Crysis

For clarity , you mean slotting the Kismet -into a henchman slot- rather than into the MM's powers, right? Because Kismet Unique only affects MM, not the henchmen since its not really a "set" bonus. Or did something change again and it now applies to henchmen in addition to the MM if slotted anywhere appropriate? While feasible, I've never quite understood this argument. Statistically, the active number of Tankers at any given time is significantly higher than active MM players. If anything, I would have expected them to be far more cautious about buffing Tankers than in buffing MM's. MM's just will never be game changing unless they totally turned us into tank mages. Given our AT damage modifier.....this nerf to lower-henchmen To-Hit makes very little sense. If anything, it turns T1's into not wasting slots for damage of any kind since they will be unlikely to land many hits at all. Just keep them for additional Bodyguard +RES....disposable damage sponges IOW. Some of the theory crafting I'm doing right now has me only throwing maybe 2-3 slots into the T1's as they just don't matter for DPS unless you are really slotting up for +Tohit across the set.

It won't matter so much about your power choices, but I've got a LOT of +END/+Recovery/-END slotting on my various MM's mainly because I've always pretty much taken at least two of the primary attacks. I mean Demons is the only way to get Whip attacks/animations in the game, so I've got all the attacks on my Demon/Time, Demon/Storm, Demon/Traps, Demon/Marine, Demon/Dark, etc etc. I think I have over a dozen Demon builds and none of them have fewer than two whip attacks. My Demon/Storm may even have to run all the iTrials again to get different T4 choices as that particular pairing is VERY END-intensive (Storm always is) and so I went Cardiac and Ageless when I could now choose Musculature Radial and maybe Barrier instead. Lots of new build possibilities with the second pass of tweaks. But that's kind of why I'm going to wait until they are done "tweaking" the AT overall. MM's are pretty slot hungry as-is, and now that we can put the ATO's into our main attacks, get some -END and our set bonuses get shared, that opens up a lot of additional slotting opportunities I couldn't justify in the past. I'm not happy with the whole treatment up to this point, but maybe things will improve when they are "done for now" versus what got shoveled over the line in November.

Considering one of the next tweaks to MM's is a fairly substantial reduction for End costs for personal attacks, I'm still keeping all of my MM's on the shelf until they are done with the changes for a bit. I'm a bit fussy about my respecs and I already spend way too much in Mids and in-game doing them so I'll just target January for next time I work on MM's. But you do you man.

Appreciate you spelling this out for us. I was in middle of trying to read this entire thread to better understand this. MM’s are so slot hungry (as are EATs/VEATs) that I see this overall as a big plus up for the AT.

TLDR; “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down.”

I’m assuming this patch was the “bedlam” you inferred when discussing the MM fixes?

Depends on the following conditions: 1) It’s a backhanded slap 2) It’s accompanied by the phrase “Dammit Janet!” 3) I’ve gotten into someone elses personal space (I swear to god, the pets shoved me, it wasn’t of my own doing!) Any of those apply…..well, I’m being reprimanded. Otherwise, it’s an open invitation to ERP. And depends on if I’m in the mood…..

By almost every experienced MM players definition, yes, in fact, at +0 you are going to worse than you’ve ever done before. In particular, if in the past you were already building for offense and had henchmen sturdy enough to solo +4/x8 while keeping them pretty much full time Aggressive/Follow, you will most assuredly notice that you now solo +0 -objectively worse- than you ever did before. Then again, you were doing +4/x8 so…..sort of a straw man argument.

Honestly….I don’t like these changes. At all. So I’m just going to keep my MM’s shelved for this update and bring them back out once they’ve adjusted-the-adjusted-adjustments they just made. Otherwise, I’m doing like a dozen respecs just to turn around respec again. While I’m encouraged to see them addressing MM shortcomings, it kinda feels like they just gave us even more shortcomings for some unknown reason out of fear of making the MM class “too good.” So for now, other AT’s to play through the content updates. MM’s, I’ll come back to later.

can you elaborate by providing a few examples? That’s what the beta is for….Id like to better understand your experiences that leads you to this conclusion.

MIDS or whatever it’s called now has this feature already. Yes it takes some work but you can compare builds to see how different slotting and IOs will impact overall stats. But I do hear you. Most RPG’s quickly tell you if a weapon drop is going to have higher damage output or whatever stat with simple green/red +\- stats. But realistically the permutations for IO set bonuses, especially when ‘combined’ with other totally different set and AT/power bonuses, is far more complex than is this sword better than that one. That said….respecs are a PITA. On average, and depending on the severity of the changes, they can take me an hour or longer to complete in-game…and that doesn’t even include the MIDS planning time.

I’ll dig up my old one….pretty solid for all Incarnate stuff up to +Hard mode. But with the incoming changes to MM’s and Thugs on Beta…..times are a’changin. MM’s are gonna SLAP.

Er…twas a joke. AE = FIre Farms, phat XP, etc etc. What’s the arc name/number? I’ll be sure to check it out when your done. On my Spines/Fire farmer of course.

Is this a Fire Farm arc? How's the XP?

Have this combo on all melee sets.... Stalker>Scrapper>Tank>Brute