TheSpiritFox

See, and I would say that mobility is NOT an intended trade off but rather an unintended aspect of the difficulty in programming effective pet AI. I'd say that the new changes to summon times are in part a move away from MMs having limited mobility, same with reducing the summon cast time for Demons down to something shorter and thus easier to quickly resummon all your pets all at once. I would not be surprised if at some point homecoming devs do even more, there have been alot of requests from MM players for a "summon pets to me" button and tbh we really do need one. Put it on a 30 second timer and make it a pet command instead of a power activation that is like a button you can hit in the pet window or something you can macro, like imagine if you could make a macro that first summons the pets to you then puts them in a stance then does the goto command so you can tell them where to go next. I would say that MMs aren't absolutely terrible for objective based speed runs, but it does require planning. My thugs/traps and demons/nature both have super speed with celerity which is enough to stealth through move PVE content, and during speed runs I am often one of the first to the objective. At the same time, yeah an MM is not good for like the beginning of Ms Lib when you have to go hunt the guard captain dudes and content like that, because of pet travel being finicky and unpredictable. The reason I disagree with you here is that the devs agree with me. Pet buffing IS intended as a trade off, but I do not think that mobility is intended as a trade off. If it were, I don't think they would have lowered pet summon cooldowns and endurance cost the way they are about to while considering further changes to the AT. So I would say that based on the above, leaving pet upgrades the same as they are but making enhancements to pet mobility seems like it's right up the alley the devs of Homecoming themselves are walking and I'm gonna hope that mobility is one of the things that gets an actual look and balance/buff pass, as while the re-upgrade issue directly affects combat and how MMs perform against enemies, the mobility issue is a primarily out of combat issue that is about how MMs perform in between fights and that seems like an area the devs would be more than willing to make adjustments to.

Its not the clicking upgrades, it's the choice. Most other classes have trade offs to doing the kinda damage MMs do, having to rebuff dead pets is a much smaller tax on the damage MMs can do than like a blaster's lack of defenses and mez protection, a corruptor or defender having to directly choose between damage and support casting, melee has to chase shit around if it's not locked down. MMs having to watch our pets, and rebuffing being a cost of failing to keep them alive, is the one tradeoff MMs really have to do the honestly large amount of damage both ST and AOE the AT is capable of doing with the right setups. The line it crosses is removing the motivation to try to keep pets alive. If they can be resummoned and then like slap your say secondary shield on them and two casts later you're back to full power, that means that you can afford, as an MM, to let your pets die much more easily and in more situations. You lose less when you lose them, less time devoted to pet management is indeed more time devoted to either just casting support powers or doing damage. And that makes the pets less a keystone of the AT. The entire line is the line whereby it is actively important to keep your pets alive, vs not nearly as relevant because they are disposable. That's the arbitrary line. Pet disposability. MMs are not supposed to treat their pets as disposable. The new changes actually encourage non disposable pets. You still have the cost of rebuffing them if they die, but you can resummon them instantly, because MMs are ALSO supposed to have all their pets out, so by buffing summon cooldowns but leaving upgrades the way they are they point the AT towards "Always have all your pets out, but protect them cause you don't want to waste time rebuffing in combat if you don't have to. It's an intended inconvenience. A limitation. The same way melee range, scourge only kicking in at half health, controllers needing to mez things to do full damage, are all limitations of the class intended to promote a certain playstyle. The entire point of games and challenges is to be given both power and limitations and use your power around the limitations. While some limitations, like rebuffing pets individually, are actually negative for the game experience not just for the MM but for everyone waiting 45 seconds for the MMs to summon and buff (originally at the start of every mission), other limitations like making pets not expendable on purpose, and limiting the damage MM attacks do, serve purposes of directing the gameplay down certain avenues that differentiate classes and change the intended play experience.

I would say it's tankier than time because between the absorb which you can perma, the aoe stacking heals, the resistance buff, you end up with demons that can take a serious pounding that nature is capable of outhealing pretty well. You gotta get it set up, including the toggle, but once the toggle is up on a spawn and such, I haven't had issues with +4x8 spawns of any type on my demons/nature. The demon prince gets pretty damn close to capped resists.

By picking a secondary that really helps them out. I would rank, in terms of keeping demons alive, the best sets in this order. Elec > Nature > thermal = Dark>time>everything else. Then its a matter of proper slotting and powerset use. My demons/nature is tough as nails, can tank any +4x8 spawn in the game as long as I only pull one spawn. My demons elec can stand in fire farms and survive.

