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What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
Release Notes 1/27/2022
kaiserin
Posts: 3,210 Cryptic Developer
Starhawk Lockbox
The Starhawk lockbox is now in rotation!
New to this lockbox:
Starhawk Costume Box
Beaming Aura Box
ZEN Store
Dragon Key Pack
Screenshots
A new command has been added:
Tailor
Misc
Power Changes
Players who owned any Heavy Weapons powers will receive a free respec. As a note, prior free respecs will not stack.
Reckless
Earthsplitter
Vicious Descent
Annihilate
Brimstone
Eruption
Skewer
Skullcrusher
Cleave
Arc of Ruin
Havoc Stomp/Haymaker/Uppercut/Mighty Kick/Roomsweeper/Catastrophic Pummeling/Final Punch
New Power: Crushing Ruin
Devices
Latent Psi
Inner Flame
Archetypes
Devastator
Rockstar
The Starhawk lockbox is now in rotation!
New to this lockbox:
- Starhawk Loyal Sidekick
- Starhawk Costume Box
- Beaming Aura Box
- Crushing Ruin Power Unlock
- Heel Rock emote
Starhawk Costume Box
- Starhawk Tights
- Starhawk Goggles 1
- Starhawk Goggles 2
- Starhawk Collar 1
- Starhawk Collar 2
- Starhawk Emblem
- Starhawk Wings
- Starhawk Arm Accessories
- Starhawk Bracers
- Starhawk Belt 1
- Starhawk Belt 2
- Starhawk Leg Armor 1
- Starhawk Leg Armor 2
- Starhawk Greaves
- Starhawk Boots
Beaming Aura Box
- Beaming Aura (Head)
- Beaming Aura (Head) (Black)
- Beaming Aura (Head) (White)
- Beaming Aura (Head) (Rainbow)
- Beaming Aura (Chest)
- Beaming Aura (Chest) (Black)
- Beaming Aura (Chest) (White)
- Beaming Aura (Chest) (Rainbow)
- Beaming Aura (Hands)
- Beaming Aura (Hands) (Black)
- Beaming Aura (Hands) (White)
- Beaming Aura (Hands) (Rainbow)
- Beaming Aura (Feet)
- Beaming Aura (Feet) (Black)
- Beaming Aura (Feet) (White)
- Beaming Aura (Feet) (Rainbow)
ZEN Store
Dragon Key Pack
- Cost: 1800 ZEN
- 20x Cosmic Keys of Power
- 1x Oriental Dragon costume
- 1x Inner Flame Device
- 3x Triumphant Recovery
- 5x Safeguard Catalysts
- 10x Healing Device Plus
- 10x Energy Surge Plus
Screenshots
A new command has been added:
- screenshot_ui_jpg_with_name
- Using this while selecting a player will include their character name and @ handle in the name of the screenshot.
Tailor
- Added Curved 1 and 2 costumes to Side Accessories, Mouth Accessories and Shoulders.
Misc
- Fixed an issue where certain mobs could vanish.
Power Changes
Players who owned any Heavy Weapons powers will receive a free respec. As a note, prior free respecs will not stack.
Reckless
- Increased effectiveness of Bastion on Heavy Weapons powers.
- Bastion no longer gains benefit from healing forms.
Earthsplitter
- Increased cylinder radius to 5ft (from 3).
- Reduced chance to apply Reckless on tap.
- Removed chance to apply Clinging Flames.
- Adjusted damage to cost values.
- Bend the Earth adv: Changed from greater than 25ft to 10ft.
- Increased knock up distance.
- Added bonus damage against Knock immune targets.
- New Adv (2): Chance to apply Clinging Flames.
- New Adv (2): Applies No Quarter to Disoriented targets.
- New Adv (2): Applies Engulfing Flames to targets affected by Clinging Flames. Expires all of your Clinging Flames.
Vicious Descent
- Increased radius to 15ft.
- New Adv (2): Increases the effectiveness of Bastion on this power to 50%. Expires all Reckless and Bastion effects if you damage a foe with a non-Heavy Weapons ability.
Annihilate
- Increased range to 15ft.
- Tooltip update.
- New Adv (1): Knocks up targets affected by Disorient instead of back.
Brimstone
- Increased radius to 15ft.
- Added 3 second cooldown.
