City Of Heroes: Invulnerability Changes Explained

Statesman explain the Invulnerability changes thusly:

Here's the reasoning behind the changes to the Invulnerability set (I compiled these thoughts from Geko and Pohsyb, who brainstormed the specific changes):

Invulnerability was MUCH better than the other sets. Tankers and Scrappers could CAP their defense AND damage resistance without even using many slots. A single Tanker could run through an entire map, aggro every mob, drag them to the entrance where several Blasters laid in wait with Nova or some other alpha strike power. This combo makes every other Archetype superfluous.

The other Defense Power Sets each had plusses and minuses. Stone Tankers have heavy resistance with a little bit of defense, Ice Tankers have heavy defense with some damage resist. Fire Tankers have only damage resistance, but make up for it with damage. Scrapper Power Sets are equally balanced: Super Reflexes is only defense and Dark Armor has a mix. Regeneration is a horse of a different color; but I'm sure Regeneration Scrappers could tell you how hard that set can be! We were trying to bring Invulnerability down a bit, while bringing the other lines up a tad.

Now, let's discuss the particulars:

[bold]Made Unstoppable non-permanent -[/bold] This power was meant to be a last resort, but Tankers would get it at 33, and immediately respec out of all of their other defense powers except for Invincibility. Unstoppable provides huge dmg resistance, endurance recovery, and status protection with the penalty of 10%HP and 0% End when it wears off (meant to leave you vulnerable). A perma-unstoppable hero would be protected by the 2nd use of Unstoppable when the first one wore off, so that hero wouldn't suffer any of the penalties used to balance the power in the first place. The hero would hardly take any damage, still be unholdable and regain the lost endurance extremely fast.

The change ensures that powers don't become obsolete. Instead of respecing out powers because perma-Unstoppable did it all, Heroes will need to decide what powers to use, and when, and pay attention to slots. Unstoppable becomes the "uber", yet situational power.

[bold]Removed Root from Unyielding, added defense penalty -[/bold] The extreme (50%) defense penalty to Unyielding was too much, it was meant to be 5%. The defense balances out the movement gain. There needed to be some penalty and -def makes sense because you are unyielding, not dodging the blows, but taking the hits and shruggin them off. The defense debuff of Unyielding can be countered with only 1 or 2 foes in melee & Invincibility.

[bold]Invincibility - [/bold]With Invincibility, a hero could cap his defense gain with only 4 even con enemies. The Accuracy bonus was so good that Invulnerability Heroes did not need to slot Accuracy Enhancements after getting this power. We lowered the defense and accuracy per minion and set a cap to the number of enemies that can boost it. We removed the Ranged Defense out of Invincibility in order to prevent mass herding.

As a side note, Invulnerability Heroes can still cap their Damage resistance with just a few Enhancement slots, and the number of pool powers with defense means that they can still probably cap their defense too if they try hard. Only now Heroes will need to use lots of slots to do this and they will not have infinite endurance.

If you have something to say about the changes, visit the official forums... I know I will.