Rebirth Issue 2: Paths To Power Overview

Rebirth Issue 2: Paths To Power Overview

Welcome to Rebirth Issue 2: Paths To Power the game update that introduces many ways to tap into power! In this free update, players can find new ways to earn rewards by engaging in multiple styles and areas of gameplay. Try out any of five new power sets! Guardians can now power up with two new ATOs. And explore hundreds of new costume options as we begin Part 1 of a deep costume system upgrade. You'll be absolutely amazed at what's in store!

Play Your Way And Get Rewarded

We all play differently. Now you can earn rewards through many different ways of playing.

Get More For Your Merits

• Huge Recipe Discounts of up to 40% were applied to the Reward Merit, Astral Merit, and Empyrean Merit vendors.

• Pricing Standardization was applied to IO set recipes to set their prices to the lowest costing recipe in their set. Note: Procs are in their own pricing tier.

• Very Rare Recipies and PVP Recipes were added to the Reward Merit and Astral Merit vendors.

• Attuned Enhancement purchase lockouts have been removed.

Exemplaring and Recipe Drop Improvements

Now you can work on your endgame character build while exemplaring.

• Exemplaring Rewards More Recipes: While exemplared, level 50 characters receive a chance for level 50 recipe rewards for defeating enemies.

• Increased Very Rare Recipes: The chances for Very Rare recipe rolls were increased from 1% to 2.5%. Loot Boosters double the percent chances. NOTE: Chances of drops have not increased, just the odds of the roll being Very Rare within those drops.

• Enhancement Catalyst 20-hour lockout removed.

• Reduced temp power recipe drops 10x. Note: Does not affect Amplifier drops.

Gladiator Merits and PvP Vendors

Lifelong PvPers can rejoice as we have introduced a reward system into PvP so that you can, if you so choose, work towards your character build entirely through PvPing. PvP remains the fastest way to earn PvP recipes and you can now earn any other recipe through the introduction of the new Gladiator Merit.

• Gladiator Merit Vendors have been added to Recluse's Victory, Warburg, Siren's Call, and Bloody Bay.

• Defeat other players to earn Gladiator Merits: Defeating a Player with Rep rewards 5 Gladiator Merits and sometimes a bonus one. While defeating a player without Rep has only a chance to reward 1 Gladiator Merit.

• Complete PvP Zone Events to earn Gladiator Merits: Bloody Bay, Warburg, and Recluce's Victory each have qualifying events. Earn 7, 15, and 50 Gladiator merits each time you complete the PvP even in each zone respectively.

Alignment System and Merit Improvements

For earning alignment-specific merits, we want players to be rewarded with unique power-ups that virtually no other area of the game currently offers. Here's what’s in store for them..

• Hero & Villain/Vigilante & Rogue Super Packs can be purchased with Alignment Merits.

• Always Reward Alignment Merits: Completing Alignment missions will now always earn Alignment Merits in places where it previously earned Reward Merits instead.

• Earn Alignment Merits Faster: Public Fame points now expire in 20 minutes instead of 20 hours, allowing for faster progression.

• Affirm OR Change Alignment Faster: Reduced the number of Alignment Tip missions to receive a Morality Tip mission from 10 to 5.

• Retain Your Alignment Merits: Switching alignments will no longer cause you to sacrifice your hard-earned Alignment Merits.

NEW Vigilante and Rogue Merits

We're introducing two new merits one for Vigilantes and one for Rogues to round out the alignments system.

• Vigilante Merit Vendor has been added to Kings Row.

• Rogue Merit Vendor has been added to Cap Au Diable.

Endgame Content and Endgame Character Build Synergy

While completing endgame content players can now be progressing on their endgame character builds.

Playstyle Rewards

Each type of merit you can earn now has a recipe specialization at their merit vendor. Merit vendor recipe specializations offer significantly higher discounts than buying the same recipe at other types of vendors.

• Reward Merit Vendor has been added to Kings Row.

• Astral Merit Vendor has been added to Cap Au Diable.

• Astral Merit Vendor has been added to Cap Au Diable.

• Alignment Merit Vendor has been added to Cap Au Diable.

New Power Sets

New Power Set: Military Assault (Guardian)

Your mastery of Military Assault allows you to destroy your enemies with brutal precision. Blast your foes with powerful attacks from your military-grade Assault Rifle and pummel them with brutal close-quarters combat techniques. Your attacks can also inflict a variety of debilitating effects on your foes, including stunning them, reducing their defense, knocking them down, or slowing their movement.

New Power Set: Ninja Assault (Guardian)

Your mastery of the ways of Ninja Assault allows you to dispatch opponents with lethal grace, cutting down foes with the razor edge of your Ninja Blade and delivering death from afar with throwing knives. Your attacks often carry additional poison damage over time, and can also knock opponents down or reduce their defense.

