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

[WindDemon21]

On 12/19/2025 at 2:03 PM, The Curator said:

Obscure Sustenance

• No longer lists AoE/Negative types on its attack types
• Now accepts endurancre modification enhancements and sets
• Recharge increased from 60s to 180s
• Regeneration and recovery buff scales and durations adjusted
  • 10s +175% regen remains unchanged
  • 20s +175% regen lowered to 136%
  • 60s +100% regen duration increased to 120s
  • 10s +60% recovery remains unchanged
  • 20s +38% recovery remains unchanged
  • 30s +10% recovery duration increased to 120s

 

So I'm not sure why my post (without curse words or animosity so it's not violating anything besides going against the devs for clear reasons, I will be screenshotting this post to prove that), but NOOO. So the solution to being told that the prior nerf was too much, as it was already balanced by offering half the survival in order to get the recovery help, is to nerf the power FURTHER!? By being roughly FIVE TIMES WORSE, and nearly 10 times worse than the live version!??! Just NO! Leave the power how it is on live, as mentioned it's already balanced as it is. But seriously, this nerf!? Just leave it as it is on live. This nerf is absolutely insane!

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

What if they limited the number of damage procs a power could slot, or turned procs into an actual set bonus instead of letting them be equipped by themselves with no set investment at all?

 

Then, depending on the limits, you'd be forcing respecs on lots and lots of builds + making slightly different powers the most optimal ones.  But it won't happen because you remember how we had 500 posts of people completely losing their minds over Rage?  Multiply that by 50 to get the number of people who would be very upset over this.

Edited Tuesday at 08:05 PM by aethereal

[Erratic1]

11 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Then, depending on the limits, you'd be forcing respecs on lots and lots of builds + making slightly different powers the most optimal ones.  But it won't happen because you remember how we had 500 posts of people completely losing their minds over Rage?

 

Interesting mischaracterization, as most of the debate was over the negatives added to Rage and what should be done and not agonizing over needing to rebuild.

 

Procs should be categorized as Damage, Buff, Debuff, and Control and when a power is activated, if there are two or more procs from the same category which would fire, one is chosen randomly to actually do so and others are suppressed.

 

 

[Myrmidon]

7 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Procs should be categorized as Damage, Buff, Debuff, and Control and when a power is activated, if there are two or more procs from the same category which would fire, one is chosen randomly to actually do so and others are suppressed.

 

 

 

And just like that, Procs are rebalanced and everything else can be looked at instead of being balanced around them.

[skoryy]

Y'all are really that much in a hurry to nerf almost everyone, huh. In the words of Lucius Fox, "Good luck."

 

Shower thought: Procs aren't the problem. The overabundance of AoE burst damage is.

Edited Tuesday at 08:44 PM by skoryy

[Black_Assassin]

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

I don't think I could afford IOs back in the day because I had no idea how to leverage various systems to make lots of influence

 

Yeah same 😂 I was dirt poor for a serious length of time until I read some guides on how to use the market. This was all before AE made it easy. 

 

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

6-slotting powers was fairly common back in the day

 

Correct, but only because that was the meta. Like proc loading is meta today. Both had their own inherent issues that can be called "broken" if you want to call it that. 

 

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

the old devs seemed to not have intended that we should be stacking procs, that they would be extra bits of damage rather than our actual powers being the extra bit of damage.

 

Perhaps, perhaps not. Guess it's speculation at best. I could be wrong, but my understanding is that the original PPM system didn't take slotted recharge into account and that was something added by HC. So perhaps the devs intended originally for full sets to be slotted but the ppm system would mean that that slotted recharge didn't affect proc rates and therefore we wouldn't be punished for it. I will say that very quickly people would have begun proc-loading so there would have had to been a decision made quickly if that was something that is wanted or not. Perhaps there would have been a 1 damage proc per power limit imposed, maybe they would have been totally happy with the damage limits being pushed with procs like they are today. 🤷

 

1 hour ago, Captain Citadel said:

but it feels like the current "culture" of proc-bomb builds means I'm expected to build every AT for maximum damage, not maximum role performance, if that makes sense.

 

Yeah I hear you on that. I personally cannot pin down and put my finger on exactly what has moved the meta towards where it is, but I think there are a few things at play that I can say have helped. 

 

PPM is one, as it has opened up builds to have the option of slotting more procs instead of set bonuses.

 

Full set bonuses are only really useful for chasing two things. Global recharge and defenses.

 

The former is still something that is in favour in the meta to some degree. You still see 5 set purples/full set preventative medicine reactive defenses etc. However it's changed somewhat due to the PPM system making FFB +rech proc grow in usefulness and removing alpha spiritual from usefulness due to it lowering proc rates too much. So perma hasten just isn't that important when ageless core and FFB exist to close that gap that grew from spiritual falling out of favour. 

