What’s up, True Believers! Designer Alex Kende and Gameplay Director Phil Therien here. We’re here to give you the details on what’s coming in the Raid, Power Level increase, and Gear so you can prepare to dive right in on November 30.

Discordant Sound

• Players Required – 4
• Location – Wakanda
• Power Level Required – 150

We learned a lot from the positive reception to Beating the Odds, we’ve heard your feedback on it, and we’ve taken to heart what you’d like to see more of. Discordant Sound is unlike anything we have created thus far and includes multiple areas where the utmost cooperation is necessary between members of your Strike Team. You’ll never know what is waiting around the corner and what twists and turns you’ll discover.

You’ll start off under a moonlit area of the Wakandan jungles and make your way to Mena Ngai, the Vibranium Mound, and delve into the expansive mines within where you’ll face off against Klaw in his monstrous sonic form. Along the way, you’ll encounter more than one boss, each with its own mechanics and puzzles to test your mettle. Several of the puzzles are role-based, meaning that different Heroes in your group will be best suited for different responsibilities. You’ll want to strategize around who is best suited for what needs doing by taking into account what each player, not just each Hero, excels in. But it’s not a lock-and-key fit per Hero—any Hero can do any puzzle task, and build customization will help prepare you for whatever role it is you take.

The roles of your team members and the synergy of your team composition are factors to consider before diving in as well. There are mechanical challenges beyond just DPS-checks, so your build can shine in certain moments when your skillset is needed most: think a situation where a tanky Hulk holds the line, a movement-based Iron Man gets the job done from afar, a full heal build Ms. Marvel is a literal lifesaver, etc. Advanced preparation, quick thinking, tight teamwork, and responsive communication is essential to conquering the challenge.

And a challenge it will be: the rematerialized Klaw is back with a single-minded vengeance, looking to destroy Wakanda once and for all. This Raid is the ultimate conclusion to the War for Wakanda Expansion and is our toughest content to date. Neither side is backing down, and they’re bringing their all to the fight: you’ll meet some familiar Wakandan faces coming to aid you, and some new ones vying to take you down. Echoes are a new enemy type found in Discordant Sound and they’re formidable foes with an inherent damage resistance and come armed with new set of debilitating attacks they can’t wait to use on you.

In the Elite version of the Raid, enemies are even tougher and more dangerous than their normal version counterparts. For example, Echoes have an upgraded attack where they shoot more projectiles for a bullet-hell volley that will test your evasion ability. All Elite version enemies take a page from the Echoes’ book and have more damage resistance. Additionally, you’ll have to consider the Raid mechanics themselves, as some have different tuning from those in the Normal version that will require precise timing and coordination to overcome. As a result, having the right gear for the difficulty is an absolute must.

Klaw Raid Gear

Let’s talk Gear!

Regarding gear going into the Raid, in both Normal and Elite versions of Discordant Sound, the gear you outfit your Heroes with is super important. We previously mentioned the damage resistance of Echoes and Elite enemies—that’s a hurdle you’ll be able to overcome best with Sonic and Vibranium gear. Having the best gear type for the Raid will make a considerable difference, especially in the Elite version, where enemy resistances matter immensely. Additionally, the best gear for the Elite version of the Raid will be found in the Normal version of the Raid—you’ll want to make sure you’re readily equipped before acquainting yourself with the big bad Klaw.

Power Level Increase

The Klaw Raid weekly mission chain will become viewable when a player reaches Power Level (PL) 150, and the Elite Raid starts at PL 160. If you’re not there yet, you can go gear hunting in the Family Reunion mission chain and the weekly mission chain, which award gear that bumps your Hero’s PL from PL 140 to PL 150. Completing the Elite Klaw Raid weekly chain will take your Hero from PL 150 to PL 165. Including the Major Artifact, the new Power Level cap is PL 175.

The missions’ rewards will not increase your PL themselves, but it will match the highest PL you have earned for that gear’s specific slot. For example, if you have PL 148 gear in your melee slot and PL 146 in your Heroic slot, the mission rewards will give you PL 148 gear for melee and PL 146 for Heroic—you won’t get PL 148 gear for the Heroic slot. This is to allow for additional chances at better rolls and to give a source of higher PL gear to recycle towards upgrading gear sets you already own. As we mentioned in our Reworks Developer Blog, you can recycle gear of a higher Power Level to upgrade your current gear to match the higher PL of the consumed gear.