Oh I agree I literally take SS on all my MMs to exploit the teleportation and force more frequent teleports to help keep pets up with groups. But it's a super clunky mechanic. Don't run far enough and they just run the whole distance to catch up to you and stuff. Its manipulating the AI, not working with good ai, and some changes to make abusing pet teleport due to distance not necessary would be really nice.

I'd like to see MM pets given a new run speed setup where if they get more than 60 yards away from you or the point that you set for them to goto they move at about double the speed they currently do until they get to you or the point you set, and see a button on the pet window that instantly summons all your living pets to your side basically dismissing them and resummoning them buffed as they are every 30 seconds. Between those two things, pets keeping up with you would no longer be a problem.

I like this idea. Slap all the upgrades into the first upgrade, change the second upgrade to be something primary dependent. Rather than like just a buff that kills a pet, like actually giving something similar to swap ammo or stances which gives you more control over how your pets work or allows them to pick buffs/debuffs they use or otherwise changes pet behavior. TLDR: I want bots 32 upgrade to voltron the bots together into a super bot for 90 seconds then have them separate again.

On the one hand I almost love teh ability to slot IOs into supremacy, on the other hand if you use set bonuses from any of those IO sets slotting auras into supremacy could interfere with a build. I would much rather see the auras done away with, their buffs integrated into supremacy such that they start out at like 25% effectiveness and hit 100% effectiveness between 20 and 32 somewhere, and then you have all your pets with the aura buffs by default, change all the pet aura ios to different functions which add flavor to an MM rather than being necessary.

I want to see a hard mode introduced which leaves enemy damage where it is, but massively increases enemy resistance and increases HP a bit such that it is not possible to steamroll through the HP pools of your average +4x8 mob. Increase influence and experience drops to compensate so that infl/xp per hour is the same, but it takes 4x longer to kill mobs than it used to. Then introduce some like champion mobs with some like Diablo/torchlight/etc style random buffs so that like some bosses on up have special powers which change how fights work, and you've got the makings of a game returning to tactitcal engagements and thinking through fights again.

I say that because you and a number of other people seem to want to reduce the complexity of the class and make it easier to play from a game balance perspective, and most of your arguments come down to "it's annoying to have limitations" I cannot for the life of me understand why you would want to remove the (rather minor) depth that exists with keeping pets around and buffed. Like, masterminds are a class where there are often decisions, minor ones, but decisions to be made in battle. Much moreso than a brute or scrapper who just waltzes into a group and starts hitting things, we choose where our pets are, whats getting the next buff, to attack or support, and you want to remove some of those choices. You want to not have to think about it, to have less to do and streamline the way the actual class plays to remove some of the strategic depth masterminds have in encounters. When you say that that's a good thing, yes, I say your opinion is objectively wrong, that you do not have an appreciation for the actual design of the class. Saying that you don't like having to rebuff in combat or that pets should be more disposable is exactly like saying a brute should just go to 100% fury as soon as it hits something. Saying that a pet class being forced to pay attention to it's pets to keep them alive and doing full damage is bad class design... No, that's wrong. Objectively speaking, you want to change Masterminds from what they are to something more mindless, which would straight up be a negative for the class. You want to not have trade offs to make in order to attack with your powers, you want to have to babysit your pets less and not care as much if they die because you're a 2 second cast from being back at full power instead of 3 2 second casts and some pet location management along the way and like you're missing the point entirely that those limitations are a direct intent in order to force masterminds to play a certain way. The same way Brute fury or containment or whatever else works, being designed to force you to play certain ways which go along with the class design. Saying that rebuffing in combat is a shit sandwich? Sorry but that same bad logic works equally well on containment, scourge, fury, etc. Its not even logic, your entire argument, and everyone else's who shares your opinion, is "I don't really care about balance, it annoys me personally and it would be progress if the class was changed to not annoy me personally" and you walk past every balance consideration anyone brings up as if they do not matter. Walk past the purpose of the limitation imposed on the AT because you do not like that limitation. So yeah, I can say that you're just wrong. Because your opinion as you have expressed it centers entirely around your personal preferences in gaming and you and certain other people like you seem to just want to like walk over content spamming powers and watching things die without having to think too much about it. There are ATs for that, MMs have not and will never be one of them. Moreso than any other class this one has always required you to think on your feet for max effectiveness, and taking away some of the thinking on your feet in order to shave a few seconds off of when you hit max damage again is not in any way an actual improvement to the class, it's just reducing the complexity and making it more mindless. Making masterminds have fewer limitations than we already do (we are one of the strongest ATs in the game at present) is something that is not needed. Changing fundamental class design because it annoys you and literally for no other in game reason is a bad reason to make real balance changes that affect more than just quality of life. Neither you nor anyone else making these suggestions is taking any of that into account, its just a whole bunch of people making bad arguments about how they are annoyed by it, how people who don't want it to change are living in teh past, every single one of you is calling "making something less annoying to me personally" the same thing as "progress" and like no that's a bad faith argument that enshrines your annoyance as the most fundamental aspect to game balance. Its ridiculous and not an argument. Having to rebuff in combat serves a very specific purpose to encourage a specific playstyle across the entire AT. "Keep your pets alive" is a GOOD goal to give a pet class from a design and gameplay perspective. It makes perfect logical sense, it meshes with the support function of our secondary. This all fits together in a vision of the class's purpose, role in groups, intended functioning and especially intended limitations which give you things to work around and pay attention to as a mastermind in order to perform effectively. Forcing you to pick between like supporting a team mate, or rebuffing a pet, or attacking is a good idea. It creates meaningful choices during fights which affect what you do and how the fight flows from that point forward. Masterminds more than most other ATs have these kinds of meaningful choices where we often can pick between supporting our team, supporting our pets, attacking something, debuffing or mezzing something, and any of those actions could be your next action, and you as the mastermind get to decide which is the best next action to take. That is GOOD game design. That is intended game design. It is strategic depth to a class in a game which is increasingly full of characters which cannot be challenged by much if any content. You don't have to like it, but it comes back to, go play another AT, don't change this one to homogenize it and make it more mindless cause you don't want to have to deal with depth. Don't advocate to ruin everyone else's game experience so you can have something closer to a crabbermind than a current gamestate MM.