 

Regarding defense bonuses, the slot tax you have to pay to reach them no longer confer the survivability they used to. This is due to another HC change (i27p4 typing vector changes) that really put the nail in the coffin for the old S/L defense build meta that used to cover almost everything in the game. 

 

2 hours ago, Captain Citadel said:

performance-enhancing drugs

 

Accept your amplifier and inspiration overlords 🙌😂

 

2 hours ago, arcane said:

they aren’t broken except in niche cases

 

I guess we need to define broken. I don't think it's a good word to use because it's quite emotive. I don't have issues with reeling in performance outliers if it makes sense though. 

 

1 hour ago, FupDup said:

There should also be a lot more non-damage utility type procs, and some categories like Stuns and Sleeps are desperately underserved while Holds are completely fucking bloated with choices. 

 

Hard agree on this. Also need to bring up the usefulness of the low level procs that aren't useful due to their low ppm and low mag. The various mez procs come to mind, like the various stun procs etc. 

[Zahnee]

On 12/22/2025 at 9:46 AM, arcane said:

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.

I have proved it. Go look at my breakdown on the SS focused feedback thread.
 

You could probably allocate some of the time you spend playing keyboard warrior to play test these builds and provide focused feedback, but I’m willing to bet that in-game results wouldn’t support your narrative. 
 

I actually just ran another test on Tankers comparing double Rage clear speed to Battle Axe and they were nearly identical, and Battle Axe doesn’t crash or cut into 140% of potential damage cap. 

[WindDemon21]

1 hour ago, Myrmidon said:

 

And just like that, Procs are rebalanced and everything else can be looked at instead of being balanced around them.

This would be very bad though. It would work for damage proc,s though completley invalidating more than one in a power also is an issue. I could see at the very least they just being subject to ED, 2 procs work, 3rd works at half value etc. But doing this for non-damage procs would really screw up slotting on some powers like aura of insanity and would be really bad.

 

Edit: honestly, a much faster way to fix damage procs, lower their value, but increase their PPM, so they're more useful across all powers, but those big powers that you Proc bomb, would result in less proc damage

Edited Tuesday at 09:47 PM by WindDemon21

[Erratic1]

2 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

This would be very bad though. It would work for damage proc,s though completley invalidating more than one in a power also is an issue.

 

It only invalidates them firing at the same time. How often is that? You still benefit in that more chances at firing results in more fires according--they just do not overlap.

 

[arcane]

3 hours ago, Zahnee said:

I have proved it. Go look at my breakdown on the SS focused feedback thread.
 

You could probably allocate some of the time you spend playing keyboard warrior to play test these builds and provide focused feedback, but I’m willing to bet that in-game results wouldn’t support your narrative. 
 

I actually just ran another test on Tankers comparing double Rage clear speed to Battle Axe and they were nearly identical, and Battle Axe doesn’t crash or cut into 140% of potential damage cap. 

I would be absolutely shocked if you managed to prove anything since I highly doubt you figured out how to objectively weigh S/T DPS, AoE DPS, and added protection/mitigation/CC all in one metric, but feel free to link me to the post you’re talking about if you want me to verify. I’m not going to read the entire thread again just to check if you’re capable of accounting for all variables.

Edited yesterday at 12:04 AM by arcane

[arcane]

17 minutes ago, Erratic1 said:

 

It only invalidates them firing at the same time. How often is that?
 

 

Only like every attack

[aethereal]

3 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

 

Interesting mischaracterization, as most of the debate was over the negatives added to Rage and what should be done and not agonizing over needing to rebuild.

 

Procs should be categorized as Damage, Buff, Debuff, and Control and when a power is activated, if there are two or more procs from the same category which would fire, one is chosen randomly to actually do so and others are suppressed.

 

"We proposed a mild and arguable nerf for one power and people, definitely including me, Erratic1, completely lost it for two solid weeks.  I know what will make it better: we should do a much more serious nerf that will affect 20x as many people, I'm sure that will solve all the controversy."

 

Listen to yourself, man.

[Erratic1]

46 minutes ago, arcane said:

Only like every attack

 

Then that is definitely broken. And somehow Bio and Rage are in need of nerfs instead?

[Erratic1]

46 minutes ago, aethereal said:

Listen to yourself, man.

 

You first. There is significant difference between discussion, even passionate discussion, and (quoting here), "...completely losing their minds."

 

Or should I just read everying you type as hyperbolic to the extreme?

[bAss_ackwards]

13 hours ago, Shin Magmus said:

When you revisit T9s, 60s should be the absolute minimum for all of them but MoG.