- Removed Disorient effect.
- Adjusted damage to cost values.
- Knock Up effect now occurs during a partial charge of the power instead of full.
- Added bonus damage against Knock immune targets.
- Snares targets that are immune to Knock effects.
- New Advantage (2): Fully charging the power creates a Healing Rune.
- Thundering Roar Advantage: Additionally Disorients targets affected by Clinging Flames.
Eruption
- Increased range to 15ft.
- Removed Reckless refresh.
- Now Stuns targets immune to Knock effects.
- Reduced CD to 6 seconds (from 8).
- New Advantage (2): Roots targets and applies negative ions.
- New Advantage (2): Applies Reckless.
- Magma Burst: Increased area effect to 15ft. Updated visuals.
Skewer
- Increased range to 15ft.
- New Adv (2): Reduces the cooldown of Active Offense powers by 1 sec per target hit when fully charged.
- New Adv (2): Adds fire damage to this attack. Chance to apply Clinging Flames.
- New Adv (2): Fully charging this power now knocks targets towards you.
Skullcrusher
- Increased range to 15ft.
- New Advantage (1): Increased damage for each stack of Reckless on you.
- New Advantage (2): Fully charging the power applies Demolish to your primary target.
Cleave
- Increased range to 15ft.
- Slightly reduced damage.
- Improved chance to knock targets.
- Removed chance to apply Clinging Flames every hit. Now has a chance to apply Clinging Flames on knock immune targets on the last hit.
- Defensive Stance Advantage: Tooltip update to mention Aegis effect.
- New Adv (2): Chance to apply Clinging Flames every hit. Guaranteed chance on last hit.
- Rampant Adv: Reduced overall chance to apply Reckless. Guaranteed application on last hit.
Arc of Ruin
- Increased radius to 15ft.
- Adjusted damage to cost values.
Havoc Stomp/Haymaker/Uppercut/Mighty Kick/Roomsweeper/Catastrophic Pummeling/Final Punch
- Updated tooltips to include what their damage boost is against knock immune targets.
New Power: Crushing Ruin
- Ultimate
- Heavy Weapons Framework
- Found in the Starhawk lockbox
- Deals Crushing damage in a cone.
- Immunity to crowd control while maintaining.
- Briefly snares targets.
- If fully maintained, deals aoe damage and knocks back all targets.
- Also applies Overpower to targets.
Devices
Latent Psi
- Fixed an issue where this wouldn't always trigger properly.
Inner Flame
- Removed fire damage trigger.
- Now has a chance to proc a pbaoe effect that applies Clinging Flames.
Archetypes
Devastator
- Level 25: Pulverizer OR Thermal Reverberation
Rockstar
- level 17: Annihilate OR Eruption
- Level 25: Thermal Reverberation OR Pulverizer
Post edited by kaiserin#0958 on
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Comments
Gravitar seems immune but Fire and Ice (as well as several alert boss villains) were quite a handful with their whack-a-mole antics
This Ultimate gets an instant solid 10/10
Its not limited in ENRAGED stacks and can be used on Theme builds with DEX primary forms and Imaginary weapons
2022 Lunar New Year is the Year of the tiger!
No one wanted the CD on Brimstone, but it was added anyway.
Probably, I mean HW was already one of the better power sets, they're not going to make it better. So they had to "Fix" it. It's not like they were working on a under preforming power set now is it?
HW rework not bad.
Lockbox looks small but alright. And I needed a dragon head for Sixx's morph. Overal happy with the release.
Sad to see this came to live so quickly, it's really depressing to see the weakest melee set get nerfed in exchange for demanding all your adv points to do less than other powersets. Also not sure why the set with a giant weapon is still quite bad with AoEs.
For melee, Might still outperforms HW on single target dps against endgame bosses (assuming using "meta" optimized builds for both). Considering that HW dps is behind most martial arts as well as TK blades (and possibly Bestial as well), that means that no, HW is not one of the better performing sets. Further, considering that AoR taps are part of the meta rotation for HW (to refresh CF+NQ) and that AoR's damage has been reduced, HW dps is now lower than it was.
Would still really like to see the indomitable advantage from retaliation added to guard. It's a really helpful advantage and it would make the two blocks interchangeable for folks that just want to use it with their HW build. Please and thank you!
