page 3 [OPEN BETA] Patch Notes for December 5th, 2025

[WindDemon21]

23 hours ago, The Curator said:

White Cap

• Changed to location power due to extremely unreliable teleport mechanics
• Recharge lowered from 30s to 15s
• Endurance cost reduced from 18 to 14.352
• Cast time reduced from 2s to 1.5s

 

Um.. excuse you. The end cost on whitecap was honestly already too high for how mcuh you spam it, this power alone completely negates the end bonus from toroidal spam and POTD pretty much. You're also halving the recharge on the power, so the end should be halved as well, to 9 end at least, not 14.352..

 

Edit: also this is obviously being done to screw over the procs on this power which is a BIG nerf to the power. So that alone should warrant greater compensation on the rest of the power, which already had too high of an end cost to begin with.

Edited Saturday at 09:33 PM by WindDemon21

[Uun]

3 hours ago, StarkWhite said:

They literally split this stuff into a separate patch from Panel 1 and are allowing the open beta to run over the entire holiday season *specifically* so people have more time to test. 

I'm aware, but it only amounts to 4 weeks instead of 2. It took me weeks to test just the MM/Beast/Thugs changes in the last patch or the tank cone/AoE changes in the prior one. In this patch there are changes to at least 8 specific sets I want to test (only 2 of which are on the same character).

[Neiska]

23 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

 

Oh, some MM Quality of life stuff. This must be the super-duper stuff that was being hinted at? Neat! But wait.. what's this?

 

Oh. Look! More damage nerfs. Grand!

 

Can we agree on the "lateral demotion" term now? "You get these things you asked for, but we are going to take other stuff away!" 🤣

Edited Saturday at 10:13 PM by Neiska

[KaizenSoze]

Since, the MM changes are very large and complicated, Maybe folks should organize on the forums and discord to divvy up the testing.

[Maelwys]

18 minutes ago, Neiska said:

 

Oh, some MM Quality of life stuff. This must be the super-duper stuff that was being hinted at? Neat! But wait.. what's this?

 

Oh. Look! More damage nerfs. Grand!

 

Can we agree on the "lateral demotion" term now? "You get these things you asked for, but we are going to take other stuff away!" 🤣

Hey, they buffed Masterminds.

We gots reduced Endurance Cost, more survivable pets (especially during resummoning) and the ability to have the pets keep up with you via a zero-recharge BAMF.
The auras from our ATOs were mostly merged into Supremacy, and the ATOs themselves can now be slotted into our personal attacks (freeing up valuable slotting real estate).
They even buffed Beast Summoning's damage output and survivability.
And that's only the stuff they could squeeze into THIS patch.

...they just nerfed some *other* stuff.
Mainly Whitecap, Rage, Hypnotizing Lights and the duration of the Armor T9s. 
_{And my Ninjitsu Sentinel's Shinobi-Iri.}

But Sentinels and Brutes and Stalkers all got sizable blanket buffs too.
And did you see the buffs to Broadsword and Spines and Kinetic Melee and Psi Melee and Dual Pistols? And all the Toggle Radius increases?
Heck; they even buffed BURN.
🤯
 

Edited Saturday at 10:30 PM by Maelwys

[Fira]

I said it before but MM changes means it's practically impossible to pull with pets now because they will stealth.

Edited Saturday at 10:30 PM by Fira

[Neiska]

Just now, Maelwys said:

Hey, they buffed Masterminds.

We gots reduced Endurance Cost, more survivable pets (especially during resummoning) and the ability to have the pets keep up with you via a zero-recharge BAMF.
The aura buffs from our ATOs were mostly merged into Supremacy, and the ATOs themselves can now be slotted into our personal attacks (freeing up valuable slotting real estate).
They even buffed Beast Summoning's damage output and survivability.
And that's only the stuff they could squeeze into THIS patch.

...they just nerfed some *other* stuff.
Mainly Whitecap, Rage, Hypnotizing Lights and the duration of the Armor T9s. 
_{And my Ninjitsu Sentinel's Shinobi-Iri.}

 

But to those of us that don't take personal attacks? Its a big middle finger.

The quality of life stuff is nice. No argument there.

Marine? lol.... 

Beast? Don't particularly care about. They have been dead last, and I expect they will remain there, this is a band aid at best. Still nice they are thinking of them, but lets not pretend this will make them on par with Thugs, Demons, or Mercs.

