Damage

Overview

Damage is a value, in Hit Points, that directly reduces the Hit Point total of a target. If the target is reduced to zero, the target is defeated. Most damage can be decreased via resistance self-affecting powers, outside buffs, or inspirations.

Damage Types

Smashing Damage

Blunt force attacks. Typified by Brawl and other bludgeoning attacks.

Example(s): Super Strength, War Mace

Lethal Damage

Piercing or cutting attacks. Typified by many weapon based attacks. A good way to remember: Blades and Bullets. Many Lethal attacks, but not all, can apply -Defense debuffs.

Example(s): Broad Sword, Archery

Fire Damage

An attack employing radical increase of temperature. Often associated with damage-over-time effects.

Example(s): Fire Blast, Fire Control

Cold Damage

An attack employing radical decrease in temperature. Often associated with slowing of attack and/or movement rate.

Example(s): Ice Blast, Ice Control

Energy Damage

An attack utilizing raw energy or an energy transfer. Often coupled with Smashing damage and associated with Knockback/Knockdown.

Example(s): Kinetic Melee, Luminous Blast

Negative Energy Damage

An attack of anti-energy, typically drawn from the netherworld by "dark" powers. Often associated with reduced Accuracy.

Example(s): Dark Assault, Umbral Blast

Psionic Damage

An attack upon the mind. When protection from attacks is not comprehensive, protection from this damage type is typically missing. It is often associated with reduction in Recharge.

Example(s): Psychic Blast, Mental Manipulation

Toxic Damage

Poisonous attacks. The nature of toxins may be either biological or chemical. Toxic damage is unique in the respect that no power currently provides defense to it, so mitigation for toxic attacks is based on resistance to it or defense versus the melee/ranged/AoE nature of the attack. It is often coupled with lethal damage and associated with damage-over-time effects.

Example(s): Spines, Bane Spider Soldier

Electrolytic Damage

Unique to Hamidon. These attacks can not be evaded and may only be resisted through use of Essence of the Earth inspirations.

Example(s): Hamidon, Mitochondria

Prismatic Damage

Unique to the Crystal Titan. These attacks can only be resisted through the use of Ambrosia inspirations.

Unique2 Damage

This is the special Radiation damage dealt by the Terra Volta Reactor Core. It can only be resisted by the Radiation Shield buff.

Damage Scale

The Damage Scale (also referred to as damage scalar) is a form of comparing attacks across archetypes (usually at level 50). There is no actual game mechanic that makes use of the damage scales, but they are used in the assignment of damage values for powers. Damage scales are expressed as multipliers relative to Blaster melee damage, with Blaster melee being expressed as 1.000. For example, if a Blaster uses a melee attack (1.000) and does 50.0 damage, a Brute using the same melee attack (0.750) would do 37.5 (50.0 * 0.750) damage.

Notes:

• While the melee archetypes are assigned ranged damage scales, these scales are never used. Ranged attacks on melee archetypes use the melee damage scale.
• Temporary Powers use normalized scales that result in the same damage output regardless of which archetype is using them.

Damage Scale by Archetype

The following table shows the melee and ranged damage scales for each archetype.

Heroes
Archetype	Melee	Range
Blaster	1.000	1.125
Controller	0.550	0.550
Defender	0.550	0.650
Scrapper	1.125	0.500
Tanker	0.800	0.500
Peacebringer	0.850	0.800
Bright Nova	N/A	1.200
White Dwarf	1.000	N/A
Warshade	0.850	0.800
Dark Nova	N/A	1.200
Black Dwarf	1.000	N/A
Pet	1.000	0.800

Villains
Archetype	Melee	Range
Corruptor	0.750	0.750
Dominator	1.050	0.950
Mastermind	0.550	0.550
Henchman 1	0.450	0.350
Henchman 2	0.550	0.450
Henchman 3	0.650	0.550
Brute	0.750	0.500
Stalker	1.000	0.600
Arachnos Soldier	1.000	1.000
Arachnos Widow	1.000	1.000
Pet	1.000	0.800

Buffs and Debuffs

Maximum

Maximum total Damage for players depends on Archetype and (usually) level.

Archetype	Maximum Damage
Brute	775%
Blaster, Corruptor, Scrapper, Stalker	210% at level 1 500% at level 21+
all others	200% at level 1 400% at level 21+

Notes:

1. Attacks do 100% damage to start with (i.e. base, or 1x normal), not 0%. The amount of Damage bonus needed to reach the cap is 100% less than the cap itself.
2. Enhancements count as damage buffs. If a character has +95% in damage enhancements, then, considering point number one, the character has 195% total damage buff.
3. These maximums apply only to effects that increase the amount of damage an attack delivers. Reductions to an enemy's Resistances can cause that enemy to suffer damage beyond these maximums. So can effects that cause attacks to deliver damage more than once, such as Containment, Scourge, and Critical Hit.
4. The Brute damage cap is set significantly higher than the other Archetypes to accomadate the mechanics of the Fury inherent power, which functions by applying a Damage buff that scales proportionally with the Brute's Fury level.

Minimum

Players and critters have a minimum damage of 10%.

Historical

This article or section contains information that no longer applies to the current version of City of Heroes Freedom. It is provided for historical purposes.

Quantum Damage

Formerly used by Void Hunters and Quantum-class enemies. These attacks dealt a great deal of un-resistible damage to Kheldians. It was replaced with normal Negative Energy Damage in the February 12, 2008 patch.

See Also

• Attack Mechanics
• Purple Patch
• Invention Origin Enhancement Proc Damage Scaling

External Links

Power Data Standardization v2.0 (Issue 7) by iakona.