tiberius0476

LOL ok. So I'm wrong, but you agree with me. Seems contrarian, but I'm glad we found common ground after all. Thanks for running your tests. They seem pretty in line with what has been posted. Overall the sum of the changes look good and I agree overall this patch is a huge win for MMs.

You're right that bots does more damage now? Cool, that's good to hear. But if you did it by ignoring all of the MM personal robotics attacks, then I'm also right: they aren't worth picking up, and I'd rather they did something else like necro/ninja/mercs do. You keep saying it's a "lopsided trade" but I haven't seen anyone say these changes have to all go together and can't be individually tuned. What if we could keep the bot power/damage changes, and we can address the fact that moving the -regen on personal attacks isn't super fun or good or worth it?

That's not quite what I'm trying to convey. Let me phrase this differently. It's not at all that I'm fixated on -regen values, or the well known hard mode/AV/purple patch situations where MMs often underperform. With this patch, many Mastermind primary attack powers are being given new features to increase their appeal and flavor and usefulness, which is fantastic. Necromancers summon even more pets, ninja's give crit chances to pets, mercenaries straight increase pet damage. These are all awesome, and great ways to make these powers better. This approach is a great idea that I am happy to see the devs implementing. But, the bots one falls short of this creativity, simply taking -regen that we previously had automatically on the assault bot, and moving it to powers that cost endurance, animation time, and powers/slots. That is the only change I am criticizing. The rest of the damage, animation and power changes to bots are awesome. The tests posted from beta prove this. Across the board they are better. Their animations are smooth and they pop off attacks fast enough that they even use all their mana sometimes. I don't even sweat the AOE changes to incendiary missiles because I think overall it'll be fine. Nobody has posted any data to say otherwise. Nobody is asking for those changes to be reverted or calling them a nerf. I'm mostly just disappointed that robotics attacks got no new flavor or enticement, and in fact were given a feature we previously already had for free, and one that only matters in specific AV-type situations. Was the assault bot -regen broken on new bots changes, so that it had to be moved? If that's the case, then this all makes sense. Or would it be a reasonable option to revert the -regen changes back to assault bot free like live, if we could brainstorm a different feature we would consider giving the robotics attacks? (some sort of temporary stacking res/def bonuses for all pets, since robotics is a more defensive set to begin with? -maxhp instead of -regen, or anything that would be more helpful against more targets than just AVs, encouraging these attacks to be used more often? I'm just spitballing now) Anyway, this was a feedback thread and that's my feedback.

What were you fighting? As a bots/storm MM, the -regen changes do concern me, but I am glad to see most people reporting the increased base damage makes up for it (not including purple patch)

Comparing the -regen performance for live vs beta is a little disingenuous. Even if somehow the new beta result is equivalent against AVs compared to live, achieving that comparable result requires selecting (and then likely slotting) 3 additional attack powers that most builds weren't intending to use, instead of the powers we were already using to help the team. Whereas on live, it is happening in the background already, without slots or endurance cost or animation time. That power tax is also independent of purple patch, which I agree is a problem but a different problem\ EDIT: Typo

This is extremely helpful data for planning future build modifications. Thank you for taking the time to do this.

So to be clear given the multiple changes at once in this patch, are you using the pulse rifle attacks too? Or is this just reflective of bot damage straight-up?

If Upgrade Robot gives Repair, which is a full heal, to the protector bots, then is there any benefit to enhancing the heal percentage? Shouldn't it still be a full heal? Is this just an odd spot to mule healing sets, or is pet power Repair not a full heal? EDIT upon a little more delving it seems that though they are both called "Repair", the pet power is a set 30%, not a full heal. My bad, carry on