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.
- Examples: Super Strength, War Mace
Lethal Damage
- Sharp force attacks. Typified by many weapon based attacks using blades and bullets.
- Examples: Broad Sword, Archery
Fire Damage
- An attack employing radical increase of temperature. Often associated with damage-over-time effects.
- Examples: Fire Blast, Fire Control
Cold Damage
- An attack employing radical decrease in temperature. Often associated with slowing of attack and/or movement rate.
- Examples: Icy Assault, Water Blast
Energy Damage
- An attack utilizing raw energy or an energy transfer. Often coupled with Smashing damage and associated with Knockback/Knockdown.
- Examples: 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.
- Examples: 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.
- Examples: 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.
- Examples: 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.
- Examples: 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 not used for ranged attacks on their primary/secondary powersets (e.g. Focus). The ranged scales are used for ranged attacks in power pools (e.g. Arcane Bolt), as well as most ranged attacks in Tanker and Brute APPs/PPPs, other than Energy Mastery, which always uses melee damage scales.
- 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.
| Archetype | Melee | Range |
|---|---|---|
 Blaster |
1.000 | 1.125 |
 Controller |
0.550 | 0.550 |
 Defender |
0.550 | 0.650 |
 Scrapper |
1.125 | 0.500 |
 Tanker |
0.950 | 0.800 |
 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 |
 Sentinel |
1.100 | 1.100 |
 Brute |
0.750 | 0.750 |
 Stalker |
1.000 | 0.600 |
 Mastermind |
0.550 | 0.550
|
 Henchman 1 |
0.450 | 0.350 |
 Henchman 2 |
0.550 | 0.450 |
 Henchman 3 |
0.650 | 0.550 |
 Dominator |
1.050 | 0.950 |
 Corruptor |
0.750 | 0.750 |
 Arachnos Widow |
1.000 | 1.000 |
 Arachnos Soldier |
1.000 | 1.000 |
 Pet |
1.000 | 0.800 |
Damage Buffs and Damage Debuffs
Maximum
Maximum total Damage for players depends on Archetype and (usually) level.
| Archetype | Maximum Damage |
|---|---|
| Brute | 700% |
| Blaster, Corruptor, Scrapper, Sentinel, Stalker, Tanker |
210% at level 1
500% at level 21+ |
| all others | 200% at level 1
400% at level 21+ |
Notes:
- Attacks do 100% damage to start with; the amount of damage bonus needed to reach the cap is 100% less than the cap itself.
- Enhancements count as damage buffs. If a character has +95% in damage enhancements, then the character has +195% damage on that attack.
- 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.
- The Brute damage cap is set significantly higher than the other Archetypes because of the Fury inherent power, which applies a Damage buff which scales proportionally to 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/Villains. 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.