Maelwys

Heather's a regular mission contact NPC. Her arcs aren't a Task Force.

FWIW, I vaguely remember a quick convo flying past on Discord about these conversions... and I seem to recall that the only things getting nixed (at that time!) were the "insanely expensive" Rare and Very Rare conversions e.g. the ones that upgrade uncommons to rares / rares to very rare and also cost buckets of influence. The other options (Threads-to-commons, Threads-to-uncommons, sidegrades, downgrades, etc) should all still be there though... right? Thanks for clearing up that they're moving to Prometheus though - I can understand not wanting newbies to think they're the "usual method" of getting a T4 incarnate ability; but for those of us with more inf than sense it'd be a shame to lose them entirely... 😉

On the OB thread, Bionic Flea did some pylon/dummy runs before the Proc fixes (though didn't use procs apparently!) and I did some after myself. There were a few others from Glacier Peak etc. too. Although the bulk of it was in the discord, BRadical in particular did a ton of them for all primaries. Macskull even produced a "Pet DPS Analyser" tool. However leaving times aside... there were apparently quite a lot of people in the OB Feedback thread who actually took the time to test the performance differences between Live and Test. But there were hardly any who had completely negative experiences. TJKnight found it better. JAMMan0000 encountered slower performance vs +4 mobs, but then realised that it was down to +5 enemies spawning where they hadn't before. Catalyze found it tougher to survive at lower levels before the HP reductions were reverted, but afterwards couldn't perceive any performance difference. Decaying Rose found the performance levels similar. Don't get me wrong - some people were certainly complaining and (rightfully!) pointing out that T1/T2 henchmen damage output had decreased in specific circumstances... but it just didn't seem to be a particularly big deal for those players who actually tested it; outside of leveless Pylon/GM fights. I was pleasantly surprised. FWIW, on the Closed Beta feedback thread there were only a few pylon/dummy times posted. There was however a lot more complaining; but most of it was directed at the rather unbalanced methods that were being experimented with to try to artificially reduce the now-even-level T1/T2 henchmens' survivability (before they finally settled on reducing their HP, which is the implementation that made it to Open Beta before getting dropped entirely). I'm not sure if we're allowed to mention the specifics of any now-defunct Closed Beta experiments... but suffice to say that it utterly sucked for Sonic Resonance, Thermal and Elec MMs; and was largely ignored by everyone else. And thankfully all the negative-but-well-reasoned-and-constructive feedback worked and the devs tossed it.

I remember levelling my first MM, a Bots/Dark circa i7. Back then you could only select up to +2 difficulty (Relentless), and they were comfortably able to do so by the time they were able to purchase SOs. Although I did have to occasionally drop the difficulty to downgrade Archvillains to EBs. It may have helped that back then Bots had considerably higher AoE damage than they do now, and setting the difficulty higher got you much larger spawns. Since then, I've levelled a pretty large number of MMs, although I very much prefer the Ranged primaries. I found Demons on Live one of the toughest to handle, purely because they didn't leash properly back then and very much resisted my attempts at micromanagement. I do tend to start out fighting even levels until level 12 ish (which is typically my "might as well swap to SOs now" threshold) but after that I'll normally only bother setting the difficulty below +2 whenever I'm trying to get my "defeat X mobs" badges or if I've disabled Exp gain (in order to complete more contact arcs) because otherwise I find it rather boring. And the main reason I don't set it higher than +2 is because whenever I'm fighting mobs that are +2/+3 to my MM, my T1 and T2 henchmen (until now!) really suffer. I am however keenly aware that some players prefer having the game set to "easy mode", including those who prefer playing suboptimal builds or are physically unable to react particularly quickly... and I expect that in those cases having your henchmen survive for longer might be a reasonable trade for them requiring a few more attacks to defeat things. Therefore in my mind it's really only the players who have the capability to play at higher difficulties but choose to run at +0 (especially if they're built well enough to never be in any danger of their henchmen dying) who are actually going to be inconvenienced by the changes... but even then, we've had multiple examples of people simply not seeing any noteworthy difference in clear times. So I'm definitely leaning towards the Devs having found a reasonable balance for establishing the new baseline performance. Soloing GMs though, I'll 100% accept that's taken a noteworthy performance hit. However those characters tend to not really be hurting for performance in the first place (AFAIK MMs were and still are the strongest AT for soloing GMs. Illusion Controllers and Crabberminds can dish out a lot of damage too, but they both have issues focusing their pets attention onto a specific target and the latter has a much harder time keeping their pets alive). And as mentioned previously... there are further changes due shortly. Not SoonTM but soon.

Whenever the T1/T2 MaxHP reduction was in effect, they were indeed taking more (proportional) damage from levelless enemies. But that was reverted and didn't make it to Live, so it should be exactly the same as before (unless you've +HP/+resistance set bonuses in which case they'll be taking less...) However they'll take anything up to 18% less damage from levelled enemies; and being able to withstand "more punishment" = "more survivable" (to me anyway!) If you don't have heals/regeneration/etc to top up their health bars, there's an argument to be made that reducing their damage output reduces their survivability (because they can't kill stuff faster than stuff can kill them!) but given that's not true vs +2s and above, IMO it's hardly a huge issue. MM performance vs low-conning foes isn't exactly poor.

