Powers not performing well?

[Archived Post]

So, I'm 99% Electricity. I have Sparkstorm (toggle), Lightning Bolt and Gigabolt as my 3 main attacks - the latter of which claims somewhere between 300-700 damage (Lightning Bolt says ??, but hits for about 400-500 when fully charged, even at level 1). All of my attacks take a grip of power to use and, with the exception of a 15 sec cooldown Lightning Bolt, none of them deal the amount of damage they say they should do in PvP.

Sparkstorm does well in PvE - Gigabolt too on occasion, but it never fully hits the mark in PvP or PvE. Meanwhile, I'm constantly taking anywhere from 500-800 damage from some attacks in the arena. I'm left wondering why my main attack, Gigabolt (which is level 3), never causes the amount of damage it's supposed to and always hits on the lowest end of the spectrum.

Defenses taken into consideration, my attack should at least be hitting the higher end on occasion, instead of consistently dealing the least amount of damage possible. What's the deal?

[Archived Post]

Are you a lower level player playing in that bracket? Because I've noticed the same thing with my fire toon. Level 13 playing with a bunch of 20s. Even though we get buffed to 20, the damage you get from stats and such doesn't seem to carry over. I was pelting people for 10-20 with Fire Blast or maybe 200 on a fully charged rank 3 fireball, only to get beat over the head for 500+ with a FORCE attack (srsly, force is weak).

What reeeeallly sucks? Force Blast is a lower tier spell than Fireball and costs about 24 energy compared to my 134 fireball. Since it's just not possible for it to be a balance issue between the powers (statistically, Fireball is more powerful in every possible way) the only thing I can see is the level issue.

Higher level means better gear, which means better Offense and Defense stats. It's like you're a gray mob fighting a purple.

I'm going to try again at 20 and see the difference. City of Heroes (and Champions sidekicking) never scaled well with levels. Sidekicking still didn't make you a true level 49, and number of powers had nothing to do with it.

[Archived Post]

To follow up on Lord's post:


Your stats in general have an increasing curve. That is, every time you level it requires more of that particular stat to keep the same performance of the previous level.


Now let's factor in superstats, that calculate your damage. It stands to reason that the damage also curves. This is in fact the case. Next time you're on, check your superstats tooltip for your % damage increase. Then join the PvP arena and once there, check it again.

Unless you happen to be at the same top level as the arena (ie, level 20 in the 11-20 bracket), there will be a difference. It's somewhat unavoidable.