Release Notes, 8/22/13

[Brou]

Source

Release notes for 8/22, the finale for FATAL ERR0R.


FATAL ERROR: Cybermind

-The epic conclusion to our FATAL ERR0R Story Arc. Confront Cybermind in his own subdomain! This is a level 40 5-player alert.


Laser Sword powers

-Combine your scientific brilliance with swordplay, shredding your enemies with Particle damage and Plasma Burns!


Bug Fixes

Telepathy

-Dependancy now properly heals allies again.

-Empowered Mind Break (from Master of the Mind) now mentions that is only shatters Empowered Debuffs. This is just a tooltip change.

-Some telepathy power short descriptions have been updated to better reflect the purpose of the powers.

-Damage penetration on Congress of Selves should now properly affect all ticks of Damage over time powers.

-Mental Weakness and Malaise now properly respect Manipulator stacks when calculating their duration.


Other

-The Demon Key will no longer get stuck outside of the final room in Beyond The Pale.

-Homestead Security should now always complete when you finish the tutorial.

[Thunder Glove]

Wait, is "Laser Sword" a new power framework, or just some new powers added to the Gadgetry framework?  (Really, though, the game has been so stagnant power-wise that even the latter is exciting news)

[General Idiot]

No, the laser sword powers have been in the game since ever. Well, one of them has. The other three were added later but the basic laser sword power as in the game at launch. They're under power armor.

Which makes me wonder what they did to them that warrants a mention in the patch notes. I miss when games would have patch notes that actually explained stuff rather than 'oh we changed something about this random thing, no we're not going to tell you what'.

Edit: Some searching around on the official forums reveals that yes, they've added a couple of new laser sword powers and also apparently a passive. I can't find a full listing of exactly what's added and changed though. Someone with better search-fu than me might have better luck.

[Thunder Glove]

I'll just wait for it to hit the Powerhouse site, then, but that's good news.  From what I can tell, it's been ages since there's been a serious power revamp, and even longer since new powers were straight-up added.

Maybe they really did set things in motion to try to grab CoH's homeless playerbase, but it's just taken them this long to actually show some results.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

Hmm.  CO-wiki seems to have info on several laser-sword attacks in the Power Armor set that definitely weren't there a few months ago, last time I played CO.

• Laser Edge (energy builder)
• Lightspeed Dash (lunge)
• Lightwave Slash (chargeable cone melee)
• Plasma Cutter (chargeable skewer melee)

The original laser sword power was called, appropriately enough, Laser Sword, and is a three-hit combo click melee power.

Of course, since these powers are not featured in any ATs, let alone Silver ATs, no Silver player has access to them unless they subscribe or purchase a freeform character slot.  Also, judging from the dating on the wiki page, these have been around since late May of this year, so I doubt they're the one's mentioned on the patch notes now, unless Cryptic/PWE is comically lazy about announcing new changes.

[Sophronisba]

I am by no means an expert on Champion Online powers, but I believe that these are the powers being released today:

We've added new Laser Sword powers to Power Armor:
Particle Accelerator - Click - You strike quickly, gaining a stack of Accelerator.
Particle Smash - Click - You strike from 15 feet, consuming your stacks of Accelerator to deal bonus damage.
Unified Theory - Charge (8 seconds) - You Deal massive particle damage, gaining the Unified Theory buff. This buff stacks up to 5 times, increasing your particle damage. If you reach 5 stacks of Unified Theory you gain Perfect Understanding which doubles the damage of your next Particle Smash. The charge time of this power is reduced for each stack of Accelerator. Each use of this power consumes 2 stacks of Accelerator.

They were added to the test server in late July.

[Kaiser Tarantula]

I am by no means an expert on Champion Online powers, but I believe that these are the powers being released today:

They were added to the test server in late July.

This sounds correct.  I recall last time I was in game and actually had Zone chat turned on in Millenium City, a couple people were talking about Unified Theory.

[Xev]

-The epic conclusion to our FATAL ERR0R Story Arc. Confront Cybermind in his own subdomain! This is a level 40 5-player alert.

RawR!


>>

OK so I've been able to run this twice now. It helps to have patient people with you in the beginning if you are... a lil slow *ahem*.

I was about to give up on this thing, feeling pretty defeated, until I teamed with a couple that showed me the ropes on the second round and we whipped it, just us three (2 and a half?). I was just being too slow to get back from the light and with too lil hps. So I died a lot, both times.

The first time just caught me totally offguard and people started bailing early into the Cybermind fight so it was a disaster. Had to head for some caffeine & breakfast before coming back for more. Being out of res devices and not having a res wasn't helping the second time so I was lucky to get ressed and get hints from nice people.

I'm gonna say this is a cool alert. Two thumbs up for boss mob challenge & freshness, Cybermind making a comeback with his witty voice acting after getting kinda overshadowed by Cyberlord earlier, and overall atmosphere and alert crafting.


>>

OK, this gets a lot easier. Main thing: have a res. You can figure the rest out.

It's basically just (Spoilers inc...):
1.) When the floor panels light up, run under the light of the same color and run back to a like colored floor panel asap and then heal up asap if you can/must before resuming the fight.
2.) When bursting bubbles, run under the light of the same color and run back and fight. If you are the only one on your target... prepare to take fire. Better for the team to try and be on the same target.
3.) Have a way to res.

And stay awake/alert.

I wouldn't want to run this alert 10 times a day every day but as-is it's fresh fun and still gets upward thumbs.

[Brou]

A new patch has been added today to address some bugs. One major feature is that SOCRATES will allow players who were defeated at the time of the boss' defeat to reach Dr Silverback's Lab.

[Xev]

I had a lot of fun figuring out the new Alert at the same time as everyone else and before it had 100 YouTube videos showing exactly how to complete it the fastest. On day 2 I think I'm over it already.

Once the newness wears off it's kinda like Gravi with a Grab reward.

Next!

(edit: Grab, not Burst!... *sigh* : )