page 3 [OPEN BETA] Patch Notes for December 19th, 2025

[Ukase]

On 12/20/2025 at 4:50 PM, Zahnee said:

I’ll die on this hill, because no one has proven me otherwise with objective current game data. 

So, that emphasis of yours. What current game data would you like to see? 

I guess what I'm asking is, do I take my tank and find some mission, clear it with unchained might, and then take that same tank, the only difference being I have rage instead and compare the times? 

So, I'm a bit puzzled by this  - if that's what you're asking - because it's an apples and oranges comparison. 
You seem to be saying that the tank dps with UM is less than it is with Rage. This doesn't surprise me. And I'm okay with it. The reason is - I don't have to watch my endurance bar and ensure I've got at least 50% before it crashes. I don't have to make sure I time my heavier hits until after the crash. To me, the sacrifice is worth it. But that's just me. I don't dare speak for anyone else. 

If I only played a character that dealt a minimal threshold of damage, there's a lot of characters I wouldn't play. And no matter what change they did to Super Strength on a tank, I wouldn't play it. Because even if it's good, it's still pretty lame when I compare it to my blasters. 

While I don't think damage should be discarded as a factor in the change, I don't think it should get as heavy a weight as you think it should get. Just my opinion. I solo a lot, so sure, I'd love it if it got more. But I think the idea is you have less dps because you don't have the crash. Maybe the number is too low in your mind - that's fair. Maybe I've completely misconstrued what they're after. That's certainly possible. I just know I played it and didn't notice the dps was weaker than it should be. (Bear in mind, I didn't do math, I just played some content and it took about as long as I would have expected it to.)

And if I've misunderstood, or misread your post, I apologize. I'm just looking for clarity and trying to be helpful. 

[Captain Citadel]

11 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Raw hit damage does not mean anything, but rather how often you can apply it--hitting for 5 damage every second is better than hitting for 15 damage every five seconds. As you cannot be using your second attack before your first attack finishes animating, Mid's and City of Data 2.0 both provide statistics on how long it takes for a power to deliver its damage.  You say other powersets have, "...slightly higher base damage..." but let's just take a look at how Super Strength compares to Battle Axe:

 

 

Battle Axe's yellow bars are not slightly exceeding Super Strength's blue bars. Of the top five bars, four of them are yellow and they are blowing most of the blue ones out of the water with the exception of Knockout Blow (holding the second place amongst the two sets) and Haymaker (coming in at sixth place and just barely ahead of two more Battle Axe powers). Of course, one cannot just look at the raw length of the bars because some of the attacks are area attacks. Foot Stomp will obviously lengthen its bar based on how many targets it hits. But then, so too will Pendulum and Pendulum already has Foot Stomp outclassed.

 

 

While a true statement, it is misleading because that 80% boost does not exist in a context where the underlying powers between Super Strength and whatever you are comparing are otherwise equal for damage output. Jab is providing 26.51 damage per animation, Beheader 41.71. After you factor damage enhancement, that becomes something more like 51.69 dpa for Jab, and 81.33 dpa for Beheader. Adding 80% of the base damage to Jab moves it up to 72.90--just behind Beheader. So Rage is only bringing Jab up to where Beheader is normally...except Rage also bring its crash every 2 minutes while Beheader just chugs along without care. Oh...and that ignores that Build Up can be added to Beheader to further boost it. At maximum recharge, you can have Build Up active over 50% of the time with no penalty whatsoever.*

 

 

*Personally, I would not want to be manually activating it that often nor having it automatically interrupting that often either, but hey, I am not one to double stack Rage either because twice the crashing does not seem inviting at all.

It sounds like we're in agreement that Rage is a huge problem because SS only has comparable damage output to other melee sets while it's active.

That's really the point of the broad view I'm taking here. I don't know all the math, I don't know the individual DPA and DPS of every single power. I just know that Super Strength is effectively designed under the assumption of perma-Rage, because Rage has such a huge duration relative to normal Build Up powers. That's why I think Rage has to go.

I don't think Rage is making Super Strength OP or anything. Maybe "more powerful than Build Up" is the wrong way to phrase what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say that Rage carries a lot more weight than any Build Up power does, and that currently the entire design of Super Strength and its damage profile is practically warping around it. Rage is a black hole and the rest of the set is trapped in its gravity well.