Oh my bad, I guess it was the worst set in the game and now it's even worse.
I admire someone who can admit their wrongdoing, well done.
making it comparable to skewer would fix it
the rest of the powers are ok, damage was taken off the utility powers and added on skewer-skullcrusher-annihilate
the 2 former are still underperforming
This is a big journey, so far if you're reading this, wish you a good day
this change is unreasonable. passives such as voltaic potential and spark shield will also expire reckless/bastion.
Why can't you add more powers to HW or DB to equal the choices of some other builds. These two have very little choices for theme, while other builds have like thirty. Wondering can I get a refund or is anyone looking to buy an account with 15 lvl 40 toons and a 16th still leveling up?
I barely like any builds in this game, three, and you killed one of them, so sad. So its spend a week figuring out how to save a little damage loss, without losing to much elsewhere to try to come even, with an already not Stellar build. And then learn to play a new toon that will look the same but combo up very differently. I suppose I can just do what everyone else does and just a carbon copy of the same builds everyone uses, unfortunately thats not why I played this game, I could have gone and Played WOW if I wanted that.
Might as well get rid of all AT's / FF Builds altogether and just make four builds players can use. CC, Heal, Tank and DPS, since most builds I see now a days all have very similar powers anyways, if you into doing better within the game. Hell lets take the choice completely away from the players, so why stop there.
After that lets just make it so everyone gets a set of gear that you have to pay to level and of course you learn at 40th level that the healer you were making needs to be retconned into a DPS toon, because your gear randomly chooses any of the three builds you didn't choose to play. Low and behold, (hey
Okay I vented, going to Retcon my three HW Toons
Sincerely
Trace Magus
P.S. and I am not even a number cruncher like most players, but I can see this is a nerf, not a fix
Since cooldowns got added to powers that were already weak without cooldowns, and powers that already did low-ish damage got their damage nerfed even harder in exchange for a 5' range buff that doesn't serve any real benefit in exchange and threatens other powersets with the notion of being nerfed in exchange for gimmicks that defy the ruleset all other powers go by...
Why should I actually ever use anything other than Annihilate?
This is my cry for help
What I find confusing is that nowhere can I find any description of exactly what powers had their damage changed and whether it was raised or lowered. I mean, what the heck do vague descriptions like "adjusted damage for cost" tell anyone?
That's the million $ question. I'm currently wondering what you could pull off going with a reckless/disorient/demolish build using skullcrusher as your main attack and taking 3/3 in Glory of Battle and 3/3 Mass Destruction but just on paper it seems like that would have a much longer ramp up time and clunkier rotations than just eruption opener > tap Arc > spam Annihilate. And having to build reckless stacks if they drop off sounds like a pita
And even beyond that, just Incendiary Grenade into Annihilate. That's the clear takeaway we're supposed to get with this: just use Annihilate exclusively, pair it with Incendiary Grenade, and then take Dragon Kick for AoE. Screw having options and all that fun stuff.
As far as "adjusted damage for cost" goes, it's our job as a community to read the minds of our devs. We just need to get good, stop using patch notes as a crutch and open our psychic third eye.
Or maybe this particular moon-logic rework just hit me a little harder than usual because this is a particularly painful push towards no alternatives to the holy meta of "MA or bestial for everything or else go kill yourself small failure child" which I, as someone who doesn't like having a dozen duplicate characters of the same build, do not appreciate the thought of.
This is my cry for help
I know you were just being sarcastic (which I totally get!) but we can't even do that lol. Eruption w/ magma and Arc with advantages are still going to end up better dps lead-ins to Annih, plus the fact those other options won't work with the ironclad mod.
**retraction as we discussed in-game: According to tooltips, an Arc tap for me was at 1137 damage, whereas Incendiary Grenade is at 1637 with the dot damage included. This should bring you back up to your old damage you used to get from arc before the patch, and free up one power since you can if you choose, drop both Arc and Eruption this way. I suppose the rotation would now be Incendiary > 3-4x Annihilate > repeat. One less knock to proc pulverize though so I may have to suck up losing CON as my 3rd SS but I'll have to test.
