Heavy Ion Beam - Limited Edition

The Heavy Ion Beam is a Limited Edition weapon made available on May 4, 2012--the same day that most of the Avengers move-themed uniforms were released.  Unlike the new uniforms, this weapon is available for 2 days only.

This weapon deals moderate damage and causes Radiation Exposure, but only targets one enemy.  Nonetheless, it's a very nice weapon due to the Quick Action property and cool-down of only 1 round.

Radiation Exposure is a very nasty debuff that is difficult to cure.  Another weapon that has this debuff is the Cosmic Ray Bomb, one of the two rewards from the premium mission in Chapter 7.

The Heavy Ion Beam is similar to the S.A. Pincer in that both are ranged guns with the Quick Action property.  However, the Heavy Ion Beam deals more total damage, deals energy damage, hits 4 instead of 1 time, has a cool-down of 1 round instead of 2 rounds, and causes Radiation Exposure.

In the image, the cost of the Heavy Ion Beam is shown to be 12 Gold, which is a good deal.  Some players have reported that this weapon is being offered to them at higher costs such as 32 Gold or 64 Gold.

The screenshot was taken when my Agent was level 84.

Chapter 7 Premium Rewards

After defeating the boss of the last mission of Chapter 7, two of the possible rewards are the Cosmic Ray Bomb and the Handheld Holraum.  They both deal a lot of damage to all enemies.  The Handheld Hohlraum deals much more direct damage and "Exploits Burning".

The Cosmic Ray Bomb doesn't deal as much damage, but it's special property, "Radiation Exposure", is awesome.  It:

• Deals an increasing amount of damage each turn
• Is difficult to cure
• Note that Asgardians such as Thor and Sif are immune to Radiation (as well as Chilled, Burning, and Poison).
• Increases damage taken from energy attacks.

These properties make the Cosmic Ray Bomb very useful for PVP.

As a side note, both weapons also grant very high PVP bonuses, but you may not want to use them for that purpose unless you have extra.

These screenshots were taken when my Agent was level 77.

Cosmic Ray Bomb

Handheld Holraum

Items Nerfed

Along with Chapter 7 being unlocked, it looks like some other changes were made.  Some of the Heroes and items were tweaked.

As you can see from the image above, the Quantum Jumper has been nerfed with this additional property: "Only one extra turn may be taken each round".  The cooldown has also been increased to 4 rounds.  After taking the first extra turn in a round, "Exhaustion" is bestowed on a character:

The Gamma Booster has been nerfed with the additional property: "This effect stacks up to 3 times".

The S.A. "Pincer" has been nerfed by increasing its cooldown from 1 to 2 rounds.  The "Quick Action" text in the display was removed as in the image below, but the Pincer actually still retains this property.    Many other items had this same bug due to the major release today, but the bug was fixed on the same day.

Chrono Boost now only gives PVP bonuses of +70 Attack and +70 Defense, instead of the prior +299/+299.  This is on top of the recent price increase from 1 to 2 Gold.  On the same day as this change, Playdom stated that "the PVP bonus granted by the Chrono Boost was accidentally reduced. This will be fixed in an upcoming patch."  It was indeed fixed within a few days.

Golden Weapons

These Golden or "Excelsior Weapons" are Chapter Mastery Rewards.  To get one, you must earn 5-star mastery on all missions (including the premium mission) of the corresponding chapter.  The damage of these weapons scale according to the Agent's level.

The images for chapters 1-10 were screenshots taken when the Agent was level 50 with no Iso-8 bonus to Attack.  The images for chapters 11-12 were screenshots taken when the Agent was level 139 with total Attack stat 695.