Crysis

I travel a bunch for work, have been playing COH since HC came back on GPD rigs. Screen size is pretty irrelevant as I use a set of Xreal or Viture AR glasses, which are basically 1080P monitors in glasses format. My smallest of the bunch….a GPD Win 3/4 (just upgraded) with a set of Xreal glasses. I use a small bluetooth folding keyboard and a Pebble mouse. Whole thing fits into a small sling bag. The GPD Win 3/4 device itself is fine for last-gen AAA gaming. I regularly play RDR2, Cyberpunk 2077, Witcher and many other games on it, sometimes on that tiny screen itself. It also has onboard joysticks, mouse and keyboard but those are only meant for casual use. Format is roughly the size of an XL Sony PSP handheld device.

Kind of my point….this playerbase doesn’t actually -want- challenge added into the game. They want more costumes, more content and parity of “superness” across all AT’s, but most definitely NOT more challenging gameplay.

Oh I get that, but I think you misunderstood the context of my reply to Arcane. There was a claim that we shouldn't be taking overwhelming damage from 6 critters out of a 16 critter spawn (supposedly the other 10 were confused). That would have to be a TEAM sized spawn, or someone playing on Notoriety +4/x8 as an example.

There's a third way, but I doubt it will be any more popular. Remove Tab-to-Target mechanic entirely. Force manual targeting (click to target or similar) and decrease the base accuracy/to-hit across the board, forcing everyone to either dramatically increase accuracy slotting or look for external damage buffs (eg; Kin or -RES powers). They gave us tougher mobs, MUCH tougher 4-star content, tougher zones, etc. Everyone clamors that the game is "too easy" but then clearly avoid all the built-in "difficulty sliders" you can apply in-game. Take away trivial targeting and actually make selecting the correct target and hitting it count, you'll see systemic challenges across the entire playerbase.

In +4/x8 solo? I'm guessing it has to be if you are facing spawns of 16 at a time. I mean using respites and the like, against some types of critters, I'll also survive against 6 attackers simultaneously when playing a Dominator. But doing this consistently without dying? Just depends on what I'm facing.

I have 3-4 Poison characters using only 2-3 powers from the primary. That just lets me take all kinds of attacks from the secondary/pool. Which AFAIK is what was intended....you can take/slot stuff as much/little as you want. Hellllloooo petless masterminds? But apparently, in the case of Plant at least, no.....wasn't intended to be this way. Plant/Fire was such a powerful combo specifically because you could take almost all the Fire powers and Pyro stuff from pools. Now, you are meant to lean into Plant powers. I think these changes across the board are intended to push players to build/play "a certain way," not open up options.

If the goal was to make Plant a mid- to low- tier powerset, then you’ve succeeded marvelously! After testing, this is now a set that I will only choose for thematics and/or for grins-and-giggles group play. It’s fine for those purposes, and those purposes are entirely viable as is almost any other combination of powers in COH. I get it, that’s what you are attempting to do, bring all sets down to a certain point where any set is interchangeable with any other set, not making any one unique/special…just so they appeal to different thematics. All fine, no complaints from me for going in that direction. You’ve succeeded in making Plants a graphically unique powerset that performs no better/worse than any others. Kinda like Storm Blast, which more or less signaled the direction you were going with most other powersets. Not like we didn’t see this coming.

Been there, done that. In fact, one of my very first incarnated MM here on Homecoming was a Thugs/Time and I had several in-game friends who also had Thugs/* MM’s. We all setup secondary builds that somewhat gimped our soloing abilities, but when combined together was bonkers levels of offensive capabilities since the Thugs were all way beyond softcapped to DEF. Take every MM personal attack and proc them out, do some silly things with secondary slotting…..really stupid OP’d all Thugs teams.

I mean I don’t recall anyone worrying about all the fire blasting going on turning Talos into a raging inferno, I never hear about Electrical Affinity users accidentally electrocuting entire coastlines in Peregrine because they happened to touch water, or for that matter some runaway Kinetic causing all kinds of death to poor citizens who happened to have pacemakers who are hit with speed boost. Why must radiation be the only power we worry about if we worry about any powers unintended consequences in this game??? Now if you’ll excuse me, I can’t seem to locate some of my bot henchman who wandered off and I’m worried about the newbs in Atlas sporting “Help Me” over their heads….