Alongside the Klaw Raid, there are some updates to aspects of gear farming itself coming in Patch 2.2, informed and implemented with player feedback in mind. All eligible Heroes can earn the weekly rewards once each, rather than once a week per account. Also, based on feedback regarding Omega Gear not having one, there is a damage buff of some kind on Exotic Discordant Gear.

Here’s the rundown on the rewards you can expect from the Raid mission chain.

Weekly Mission Chain Completion Rewards

• Discordant Exotic Gear (Melee/Ranged)
• Discordant Exotic Gear (Defense/Heroic)
• 1 Epic Raid exclusive Minor Artifact

Mission Completion Rewards

• Discordant Exotic Gear (Random Slot)
• 400 Fragments

Elite Weekly Mission Chain Completion Rewards

• Elite Discordant Exotic Gear (Melee/Ranged)
• Elite Discordant Exotic Gear (Defense/Heroic)
• 2 Epic Raid exclusive Minor Artifacts

Elite Mission Completion Rewards

• Elite Discordant Exotic Gear (Random Slot)
• 600 Fragments

And here’s the description of the brand new gear set you’ll get from Discordant Sound!

Discordant Set Description

• Rarity: Exotic
• Preferred Attributes: Might, Precision, Valor, Resilience
• Preferred Status Effects: Sonic and Vibranium

Discordant Gear

Discordant Gear has 4 main themes.

Sonic Conduit

The Sonic Conduit perk will always be on the Heroic gear piece and forms the backbone of several other perks. Sonic Conduit operates much like its name: once kickstarted by the Sonic Status effect (which increases Intrinsic and Heroic energy gain), it activates the Sonic Conduit buff on nearby allies.

So, what’s the Sonic Conduit buff? Well, it can look like a few different things. If your Hero has this perk and is affected by the bonus from the Sonic status effect, then a small portion of that Sonic status effect bonus is sent to all teammates nearby. This happens regardless of whether your teammates have Discordant gear—think of it as the most basic bonus effect. This buff activation and sending to nearby allies makes you a Sender of Sonic Conduit.

So, the team gets a small benefit via the sharing of the Sonic status effect even if they have no Discordant gear. But if they do have Discordant gear, then more perks activate. Since all other Discordant gear can come with perks that have effects requiring “Sending” or “Receiving”, players who have Discordant gear can receive a buff called “Sender Sonic Conduit”. There is another buff called “Receiver Sonic Conduit”, which is triggered by somebody activating Sonic Conduit, regardless of whether you have Discordant Gear. Sender means you have the Sonic Status effect and channel it to your nearby teammates. Receiver is the other side of the Conduit and means you’re on the receiving end of the channeled Sonic status effect from a Sender teammate. All Conduit perks are either on or off—there’s no chance involved regarding their activation. A Hero can have both buffs at the same time: you can be both a Sender and Receiver. Note that these effects don’t stack, though; if you have two teammates nearby that are both Sending, you only get one Receiving buff.

Some of these Sending and Receiving perks are Hero-specific and give buffs to certain parts of a Hero’s kit. For example, my personal favorite is Hulk’s Granting Aim, which increases rock damage when used as a melee attack if you’re a Sender of Sonic Conduit. To give you an idea of how much of a buff it is, the rock damage is increased by around 80%—which is nothing to scoff at!

If grouping and close teamwork isn’t really your thing, there’s an option that’ll give you some space. Conduit Revival and Lethal Conduit are the two perks that activate Sonic Conduit without the need to activate the Sonic status effect, meaning you won’t need to be near a teammate who is a Sender, or near enemies with the Sonic status effect on them. However, the price for this increased independence is that these perks only ever grant the “Receiver” buff, since there’s no Sender.

Efficient Status Perks

In the past, melee and ranged gear came with only one Status effect perk. This could add too much RNG into successful gear rolls due to the number of attack types these gear types have. To address this, we gave Discordant gear Status perks that can affect more than one attack type. This is another thing that’s special to Discordant gear, and basically makes melee and ranged gear act as if they had four perks on them.

