We're extremely pleased with the response to our 0.1 update last week which not only added a new map (Valley of Kings) and a new class (Medic), and of course the VD/Hero queuing, but it also corrected a lot of smaller issues from player feedback that we were able to address. This week, our team will continue to adjust core gameplay aspects based on feedback post-patch, as we prepare for the Breach Invitational, pitting 40 players on 8 teams against each other for a share of $10,000! Don't forget that just by watching, you too can win prizes from a t-shirt, to a NVIDIA GTX 1080, or even an Alienware Aurora PC! We can't wait to stream all the action on March 2nd, starting at 3PM Central on Twitch, Mixer, and Facebook.

Now, let's get to the update this week. Here's the timing for the upcoming downtime, and the usual countdown clock for all of you in various timezones across the world. 

• Servers Locked: Tuesday, February 26th at 8 AM Central[/*]
• Service Downtime: Approximately 1 hour[/*]

As always, please remember to exit out of the game and launcher fully during this downtime. Sitting inside the game and waiting for the light to switch from red to green can potentially cause an issue, requiring a game restart anyway.


Updates and Changes:

• Summon Elite: Charge cool down increased to 3 minutes (from 2 minutes) and Elites deal 25% more damage and healing.  There will now be fewer Elites per match, but they will be more impactful when present.[/*]
• Cooldown Reduction and Charge Accrual cap has been reduced from 50% to 33%.[/*]
• Mending Wave (Arcane Mender): Now grants 1 starting potion, instead of 0.[/*]
• Healing Microbots (Medic): Now grants 1 starting potion, instead of 0.  [/*]
• Potions: You can no longer have more than 3 potions on your character at a time.[/*]
• Komainu Basic Attack: Increased the damage of the basic attacks and slightly decreased the amount of impact on the first attack in the chain.[/*]
• Kinetic Absorption Field/Kinetic Charged Shot: Maximum stacks of Kinetic Charged Shot set to 6 and updated tool tip to show "Max Charges" for the ability[/*]
• Sticky Grenade: Decreased damage from 350 to 315.[/*]
• Marked Shot: Lifesteal Talent changed to grant 25% Lifesteal.[/*]
• Bastard Cleave: No longer grants Lifesteal.[/*]
• Elemental Quintessence: No longer pushes enemies outside of the area.[/*]
• Guardian Sprite All Allies Talent: Reduced the shield value given to all allies from 3000 to 1000.[/*]
• Combust Heals Caster Per Burn Stack Consume: Combust now grants 0.5s Charge Accrual towards your next Firebolt per Burn stack consumed.[/*]
• Grim Reaper Form: Removed Stun and Suppression immunity from the ability[/*]
• Sehkmet: Increased the health of the destructible towers during Event Horizon mechanic to 4800.[/*]
• Translocate: Skilled play bonus increased to 2,000 health.[/*]
• Pain Conduit: Skilled play bonus increased to 200 damage per tick.[/*]
• Cerberus Core.  Increased cool down from 8s to 16s.  Reduced Max charges from 8 to 4.  Reduced arm time from 3s to 2s.  Increased damage to 775.[/*]
• Shards of Cerberus: Increased damage to 900 and Charge cool down is now 25s[/*]
• Talent - Breach Restriction: Reduced the restriction of Breaches from 5m to 2m.[/*]
• Talent - Invisible to the Veil Demon: Increased cool down from 8s to 16s.  Healing spells now break stealth.  [/*]

Known Issues:

• The rewards for Veil Demon players winning a Co-op vs Player match early has improved with the win bonus applying regardless of duration, but we are still working on improving it beyond that. [/*]
• Siphoning Skull's stun effect will sometimes end early.[/*]
• Players may get caught in a longer load screen than expected when starting a match, and can hear a match starting in the background. This cannot be fixed by reconnecting, but the player will eventually connect within a few minutes[/*]
• Some abilities are not tracking their score correctly on the in mission stat board, resulting in displaying lower than actual stat numbers[/*]