Redlynne

Because they weren't being ported over from already existing power sets that needed to be run through the Intentional Gimp Code For Masterminds™ by Cryptic Studios (back in Issue 6). But you're right, the newer sets give every appearance of having AoE attacks that do approximately DOUBLE the damage of the AoEs of the previous legacy powersets. If you do a more expansive analysis (all the sets, not just 3) you ought to see some trendline factors that could hint and probable cause for the discrepancies. I'm thinking that it was probably just Cryptic overcompensating (because, Pets).

The reason is ... Wormhole. If Wormhole transports a $Target, that $Target is almost certainly getting Stunned ... unless it has Stun protection. And once you've got them Stunned, you can basically take them down before they get a chance to respond, because Wormhole is perma (so you can recast and Stun them again before the Stun duration expires). And when you're playing City of Statues™ you don't need a whole lot of Defense and Resistance when fighting Underlings/Minions/Lieutenants/Bosses. However, you apparently missed the Power Boosted Farsight potential for getting perma high Defense. Farsight is where most of the Defense protection is to be found, so it's NOT a 0% Defense 0% Resistance build.

Slot Dehydrate with a 5+1 combo of both Accurate Healing sets so as to slot both procs into the power (Theft of Essence and Touch of the Nictus) while limiting how much recharge gets slotted into the power (so the procs have a higher chance to happen). You then use Dehydrate as the Tidal Power 3x consumer when you don't have Water Jet ... or you use Dehydrate as the Tidal Power 2x builder to get to 3x so as to "double tap" with Water Jet after use of Dehydrate. When you've got Dehydrate slotted with Accurate Healing and the Theft of Essence proc the power will add to both your green AND blue bars, turning it into a mega sustaining power that allows you to take damage but still keep fighting.

They're the "newest" primaries and the devs very deliberately sidestepped the pitfalls they fell into with the other powersets in which the personal attacks have little to no synergy with the rest of their primary powerset.

They do, actually ... however not as a fighting NPCs. I've seen plenty of female PPD in Steel Canyon, but they're Civilians who (also) run away from crime on the streets (because they use the Civilian AI). But they just walk the streets. All of the combatants in the PPD are male ... both in Paragon City and in Praetoria. Of course, in Praetoria the females are Seers who SUMMON the male PPD officers. Kind of curious how there aren't any male Seers ...

I honestly wish the Green and Yellow Lines would get separated again here on Homecoming, so people would have to make that north/south run in either Steel Canyon or Skyway ... or run east/west through the tunnels from King's Row to Independence Port or Steel Canyon to Independence Port or Skyway to Talos Island. And that's not even including Paragon Dance Party and Pocket D for making those transfers. And that's not even including the convenience of Base Teleporters. Beyond a certain point, extra convenience of being able to go anywhere from everywhere winds up making the world smaller (ironically) because you can skip over the world to get where you need to go.

In my opinion, the minimum slotting is 3 in Health and 3 in Stamina. Health Panacea - +Hit Points/Endurance: Level 10 Miracle - +Recovery: Level 20 Numina's Convalesence - +Regeneration/+Recovery: Level 30 Stamina Synapse's Shock - EndMod Synapse's Shock - EndMod/Run Speed Performance Shifter - Chance for +End

At the 2012 Player Summit I tried to convince a few devs that there ought to be a railyard for getting all those shipping containers from Independence Port on rails for shipping around the rest of of New England. That would have meant opening space to the WEST of Independence port north of the Rikti Crash Site/War Zone and be a big switching yard with steel tracks and lots of railroad rolling stock on the tracks (and skirmishes happening around the zone kind of like Boomtown) where the place is substantially damaged and the fight is to "reclaim" it since it was OUTSIDE the War Walls for awhile. The response I got could be best described as ... polite interest ... but of course, nothing ever came of it.

Then that's on the rest of the PUG for biting off more than they could chew without you. If you have to fall back to resummon and they lack the situational awareness to notice that AND they "need" you to support them while they forge forward (without you) ... that's their fault for not paying attention (and just assuming you will be there as their buff bot). If your DPS isn't "needed" for the team to continue advancing, then you can simply summon+upgrade/equip when possible/convenient as opposed to needing to do it immediately. In which case the DPS from your pets is helpful as opposed to necessary for the team. The entire premise of your question however is flawed, because there's an entire continuum of possibilities (you've provided only 2) and it's a judgement call on the part of the Player to figure out what they need to do when (and why) depending upon the situation and circumstances and group dynamics. So the answers are ... fluid ... rather than cut and dried, and it requires the Player to both recognize/know and adapt to the situation at hand.

