ArchmageMC

Have the chain buffs always affect the caster, instead of it randomly deciding to jump to you and having it only work sometimes. The best way to do this would just be to add a "on cast: affect caster" clause and have the caster be unable to be chained to by their own ability. This will still keep its logic of "if pet targeted, prioritize pet" and everything.

Interesting insight, I'll put it into the build. Although probably swap to Cold isntead of elec. The chains not always affecting me really ruins the set.

Either it always needs to affect the caster, or never affect the caster. The fact I can't rely on the chain to work on me all the time, but only sometimes, due to RNG, is a very annoying problem with the set that no other sets have to worry about. Its a huge turn off for the set, especially when sets like Cold are right there and don't have this annoyance.

Ah. This is what I came up with. Mastermind (Mercenaries - Electrical Affinity).mbd Managed all pet IOs, 5 procs, achilies, soulbound, and 3 10% IO sets with over 80% damage in each pet power and at least 30% acc in each.

StrikerFox Can you share this merc/elec build you've made? I don't see how you can have 7 procs + build up, all the pet IOs, and still have 50%+ acc and 80%+ damage on all the pets. My best so far is 3 procs, build up, achilies, all the pet IOs, and 50/80 in all the pets.

Haven't played in awhile, I remember it used to be Rad/Bio/FA Energy melee/SS Is it still these or did a patch change things?

Nah, what I'm asking is some of the travel pool powers to be "You need 1 other" like tough.

Since travel powers are allowed at the same time as the "Tier 1" powers of the same pools, there are no "Tier 2" powers in these pools, but instead it jumps to "Tier 3". Have you thought about changing one of the Tier 3 powers in those travel pools to be tier 2?

Street Justice is a fun idea for a set, but its just not used that often because its AoE is horrid. A suggestion I have that wouldn't change the power of the set, but make its AoE much more better and thematic.... 1. Sweeping Cross is a Combo Builder, instead of a combo finisher. 2. Spinning Strike AOE radius set to 8ft instead of 6ft. When at combo level 3, the AOE radius is 15ft. Those two buffs should help a ton and make STJ more used. Of course any sound effects to make it feel more 'weighty' would also help a lot, but its AoE is a huge issue it needs fixed.

Talking on the discord, it seems the issue isn't removing the shift, they can do that, but the issues it causes with MM pet sets in relation to each other. But with the recent topic I just put out saying how each MM pet set is supposed to be a mini AT, that shouldn't be too much of an issue with that design space in mind. Either way, I'm very excited to see level shifts removed at some point in a testing enviorment so we can see how well it fixes MMs xD.

From talking on the discord I've come to the realization that MM pet sets themselves don't have an obvious theme, and that really hurts how you'd design them or balance them. They are often seen as all related to each other, instead of being their own thing. But when that was realized, discussion started on what if each MM pet set was supposed to be its own AT, instead of being related to each other, and suddenly things made sense. For example... Bots are the tankiest of all the sets with AoE damage but poor single target. This is in line with Tankers. Ninjas are squishy but have very high damage and criticals. This is in line with Scrappers Mercs (after the new patch.) will be more Blaster like, being squishy but doing high damage with minor CC. This will be in line with Blasters Necros have lots of debuffs and other such effects. This is in line with Corruptors or Defenders. (take your pick as this is the only 'support' MM pet set) Thugs are much like Soldiers of Arachnos, they do a little bit of everything but only benefit themselves or other pets. This could be in line with SoA or Brutes, depending if you want to think of their design around all the pets, or just the bruiser. Demons blast things and do blaster like stuff, but their boss monster spams a ST hold. This is very in line with what Dominators do. Beasts are more or less Ninja 2.0 and will need an identity of themselves. Right now they are just scrappers. My suggestion would be making them like Sentinals but with a blapper mindset/melee mindset instead of all ranged like Sentinals. Now you might be saying "Demons don't have any AoE mez!" or "Mercs don't have any nukes!" or "Ninjas don't have a big finisher!" And thats the point. MM pet sets are representatives of "A mini AT", giving them the large, powerful abilities of the AT they are based on would instead make them an actual AT and remove what makes that AT special. And this should help new MM sets be designed and current MM sets be balanced. They wont be balanced with each other in the conventional sense, but can be a representative of what each AT looks like when balanced against each other with a support behind them.

