Runaway

I've experienced the same in one of the Zoe Langston boss fights, bringing pets back only worked once the fight was practically over.

For my latest mastermind (robotics kinetics), I think 0 or +1 would have been the proper balance point to keep things more or less the same compared to before the patch. I started before the mastermind before the patch, not knowing that it was coming. At level 12 (IOs) I could go +1/4. Early masterminds are strong. At level 26 I went +1/8 and in the next fight I went "hold up, wait a minute, something ain't right", after which I went reading and discovered that robotics was no longer good at aoe, so I went back to +1/5. When I was about level 30 the patch went life. Early 30s were rough, probably mostly because of the more dangerous enemies compared to below 30, but losing a tiny bit of my damage didn't help either. I did a full respec and still fell back to 0/4 (on a character with full IOs this is low imo). Once I got fireball I could go 0/6. At level 50 with the fireball setup I had a survivability issue. So I respecced to a more defensive epic + added purples + superior sets. I was now more tanky, but lacked clearspeed again, so I stayed with 0/6. After getting incarnates to tier 3, I could do 1/8 or 2/8 against most enemy types without it being too much of a slog (my personal comfort zone). T3 incarnates made a much bigger difference than for my previous char (a fortunata), but imo that's because of the weakness of the primary. Even with incarnates, clear speed is still several times slower than with the fortunata, but I find it fun to play. This was on a fully equipped mastermind funded by money transfers from other characters, with powers fully slotted at all levels past level 12. Exclusively solo play till level 45 or so. Imo, when it comes to the numbers, the biggest clearspeed issue of robotics isn't damage per hit, but the lack of consistent aoe damage. That's if everything works, if the pet AI or collision detection goes haywire, there's no dps left obviously. Pets getting stuck or getting the zoomies are very annoying.

My 7 cents: Others have suggested the same, but I'm still going to echo it. Don't limit Mastermind ATOs to just pets, but allow them to be slotted into all primary powers that take damage + accuracy IOs. I feel like only allowing masterminds to slot their ATOs into pets, is an artificial limitation that should have never been. The various attack powers in the primary powersets are part of the mastermind toolset and so imo Mastermind ATOs should have been slottable in those from the start (since the modifiers are fully applicable). I haven't seen this mentioned yet, but I would also allow slotting "recharge intensive pets" sets into recharge intensive pets that don't do damage. I'm thinking of Maintenance Drone and Dark Servant, but I'm probably forgetting some. Imo any summon with a long recharge should be able to slot these sets. 50% instead of 40% effectiveness of set bonuses to pets would be a great, if only for the much easier math. I would let all archetypes enjoy the ..% of set bonuses to pets. Mastermind pets aren't the only pets that have had trouble keeping up with the times. About the various changes to mastermind primaries: I'm not going to post this in every focused feedback thread, so I'm saying it here: Why the slew of changes to Beasts, Demons and Thugs? What problem are those changes trying to solve? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. If the desire is to put creative archetype design into this patch, then consider making an entirely new mastermind archetype or focus that creative energy on one of the primaries that everyone thinks is awful. ps: Beast Mastery has no link to a focused feedback thread. I'm glad that the hp nerfs to the t1 and t2 henchmen are off the table. Personally, rather than doing all these convoluted changes to henchmen levels and stats, I would have considered smoothing out the purple patch nerf table a bit, which would have also helped fresh level 50s when they group with incarnates. The nerfs when going from -4 to -5 (1.6x less effective) and from -5 to -6 (2x less effective) are very harsh and that's the root cause of those changes being needed. But that smoothing out might also break years of content balance since everything has been playtested with the purple patch numbers as they are, so meh, sometimes there's no easy solutions.

It was the only reason that I could think off, set bonuses is the reason that we slot enhancements with wasted modifiers. It's almost always going to be subtoptimal for that particular power, but better for the overall build.

I suspect that the confusion comes from a misunderstanding about set bonuses: Set bonuses are shared by all your powers (unless those powers explicitly state that they aren't affected by the modifier). You can stack up to 5 of the same set bonus, so you can slot 5x lotg7.5 in 5 different defence powers and that will apply an additional 37.5% recharge to all your powers. That 37.5 isn't affected by the diminishing returns that affects normal recharge IOs above ~85%. In attack powers, that 37.5 also won't lower proc chance per hit, which recharge IOs can do.

This is about the "Powers" window of the in game ui. Currently the first column contains your primary power set. The second column contains your secondary power set. And the third column contains temporary powers, accolades, prestige powers, pool powers, epic powers, incarnate powers, inherents, ... I probably missed some. Long ago that distribution made sense, but over the years the amount of powers in the 3rd column has grown too large to be able to quickly find something (for me anyway). So my suggestion is to move some of those 3rd column powers to the first 2 columns. Personally I would move the inherent pool + incarnate powers to column 1, and the 4 power pools + epic pool to column 2. That would leave column 3 with earned/bought powers like accolades, temporary powers etc. Yomo Kimayata's rearrangement seems more logical than mine: primary and secondary power pool in the first column. Pools, epic and incarnates in the second column. The rest in the third one. Tiger Shadow's idea of collapsable sub windows would also help a lot with quickly finding a buried power.