While MM endurance costs do need a look (and will probably get one) that doesn't change the fact that MMs should not have pets out and then just run an attack chain and not have to support their pets (or their team) Like our secondary is a support set for a reason, you genuinely do not like the function of the AT. You want to attack and have pets which I repeat is like Crabbermind/controller territory and you are trying to move MMs away from what the AT is. Its not "a few people stuck in their ways" like the entire point of this is that City of Heroes has a certain feel, has worked a certain way, and tons of us are in fact here for the nostalgia binge, to play a game we liked on Live and with the cottage rule the changes you want would never have begun to be dreamed of beyond players asking for it and getting told a hard no. Like you describe it as stuck in their ways which is an inherently negative statement as if the way they are is bad, and it's not. It serves a very specific in game purpose. Why not just make pets invincible? Why not remove containment and just double controller damage? Why make brutes build fury? Why not make controller pets have the same controls as MM pets? These limitations serve to create challenges in the use and control of the class for you to adapt around. To differentiate the function and mechanics of the ATs enough that playing one class is not exactly like playing another, and moving away from that diversity in mechanics towards something more homogenized is not a step forward. Like, if you don't like the homecoming attitude towards changes then again maybe this isn't the server for you? This is not a problem, this is how tons of us who play on these servers want it. New content is cool. Buffing weak powersets, quality of life adjustments to eliminate the grind intended to keep you paying a subscription, these are welcome changes and are cool. Changing the fundamental design of a class from what it has been literally since launch is not cool. Its not what most people want. You want to remove the limitations. I have a quote for that. All scientific advancement due to intellegence overcoming, compensating, for limitations. Can't carry a load, so invent wheel. Can't catch food, so invent spear. Limitations. No limitations, no advancement. No advancement, culture stagnates. -Professor Mordin Solus

1) The devs have stated (in another thread, after I posted the comment you're quoting) they will not make pet upgrades auto 2) The entire design of the class is around supporting your pets and keeping them alive, this is not "living in the past" it is intended class design, your minions are not intended to be disposable and making them disposable would make them more like controller and veat and epic pets and such, which is not intended. 3) No I fully disagree, masterminds are fine the way they are, its not that there's something wrong with the design, its that you don't like it, and you should make a controller or crabbermind instead of a mastermind. Like, I get you do not like the intended class design, that doesn't mean there's something wrong with it, it means you do not like masterminds. That's not a valid reason to change a fundamental aspect of the AT's class balance, your pets not being intended to be disposable, even with the current changes. Making pets auto upgrade would not be a change for the better, it would be a change for the worse. It would remove any impetus to keep pets alive and it would remove the tactical choices of upgrading your pets, supporting your team, casting one more damage power. It would remove depth from the class, which is a step backwards from the intended design of masterminds, not a step forward. I get you don't like the complexity, that doesn't mean the class should change, it means you should make controllers.

