Heya all just a quick status report in regards to the current beta status of CCS v1.0.1. I realize lots of people are waiting for this and I can assure you nobody wants it done more than I do.

The Good News:

The good news is that the meter is more or less done. There are some balancing issues we're working on right now in regards to class to class strengths that we're currently testing with the RC10 beta testing team. Pretty much all the major script changes and system changes are finished.

The Bad News:

There are a few issues that are continuing to make me hold back the release until we find their root cause, and as I've said I won't release a buggy meter.

• Currently there is an rather tricky to find bug that is causing race/class chance to hit to not translate to the meter on load, which is causing inordinate amounts of "misses" or "failures" to use a skill. The issue is the chance to hit calculation is there in the script and its there in the new unified skill system, we're trying to figure out where the disconnect is there before declaring this "fixed" currently we're seeing a 4 - 7 of 10 attempts at a skill to fail, thats not acceptable even with the new mitigation system.
• The new damage mitigation system which splits melee, ranged, skill damage and status effect resistance is turning up more than the intended top end 33% resistance factor, we're searching for the cause on this.
• Neko Racial: Reflexes has some issues in regards to its actual usefulness due to changes to the mitigation system, adjusting it to buff Finesse and Perception turned up fairly unacceptable results because of the top end mitigation cap. We're either going to rewrite cvars to allow for mitigation above the cap or we're going to create a new status effect that will allow me to rebuild Reflexes into the skill its intended to be. 

So all in all we're almost there, but a couple minor issues left to sand off.

Just keeping everyone in the loop. Reports on everything else are coming in good. Intelligence now affects caster damage, casters have a new ability called Reave, which allows them to steal stamina from targets (its similar to the caster Lifetap skill, except all casters have it), Tank Adamant passive is turning up great results allowing tanks to become very dangerous on the battlefield as they take damage. Buff stacking is removed, making healer buffs/armors good for classes that don't have their own, Tank/Healer teams should work great together now, DPS and Tank classes are both getting great results from strength investment increasing their melee damage output, and the new hot targeting system has really made combat even more fun and less laggy due to not having to run a target dialog every time you want to use a skill.

So by in large, 1.0.1 really is doing great, its just got a few issues still that I don't want going to live. So we're going to get those last few issues settled then we'll get the release done.

Thanks for your patience all.