You can build all the other damage powersets without Build Up, or whatever their specific version of that same general short-duration damage buff happens to be. Your damage isn't thrown in the trash if you don't take it, because it has substantially less uptime than Rage, even with more than 50% uptime fully enhanced. But you can't build a Super Strength character without Rage unless you're okay with having absolutely pitiful damage. Even with the crash, Rage has greater uptime than Build Up, yes?

This is why I'm so upset that Unleashed Might wasn't implemented. I think the whole powerset could do with a full rework. But at least Unleashed Might offered a way to play the set without the crash. The two things I hate most about Super Strength are the Rage crash, and the fact that Hurl doesn't work while flying at ground height, while Foot Stomp does. At least we could have had Unleashed Might as a really good band-aid fix while we waited for some kind of larger rework or whatever is planned for the next beta patch.

[skoryy]

I don't think Rage has to go, since sets should not be homogenized.  I do think the crash needs to be looked at, and the hit to resistance sets need to match the hit to defensive sets. I think Unleashed Might was a fantastic move, a toggle buff with buffed attacks was definitely the way to go without further homogenization.  

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

It sounds like we're in agreement that Rage is a huge problem because SS only has comparable damage output to other melee sets while it's active.

That's really the point of the broad view I'm taking here. I don't know all the math, I don't know the individual DPA and DPS of every single power. I just know that Super Strength is effectively designed under the assumption of perma-Rage, because Rage has such a huge duration relative to normal Build Up powers. That's why I think Rage has to go.

I don't think Rage is making Super Strength OP or anything. Maybe "more powerful than Build Up" is the wrong way to phrase what I'm trying to say. I'm trying to say that Rage carries a lot more weight than any Build Up power does, and that currently the entire design of Super Strength and its damage profile is practically warping around it. Rage is a black hole and the rest of the set is trapped in its gravity well.

 

Certainly, one could build a Super Strength set without a "super" enabling power. The feel from the set I enjoy is embodied in its animation--you stomp the ground and make foes fall over, you rip up pieces of pavement, or hurl boulders. None of that require Rage, and the animations are there even if Rage is not clicked.

 

I do think there is a certain tendency when seeking balance to slide into a sort of absolutism--if powerset A does something no other set does, it must be brought into line. But the sets are not meant to be carbon copies of the others. They were meant to have their own feel, be stronger in some areas and weaker in others (e.g. Fire in City of Heroes has been declares the "damage" element and meant to deliver more damage than other sets in the same category of powers). If Rage or UM make SS the "accuracy set", that is not a problem for me because Fire is out there providing the most damage, Energy Aura is providing the most (situational) Haste, and Dark sucking down its user's endurance more than any other powerset. 

 

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

You can build all the other damage powersets without Build Up, or whatever their specific version of that same general short-duration damage buff happens to be. Your damage isn't thrown in the trash if you don't take it, because it has substantially less uptime than Rage, even with more than 50% uptime fully enhanced. But you can't build a Super Strength character without Rage unless you're okay with having absolutely pitiful damage. Even with the crash, Rage has greater uptime than Build Up, yes?

 

Rage's default recharge time is 4 minutes and it lasts 2 minutes. Greater uptime but also greater down time, though it does not take a ton of effort to get it to being up all the time--3 level 25 SOs gets you there at around level 23, or 2 level 50s as you near the end of levelling your character. 

[Troo]

Super Strength

Existing characters shouldn't be wrecked by changes. Improving sets should also improve existing characters if they can. Want to have a major departure make a new powerset.

[Captain Citadel]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

Certainly, one could build a Super Strength set without a "super" enabling power. The feel from the set I enjoy is embodied in its animation--you stomp the ground and make foes fall over, you rip up pieces of pavement, or hurl boulders. None of that require Rage, and the animations are there even if Rage is not clicked.

 

I do think there is a certain tendency when seeking balance to slide into a sort of absolutism--if powerset A does something no other set does, it must be brought into line. But the sets are not meant to be carbon copies of the others. They were meant to have their own feel, be stronger in some areas and weaker in others (e.g. Fire in City of Heroes has been declares the "damage" element and meant to deliver more damage than other sets in the same category of powers). If Rage or UM make SS the "accuracy set", that is not a problem for me because Fire is out there providing the most damage, Energy Aura is providing the most (situational) Haste, and Dark sucking down its user's endurance more than any other powerset. 

Okay so now you're talking about theme. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Rage being a problem for Super Strength because its usage is required for damage to just be on par with other sets.