No. They didn't buff. As always, the gave some stuff, and took other stuff away. Like always?

 

And at this point? I fully expect them to buff the damage on all the attacks and further reduce pet damage, before they fix pet damage. 

[Wavicle]

1 hour ago, WeatherLord said:

No dedicated Stalker Focused Feedback thread, so will ask here.

 

What does the above mean? Higher base critical chance for Stalkers? I ran a few tests on a Practice Dummy with my Ninja Blade Stalker and didn't notice any differences with Crit Chances.

It means that the slow version of assassin strike does more damage.

[WindDemon21]

On 12/5/2025 at 5:20 PM, The Curator said:

Obscure Sustenance

• Power now accepts endurance sets and enhancements.
• No longer lists AoE/Negative types on its attack types.
• Regeneration and recovery buff scales and durations adjusted.
  • Now provides a flat +250% enhanceable regeneration buff for 60s.
  • Now provides a flat +25% recovery buff for 60s.

 

Also WHAT!? does that regeneration buff stack I'd assume? Because if not this is a HUGE nerf. Previously, assuming 1/3 recharge achieved you could get about 700% regen consistently off the power. That's a 200% regen loss roughly. Especially already losing the massive heal from dark regen by going this power, this is a really big hit.

[Maelwys]

1 minute ago, Neiska said:

But to those of us that don't take personal attacks? Its a big middle finger.

The quality of life stuff is nice. No argument there.

Marine? lol.... 

Beast? Don't particularly care about. They have been dead last, and I expect they will remain there, this is a band aid at best. Still nice they are thinking of them, but lets not pretend this will make them on par with Thugs, Demons, or Mercs.

No. They didn't buff. As always, the gave some stuff, and took other stuff away. Like always?

 

And at this point? I fully expect them to buff the damage on all the attacks and further reduce pet damage, before they fix pet damage. 

If you don't see all that QOL stuff as being sufficiently beneficial to constitute a "buff"; fair enough I guess.

FWIW personally I tend to take at least one personal attack for the buff/debuff synergy; but I don't really care about their raw damage outside of a few procbombed grenades.
Being able to stick a Acc/Dam plus an Aura ATO in them has freed up at least one enhancement slot from a henchmen summon on all of my Bots and Mercs and Ninjas 🥳 

Beasts are definitely in a funny place. I believe @BRADICAL was parsing them about 12s/15s behind Ninjas/Thugs on a Pylon/Dummy before these changes... but they're apparently supposed to be more Tankier (I know!) than damage focused. I very much doubt the powers team are done with them just yet.
 

  

1 minute ago, Fira said:

I said it before but MM changes means it's practically impossible to pull with pets now because they will stealth.

Outside of Supremacy range, sure.
And it's also become difficult to have them act as "point defense" turrets outside of Supremacy range because of the perception debuff.
But personally I'll happily take those tradeoffs in return for MMs being able to actually stealth through a mission and pets taking less of a beating whilst "keeping up".

Unfortunately the various Aggressive/Defensive/Passive pet stances really just tweak AI behaviour; so they don't (currently) allow different power effects to be triggered depending on what AI state the pets are in... such as only enabling Stealth when the pets are in Passive/Follow mode. Which to me would be the ideal.

Henchmen also do each still have their own aggro caps + you can technically still attract the attention of an extra 17 mobs per pet providing they remain on the target's hate list (e.g. they're visible or have dealt damage etc). I've done the AE farming runs on CB to prove it.

[WindDemon21]

9 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

If you don't see all that QOL stuff as being sufficiently beneficial to constitute a "buff"; fair enough I guess.

FWIW personally I tend to take at least one personal attack for the buff/debuff synergy; but I don't really care about their raw damage outside of a few procbombed grenades.
Being able to stick a Acc/Dam plus an Aura ATO in them has freed up at least one enhancement slot from a henchmen summon on all of my Bots and Mercs and Ninjas 🥳 

Beasts are definitely in a funny place. I believe @BRADICAL was parsing them about 12s/15s behind Ninjas/Thugs on a Pylon/Dummy before these changes... but they're apparently supposed to be more Tankier (I know!) than damage focused. I very much doubt the powers team are done with them just yet.