 

Awhh c'mon, they could even rename it to Minute of Glory. 😉

[Bob]

It is what it is at this point, but are we ever going to see some blaster balancing in general to bring things closer in line for damage?  I don't expect anything to outclass fire in raw DPS, but a lot of abilities just don't make sense with animation time and the damage they deal.  Fire is so far ahead it is mind boggling that an attempt was seemingly never made to adjust other things.  Closest thing might have been the quick snipe change, but even then.. not all snipes are created equal for some reason lol

 

I suppose it doesn't really matter for 'beating the game', but it is tiring when people simply desire one thing over everything else by such a large margin.

[aethereal]

1 hour ago, Erratic1 said:

 

You first. There is significant difference between discussion, even passionate discussion, and (quoting here), "...completely losing their minds."

 

Or should I just read everying you type as hyperbolic to the extreme?

 

There is a significant difference between discussion and completely losing your mind (yes, yes, figuratively obviously), and you are on the wrong side of that significant difference.  It was more than 600 posts by people who overwhelmingly didn't try the change over a 10 second debuff for durability on Tankers.  Guys, just get a grip.  And, to be clear: maybe it was not the right move, I don't have a strong opinion on Tanker SS balance, but this was clearly an overwhelming emotional reaction, not a technical balance discussion.

 

And, hey, look, if you have a big emotional reaction to balance changes, that's actually fine. I'm not here to police you.  I just want you to take a really hard look in the mirror and say, "Do I, in my heart of hearts, truly believe that the solution to people having emotional reactions to mild nerfs is bigger nerfs that affect vastly larger numbers of people?"

[Bob]

6 minutes ago, aethereal said:

And, hey, look, if you have a big emotional reaction to balance changes, that's actually fine. I'm not here to police you.  I just want you to take a really hard look in the mirror and say, "Do I, in my heart of hearts, truly believe that the solution to people having emotional reactions to mild nerfs is bigger nerfs that affect vastly larger numbers of people?"

Eh, not sure that logic is any better though.  At the end of the day, if a game has a big balance issue, then players tend to lean in favor of taking advantage of it.  So just because players hopped on the meta train, shouldn't be reason not to change something.  Otherwise you get the blizzard style of balance (infamous in diablo 3) where you refuse to nerf the flavor of the month, and introduce big powercreep into the game, requiring further reworking of the game itself.

 

Of course city of heroes is a bit different in that there isn't really much of an end game to use such power on (that matters), but it does change how people perceive others and the powersets they choose.  It still happens to this day (more so on excelsior, but even on everlasting to varying extents).  

 

With that said, I don't disagree that people shouldn't be getting too emotional over this.  Not to mention it isn't even the most glaring issue the game has anyway.  Powerset imbalance within each AT is.

[aethereal]

18 minutes ago, Bob said:

Eh, not sure that logic is any better though.  At the end of the day, if a game has a big balance issue, then players tend to lean in favor of taking advantage of it.  So just because players hopped on the meta train, shouldn't be reason not to change something.

 

It's really not me taking a stance on logic, it's me saying, "Clearly the devs actually care if the player base reacts poorly to changes," and "nerfing literally everyone's build is something the player base will predictably react poorly to."  And I feel like everyone I say this to tries really, really hard not to address that point and instead say like, "But I really think that procs are a problem!"

 

Okay!  But that's not what I'm talking about.

[Zahnee]

32 minutes ago, aethereal said:

 

There is a significant difference between discussion and completely losing your mind (yes, yes, figuratively obviously), and you are on the wrong side of that significant difference.  It was more than 600 posts by people who overwhelmingly didn't try the change over a 10 second debuff for durability on Tankers.  Guys, just get a grip.  And, to be clear: maybe it was not the right move, I don't have a strong opinion on Tanker SS balance, but this was clearly an overwhelming emotional reaction, not a technical balance discussion.

 

And, hey, look, if you have a big emotional reaction to balance changes, that's actually fine. I'm not here to police you.  I just want you to take a really hard look in the mirror and say, "Do I, in my heart of hearts, truly believe that the solution to people having emotional reactions to mild nerfs is bigger nerfs that affect vastly larger numbers of people?"

I came out with objective findings. Go scroll through the entirety of that and tell me who else actually tested the performance of Rage vs UM. It was a bunch of “+140% damage is overpowered because it’s +140% damage man!!!” And “UM feels fine! I didn’t even use Rage antway!” 
 

You want to talk about emotional, the anti-proc, anti-Rage crowd can’t even provide any type of evidence outside of bad napkin math and “feels.” Why don’t they go play both and test them against each other as well as other sets within the same AT and report their findings? Because it wouldn’t fit their narrative.
 

I just ran another test and Battle Axe gets similar (within 2 seconds) clear speed as SS with double Rage. Except BA doesn’t have a crash or cut 140% into your damage cap. 
 

