Enhancement Diversification

I analyze the affect of Enhancement Diversification below, now that we have hard numbers.
Warning: there will be swears.

From the Training Room Patch Notes:

Enhancement Diversification:
What does this mean?
Simply, if you are slotting Enhancements and your bonus to a single attribute reaches 70% through Enhancements, you will begin to see a drop in the amount each Enhancement should be giving you.

This is an inaccurate and misleading statement. Given the numbers listed further downin the Patch notes, it actually should read:
“Simply, if you are slotting Enhancements and your put more than two of the same SO Enhancement type, you will begin to see a drop in the amount each Enhancement gives you.”
This is a HUGE difference.

If you exceed 100% bonus, then the drop will be more severe.

No…
“If you exceed three SO Enhancements of the same type in a power, the drop will be more severe.”

We have added to the Enhancement Slotting screen a display of how much bonus you are getting from your Enhancements. When you are adding in Enhancements that will be reduced in effectiveness you will be able to tell.

… how much you’re being screwed.

Note that this only affects Enhancements of the same bonus. So you can have a Damage bonus of 66.66%, and an Accuracy bonus of 66.66% (from 2 SO Damage and 2 SO Accuracy Enhancements) and you will not be affected in any way. Adding in another SO Damage Enhancement will not give you a 99% bonus, but a 94% bonus, because the damage bonus now exceeds 70%.

Again, this isn’t about a breakpoint at 70%, it’s about breaking it at the third and higher enhancement. 70% is true for “Schedule A” enhancements, which, granted, is the majority type, but it’s not right for stuff like … Defenses. Any of them.

A good rule of thumb is ?2 Single Origins Enhancements = No Reduction. 3 SOs = Slight Reduction. 4, 5 or 6 SOs = Major Reduction?

See… THAT is the actual truth.

What if I don?t have more than 2 SOs of any one type in my powers already?
Then you have nothing to worry about, your character will function exactly as they did previous to this feature being added.

Don’t worry, only Tanks are really and truly screwed.

Does this affect Dual Origin Enhancements at all?
Yes. If you have 5 DOs of all the same type you would normally get an 83% bonus. Because of Enhancement Diversification your bonus will actually only get an 82% bonus. If you have 6 DOs of all the same type, instead of a 100% bonus you will have a bonus of 95%.

How bad is it for the Resistances and Defenses? Simply put, if you have six slots in a defensive power at level 21, all of which are DO’s… and at level 22, you ‘upgrade’ to six SO’s… you will see no change whatsoever in your damage taking capacity.
In fact, if you want to know what kind of damage your tank is about to start taking in I6, go to a store right now and swap DO’s in for your SO’s in all your defense powers, even up.
Then pucker up.

Are Hamidon Enhancements affected?

Who the fsck cares?

What about Stamina? I need this to make sure I have enough Endurance to power my powers.
Because of the effect that Enhancement Diversification has on the Stamina power, we are lowering the Endurance cost of every non-Auto power in the game by 13.33%.

… Let’s just ignore the fact that six-slotted stamina now 90% less bonus. With four slots in it, it’s about as useful as 3-slotted stamina is today.

What if a power only takes one type of Enhancement to begin with?
You have a couple of choices. You can respec the character and only go so far as putting a couple slots into the power, or you can go with more slots and eke out a little more effectiveness out of the Enhancements.

You can fuck yourself with *this* thorny branch or *this* barb-wire wrapped pole…”
Hot-diggety.

What Enhancement Types are what bonuses (schedules)?
Schedule A Enhancements (33.33%, 16.66%, 8.35%) are:
Accuracy, Confuse, Damage, Defense DeBuff, Drain Endurance, Endurance Discount, Fear, Fly, Heal, Hold, Immobilize, Intangible, Jump, Recharge, Recovery, Run, Sleep, Snare, Stun, Taunt, To Hit Debuff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 70% or more, and a severe reduction at 100% bonus or greater. So your bonuses when slotting in multiples of the same Single-Origin Enhancement work out to:

((What it used to be at is in parens.))
1 SO: +33.3% ((33.3))
2 SO: +66.6% ((66.6))
3 SO: +95% ((99.9))
4 SO: +100% ((133.2))
5 SO: +105% ((166.5))
6 SO: +110% ((199.8))
In short: if you six-slot your attacks, you want 2 accuracy, 3 damage, and 1 of whatever the secondary effect is.
Yeah: diversity.

Schedule B Enhancements (20%, 10%, 5%) are:
Range, Defense Buff, Resist Damage, To Hit Buff
These bonus types start to see reduction when the bonus is 40% or more, and a severe reduction at 60% bonus or greater. So your bonuses when slotting in multiples of the same Single-Origin Enhancement work out to:

((again, in parens…))
1 SO: +20% ((20))
2 SO: +40% ((40))
3 SO: +56% ((60))
4 SO: +59% ((80))
5 SO: +62% ((100))
6 SO: +65% ((120))
So, if you want to see about where your defense will be, fully six-slotted with SO’s… open up CoH planner and take all your defenses down to three +1 or +2 SO’s in the current system, or get in the game and slot in 6 +2 DO’s in everything.
If Hype stays slotted just as he is (sixed in both his primaries, 4 resistance slots in Tough), his Smash/Lethal resistance drops to about 70-75%. Gilly is EXACTLY the same with just her two primary powers, but if I add Tough to her build, I CAN actually cap smash/lethal on her… downside for Invul is that their resistance to other powers is lower than Fire’s… Fire sucks equally pretty much across the board.
The REALLY annoying thing — there’s virtually no reduction in over-all resistances if Hype just leaves his defenses 3-slotted… the extra six slots in the two primary defenses and the extra one in Tough net him a grand total of about 4% increased resistance, across the board.
I beginning to see where there’s so many “resistance shield” type secondaries for Corruptors over on CoV.

Schedule C Enhancements (40%, 20%, 10%) are:
Interrupt
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 80% or more, and a severe reduction at 120% bonus or greater. So your bonuses when slotting in multiples of the same Single-Origin Enhancement work out to:

I was going to say who cares, but Hang Time actually uses a single interrupt reduction on his snipe, which means it’s only interruptable for the first 3 seconds, even though the animation is six seconds long… it’s very useful.
But I digress.

Schedule D Enhancements (60%, 30%, 15%) are:
Knockback
This bonus type starts to see reduction when the bonus is 120% or more, and a severe reduction at 180% bonus or greater. So your bonuses when slotting in multiples of the same Single-Origin Enhancement work out to:

Might as well drop in a slot for knockback in your powers, folks… your tanks are going to need that precious time while the mobs are getting up and running back into the fight.
Jesus.
Bottom line: the reduced bonus from slotting the 4th, 5th, and 6th SO is much worse than I’d guessed.
Hype will still be able to Cap his smashing resistance, as long as he’s with Syn and she keeps her (1 minute duration) Increase Density on him. His Lethal resistance is going to be the 70’s. Fire is still over the cap, but only barely. Energy is at about a 45-50%, but ID will push that close to the 90% cap. Negative energy will also be 45-50%. Toxic at 20 (gee… I might be able put a couple resistance slots in it to get it to 30… seems I’ll have some to spare…), and Psi = Nothing, as usual.
Gilly’s about the same boat. Pummelcite… jesus, I just wince.
Tanks are going to really REALLY want a defender of ANY kinda around (although Stone and Ice armor will want Force Fields more, while everyone else will want Sonic or Kinetics or something like that. The debuffing sets like Rad and Dark and Trick Arrows will continue to be unappreciated and misunderstood.