I knew if we invoked your name you’d eventually show up here. If anyone has petless masterminds figured it it’s gonna be @plainguy. I remember Back Alley Brawler stating waaaaaay back in Live days that in general endurance to damage ratio for the game was set at about 1:10 ratio….meaning for every 10 points of (base) damage the power should cost around 1 Endurance. I’ve no idea if that number still holds true, and I do seem to recall MM’s had their endurance costs reduced slightly for primary attacks (may be mis-remembering that), but I think MM’s still are closer to +25% more endurance per attack than other AT’s specifically because their pets apply damage without burning any END on the MM’s behalf short of summoning and buffing them. Our lowered damage multiplier for the AT makes this feel like a bunch more though. I don’t think other pet summoners suffer similar endurance penalties for their attacks, but could be wrong.

By your low/mid 40’s, if built properly, a MM can easily solo +3/7 or 8. Somewhat varies based on what you are facing, status effects used against you, etc. I don’t have a single MM that can’t solo +4/x8 by the late 40’s and definitely easily by 50 with some incarnates slotted. Most of my MM’s solo AV’s and GM’s easily, although it’s easier if you can keep them immobilized. There are exceptions. Some MM’s aren’t as tanky as others nor as built around offense. But with the updates to MM’s, Demon/ Necro/ Ninja/ Mercs/ and Bots/ and even the venerable Thugs/ are all very capable, especially when paired with /Marine /Storm /Time /Dark or /Cold. Heck, even the much reviled Ninja/Trick Arrow can easily solo +4/x8 by 50. In fact, that’s generally my benchmark as to whether or not I’ve built my MM to its fullest potential. If I cannot comfortably and speedily solo +4/x8 by 50 (pre-incarnate), then I’ve got a respec or two to do. Yes, if you built your MM primarily for support or “to keep the henchmen from dying” (hint: there’s a reason we are given near-instant resummoning powers…they are expendable to a point), you’ll likely find that you can survive +4/x8 easy enough but killing takes forever. That’s one reason I’ve always been a big fan of /Storm on MM’s because /Storm is basically just “moar damage” and if slotted properly, high recharge. Oh and don’t ignore your primary attacks either, at least on the newer reworked primaries of Necro/ Bots/ Ninja/ and Mercs/. Maybe not so much for straight damage as much as for procc’d damage and/or secondary effects (especially more +Recharge), or in the case of Necro/ for the added pets. TLDR; yes, much better….if properly built/slotted.

Back in the day on Live, Huntsman builds were just becoming "a real thing" and then when Homecoming launched, Redlynne threw up this thread which revitalized the concept at least for me. I don't play near as much as I used to but over the past few weeks I dusted off my Huntsman, who had sat at level 50 without incarnates for years, and leveled up my incarnates and did a couple of respecs. The character backstory is that my character was the "Camera Guy" you see in the Miss Liberty Task Force, the one who filmed that idiot Aeon live giving away the secret to beating his trap and got yelled at for just doing his job. He was drummed out of the Arachnos corps and is now a freelancer as a result. At any rate, I love gun-based heroes in the game, and I'd never been happy with Crabberminds or Bane builds. So this scratched that itch. I've been -very surprised- how effective of a solo'er this build is. I take on everything at +4/x8. Some mobs are a bit more challenging given the nature of my attacks, but after incarnates were leveled up, I could slip in a lot more Procs. Being a very high recharge build they aren't optimized to go off all the time, but they go off enough to be worth the slotting. I'm damn near unkillable as well with positionals and S/L +DEF all being in the 50's or higher. I think I've died once from vet levels 1-22 mostly soloing. At any rate, this is how I ended up. Credit goes to Redlynne for the original build I based this off of. You can get by with cheap damage IO's, I just have so many purples I threw them in once I respecced. Near perma reinforcement pets, or can be perma with slightly modified slotting and if you remember to hit Destiny and Hasten (I don't have Hasten on Auto) whenever they are up. Disgraced_Camera_Guy_SOA_WolfSpider_FINAL.mbd

Welp, TIL….. I’m now a believer!

After all these years, I still don’t quite believe it procs in Triage Beacon. That power in Traps is often skipped anyways, but I’ve taken it on all my /Traps players and procc’d it with Panacea in several. The +150% regen is hard enough to ‘see’ in most cases, and the radius of the Triage Beacon I think diminishes the ability for it to proc at all, but I haven’t ever seen it replenish any END whatsoever. Could just be lack of logging on my part.