I have participated in a few forums that are like this, if you block someone they can no longer see your posts, and I 100% agree it would be an improvement if it is necessary. So far I only have two people on my forums ignore list, but both of them are people who I do not want seeing my posts, interacting with them or me, or otherwise even able to see I exist. Right now I have to settle for just not reading their stuff when it pops up, but they can still see and respond to all of mine and quote me and such, and this does enable harassment if someone wants because they can spam your posts and follow your comments and basically everyone else can see what they're saying, and you know that they are saying something. I would love to be able to make someone not able to see MY comments any more than I can see theirs so that they have no opportunity to interact with me at all.

I'm glad there's an ignore function. Its nice. I am not glad that I can see "you have ignored this person's post" repeatedly in a thread. Is it possible to just remove that? Remove any notification that someone you have ignored has posted at all beyond other people quoting them?

I've dealt with that dude on more than one occasion. He argues without listening, repeats his points without addressing discussion, and constantly makes flat out false statements which he has zero understanding of game mechanics to back up. He is an active nightmare to deal with and HIM very specifically, I do not want to interact with. He is the pidgeon who knocks the pieces on the chessboard over.

Yeah I kinda feel like making the minions have a level difference was almost more cosmetic than anything else to emphasize the differences between T1, T2, and T3 pets to players. Its not like they couldn't have made them all the same level as the caster and still tuned it to have the exact same DPS with all your pets being your level, that always felt to me like some dude in design just got the idea and was like "yeah this makes it really unique" without thinking the balance repercussions down the road over very hard.

Every single person I have seen argue against upgrading is talking about being annoyed and wasting time. Like the hyperbole inherent in "this is a stepping stone to fixing Masterminds" is something that these people don't even wanna examine, they aren't talking in numbers they're mostly making emotional statements and broad generalizations pretending that MMs are like broken and that quality of life fixes are somehow important to making the AT playable at all.

I agree. Like, It honestly mystifies me how people want to lower the complexity of pet interactions on a mastermind. This is the essence of the AT, it's what it was originally designed around, and people wanna turn Masterminds into Crabberminds with pet commands it seems. Just go man a soldier. Have a character with it's own softcapped defenses, attack chain, and a bunch of pets that ignore you but do decent damage.

I mean, you're flat out wrong, but hey you're allowed to be if you want, it's not like it's gonna change MMs at this point.

This just means your personal preferences stray from the intended class design. Never let your pets die was a good philosophy, its integral to the design of MMs, making your pets more important and require more watching than like just a controller pet. You don't find MMs a fun class, but that doesn't mean they aren't a fun class, it means that your preference is to play something other than an MM. Changing this would be like saying you don't like fury cause brutes have to build it up and its better to be a scrapper damage wise so you want brutes to work like scrappers. Buffing your pets is directly intended to create opportunity cost. Keep your pets alive or lower your damage, lose a pet you decide between immediately rebuffing it or casting support/damage powers or whatever else during combat. You are SUPPOSED to try to keep your pets alive, the entire class is based around it you're a goddamn pet class with support powers to support your pets. The fact that you do not like that design does not mean there's something at all wrong with masterminds, it means that they aren't the AT for you.