Some heroes have limited melee or ranged options, so their Efficiency perks cover all options available to that Hero. Melee gear for Iron Man only ever has two Status perks, because he only has Light Combo ender and Signature Attack perk types. These two types are covered by a single perk on Discordant gear. On the flip side, Iron Man’s Discordant ranged gear is more interesting… but I’ll let you discover that yourself.

The reverse is true for these Heroes on their Ranged gear. Discordant ranged gear for Hulk, Captain America, Thor, and Ms. Marvel covers all ranged options since they only have two ranged perk types. For an example, Hulk’s perk applies the Sonic Status effect to small and large rocks, instead of one or the other. This is the first step to getting a wider variety of specific or interesting attack types to apply Status effects.

Note that every new perk made for this gear set does not require a percentage chance to activate. We want to make any combat condition to be more within player agency and make raw damage less of a requirement for gear.

Hero Gear Additions

There are several perks in Hero gear that are so fun or bombastic (*cough* Operatives Armor *cough*), that many players see the loss of a single perk as too high a price to pay for any potential benefit. We wanted to address that trade-off without negating the value of Hero gear. To that end, we have added several Hero-Gear-specific perks to Discordant gear, with some perks only being available on the Elite variants.Example: if you want Discordant Gear with Split Multiplier, you’ll have to complete the Elite Raid!

There are also a couple of new additions that are not related to Sonic Conduit for Captain America and Iron Man. Each Hero will get Hero-specific perks in this set, with some Heroes getting new perks with new mechanics. Also making an appearance will be reprisals of already existing, notable perks from other sets.

Black Panther and Thor will not get entirely new perks in this set. In the case of Thor, he is already a powerhouse of a Hero so more effort was made to the other starting six Heroes. Black Panther is new, and we wanted to focus more on bringing the other Heroes to his standard of interesting perk options. They still have specific perks, some of which have been updated or given different names, but their time to shine will come in the future.

Kate and Thor get more perks focusing on areas of combat to help increase player agency in build creation. One example of this is a perk improving Thor’s Hammer melee damage or ranged damage during Quantum Overdrive.

Heroes like Black Widow and Captain America will see a couple of interesting options. One of my favorites is one Captain America mains will appreciate: Captain’s Charge is a buff with a difficult trigger condition, but with the Counter Charge gear perk, performing Counterstrike activates Captain’s Charge.

Status Leak

The most complex addition to Discordant gear is the Status Leak system. When a player deals a certain damage type against an enemy with an active Status condition, a Status effect is spread to nearby enemies. In this way, the effect is similar to the Sonic Conduit buff that spreads between you and your teammates, but on the enemy’s side instead.

Let’s look at Vibranium Double Leak as an example of a Status Leak perk.

So, you have an enemy currently affected by a Sonic Status effect. When you hit that enemy with Vibranium damage, it spreads that Vibranium Status effect to nearby enemies too. There is a small cooldown of two seconds for the Leak to spread the Vibranium Status effect, but this gives room for you to build more Vibranium Status effects on other nearby enemies.

There are three types of Status Leak perks: Vibranium, Cryo, and Shock. Each have a different attack and enemy condition combo requirement but will spread those Status effects to nearby enemies. Think of the Sonic Status effect as a transmitter for another Status effect, like ice or electricity riding a wave of sound.

I look forward to you discovering the other gems like these in Discordant Gear, but I’ll touch on one here: Perk Breaker.

Perk Breaker increases the damage originating from perk attacks, not the damage coming from a Hero (which some perks give a bonus to). For example, Payload Missiles (from a Payload-type perk) will be affected by Perk Breaker and do more damage, but a perk increasing a Hero’s Power Attack damage (like Heavyweight Breaker) is unaffected by Perk Breaker. The damage must come from the perk, not the Hero. You’ll find that there are a few new perks that benefit greatly from Perk Breaker.

The larger theme of Discordant gear is teamwork. Whether it’s getting benefits from tanks staying in melee range of an enemy or building Status effects in certain ways to affect the greatest number of enemies, sticking together and coordinating with your teammates really pays off with Discordant gear.

Phew, that was a lot! Get your squad ready to tackle Klaw together once Discordant Sound arrives on November 30!­ We hope you enjoyed this deeper look into the Raid, and we’re excited for you to play it and let us know what you think. Thank you for reading, thank you for playing, and thank you for giving us your feedback on what you’d like to see in Marvel’s Avengers!