Controllers and Dominators need their mez. Scrappers and Stalkers need their crits. Brutes need their fury. Masterminds need their pets. I'm not seeing the problem here. A purpose build Pet Archetype needs their pets. It's almost as if that was the point and the plan. Ever heard of retreating? He who fights and runs away lives to resummon (and upgrade and equip their) pets further away (and all that jazz) ... Seriously. If you're complaining that you can't resummon your pets on the fly in the middle of combat and have them live ... THAT'S ON YOU for being a lousy tactician as a Mastermind and picking a bad time AND a bad place to try and do your resummoning. If your pets "fold" on you, the smart play is to ... ... and I shouldn't have to point out something as basic as that to you @plainguy. That's kind of like not standing in Caltrops while trying to use an Interrupt power. It kind of goes without saying. Trying to summon replacement pets AND upgrade them AND buff them in the middle of active combat in which other pets have already fallen (due to taking too much damage) is kind of the poster child for Wrong Time+Wrong Place to try and do that. Just retreat if that happens, preferably before all of your pets faceplant (so they can fight a rearguard for you), and if necessary leave them to die while your Mastermind gets away. Once you have achieved the necessary measure of safety to be able to (optionally dismiss before you) resummon, upgrade and equip your replacement pets (and if you dismiss you'll have "fresh ones" that don't need to be healed) then you'll be ready to advance back into the fight with fresh troops pets and have another go at it. Remember ... the pets are disposable, if it comes to that ... your Mastermind is not. YOU can survive without them, but they cannot survive without YOU. Knowing when to retreat and when to re-engage are fundamental bits of Mastermind strategery. If you haven't learned this skill yet, nor developed the situational awareness to know what to do when (and where), that's on YOU as the Player. I'm amazed you didn't ask for a talking pony bearing wendsleydale cheese from the moon as part of your expectations ...

It still works on PCs, just not on THOSE NPCs ...

Indigo ... a contact in Founders' Falls was especially bad at this. She was located in south Founders' Falls, south of the gate to Eden, and in those days there was no tram in Founders' Falls ... so you had to tram to Talos and then travel "manually" into Founders' Falls by the tunnel and then continue to travel all the way to Indigo in order to talk to her (oh and she wouldn't give you her cell phone number until you'd done most of her missions, hope you like getting your exercise hero!). So she was located in one of the most inaccessible long distance locations possible (basically a zone and a half away from the nearest tram) and she would almost NEVER give you a mission that would take place in Founders' Falls. Most of her missions wound up being in Crey's Folly(!). So the trip (without a supergroup base portal) amounted to: Indigo Across Founders' Falls (south to north to the tunnel) Talos (south tunnel to the tram) Brickstown (tram to the southwestern gate) Crey's Folly (go to the mission door) So going from Indigo to the mission door was a LOT of traveling and needing to cross large chunks of multiple zones. So yeah ... Contacts stop sending you to places that aren't "local" on Blueside once you get above Level 9 ... mainly because they can, since there are multiple zones in the same level ranges. Redside and Goldside don't suffer from this problem because they have fewer zones, the zones are more "segregated" in their content (although Goldside has underground and aboveground zones until Level 20) and so the travel distances to get from Contact to Mission Door(s) is nowhere near as obnoxious. That said, Paragon City certainly FEELS like a much larger "place" than the Rogue Isles or Praetoria do, so there's that.

Most of them keep pet catgirls, but one of them has a dog (and the brothers don't like him much and never talk about Terrabull 'cause he's a villain).

Would the costume change for Cast emote work as an alternative animation for you?

Peregrine Island in town south of Portal Corp. There are some spawn points for them out in the streets. Ideally speaking you only need ONE Master Illusionist ... who will keep spawning Illusionist pets (that you need to defeat before they despawn for the badge) WITHOUT defeating the Master Illusionist. It's one of those whole "don't kill the goose that lays the golden eggs" kinds of things.

To be honest, it doesn't even look like there's a jetpack attached to the character's back ... unlike every other jetpack option. Makes me wonder if there's "parts missing" for that costume part.