I don’t even care about Rage—I’m about performance, and I’d leave Rage in a heartbeat for something better. But UM was not it. At least not for solo play that I mostly do. 

[Captain Citadel]

7 minutes ago, Zahnee said:

I came out with objective findings. Go scroll through the entirety of that and tell me who else actually tested the performance of Rage vs UM. It was a bunch of “+140% damage is overpowered because it’s +140% damage man!!!” And “UM feels fine! I didn’t even use Rage antway!” 
 

You want to talk about emotional, the anti-proc, anti-Rage crowd can’t even provide any type of evidence outside of bad napkin math and “feels.” Why don’t they go play both and test them against each other as well as other sets within the same AT and report their findings? Because it wouldn’t fit their narrative.
 

I just ran another test and Battle Axe gets similar (within 2 seconds) clear speed as SS with double Rage. Except BA doesn’t have a crash or cut 140% into your damage cap. 
 

I don’t even care about Rage—I’m about performance, and I’d leave Rage in a heartbeat for something better. But UM was not it. At least not for solo play that I mostly do. 

I think maybe one of the reasons people were so ready to just jump to Unleashed Might and forget about it (myself included!) is because it seems unlikely Rage will ever get deleted, so the best we can hope for is a slightly weaker version of it that has no crash.

 

I firmly believe the only way to truly fix Super Strength is to reduce the overwhelming impact Rage has on its entire damage profile, and even if that means Super Strength still has a power in it called Rage, people who don’t want it to change will consider that to be equivalent to killing it.

[Erratic1]

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

There is a significant difference between discussion and completely losing your mind (yes, yes, figuratively obviously), and you are on the wrong side of that significant difference. 

 

If that is what you want to believe, nothing I can do (other than perhaps application of ECT) will change that, but people believe all sorts of crazy stuff.

 

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

It was more than 600 posts by people who overwhelmingly didn't try the change over a 10 second debuff for durability on Tankers.

 

Oh gosh! Everyone did not approach the matter from the standpoint of being a Tanker (who gets an ATO buff which negates the discussed penalty). How horrible other ATs were considered and the impact on hybrid sets was mentioned more than once. Hmmm...if someone was losing their mind, I think it is evident who that was.

1 hour ago, aethereal said:

And, hey, look, if you have a big emotional reaction to balance changes, that's actually fine.

 

I don't. That was the point in particular with your libelous accusation. I was (its all documented) perfectly fine with shifting to UM. I argued the nerf to Rage was a bit extreme for it to be really in consideration for most ATs (you know...not just Tankers). I definitely did not rant are get emtional because I had been on the test server and found a build to my liking. And if you want to try to find a post proving otherwise feel free. You won't succeed.

 

As I noted, the record there. You're utterly misrepresenting what I and others said.

 

[Erratic1]

56 minutes ago, Captain Citadel said:

I think maybe one of the reasons people were so ready to just jump to Unleashed Might and forget about it (myself included!) is because it seems unlikely Rage will ever get deleted, so the best we can hope for is a slightly weaker version of it that has no crash.

 

Well, I did construct an SS/Willpower Brute on Test, a potential replacement for my SS/Bio Brute, and was satisfied with the performance of UM (and Willpower too, as Bio is slated for nerfing too). Most notably, I wrote more than once that SS/Willpower was what I was planning to switch too, as opposed to what some here have characterized as, "...completely losing...[my] mind." I merely argued against a need to make Rage an unpalatable choice for those who, unlike myself, were not willing to rebuild.

 

Now, while I was prepared to go forward happily, I will not say I did not notice people testing UM on Tankers and finding its damage particularly underwhelming. But Tankers...they can survive the Rage crash better than any other AT, so presumably the out for them is continued use of Rage (stacked or not).

[PoptartsNinja]

4 hours ago, bAss_ackwards said:

 

Awhh c'mon, they could even rename it to Minute of Glory. 😉

While they're at it, they could give it an alternate animation of spraypainting the player character's teeth silver.

 

We already have spraycans and I'd bet one of the texting emojis or maybe even the newspaper salesman shout and arm swing would get pretty close...

[Faultline]

19 hours ago, Erratic1 said:

It only invalidates them firing at the same time. How often is that? You still benefit in that more chances at firing results in more fires according--they just do not overlap.

 

 

I'll preface this by saying: I'm not a powers dev and I will not be making any changes like the one I'm about to mention.

 

I just wrote some code for a separate project to allow enhancements to know how many with a specific tag are slotted in a power, and this could be used to scale damage procs based on how many there are in the power, something like 10% efficiency loss for each. One proc in power = no change from current situation, six procs in power = 50% damage from the procs in that power.