 

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

Rage's default recharge time is 4 minutes and it lasts 2 minutes. Greater uptime but also greater down time, though it does not take a ton of effort to get it to being up all the time--3 level 25 SOs gets you there at around level 23, or 2 level 50s as you near the end of levelling your character.

I'm also not talking about how easy or hard it is to get perma-Rage. I'm saying it shouldn't be expected to use perma-Rage just to get baseline damage numbers from the powerset. When comparing Rage to Build Up, Build Up is not required to get baseline damage out of a set, because Build Up is not designed for perma-uptime. You can choose to not take Build Up, and it won't utterly ruin your damage output the way that choosing not to take Rage would.

The fact that Rage is not only relatively easy to get permanent uptime on, but also not that difficult to build for a significant window of double-stacking, means that Super Strength will never be able to get good damage without using it, because of how heavily its contribution to Super Strength's damage is weighted. Rage also has a crash, Build Up does not. Again, I realize this crash is part of Rage's overall balancing because it's a very long-duration power and needed some kind of penalty when it wears off. But it's really not fun to play with that crash while other sets don't need to put up with it at all.

This is why Unleashed Might was perfect, because it was not as punishing to use as Rage is but still smoothed out Super Strength's damage profile and brought its damage up to something at least close to single-stack perma-Rage.

[PoptartsNinja]

16 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

Okay so now you're talking about theme. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Rage being a problem for Super Strength because its usage is required for damage to just be on par with other sets.

And that is an even bigger problem than it appears.

The poor base scaling Rage requires in order to not be stupidly broken makes team buffs worth less on a Super Strength character than other powersets. To toss out the hypothetical max fulcrum shift/damage cap/max fury/etc: Super Strength's values are so low that being at the damage cap just benefits every other powerset more than Super Strength.

 

I understand not wanting Rage to change because it makes proc bombs easier, but the whole set is just stuck in a vicious circle:

1. Rage enables proc-bombing, so that's what "everyone" (doing harder content) does to try to make Super Strength viable. Super Strength requires both rage and procs to achieve basic functionality
2. The set wouldn't need to proc bomb as hard (especially in harder content) if it had better scaling
3. Rage's very nature will always prevent the set from ever getting better base scales (Go back to #1)

[Captain Citadel]

1 minute ago, PoptartsNinja said:

I understand not wanting Rage to change because it makes proc bombs easier, but the whole set is just stuck in a vicious circle:

1. Rage enables proc-bombing, so that's what "everyone" (doing harder content) does to try to make Super Strength viable. Super Strength requires both rage and procs to achieve basic functionality
2. The set wouldn't need to proc bomb as hard (especially in harder content) if it had better scaling
3. Rage's very nature will always prevent the set from ever getting better base scales (Go back to #1)

This is why I made a thread over in Suggestions & Feedback just saying they should kill Rage. Put Unleashed Might in its place as a placeholder, it has the same enhancement slotting so it wouldn't break any builds. It's not as powerful as Rage, but it's easier to use and has no crash, which seems like a fair tradeoff to me. We need a world where people aren't aiming to double-stack Rage before we can get a version of Super Strength that isn't wholly dependent on a single power being pushed to its absolute limit to get the powerset's full damage.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

Okay so now you're talking about theme. That's not what I'm talking about, I'm talking about Rage being a problem for Super Strength because its usage is required for damage to just be on par with other sets.

 

I'm also not talking about how easy or hard it is to get perma-Rage. I'm saying it shouldn't be expected to use perma-Rage just to get baseline damage numbers from the powerset. When comparing Rage to Build Up, Build Up is not required to get baseline damage out of a set, because Build Up is not designed for perma-uptime. You can choose to not take Build Up, and it won't utterly ruin your damage output the way that choosing not to take Rage would.
 

 

You have completely missed what I was saying. But that's not the end of the world.

[Erratic1]

16 minutes ago, PoptartsNinja said:

I understand not wanting Rage to change because it makes proc bombs easier....

 

I do not proc bomb, nor do I double-stack Rage. Pretty sure I am not alone in this.

 

Granted, I am all for making use of UM when it come available, but Rage should remain and remain as something useable for those preferring not to remake their characters.

[PoptartsNinja]

12 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

I do not proc bomb, nor do I double-stack Rage. Pretty sure I am not alone in this.

Good for you!