I know people have been tinkering around with skull crusher main attack ideas but like I touched on above you need a BUNCH of things going on to make it a viable Annihilate replacement: You still need CF and NQ but you'll also need reckless stacks, disorient, and demolish to make all the new advantages work together. And on top of all that, some of those adv were things that were stripped from being built in and made into adv points. I'm well aware from the comments on Discord that the devs don't think this review is a nerf and they appear set on that stance but... well it just is. If you even attempt to move away from an Annihilate build, HW is kinda like the Gadgeteering set of melee now with the messy disorganized mish-mash of powers and adv points.
If someone is able to put together a HW DPS build that's NOT the same old Annihilate build but just as good and not a clunky mess of rotation, I'll post a video of me eating my keyboard. The only thing HW can be without suffering quite as much now is a tank. Or some just-for-kicks theme build for non-endgame stuff. Honestly, I much much preferred the self root of this set to this and wish I could have it back.
Or just tell us instead of leaving us to guess exactly what damage you've raised/lowered for the attack powers? I have no idea why you're treating this in a secretive manner? If you just did that one simple thing we'd all know whether or not you've truly nerfed this set's DPS as everyone is speculating so far and could do our retcons in an informed manner.
Also another thing is I know some real explaination may have been given for all these changes on pts threads (im not sure since I dont really go there) but devs really should kind of give a reason for the changes they make. Like a little blog section in the patch notes to explain there intention for whatever changes they make at the time atleast when it come to something like this. Actually saw another games dev team do it that way and it was refreshing so atleast even if you didnt agree with the changes you werent left in the dark about the reason for them. This just sucks.
^^^I could possibly get behind changes a little easier if I knew why they were happening. As of now it just seems arbitrary
https://arcgames.com/en/forums/championsonline#/discussion/1216992/unable-to-leave-in-combat-state
On the plus side, glad we got a HW Ultimate. It looks cool and thank you for giving it the Challenge advantage so its actually useable by tanks. Catastrophic Pummeling STILL needs it. Final Punch too but, that ones just TERRIBLE. (Doesn't matter how much damage it does, losing 8 stacks of Enrage is NEVER worth it. Nott to mention it never actually knocks in PvP, but I digress.)
The HW set in general is just a mess. Crushing Damage or Fire damage? Demolish or No Quarter? Both I guess? Sucks for Brute Force though when half your damage is Fire for NO reason. Then there's Knock, Disorient, Reckless, Clinging Flames, like what the heck are you actually trying to do with this set?
IMO, take out all the fire stuff. Make THAT into the advantages. Add the split fire damage and clinging flames like Chi Flame on the Martial Arts sets. But otherwise just leave it all Crushing. And Reckless is a cool ability, so why not make THAT the key ability of the set? Make the knock stuff secondary, or adv type stuff. Give us a new Form and Energy Unlock that works off Reckless.
Just doesn't seem like this was at all well thought-out.
Suggestion: Make OV Defender Gloves give the same Bastion % (10%) as other sources, not including the buffed one from Vicious Decent advantage.
-=-=-=-=-=-(CO in-game handle: @WarCan )-=-=-=-=-=-
"Okay, you're DEAD, what do you do NEXT?"
Yeah, the CD makes Brimstone downright unplayable. Why?
BTW, this is the third adjustment to HW powers since I started playing, and all of them have objectively made the powerset worse. At no point in time was HW 'overpowered'. I guess the game devs really don't want me to play my HW character. I'm frankly tired of having to retcon her and figure out what still works.
But, why should we have to do this. It should be my choice if I want to spam Brimstone, Arc, or something else. This was a pointless change to the power. The devs were just wrong to do it.
Not saying you have to, just saying it works, and I can add quite well. People claim on the CO discord that HW is "one of the lowest dps melee" but even if that were true, I more often than not can hit the top 5 on cosmics with mine. I can, if I wanted to, hit 6.7k dps on ACT in the powerhouse (post-patch) which is a pretty damn respectable score but don't want to build that way. If I were to guess, my 'fun first' build would still parse well over 6k. Can I wipe out mobs as fast as my TK blades? Nope. But with these changes I can do so at a respectable rate while at the same time having a wider range, and ridiculously better survivability. Most power set have strengths to play to, but I admit several needed more attention than HW. My theory, just going on casual comments I've seen on discord is that they just don't know how to tackle those.
What I'll also concede is that the brimstone CD does end up limiting your power and advantage point spread choices quite a bit.