I see your objections ... and honestly think they are misplaced. Yes, Crab Soldiers can approach the Quantity of Pets that a Mastermind can ride herd on ... but the QUALITY of the Pets a Crab Soldier can summon is pretty craptacular compared to Masterminds. Crab Soldier Pets are pretty much the textbook picture of Cannon Fodder. Also, Crab Soldier Pets are pretty darn suicidal in their behavior, because they are permanently in Aggressive Stance ... meaning they are cats you're trying to ride herd on. They are "badly behaved" compared to how much command and control Masterminds have over their Pets. Sure, if you're just looking at a spreadsheet that's only calculating damage in a vacuum for you, Crab Soldier might LOOK better ... but it isn't ACTUALLY better in actual gameplay compared to how a Mastermind both plays and strategizes.

Well, Masterminds can be played Petless. It's sub-optimal, but people can (and do) play that way anyway. Masterminds can be played without personal attacks from the primary. Even if the personal attacks are buffed into being acceptable/useful, that will remain the same. As for what the Conventional Wisdom™ will settle upon as the "right way to play" after making any changes ... well, there aren't all that many ways to "control" that with perfect certainty from the get-go. This is true. It isn't just ONE thing that needs to be fixed. There's no "silver bullet" for Mastermind problems in this regard. There's multiple pieces to this puzzle. What needs to happen is a collection of SMALL tweaks to a variety of elements so as to give Masterminds the overall tune up that they need. It's not a case of moving ONE thing by A Lot ... but rather a matter of moving a LOT of things by A Little Bit in order to settle Masterminds into a new paradigm of how they ought to be built and played, while making sure that such a paradigm shift does not eliminate all of the options we've enjoyed up until now. So you want to expand without creating outright obsolescence. The problem with that is that as far as the min-max crowd is concerned (and they're the "loudest" crowd) as soon as something becomes non-optimal (which they will term "non-viable") they will kick that option to the curb (and sometimes curb stomp on it for good measure) just to border guard against anyone ever thinking it might be in any way useful ever again. They'll be wrong (of course), but when has that ever stopped anyone from feeling self-righteous about what they (purport to) "Know" better than anyone else? There is wisdom in crowds ... but crowds can also be stupid.

Just because that's how I approach dealing with all of my build posts is no reason to cross-pollinate it over to this effort. 😝

Probably because it was all about making COOL™ animations at first, and then only later the devs realized that Players cared about animation times (at which point it was FAR TOO LATE to do anything to fix it all). I'm of the opinion that anything above zero is "gravy" on top of whatever the Pets are doing. It's not like I'm trying to hit a percentage marker ... I'm just trying to DO SOMETHING to make the fights end faster (so my Pets take less damage, meaning less need for healing).

Actually, it would be really cool if you were given the option to swap the Umbra Beast model for a Spirit Panther model (courtesy of Night Ward), since both are quadrupeds: Allow customization of the glowing eyes color in the costume editor and you're good ...

Something else to update when you get the chance.