 

My favorite power in the game was Force Bubble. Force Bubble was legitimately too strong and was replaced with a less fun but much more practical power that gave Forcefield something it legitimately needed (a source of DDR).

 

We'd never have gotten the ZTF train mission if Force Bubble still existed. Imagine just turning on a 40 foot radius bubble and instantly killing everything that wasn't an AV just by walking forward in a straight line.

Rage is exactly the same sort of problem-tier power.

[kelika2]

Whoa.

You know how Titan Weapons cannot use some attacks without momentum?

What if the Rage "crash" was just being locked out of using Rage?  SS damage without Rage is pretty ass

 

Make it not stackable in some form or another

Rage gets the [Victory Rush]treatment where it is 100% not effected by any form of Recharge AND Burnout

AND maybe like [Vengeance].  not stackable, but strongest wins

[Erratic1]

5 hours ago, kelika2 said:

Whoa.

You know how Titan Weapons cannot use some attacks without momentum?

What if the Rage "crash" was just being locked out of using Rage?  SS damage without Rage is pretty ass

 

This presumes that Super Strength using Rage is somehow overpowered--which was shown above not to be the case. Your suggestion would allow Super Strength to operate roughly equivalent to other offense sets for 2 minutes at a time then suck for 2 minutes at a time. That would make it undeniably weaker than every other powerset.

[DarknessEternal]

People keep talking about Super Strength and Rage, but all I can hear is "it's time to fix damage procs."

 

Changing Super Strength/Rage without changing damage procs would be like changing the tires but not putting gas in the car.

Edited 4 hours ago by DarknessEternal

[arcane]

On 12/20/2025 at 4:50 PM, Zahnee said:

I’ll die on this hill, because no one has proven me otherwise with objective current game data. 

Why don’t *you* prove your point? I don’t know how one can objectively compile single target damage, AoE damage, and added survival/mitigation fairly into one metric, so why don’t you handle this? I think most here have real lives and don’t need people constantly giving them homework assignment. If you do insist on being lazy, please at least provide the testing parameters necessary to prove you right or wrong beyond a shadow of a doubt.

[skoryy]

1 hour ago, DarknessEternal said:

People keep talking about Super Strength and Rage, but all I can hear is "it's time to fix damage procs."

 

Changing Super Strength/Rage without changing damage procs would be like changing the tires but not putting gas in the car.

There's a whole lot of other ATs and power sets that are using that same gas, though.

[Troo]

On 12/20/2025 at 2:50 PM, Zahnee said:

Rage wasn’t left as-is, it was nuked from orbit. Not only did it suck on defense sets still, but now it was suicide on hybrid and resistance sets.

 

inaccurate

 

2 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:

People keep talking about Super Strength and Rage, but all I can hear is "it's time to fix damage procs."

Changing Super Strength/Rage without changing damage procs would be like changing the tires but not putting gas in the car.

 

perma-Rage with perma +ToHit does create a situation where those who proc are greatly benefited over those who don't.

 

if we have Rage active continuously, a 10s crash is 8-9% of the time.

 

if the crash also included the +ToHit, proc'd builds would be effected similarly to non-proc's builds. (That's a basic issue)

 

Rage (Standard Effects) 100% chance

+80% Damage (All) Strength (self only) for 120s

+20% ToHit (self only) for 120s

-20% Base Defense (self only) for 10s after 120s

-25% Endurance (self only) after 120s

-9990% Damage (All) Strength (self only) for 10s after 120s

 

One solution:

Raise the Super Strength powers to be at least as good as pool powers, boost Rage (only slightly for damage because we'd have already increased set powers) in exchange for removing the ability to stack Rage, add a crash to ToHit as well as Damage, and reduce the Defense crash.

• Buff normal Damage
• Buff Rage (to at least be slightly better than Unleashed Might which should be included)
• Reduce the -Defense in the crash
• Add -ToHit to the 10s crash
• Change Rage from Stacking to Replace
• Proliferate to other archetypes

 

Is that a good solution? Maybe not, but it does try to make Super Strength a little better and the crash from Rage effect everyone similarly while providing an alternative to Rage.

 

 

Edited 2 hours ago by Troo

[DarknessEternal]

50 minutes ago, skoryy said:

There's a whole lot of other ATs and power sets that are using that same gas, though.

And this patch is hitting almost all of those ATs too.  May as well pull the chord.