Dammit we didn’t stake him properly…..

necro this because you just inspired me to create a new SG: The Island of Misfit Toys! Already working on costumes to fit each character!

i love my newest Mercs/Marine but gotta admit my Mercs/Cold is just as effective. I have a Bots/everything -but- cold as I felt the additional defenses from cold shields would be superfluous with Bots native bubbles but I may just have to roll up a Bots/Cold now.

Pretty much all of my /Marine MM’s open with Whitecap. Doesn’t take much to be tanky with anything/Marine.

We will have to agree to disagree. It’s trivially easy to softcap any AT for defense -and- maximize DPS at the same time. Anyone arguing otherwise just frankly doesn’t know how to min/max a build. And that’s the beauty of this 20 year old game. You can be as “useless” a petless Mastermind and still play on teams that max your damage and your defense for you. Self sufficiency should be every players target but the power sets are meant to cover the holes who just flat out don’t get it.

I think you are being overly broad in your recommendations here. Case in point: Defenders built for OFFENSE. Poison/anything is a great example. You really only need 4 powers from your primary for an offensive build. And even those need minimal slotting, some only the native first slot. My Poison/Fire Defender still manages to eek out softcapped DEF for both melee and ranged. And she solo's +4/x8 perfectly safe and fine, and is equally effective on a team because -damage output is the best 'debuff' in the game.- Same for my Marine/DP Defender. Just because you play a defender AT doesn't mean you have play support roles. I've seen Brutes play better Support roles than many Defenders just by holding aggro. My point still stands, and you've somewhat made the same here. It's always best to be as "self sufficient" as possible, unless you are rolling an AT to play a certain role on a specific team makeup 24/7. And in this game, self-sufficiency means "I don't need anyone to heal me," "I don't need status protection from outside," and most definitely "I can fend for myself with enough DPS to bring down my foes before they can hurt me." That means almost universally build for softcapped DEF and max DPS. Regardless of AT. Some builds will certainly find this more challenging to do than others, and I've always felt that's the real "difficulty slider" in this game. But if you can achieve softcapped DEF and max DPS, you are highly self sufficient. Not invulnerable, but quite competent by yourself, on a dedicated team or on a PUG. Remember: DEF softcaps are fixed in this game regardless of class. RES softcaps vary by AT. Some AT's are easier to softcap DEF or RES but you avoid 100% of damage, debuffs, etc that whiff you because of +DEF. And damage is damage, whether its 100 points coming from a proc, a Controller or a Blaster. Doesn't matter how you apply damage...it's all the same.

I always build anything I keep on the T4 Incarnate path to a) some level of softcapped +DEF…this can be positional (usually ranged) or S/L and often several and b) enough damage to reliably solo +4/x8 non-Incarnate mobs. If I can solo it on max difficulty, there’s really no reason for me to worry about doing anything other than the above. This isn’t a game about max defense/resistance. It’s a game of -enough- defense/resistance and -enough- DPS to take out the enemy before they take out you. Every once in awhile I find a toon that is highly proccable. I have a Marine/DP Defender like that. She doesn’t have max Defense natively as I’ve procc’d out all her attacks and sacrificed all IO bonuses for +DEF as a result. But even in such an edge case, I still end up T4’ing out Hybrid>Melee and Destiny>Barrier so I still end up with softcapped +DEF and +RES pretty much all the time. Worked well for me across dunno….60-80 level 50’s across all classes. I see no reason to change it now.

I -always- T3 Alpha, Destiny and Lore to get the +3 Level Shift. Then I'll T3 Hybrid and then work on T4'ing Alpha, Destiny and Hybrid. Then a full respec into my final build for the toon. Those three incarnate powers do more for your build than any others and depending on choices can allow you to do crazy things like ignore set bonuses and go proc crazy with your powers. Can be jarring how much they allow you to frankenslot and gain massive returns. I've had Defender characters go from OK to some of the most damaging toons in my library after this part of the game. Only then will I go back and T3/4 Judgement, Interface and Lore in that order. I've done this since Live. Just faster and easier now.

It's been WAY TOO LONG since I've seen Masterminds make the top of ANY list. I gotta admit, as much as I always liked the AT as-was, the buffs and changes and the new Marine Affinity powerset has made 2024 the best year for MM's yet. I T4'd out no less than an even dozen MM's, some of which had been abandoned in their early 40's for over a year. Lots of respecs used to account for the changes but boy oh boy were they worth it!