Buffs are changes that increase the stats of a power for the better. Anyting else, while may help the set, are still QoL

 

Yeah, beasts STILL need to be able to enhance their defense and resist armor like every other pet set is able to do... (and honeslty being melee only, should also at least have inherent kb and fear protection, and their defense armor should be a little higher as well IMO, melee is ROUGH on pets)

[Fira]

16 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Outside of Supremacy range, sure.
And it's also become difficult to have them act as "point defense" turrets outside of Supremacy range because of the perception debuff.
But personally I'll happily take those tradeoffs in return for MMs being able to actually stealth through a mission and pets taking less of a beating whilst "keeping up".

Unfortunately the various Aggressive/Defensive/Passive pet stances really just tweak AI behaviour; so they don't (currently) allow different power effects to be triggered depending on what AI state the pets are in... such as only enabling Stealth when the pets are in Passive/Follow mode. Which to me would be the ideal.

Henchmen also do each still have their own aggro caps + you can technically still attract the attention of an extra 17 mobs per pet providing they remain on the target's hate list (e.g. they're visible or have dealt damage etc). I've done the AE farming runs on CB to prove it.

i've tested it in Open World Cim and it was a big letdown because the distances involved mean you can't always hug them to remove the stealth + stealth has a big negative impact.

Can see it also being really bad if you "split the party" in MSR pulling, although I moved on to another technique already.

 

Won't blame the changes because they make sense overall, but it's still extremely annoying to get this playing niche partially neutered. 

Does it even actually work for mission stealthing? Because if you get too far the pets will teleport on you, and then they lose stealth...

[Neiska]

12 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

If you don't see all that QOL stuff as being sufficiently beneficial to constitute a "buff"; fair enough I guess.

FWIW personally I tend to take at least one personal attack for the buff/debuff synergy; but I don't really care about their raw damage outside of a few procbombed grenades.
Being able to stick a Acc/Dam plus an Aura ATO in them has freed up at least one enhancement slot from a henchmen summon on all of my Bots and Mercs and Ninjas 🥳 

 

You are missing the point... anytime they give us something, something else is taken away. They give us QOL things? Loose your Marine stuff.

 

Never is something been unilaterally buffed, without something else being removed. The QOL stuff is nice and was needed (though someone has already figured out a way to break it, so that didn't take very long.) But IMO this does not make up for what the last patch did.

 

You will never convince me, no matter what your math says, that somehow me taking 3 minutes longer to clear a map is an upgrade or buff.

 

Personal attacks? Well, the English Language is difficult for me to fully express my opinions about them, but I shall try (And I do hope they might even share this at their meetings, if they even have them) -

 

- I would sooner be dragged behind a 747 screaming through the sky over the Pacific Ocean while the aircraft was actively combusting and being piloted by a drunken rodeo clown with a nose full of no-no snow, than actively play/rely on of these MM personal attacks. That is roughly about how much spite I have for them. A class focused on pets, should not be reliant on personal attacks to make it viable, and nor should they be balanced on using them, which is what I suspect they are doing. Because for builds that do not take them, this has been nearly 2 years of constant punches to the gut. The only MM attacks that I like, is the Necromancer. Because it makes spirits, which is very neat and thematic. The rest? See above.

 

Real talk - MMs were never OP in the damage department. Even if you built the best MM possible for damage, it still wasn't setting any records. So who looks at a race, then looks at the one in 6th place and goes "Hey, that guy is going too fast. So lets give him new shoes, but we are going to give him a -1 minute penalty to his time."

 

In closing - we find ourselves agreeing to disagree as per usual. So, see you next round of lateral demotions I guess? 😆

[Fira]

1 minute ago, Neiska said:

-snip-

But why are you going by the assumption things have to be "unilaterally buffed" exactly?

Also i believe "best possible MMs" were, in fact, setting the records for pylon testing, unless I missed something.

[Neiska]

1 minute ago, Fira said:

But why are you going by the assumption things have to be "unilaterally buffed" exactly?

Also i believe "best possible MMs" were, in fact, setting the records for pylon testing, unless I missed something.

 

Let's not get into the pylon argument. I consider them a ballpark figure at best, not something to bet the farm on, or even use as the sole metric to balance things on. Because actual combat, enemies don't just stand there and take it. They buff. They debuff. They CC. They move. They fight back. Etc. Seeing how fast you can reduce a HP bar is hardly full considered aspects of combat. And, even if they were, so what? Pets die in combat. They don't die fighting a pylon. And having a pet dead, greatly impacts a MMs damage. So I find that kind of sus already? There is no open world combat where there is an AV or GM that will just stand there and let a MM and their pets just whack away on them without loosing pets or having to heal etc.