[skoryy]

7 minutes ago, DarknessEternal said:

And this patch is hitting almost all of those ATs too.  May as well pull the chord.

 

Controllers? Defenders? Corruptors? Brutes?

Edited 2 hours ago by skoryy

[aethereal]

2 hours ago, DarknessEternal said:

People keep talking about Super Strength and Rage, but all I can hear is "it's time to fix damage procs."

 

Changing Super Strength/Rage without changing damage procs would be like changing the tires but not putting gas in the car.

 

Focused Feedback:  We invalidated every performance-oriented build in the game lol

 

You're welcome to imagine that the devs shouldn't care about pissing off every player who builds their character for anything vaguely like common performance goals.  Or you're welcome to imagine that players shouldn't get mad if they now have 30+ characters who they need to laboriously respec.  But I think that just empirically, you should resign yourself to the fact that devs do care, and players do care.

[arcane]

25 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

Focused Feedback:  We invalidated every performance-oriented build in the game lol

 

You're welcome to imagine that the devs shouldn't care about pissing off every player who builds their character for anything vaguely like common performance goals.  Or you're welcome to imagine that players shouldn't get mad if they now have 30+ characters who they need to laboriously respec.  But I think that just empirically, you should resign yourself to the fact that devs do care, and players do care.

Yeah these current big power change patches necessitate like 10-20 respecs per patch from me. A complete 180 on PPM could necessitate over 80 respecs. I prefer their more careful approach for sure.

[OverkillEngine]

Rage would at least be easier to balance without making the rest of the SS set sucking butt in its absence if it were treated and tweaked to be a mid-point choice between Build Up and Unleashed Might.

Or in other words:

• Build up - highest magnitude buff, least duration, moderate recharge (stacking not really possible)
• Rage - moderate magnitude buff, moderate duration, long recharge (basically makes multi-stacking improbable if not outright impossible)
• Unleashed Might - lowest magnitude buff, permanent duration while toggled

Without the assumption of multi-stacked Rage befouling the entire set, there would be plenty of freedom to adjust the set attacks to not be worse than some pool attacks. That alone should have been a clue by four years ago or even back during OG Live that the set needed a total rework.

At that point there would also be no need for a crash which introduces a whole extra layer of balance fuckery to complicate things. (And does anyone really enjoy the constant forced timeouts?) And this makes them easier to proliferate to other sets as alternatives to Build Up- a set with slow animating but high damaging attacks might want Rage or UM instead of Build up to maximize the number of attacks within the buff window. Characters without access to mezz protection toggles are likely to prefer Build Up or Rage to Unleashed Might. Like Blasters or certain Kheldian builds or (shudder) non-perma Dominators.

 

[kelika2]

5 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

This presumes that Super Strength using Rage is somehow overpowered--which was shown above not to be the case. Your suggestion would allow Super Strength to operate roughly equivalent to other offense sets for 2 minutes at a time then suck for 2 minutes at a time. That would make it undeniably weaker than every other powerset.

I never said how long the lockout should be.  Could be the 10 seconds we have now or 15 even 20 seconds without being able to use Rage

And two, I know you probably maybe kinda played SS at a low level at some point as a tanker.  Just doesnt feel right, jabbing and haymakering things without taking off chunks of enemy healthbars meanwhile you probably also kinda sorta played energy melee and see a noticeable difference.  Im going to stand by what I said that SS is a lackluster set without Rage and being locked out of it could be enough of a crash.

[Bill Z Bubba]

On 12/20/2025 at 5:06 PM, Ukase said:

This is you. You can only speak for yourself. I know plenty of folks that play all day, every day. And I don't even get out much. 

The game is getting better with age. 

 

And still surprises me with how good it looks even 21.5 years later. Some of the textures on NPC costumes look better than modern AAA games. Some look dated as all hell.

I take big breaks, too, and will again in the future. But after living in ignorance of the SuperSecretPrivateServer for years, I'm very grateful that I was given the chance to not only recreate my main and enjoy the ride getting him back to his Live Server glory, but to make a whole slew of alts and cap them out in a way I never would have back in the Paragon days. And even if I don't agree with this batch of developers and their decisions all the time, it doesn't mean I've stopped being grateful for their work at keeping the lights on.

And, yes, bummed at the delay regarding UM and SS but she's built and ready to go when they are.

[WindDemon21]

On 12/19/2025 at 2:03 PM, 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

 

Still didn't fix the end cost....