1) No its not theorycrafting. I carry ITFs on a number of masterminds, I have soloed the ITF on both my thugs/traps and my demons nature at +1x8. My MMs do great in incarnate content as well. You're the one who doesn't know the AT if you think that all masterminds lack end game. There are a number of set combinations that can handle incarnate content fine before you've even slotted your alpha and which laugh at incarnate content as much as everything else once you've got them T4ed. 2) You're wrong. I actually have a few macros designed to target my bruiser on my thugs/traps and feed him any reds, yellows, or oranges I have in my insp tray. The oranges just to clear space, but the reds and yellows help his damage a decent bit. You can drag and drop inspirations on pets. Pets do benefit from all buffs except recharge to some degree, though endurance is questionable. But accuracy, damage, defense, resistance, mez protection, all of those apply to pets same as they do to characters. Also, pets have the same resistance caps as tanks. My demons/elec has a Demon Prince with above 80% resist to I think all but psionic and negative while still having some defense to all through auras and maneuvers. 3) Masterminds can be among the highest single and aoe damage characters in the game. My thugs/traps has a top pylon time of 55 seconds. That's over 600 DPS, or roughly the same DPS as a TW/Bio scrapper. You are the one theory crafting here dude. 4) Nope. Making pets share IO bonuses would be broken. Its already possible to softcap alot of sets, if you could make resist focused MM builds hit the softcap as well through slotting MMs would be damn close to immortal in all content. You do not have a clue about the actual math behind this stuff and are making generalized statements with no actual basis in reality dude. 5) You have already had it explained to you the purpose and benefit of having summons require rebuffing. A GM posted above as to why the decision was made. You can disagree with that decision if you want, but you are not disagreeing with that decision, you're pretending that decision does not exist. The entire purpose is to create tactical decisions with opportunity costs with supporting your team, supporting your pets, using your own damage powers, etc. You just have no appreciation for the depth of the class, and honestly you do not have any actual clue how the class works at high levels I suspect, or how to build a mastermind properly to actually be good in high level content. Here, a post I made on reddit about how to actually make a solid ass mastermind. Go learn. And this is is me getting MoITF badge solo at +1x1 on my demons/nature. I beat the entire TF in 90 minutes without dying on an MM. Still want to say MMs are not good in the ITF? The only reason I did not do x8 on this is cause it would have probably doubled the amount of time it took just to grind through the whole TF solo.

Dude I literally made a bots/traps the day CoV launched. Auto upgrades would be an actively bad choice for the AT that would harm game balance. MMs are balanced around a number of factors, including resummon costs. Resummoning and rebuffing is meant to take time and endurance, not to be just like "if something dies a 1-2 second cast time later its like it never happened" The entire point is to FORCE you to choose between like, cast support power on team mate, make sure living pets are still alive, decide if you wanna throw one or two more attacks or if you want to buff your pets back up immediately. These choices matter during fights, they create tactical situations where there are trade offs to whatever choice you make in battle, which makes fights more varied and interesting. MMs are NOT the "spam 5 powers in a rotation until stuff dies" class and should not be. This is not something that is broken about the AT. MM pets are by far the strongest pet entities in the game, and MMs are in their current state and with the right set picks and IO builds, some of the most powerful characters you can have in both solo and group content. Resummon time and cost is, as has been stated above, incentive for the player to attempt to keep their pets alive. That's not a broken feature of the class, it is an intended design to create opportunity cost to choices during fights. We are very powerful, but we must maintain that power and protect it, and if we do not we have to spend precious time fixing the issue. In a game where most encounters are not like WoW raid boss length, time matters more, decisions matter more, and having pet resummons cost time gives you genuine incentive to keep your pets alive, pay attention to where they are, what they're doing, how much health they have, what they're fighting. We are Masterminds. If any AT in this game should have detail oriented mechanics, tactical choices in combat, and complexity to keep track of, it is us. Or if you want to hear it from someone smarter than me lol

If you make it a PBAOE make it so that all the pets do the upgrade animation plz

=0 I did not see this one in the patch notes damn that's a nice buff.

Agree. Bigger aoes, more damage, make the commando's full auto have a 60 second cooldown and make the AI try to use it every time it's up, remove the medic from the T1 pets and replace serum with a medic summon giving you 8 permanent pets and a mule power if needed, Though honestly I really like your formations idea. Make it macroable so you can like hit a button and set all your pets to individual stances or whatever and pick who's doing what and it would be awesome. Maybe even give like, the more pets in a formation the stronger the buff they all get. You can "franken buff" your pets each with their own buff and they all get different benefits, or you can put them all in one formation and the buff they all get is decently stronger. That sounds like exactly the kinda pet management I signed up with this AT to have and would give me at least tens of hours of amusement figuring out ideal merc setups and macros. But seriously if nothing else buff their defense, resistance, and damage and do ANYTHING else with serum besides a goddamn crash buff.