Palladiamors

And yet Commando's rocket launcher is still a four minute cooldown while not being as useful as Beast Masters Terrible Howl, which does the same damage except ICE instead of physical AND terrorizes the targets and is just a minute cooldown. Mercenaries are in desperate need of a quality of life pass that brings them up to date in things like the sniping changes and to make stealth DO SOMETHING for spec ops and such.

Oh heck no. Masterminds are dang near PERFECT. The focus isn't on the player by design, you are there to ferry your minions from one target to the next and you are there to supplement their damage and keep them alive/the target debuffed. I do wish they'd go with passive equip buff other servers have going on but no, they do not need to be replaced with more personal powers. If you want more focus on the player go play a archetype that doesn't rely on or even HAVE minions, geez. Plenty of blasters, scrappers, ETC out there for you to play as without trying to change a playstyle other people like.

Might I suggest a Mastermind inspired power pool, called "Hired Help"? Three basic summons and two buffs for them. Nothing major, a low DPS pet, a simple debuffer pet, and a simple healer pet. The first pet can use a pistol or even just use basic fighting pool attacks, the second can debuff defense/resistence, to-hit, and recharge, and the third can do basic small single target heal, basic group wide AoE, and a basic HoT, either AoE or single target. First buff gives the second attack listed, third gives the third ability. Nice, simple, and thematic. Further it can help some sets earlier on like controllers without being too much in the long run. Also by 'basic' I mean 'lower than merc medic heal'. Also throwing in my voice for a single pistol pool.

Bot are THE most durable of the mastermind powersets so you're doing something wrong. IO them at 22 ((Since you have the assault bot I know you're a higher level)) and put two resistance IO's into your protector bots. For me I go three damage, one accuracy, and two defense for them. For time you want Farsight six slotted with three defense, three recharge reduction, and Temporal mending six slotted with three healing, three recharge reduction and make sure you have Times Juncture and keep it on. This makes Farsight two seconds off from being perma, or 'good enough', and puts mending at a nine second cooldown which should be plenty while Times Juncture lowers the enemies damage done. For comparison, I have a ninja/time and with that combination I also had to take Aid Other to keep up with the healing load, while my bots/time doesn't need aid other to keep up. Neither does thugs/time. If it gives you something to shoot for, my merc/nature is at fifty now and I am running at +3+3 and only rarely lose any soldiers and Merc is considered to be the worst of the mastermind powersets. Also offhand advice, give each of the materminds a run up to twelve at least. Bots gets heavily lauded but for my buck its one of the least fun of the mastermind sets. Off the top of my head the only job that doesn't really get started even at twelve is beast master, but eventually they develop into a whirlwind of destruction. Fragile destruction, but destruction none the less.

Bit of a request, is there any way you could lower the cooldown of the Commando's Rocket launcher, over in Mercenaries? 4 minutes is a bit much for the damage it does.

Nature is just an amazing set all around. I brought this up in another thread, but -res, +res, shields, a decent duration damage buff, to-hit buff, and endurance discount, a ground patch AoE heal and endurance restoration, decent length AoE heal with a great HoT component made better by your bloom count, a revive for parties, so on and so forth. The set really is just amazing and can help even the anemic damage of Mercenaries while keeping them alive. Combining it with a set like Demons that already has its own -res, shields, and heals just seems like overkill to me. But fun overkill.

For single target, Ninja's are far and away the best for damage. They do decent in groups due to how the AI responds to caltrops, too. They are a bit on the endurance heavy side though, and obviously the suckers are squishy but their low cooldown, constant damage ((With Jonin dealing high damage to boot, second only to Skeletons but without Skeletons flaws)) and the Oni's damage is non-physical and decent stacks up real quick. If you can keep them alive they'll murder anything in a hurry. Even if you just meatbag them they'll still do a good job in making things dead. For multi-target its between Bots and Demons. From Bots it primarily comes from the fairly short cooldown on the Assault Bots missiles, with some help being tossed in from Protectors Photon Grenade. Little bots technically have a conal attack but the chances of it hitting more then one or two enemies is meh at best. Demons are in a similar position, but with the breath attacks from the demonlings being a bit better in AoE situations. Hellfire Gargoyle and his constant AoE damage coupled with his AoE abilities make him the star of that show, with the demon Prince's AoE focusing more on crowd control and debuffs. Pure survivability, that's going to the Bots obviously. Don't even think I need to explain this one. I will say that Bots/Kinetics is weird. Bots is knockback heavy and Kinetics heal focuses on the target, which is usually flying across the room so that makes keeping them alive via those means ((In cases where something manages to damage them)) unreliable. The damage increases are nice but Bot's low overall damage is still a bit of a factor. Also, personal note, Bots being primarily energy damage is over-rated and heavily countered by their long cooldowns. Best jack of all trades? Friggin' demons. They aren't really the best at any one thing but they can do everything. Buffs, heals, crowd control, -recharge, primarily non-physical, demons can do it all and do it decently. Only real downside is that constant noise.| Special mention goes to Beasts. They start off slow but once you get the Dire Wolf and your second upgrade, they skyrocket. The only reason they don't place higher on the damage list ((They're behind Ninja's and around Thugs/Necro)) is because their damage comes in bursts which are dependent on their self buffs. Their survivability is dependent on the same, on buffs with longish cooldowns so they aren't always hard to kill, and when those buffs are down they die kinda easy. Necro's are an oddity. High damage, decent AoE, decent CC, but some issues with their skeletons knock them down a bit. You can overcome said issues a bit by putting them right on top of enemies so that they are less likely to go ranged first but its not a perfect fix. And holy mother of god, Necro henchmen are squishy. Last and least, my favorite MM, the Mercs. I love Mercenaries, I really do, but these poor suckers got the short end of the stick. For some reason they decided rocket needed to be on a four minute cooldown, snipe is on a minute cooldown and deals less damage than even moderate Jonin or Skeleton abilities which have far shorter cooldowns, the medic doesn't get the Assault Rifle Upgrade, gets a weaker grenade attack, a long cooldown heal, and a meh mez resistance, and your spec ops love to waste their CC's on targets that are already suffering from CC affects. All of that coupled with lowish damage and almost entirely physical damage. I love them dearly, I do, but boy howdy do they need help. Finally, /nature doesn't get enough love. -resist, +resist, shields, AoE heals/endurance restore, AoE root passive, long duration +damage and +to-hit, and one of the best AoE heals of any support. The set really needs more credit.