TBF I'd probably place it and Sleep Grenade roughly on par... but yes, both should 100% be procced up. Though Distortion field doesn't play as nice with the hold ones IIRC - so I'd probably move a few of those slots into Slowed Response. Also, Tricannon could probably do with being swapped to the Expedient Reinforcement set to cap its Resistances. Plus perhaps a Soulbound + a Perfect Zinger proc.

No, you're not. The thread linked above has clarifications from the Devs on what was changed. And a little bit about the "why". But if you want a more detailed run-through, then this might help:

Doesn't look like Motolov scourged before https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.thug_arsonist.molotov_cocktail&at=minion_henchman

Vs +0s; Your T1 and T2 henchmen will both deal a little less damage than before vs even-level foes. But they'll also be considerably more survivable vs those same foes. The T3 henchmen and the Mastermind themselves are unchanged. That said... if you were intentionally fighting +0s because you typically struggle vs higher-level foes? Perhaps try fighting higher-level foes. Vs +1s; your T1/T2 henchmen will only be dealing very slightly less damage; but still be more survivable. Vs +2s; your T1/T2 henchmen will deal exactly the same damage as before, but still be more survivable. Vs anything over +2; they'll deal more damage and be more survivable.

The main problem is that the App has changed prerequisites a LOT over the years, and the updater has gone through some very buggy iterations. If you have a clean Win10 or Win11 PC with the three prerequisites (DotNet 8.0 Desktop Runtime and DotNet Framework 4.8 and the latest Visual C++ redistributable) then it'll install just fine and update just fine - I've done that recently on two laptops. If however you've got a PC that isn't clean there could be other software/configuration bits blocking it (like Firewalls/Antivirus/etc). And if you've got an older version of Mids which predates the Bootloader changes, then it's quite possible that you'll likely only get the notification that a patch is available but pressing the update button does nothing (because the bootloader is the thing that actually performs the newer updates; so if it can't run properly then nothing happens). In that case the only way to fix it is to install the Visual C++ Redistributable and manually replace the existing "MRBBootstrap.exe" file within your Mids installation folder with an up-to-date copy (the patcher will try to do this; but it often fails to extract the zip file containing the new exe). In most cases, ensuring you have the three prerequisite DotNet and Visual C++ bits and then downloading a working copy of the software (NOT just the latest database, but the whole installation folder) e.g. "mids_3.7.14.3+db_25.6.1082.zip" from https://updates.midsreborn.com/full_updates/ works and will let you run the update successfully.

To add to that: CPH has already stated that there's going to be another patch shortly after Christmas; and that this patch is going to contain a HUGE number of changes. To clarify: that the devs were concerned that the current MM changes would have been "lost in the crowd" if they'd released everything all at once. So they pushed them to Open Beta separately to give them a decent chance to get properly tested and refined before the next patch lands and all hell breaks loose.

Weird. I could understand it being an issue on the server side if nobody could update. But clearly some of us can. And I could also understand if the issue was only happening with a very specific version of the Mids Reborn application. But if you've been completely overwriting your entire Mids Reborn installation folder with a fresh working copy (from the zip file) then that's also ruled out. Which really just leaves the Client device environment that Mids is installed on. Something isn't playing nice. Operating System/Drivers/Software/Firewall? But its a total guessing game unless there's a more detailed error log somewhere. I'd be very tempted to ask you to zip your current Mids Reborn installation folder and upload a copy of it to Dropbox etc. just so I can see if it's possible to replicate the same fault on another device (I have eight sitting here idle, and only four have had Mids on them before)

That looks more like a connectivity issue than anything else. I can't see anything in either its own config files or the registry to suggest that Mids Reborn is attempting to do any independent network stuff (e.g. there's nowhere to set a non-standard proxy etc) so there shouldn't be any difference between Mids trying to get to that URL and any old regular app running on your PC trying to get out to that same URL. Web browsers however can complicate things - they often have their own independent network settings and don't respect the system proxy or certificate store. So it might be worth trying from a different non-web-browser app. If you open a powershell window and type in "tnc updates.midsreborn.com -port 443" does it succeed OK? (that's the built-in "Test-NetConnection" applet - and checking that destinations are reachable on specific ports is what its designed for!) If it succeeds then something's definitely something wrong with Mids specifically. So my next step would be disabling your local Windows Firewall temporarily (in case it's blocking the Mids application itself from reaching the internet) and then whitelisting both Mids and the DotNet framework components within any "Antivirus" or "Endpoint protection" products you might be using on the PC in question. If there's no software firewall running, no antivirus AND you've already nuked Mid's original installation folder and copied one of the working archives over the top of it... then the next thing I'd check would be the DotNet framework bits. But honestly that's getting into longshot territory. It's far more likely that windows has got a dodgy system proxy entry or multiple Network Adapters; or that the local Firewall/AV is silently blocking either Mids or the DotNet framework components. Computers really love to break in weird/wonderful ways... 😛

As long as you've got *all* the prerequisites the Bootloader should kick in whenever you open Mids via the main program (not via opening a previously saved build file) and hit Update. If you're missing one of the prerequisites like the Microsoft Visual C++ Redistributable (or the bootloader MRBBootstrap.exe itself) then the update will silently fail and you'll get an error recorded in your windows event log (Event Viewer > Windows Logs > Application) like this one. Worst case you can download one of the zip archives that contains the full installation folder and database (rather than the installer) and overwrite your current Mids folder with it.