Welcome back, adventurers! Now that many of you have tangled with the Xaryxian Empire, you’ll be familiar with their arms and armaments… But this lockbox, the second of our 27th module, Spelljammer, still has some surprises in store! The Starlight Armaments Lockbox has the standard lockbox rewards and pacing, and the two headlining items for this lockbox are the Golden Armored Griffon mount and the Marco’s Mystic Marker artifact. This lockbox will be available January 18th!

Mount: Golden Armored Griffon 

Griffons are majestic and terrifying in eagle proportion, and we’d be lion if we said they can’t make for excellent allies. This one in particular is rumored to have hatched from a golden egg, and her strengths are in crowd control and damage prevention. 

Summary 

• Slots: Crescent, Illuminated, Universal, Universal (Enlightened preferred) 

• Combat Power: Targeted AoE stun & damage reduction on enemies, bolsters caster’s defensive ratings. 

• Equip Power: +Crit Strike, +Combat Advantage 

Slots 

This majestic monster comes with four insignia slots. Its static slots are Crescent and Illuminated, and of the two Universal slots, the final prefers Enlightened insignias. This means that, in the stable and at full efficiency, the following 4-slot insignia bonuses are available: 

• Mender’s Covenant (Healer focused) 

• Executioner’s Covenant (DPS focused) 

• Trainer’s Restoration (Situationally beneficial to Tanks and Healers) 

At the cost of the 20% Preferred Slot bonus, you can also access the following 4-slot insignia bonus: 

• Survivalist’s Expertise (Situationally beneficial to all roles, though mostly suited to Healers and those who prioritize Forte highly) 

Combat Power: Harrowing Screech 

Following in the footsteps of the Armored Griffon’s combat power, Piercing Screech, this power stuns the target and enemies around it, while significantly reducing their damage dealt and buffing the caster. Instead of the Armored Griffon’s Attribute buffs, however, this increases the caster’s Forte, Critical Avoidance, and Awareness.  

We hope this power will be useful to tanks and healers in high-end content, and players in leveling or open-world content who can benefit from the stun as a reprieve from enemy attacks. We’re also aware that our mount combat powers have been pretty tank-heavy over the past few modules; while we believe that they’ve all been worthwhile additions to many players’ kits, this will likely be the last heavily tank-leaning Mount Combat Power for the next couple lockboxes. 

Values at 100% Mount Bolster: 

• Targets’ outgoing damage reduction: 15% 

• Stun duration: 3 seconds 

• Forte, Crit Avoidance, and Awareness buff: 5% each 

Stun duration as well as buff and debuff values vary based on Bolster. 

For the number crunchers, here’s some extra information: 

• Cast time: Instant lock-in, 0.6 seconds post-cast animation, ~1.5 seconds from button press until effects apply 

• Roots the player during cast. 

• Animation cancellable by Encounter powers, Daily powers, and tactical mechanics (e.g. dodge and block). The power is immediately locked in, so the anim cancel will not prevent it from taking effect or going on cooldown. 

• Range: 

• Initial cast: 50 foot distance from caster to primary target. 

• Debuff / stun effect: 20 foot sphere around primary target. 

• Affected targets: 

• Debuff / stun effect: Any enemies, maximum 5 targets, with priority based on distance from primary target. 

• Buff: Affects casting player regardless of range. 

• Stacking behavior: Debuff is refreshed but kept at a single stack if multiple players cast this Combat Power. Does not overwrite nor conflict with other similar debuffs. However, Outgoing Damage reduction debuffs have less of an effect when more of them stack. 

Equip Power: Predator’s Focus 

This equip power grants the standard ratios for two-stat powers, split between Critical Strike and Combat Advantage. At 100% Mount Bolster, this comes to: 

• 2700 Combined Rating 

• 2250 Critical Strike 

• 2250 Combat Advantage 

We’ve aimed for this to be a useful stat combination primarily for DPS classes. 

Artifact: Marco’s Mystic Marker 

With the fantasy space theming of this module, we felt there was a fun opportunity to give players a D&D take on the classic “missile storm” aesthetic in the form of a target marker. Starting from that point, we fleshed it out into a single-target barrage, with an Increased Damage Taken debuff to keep it competitive with other desirable DPS artifacts. 

Summary 

• Item level: 1500 

• Use power: Single-target barrage of attacks plus 10-second “10% increased damage taken” debuff 

• Stats: 33% Crit Severity, 67% Accuracy 

Use Power 

Marco’s Mystic Marker casts Marco’s Magic Missile Mayhem, which deals about 120% of an artifact’s damage budget total over six damage ticks. It also applies a debuff causing the target to take 10% additional damage from all sources for 10 seconds. 

For the number crunchers, here’s some extra information: 

• Cast time: Instant lock-in, 0.67 seconds post-cast animation 

• Roots the player during cast. 

• Animation cancellable by Encounter powers, Daily powers, and tactical mechanics (e.g. dodge and block). The power is immediately locked in, so the anim cancel will not prevent it from taking effect or going on cooldown. 

• Debuff is applied 0.67 seconds after button press. 

• First damage tick is applied 1.67 seconds after button press, with subsequent damage ticks applying every 0.1 sec for a total of 6 hits over 0.5 seconds (starting at 0.0). 

• Range: 80 ft 

• Stacking behavior: Stacks with other unique Damage Taken debuff sources. Does not stack with other iterations of the same power. Debuff name is Marco’s Mystic Malaise. 

• Multi-hit considerations: 

• The damage taken debuff does apply to the damage dealt by the artifact. 

• Crit and Deflect are rolled once and apply to the entire power. (If the first hit crits, all hits will crit.) 

We expect that DPS players, along with tanks and healers who can sacrifice defensive options, will find good uses for this artifact for artifact burns in high-end single-target encounters. We also hope that other players will enjoy the fun visual effects and flavor of the artifact, and find good use of it outside of artifact burns. 

Stats 

This stat combo isn’t entirely unseen. The values are standard for an Item Level 1500 artifact, with a 1:2 ratio: 

• 1,125 Critical Severity 

• 2,250 Accuracy 

• 1,275 Combined Rating 

We mainly expect this stat combo to find use among DPS players, especially those who are capped on Critical Severity and need to redirect some of that to other offense stats. 

In Closing 

As always, we hope these new headline rewards capture your interest! These lockboxes require an Enchanted Key to open, and retain the same reward structure as before, including plenty of items that will help you continue to progress your character overall. As always, we’re open to feedback that’ll help us develop features and offerings for players like you. For instance, does the flavor-first approach to Marco’s Mystic Marker appeal to you, or does the execution fall flat in practice? Does the Golden Armored Griffon’s combat power differ enough from Piercing Screech to fill a worthwhile niche? Are there niches you’d like to see us fill? Let us know on the forum!