New Power Set: Infiltrator Training (Guardian)

You have superb training as an Infiltrator. Your intrusion skills allow you to deftly evade attacks and move behind enemy lines unseen, while your weapons training gives you mastery of a variety of debilitating tools and gadgets to wreak havoc on your unsuspecting foes.

New Power Set: Water Control (Controller and Dominator)

You have total control over the power of water. Water Control grants you superior control over large groups and the ability to deal a good amount of damage to single targets. Your powers have a chance to inflict Drowning on a target, while under this effect, Deluge, Suffocate, Hypothermia, Turbulent Aura, and Tidal Wave will deal more damage and these powers' secondary effects are enhanced.

New Power Set: Kinetic Assault (Guardians and Dominator)

Through manipulation of latent energy present all around you, you create powerful blasts and forceful blows that can prove devastating to your opponents. As you manipulate this energy, you will accumulate Impulse. Each stack of Impulse grants you a scaling recharge buff. Impulse is also used to empower Disrupting Torrent, Kinetic Shockwave, Energetic Strike, and Mass Driver.

Power Quality of Life

• Sped Up Animations: Total Focus, Tremor, Thunder Strike, and Incandescent Strike animations have been sped up, reducing their animation time from 3.3s to 2.2s. This affects all player versions of the following powers:

• Archery:

  • Rain of Arrows: Animation time reduced from 4.0s to 2.0s. Damage delay reduced from 1.37s to 0.67s.
  • Explosive Arrow: Damage changed from scale 0.6 Lethal + 0.3 Smashing to scale 0.3 Lethal + 0.3 Smashing + 0.3 Fire so that the power can now light Oil Slick Arrow.

• Sped Up Bomb Attacks: Force Field, Repulsion Bomb and Radiation Blast, Neutron Bomb: Unified both powers to use the faster Repulsion Bomb version of the animation, and corrected the erroneous mismatches between activation time and animation length for both powers. This shortens the activation time of both powers to 1.47s and affects all player versions of these powers.

• Explosive Shuriken: Scrapper and Stalker Weapon Mastery, Exploding Shuriken: Radius corrected from 10 feet to 15 feet and max targets increased from 10 to 16 - this power was balanced incorrectly relative to other APP TAoEs.

More Power Customizations

Get ahold of new power customizations for Energy Torrent, Eagle's Claw, Ki Punch, Storm Kick, and Jacob's Ladder. Plus, three new full themes for Dark Blast, Dark Melee, Dark Control, Dark Armor, and Dark Composition: Skull Theme, No Skull Theme, and Soul Noir Theme.

Deep Costume Revamp: Part 1 - Female Characters

This deep systems renovation has made it finally possible for City of Heroes player models to have asymmetric chest and hip patterns! Our intent was to design a system that is seamless with the familiar CoH character design experience. Every place you can set a chest or hip pattern you should now be able to access asymmetric chest and hip options.

Asym Torsos Are Here for Female Characters!

Dozens of new asym-specific patterns were added to hips and chests.

All with left and right variants where appropriate. Many with matching top and bottom options!

Single Panel Tights for Females!

A longstanding request by many players dating back to Paragon Live servers, Single Panel Tights offers players a more modest, classic look for their female characters. This new geometry has a full library of base textures, pattern masks, and carefully ported, conformed, and weighted chest details, including many familiar options.

Integrated Tights

Rebirth Issue 2 introduces a powerful new tool, guaranteed to up your CoH costume game!

Integrated tights can be found within the base texture section of the chest and hips tights. The sub-selections allow for unprecedented control with these compound textures.

You can then use any pattern, symmetric or asymmetric, to decorate either the over garment or the under tights!

Full-color control over the nonpatterned region of the texture!

Mix and match settings and choose from a wide library of integrated options to make your most sophisticated CoH costumes yet!

Bodysuits, Catsuits, and Unitards

A renovation of the legacy CoH pants section has opened up a variety of new options for contiguous full-body outfits!

Jodhpurs and Bell Bottoms

Pay homage to bygone eras with two new historically inspired lower body geometries, the golden age jodhpur pants, and the 1970s bell bottoms!

Yikes! Upper Body Details

Cross-server costume artist Yikes has shared much of his work, including hoodies, off-the-shoulder shirts, blindfolds, and ninja wear that can be found throughout the costume library--including in a new category of upper body details now found in many chest sections.

Oodles of New Emblems

40 new standard chest symbols and a CoH first introducing 42 glowing and animated variants.

Glowing Symbols

Glowing symbols can be found in their own subsection just after standard symbols.

For all the details, view the City of Heroes Rebirth Rebirth Issue 2 Release Notes.