 

And I am not assuming things have to be "unilaterally buffed." But I take a pretty dim view on having more than 5 total minutes added to my favorite activities from all the changes come to pass over the past 3(ish?) years, and everyone heralding it as a buff. That isn't a buff.

 

So why do things that MMs needed, tweaks and adjustments, purple patches QOL stuff, require us loosing damage to implement? Why must it always be give and take? Not once has it been just a "give."

[GM Impervium]

On 12/5/2025 at 5:20 PM, The Curator said:

Loses the 50% chance for additional mag 1 stub

And thus, my enemies toes are now safe; curses!

=P

[Maelwys]

2 minutes ago, WindDemon21 said:

Buffs are changes that increase the stats of a power for the better. Anyting else, while may help the set, are still QoL

Like, for example...
+ Supremacy gaining +10% Resistance, +100% Regeneration and +10% AoE Defence to henchmen?
+ Henchmen gaining an additional +10% of your Set Bonuses?
+ Henchmen gaining a +75%/+100%/125% Defence buff (depending on the tier) for several seconds after summoning?
+ Beasts self-heal gaining 67% strength and many of their attacks having reduced cast time for improved DPA?

👀

Nope, no buffs there. Nosireebob.

To me a "buff" is a beneficial change. That's anything that makes the target power or ability or character stronger or more effective.
And all the stuff I mentioned earlier - QoL or otherwise - definitely makes my MMs more effective.
With the noteworthy exception of my /marine MMs. And to be perfectly honest, they had it coming 🤷‍♂️

Also as I mentioned earlier - what we're seeing in this patch is the huge set of changes that were originally scheduled for being released at the same time as the MM even-level pets tweak. The devs intentionally split these into two patches in order to allow the playerbase better opportunity to stress test those even-level pet changes. As such what you're seeing here are only the second half of the CURRENT round of tweaks. Meaning there are more in the pipeline. Including some stuff that the Devs started considering in response to the original player feedback on the MM even-level pet changes in both Closed and Open Beta. The powers team can only realistically squeeze out so much before the Holiday break. 🦃 🎄

[Neiska]

9 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

As such what you're seeing here are only the second half of the CURRENT round of tweaks. 

 

Looking forward to the next round of -10% damage/-20% damage/+1 minute on my timer then. 😆

 

Prediction - "We have enabled Pet Customization! But all pets do -20% damage and are no longer able to trigger proc effects."

 

+ Supremacy gaining +10% Resistance, +100% Regeneration and +10% AoE Defence to henchmen?

- We lost value on our Pet Aura ATOs. Which is still give and take. Not a buff.

+ Henchmen gaining an additional +10% of your Set Bonuses?

- Minimal effect at best, previously discussed elsewhere. Nice but it's more like sprinkles than a feature.

+ Henchmen gaining a +75%/+100%/125% Defense buff (depending on the tier) for several seconds after summoning?

- Quality of life change. Nice, prevents death loops. In theory. Bbbuuttt this is the thing that's already, well, "broken" that some might call an exploit. And, if discovered, I expect this to be possibly removed.

+ Beasts self-heal gaining 67% strength and many of their attacks having reduced cast time for improved DPA?

- Nice touch, I am no Beast expert, but I believe it was the recharge on their attacks that were the issue - IE gaps in their attack chains, where they just stand and do nothing? Not sure there. But at least Beasts getting looked at, which is nice.

Edited Saturday at 11:46 PM by Neiska

[Maelwys]

16 minutes ago, Neiska said:

You are missing the point... anytime they give us something, something else is taken away. They give us QOL things? Loose your Marine stuff.

Ah.

I suspect there's a joke in there somewhere about /Marine and being salty... 🥁

Yeah, I get it sucks when stuff gets nerfed.
But /Marine is just one single powerset. And it's not unique to Masterminds.
Whitecap's procbombing potential and Tide damage procs were what got the hammer, since they were apparently causing issues on other ATs too.

It was also, to be fair, the runaway standout overperforming Mastermind secondary. Even after these nerfs overall I'd still rate it on par with /Time.
 

16 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Never is something been unilaterally buffed, without something else being removed.

