The Paragon Studios team is hard at work preparing for City of Heroes Freedom, the F2P edition of the game set to go live soon. One way to get players excited about Freedom is by revealing some of the gear that devs are designing, refining and finalizing and that will be available in the Paragon Market. First up is the Beam Rifle power set.

Beam Rifle provides a cascading mechanic triggered by the Disintegrate power. Foes hit by the Disintegrate power have the disintegrating effect placed on them. Enemies suffering from this effect take additional effects or damage from Beam Rifle attacks. In addition, single target Beam Rifle attacks (Single Shot, Charged Shot, Lancer Shot, and Penetrating Ray) have a chance to cause the disintegrating effect to spread to three additional targets, who are then vulnerable to single target attacks that can spread the effect to three more targets. This allows the Beam Rifle user to quickly weaken and then eliminate groups. Although Beam Rifle is a single target set, the clever use of Disintegrate combined with the area of effect (AOE) powers (Cutting Beam, Piercing Ray, and Overcharge), plus a little luck, can cause a significant amount of AOE damage.

Read the full developer blog post on the City of Heroes site.