bio for a glass cannon character over say, fire armor.

[Myrmidon]

3 hours ago, Maelwys said:

FWIW, it's been confirmed by a Dev (although I shan't name them just in case Moogly Googlies me! 😛) that the Offensive Mode debuffs, DNA Siphon recharge and Evolving Armor +regen are all bugged currently on Open Beta. So expect a fix for those in due course.

((It won't take the sting out of the Parasitic Aura changes, but there should at least be a little positive clawback to baseline survivability whenever those fixes land!))

Although I have been gone for sometime, just reading this Feedback discussion made that obvious.😃

[Sovera]

18 minutes ago, Myrmidon said:

Although I have been gone for sometime, just reading this Feedback discussion made that obvious.😃

 

We missed you though, welcome back!

[ExeErdna]

A lot of these changes aren't needed. If anything Bio needed a bit more of a safety net not reworks. Since to me it was always an armor set that was amazing on mids yet then it wasn't fun to play. From personal experience on my SS/Bio brute I used to run Hami raids on live. It was fine keeping a mob of GMs since that's where it's strongest when it can simply draw power. Yet during faster content like trials, papers, etc if you didn't Siphon right you just debuffed yourself and running into a mob weak.  It's nice Spines got buffed yet its pairing is Bio and now it's looking/feeling worse now. 

 

[Super Atom]

If anything was gonna get reverted, it should have been this change.

[Black_Assassin]

On 12/7/2025 at 7:09 AM, ScarySai said:

go try and solo +5 arachnos on a bio character without any insps or barrier and try to tell me its overpowered, lol.

 

I did this on live and on beta. I was so overpowered in both instances (on my fully incarnate bio/en tank) that I got bent over and solidly reamed by Daddy LR's gang. 

 

I even swapped to defensive stance to attempt to eke the most survival I could and literally made no difference. 

 

Verdict: NERF IT