Vengeance is very strong in certain settings, but it doesn't fit in. My complaint wasn't about the strength of it, but about the way how it is implemented. To me it looks a meta skill, kinda like the p2w attack skills, something tacked on to the game that doesn't fit in with the rest of the game. And for me, finding out that the current opportunity is nothing more than a time based recharge + that the debuff doesn't stack, were also both disappointments. Hence my suggestion for a rework. I've gotten over the range difference by now. On sentinel the attack chain that annoyed me was 60-60-40, while it was 80-80-80 on a blaster, but another power in the set (electrical blast) was then much better than the blaster version. So you give some and you take some, not everything has to stay the same.

I realize that I’m late with this, but I haven’t played in 3 years and I chose to make a sentinel when I returned. When playing it, I can’t help but notice how bland the opportunity mechanic feels. Hence this complaint/suggestion post. I've seen that I'm not the only one who feels that Sentinels are not right atm, but still I’m sorry if I’m flogging a dead horse with this. Why I think the Opportunity/Vulnerability mechanic is bland: The Vulnerability debuff name perfectly describes what it does, but the name + application feels thematically non fitting to me. Vulnerability is a non stackable debuff, which makes it weak in large group settings. Having almost every buff/debuff be stackable has always been one of the things I love about coh, and now there’s this one archetype defining inherent power that doesn’t stack. The opportunity meter might just as well not be there. There’s no way to directly affect it, all one can do is wait for it to fill, which makes it just like a recharge. Vulnerability could have had a 15s up time and 20s unenhanceable recharge and gameplay wise, it would feel almost the same. The application of the inherent is done with an extra button that thematically doesn’t fit within the primary powerset, which is also inconsistent with how inherents of other archetypes work afaik. It seems out of place and tacked on afterwards. My suggestions: Rename Vulnerability to something more thematic, for example “Opportunity Target”. Stackable “Opportunity Target”, with diminishing returns. Simplified numbers: 1 stack = 15% 2 stacks = 23% = 15+8 3 stacks = 30% = 15+8+7 6 stacks = 45% = 15+8+7+6+5+4 Every extra stack of “Opportunity Target” after that, increases it with 3%. The diameter of the visual effect target reticle increases with each stack. A more involved Opportunity Meter: Increase the “Opportunity Target” duration to 30 seconds. Setting an “Opportunity Target” costs 100% of the full bar. Leave the opportunity bar recharge at 60 seconds for going from 0 to 100%. When your active “Opportunity Target” is killed (it doesn’t have to be by you), then your opportunity bar is fully recharged & the sentinel gets a small stackable buff called “Opportunist”. “Opportunist” lasts 30 seconds and buffs offence in some small, but not insignificant way. Examples: +10% accuracy/damage/recharge or 15% recharge/speed or ... Exact stats subject to balance calculations + testing. Fit the application of the debuff within the primary powerset: When the opportunity bar is full, certain (or all?) single target attacks of the primary powerset, will set the current target as the “Opportunity Target” upon initiation of the animation (so before the attack even lands). The application of the “Opportunity Target” debuff must be done before it lands, so that the attack itself benefits from it. This application is unresistable. And no more separate incongruent “Vulnerability” skill. How I imagine this would work gameplay wise: If you miss an opportunity, then you’ve got to wait 30 seconds for it to come around again. But if you choose your opportunities wisely and don’t waste any, then you can chain them indefinitely & get some nice buffs going. In a setting with a tough boss without side mobs, the up time of the defence debuff will be less. But as an upside, more than 2 sentinels will be able to contribute to debuffing the boss. In an aoe dps setting, instead of spreading your single target damage around so that everything dies roughly at the same time, the “Opportunity Target” mechanic + the "Opportunist" buff encourages you to not do that and instead blast down your chosen opportunity target as fast as possible. Imo this last point is what would give sentinels a unique playstyle without infringing on the territories of the other archetypes which share the same primary powersets. It can make a playstyle that wouldn’t be optimal for the other archetypes, the optimal playstyle for a sentinel. Not directly related to the opportunity mechanic, I also wish that some of the nerfs to primary attacks were lessened. The much shorter range on aoe attacks feels especially bad on my sentinel, since having a different range for the aoe and for single targets, makes it so that they can’t be part of the same ranged attack cycle. Yes, it makes it so that I play my sentinel play different than I would play a blaster/corruptor/defender with the same powerset, but this has been accomplished in a negative way. There’s a reason why all those attacks had the same range. Sentinels should be encouraged to play differently than blasters by positive reinforcement, not with punishment 😉