The closest I can come to allaying @Nanolathe's fears on this point concerning the personal attacks is that you wouldn't want to alter/update the personal attacks to such an extent that as a Player you would have to be an ID10T Error personified not to take them. In other words, they can't become "SO GOOD" that they become "mandatory" to take for that primary because they overshadow every other possibility. If I'm interpreting the objection correctly (not always guaranteed), then the concern is a matter of DEGREE of improvement, rather than an objection to improvement happening AT ALL. As matters stand with the legacy structure of Mastermind primaries, the common consensus is that not only are the personal attacks "worthless" but are actually detrimental to take and slot and use. So the pendulum for that is pushed pretty hard over into the "This is wrong tool, never use this!" camp on this point. Whatever happens in this regard cannot then OVERCOMPENSATE for this initial condition by swinging the pendulum SO FAR in the other direction that you wind up in a place of "If you skip these you are DUMB!" due to being so tightly (or perhaps too tightly) integrated into the primary powerset's performance. THAT is something that I would also agree would be a mistake ... to push things "that far" and to that degree. So what you're looking for is a kind of Goldilocks Point™ where the improvements to the personal attacks are "enough but not too much" for increasing their usefulness and "value" to their respective Mastermind primaries. But then again, you're going to run into trouble if you take a One Size Fits All™ approach for doing that. The "newer" Mastermind primaries (Demons, Beasts) are "better balanced" than the originals from Issue 6 were/are, and Demons and Beasts have personal attacks that ARE rather more tightly integrated with their primary powersets (Beasts in particular having the procs to increase Pack Mentality system integrated into the personal attacks). Likewise, Demons and Beasts aren't "proliferating" their personal attacks from other existing powersets, since they were made whole cloth "new" for their respective primaries. So any sort of "rule" you come up with for the other older primary powersets (Ninjas, Mercs, Robots, et al.) you need to be making a judgement call as to whether or not the newer primary powersets ought to (or even "need to") partake in similar buffing of the personal attacks for them too ... or are the newer primary sets In A Better Place™ simply because they got developed later and therefore don't suffer (as badly) as the older primary powersets do? In other words, there are judgement calls to be made on the "reach" of any changes, and how globally they ought to be applied. THAT is a sensible stance to take. However, taking the stance that ANY changes to the older primary powersets to make their personal attacks more useful will ipso facto DEMAND that they MUST be taken (or you're an ID10T Player) ... so don't change ANYTHING ... while simultaneously insisting that they're crappy game design and need to be improved ... is just inherently self-defeating. There's no way to change what the powers DO without changing the meta of their VALUE in builds. If you make the personal attacks better, then their value in builds will rise. I can agree with the position that you don't want to overcompensate and make the personal attacks TOO GOOD (such that they then become "mandatory" picks due to the rise in their value). The challenge is to find a balance point where the personal attacks become COMPETITIVE picks with other alternatives, without making them "win by default" on (increased) value in builds. And THAT is the challenge of making Good Game Design Decisions. 😎 The objective is to open up new possibilities without foreclosing on others in exchange.

You're trying to have it both ways. Your stance is basically that you want the personal attacks to be BETTER than they are right now, but NOT GOOD ENOUGH to become NECESSARY. Except, the whole point of the exercise is to make them BETTER ENOUGH to become desirable ... which will overturn the Conventional Wisdom™ that skipping the personal attacks is the only "Sensible" option. Will you still be able to skip them entirely? Of course, it will be perfectly possible to create builds that still include zero personal attacks from the Mastermind primaries. Will it still be as much of a slam dunk "smart" decision to continue to skip them entirely? The whole point of the exercise is to put the WISDOM of that option up for debate so as to make it a close(r) call than it is right now, where the consensus opinion is that taking the personal attacks (let alone slotting them) is waste of power picks and slots better invested elsewhere. You can't make a choice more competitive and NOT expect to have it compete more strongly when the paradigm shifts. You can't have it both ways.

Well, the key to that parallel track for putting debuffs on the primary personal attacks is that whatever gets "stacked" onto them ought to be something both thematic (and therefore plausible/appropriate) and something that can harmonize/synergize with how your Pets "work" (and protect themselves) such that the Mastermind is able to "support" their Pets through both the primary (attacks) and secondary powersets. The example I'm most familiar with are Ninjas (for what should be obvious reasons) and their Bow attacks do Lethal damage ... and that's it. No damage over time, no debuffing, no self buffing, no nothing ... just raw Lethal damage (and not much of that, to be honest). I've raised the prospect of "poisoning" those personal attacks (you ARE playing a Ninja Mastermind, right?), although not with anything as powerful as the Poison powerset. In this case, I'm angling for something which is more "debilitating" than something that hastens defeats, so a debuff that weakens $Targets without increasing the damage that they're taking (and is therefore damage throughput "neutral" as far as that goes). That means no DoTs or -Resistance debuffing. It should also be something relatively minor, rather than obnoxiously overpowered (like a -500% Regeneration or anything similarly ridiculous). The option that I've raised previously would be poisoning Ninja primary personal attacks with a minor Slow (-Movement and -Recharge) which can be enhanced (with sets!) so as to represent a "debilitating poison" that makes $Targets sluggish so they can't fight at (default) max capacity. The alternative to that option (which I just thought of) would be to add a minor -ToHit debuff to Snap Shot, Aimed Shot and Fistful of Arrows which can be enhanced (with sets!) so as to represent a "debilitating poison" that impairs the senses (blurry vision, numbness leading to poor proprioception, sloppy judgement of depth perception, etc.) ... which would directly synergize with the Defense protection scheme that Ninjas use to avoid taking damage. Ideally speaking, both debuffs would be added (thus enabling access to both enhancement sets!) with the direct design intent for the Mastermind to be able to STACK the debuffing to "useful" quantities with repeated attacks, but still being limited in effectiveness by the "depth" of that stack.