  

True. But that's kinda the nature of trying to maintain game balance though.
And I maintain that this patch has seen a lot of improvements for Masterminds. Just maybe not /Marine Masterminds.
_{(Who I still say had it coming, Humbug! Humbug I say!!) 😛}

 

16 minutes ago, Neiska said:

In closing - we find ourselves agreeing to disagree as per usual. So, see you next round of lateral demotions I guess? 😆

 

  

😉
 

[Maelwys]

42 minutes ago, Fira said:

Does it even actually work for mission stealthing? Because if you get too far the pets will teleport on you, and then they lose stealth...

If you STAY them and then move you can repeatedly FOLLOW/STAY them whilst keeping them within teleport leash distance (500ft?) which works fine on indoor maps.
The new mechanics also allow you to BAMF them to you on demand (just be sure they're in FOLLOW mode rather than STAY) when you find a handy corner/elevator to stop.

 

[Mezmera]

1 hour ago, Wavicle said:

It means that the slow version of assassin strike does more damage.

 

I like that change a good deal.  Everyone uses fast AS since there's not as much incentive not to, just scrap and try to get the orange ring around it then hit your target.  This'll give an option for people to get skilled with Placates and initial AS'ing which the AT has more intent towards anyways.  

[BlackSpectre]

11 hours ago, AboveTheChemist said:

 

That is how I read it as well. I just tested it on Brainstorm by auto-leveling to 50. I was granted 39,149,000 XP. Level 50 used to require (per the wiki Experience page) 39,149,119 XP, so a difference of 119 XP. As noted, a negligible change.

Puzzling.

Quote

Experience

• Minor tweak to the XP curve, rounding Experience Required down to the nearest 100
  • Example: Level 40 requires 8,401,500 experience instead of 8,401,519.

That would mean the numbers are not being rounded down to the nearest hundred, but instead rounded down to the nearest thousand. 
 

I’ll go ahead and look over the level requirements in the Beta server so see what’s what…

 

 

UPDATE: I went to the Beta server and looked at the cumulative xp needed for levels 1-10 and a sampling of the others, and it looks like all but level 50 rounds down to the nearest hundred. Level 50 rounds down to the nearest thousand, oddly.

 

That means that players will need to cumulatively earn:

119 less xp to reach level 50

19 less xp to reach level 49

69 less xp to reach level 38

19 less experience to reach level 27

69 less xp to reach level 17

92 less xp to reach level 10

25 less xp to reach level 5

and so on...

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Experience

 

The incremental amount shows a similarly insignificant impact. For example, the amount of XP needed to reach the next level will look something like this:

1 to 2 = 100 xp (6 less xp than current amount required)

2 to 3 = 300 (37 less)

3 to 4 = 600 (18 more)

4 to 5 = 800 (same)

5 to 6 = 1200 (37 less)

6 to 7 = 1600 (25 more)

7 to 8 = 1900 (50 less)

8 to 9 = 2700 (20 more)

9 to 10 = 3000 (125 less)

and so on...

 

 

Overall, a teeny tiny change to the amount of xp needed to achieve a level. I'm still not sure about the reason for the change. It could be due to a slight change in the way that XP is calculated when defeating a mob, or maybe because of a change to the way the game rounds XP gain, or maybe just to make the cumulative levels easier to understand? In the wiki XP chart, both the Incremental and Cumulative numbers will all end in 00. No more odd numbers. So maybe the reason is as simple as that? 

 

No change to amount of xp needed for each veteran level, BTW.

 

Anyway, if the leveling requirements is the only change, it won't have much of an impact.

 

Edited Sunday at 02:22 AM by BlackSpectre

[GM Impervium]

Looking at that link, it seems the only thing that's going to change is the early leveling curve, as most levels after 17 already end in *00; the few that don't end in 50, and will just make it so that you have to earn 50 more XP to level up (though by that point, that's a fraction of a minion, so, nbd).

[kelika2]

Did anyone test the 50% IO bonus thing yet?  do i still need to spend 9 extra slots to get 1kb protection?

[Glacier Peak]

10 minutes ago, GM Impervium said:

Looking at that link, it seems the only thing that's going to change is the early leveling curve, as most levels after 17 already end in *00; the few that don't end in 50, and will just make it so that you have to earn 50 more XP to level up (though by that point, that's a fraction of a minion, so, nbd).

50 xp more!?