If you didn't know, MM pets have a negative level shift applied to them of -2 on the minion pets and -1 on the LT class pets. This is a core issue of MMs that would be a small, but huge change for the class due to the massive, massive penalties these level shifts cause the pets. So much so, that just removing this pet level shift system. (Or making the Supremacy aura give Minion pets +2 levels and Lt. pets +1 levels to ovveride the level shift in a more hacky/janky way if the pet level shift code is in some massive spaghetti block code...) will buff MMs considerably, far more than just changes to the powersets would give. In fact removing or effectively removing these level shifts will cut down on MM set rebalancing work considerably. Why should these level shifts go away? Everything at +4, since thats the most commonly ran thing. Minion pets have 20% tohit compared to players with 39% tohit Lt. pets have 30% tohit compared to players 39% tohit. Minions have -def somewhere in the 30% range, needing 75% def to be softcapped. Lt. have -14% def, meaning they need incarnate cap to be softcapped. Minions deal 70% less damage Lt. deal 53% less damage. (yes, level shifts of this degree cause massive damage penalties.) And of course Minion pets have 48% less res Lt. pets have 20ish% less res Removing the pet level shifts will just greatly help all of MM's core issues and is a much much faster way of fixing the class than rebalancing the MM pet sets themselves. Once the level shifts have been removed it will be much easier to evaluate each MM set as MM sets that put their damage into the minion pets will be made much better, while MM pet sets that put their damage in the boss pet wont change too much.

Such as "collect X costumes" or "collect X presents" since these are very lengthy badges that take a long time on a single character, and are event only badges.

As most know, Regen is the weakest set for melee defensive sets due to its lack of really anything outside of regeneration, which more modern sets like Bio can almost match. However, just giving Regen what Bio has would make both sets play very similar to each other. So I remade Regen into a set that still keeps its identity, but also give it a niche almost no other set has. And of course, with these changes, it'll be possible to proliferate regen to Tankers. (Although that might be a bad idea(?) TLDR The changes make it so Regen has an insane amount of Debuff resistance, more resistance, a tiny bit of DEF, an auto rez toggle, Instant healing is a toggle and gives a tiny bit of absorb, some -dam to enemies, and reconstruction is baked into Dull pain. Numbers can def be tweaked, but this idea makes regeneration a lot better and less spiky and gives it a tiny bit of team support, although not much outside of actually tanking. Its biggest niche being the auto rez and the debuff resistances that will allow it to reach cap or close to it on most of them with Ageless and other abilities. T1 Fast Healing (Auto) You heal Hit Points faster than normal. +100% Regen , +35% Res(Regen) T2 Quick Recovery (Auto) You regain Endurance faster than normal. +30% Recovry , +35% Res(Recov, end) T3 Dull Pain (Clickie) Recharge from 360 to 240, HP max from 45% to 50%. T4 Integration (Toggle) You can Integrate your Mind and Body, Making you resistant to (Basic mez resistances). Your concentration also increases your resistance to debuffs as you heal away the effects. (Mez resistances given to melee sets), +60% res(DefDebuff, EndRecov, Regen), +30% Res(Slow), +20% Res(ToHit, Perception, End) EndCost 0.26/s T5 Resilience (Auto) Your regeneration makes you resilient to all damage. This is always on and costs no endurance. 10% Res(all), 3% Def(all) T6 Instant Healing (Toggle) Your body regenerates at an insane rate. This boosts your Regeneration Rate while toggled on. Additionally your body regenerates so fast it prepares itself for oncoming damage, giving you a slight about of Absorb. 600% +Regen, +10% Absorb EndCost 0.28/s T7 Adaption (Toggle) This technique allows you to use your body's regenerative abilities to adapt to attacks and become more resilient to them, increasing your resilience to all damage. Additionally your body's ability to adapt to your foe's attacks effectively reduces their damage dealt. 20% Res(all), -15% DamageBuff, Taunt EndCost 0.18/s T8 Revive (Toggle) You recover so fast that not even falling in battle can stop you. You heal slightly faster and if you would fall in battle you revive yourself at half hp but lose half of your endurance. This is so taxing that you are unable to regain endurance for a little while. When you are revived from this ability, it is toggled off. This ability does not benefit from Recharge Reduction. 100% +Regen, Self Resurrection(Special) EndCost 0.12/s T9 Moment of Glory (Clickie) Cast time to 1 sec instead of 2.5s, otherwise unchanged.

Worse comes to worse, they remove the level cap and find out MMs are overpreforming because the minions are actually doing damage again. Not a big deal since it wont usurp the fire/spines brute in farming nor overshadow other ATs in group content. Its not like the MM will suddenly get infinite judgement strikes or anything. They can be OP for a patch or two if removing this makes them 'overtuned' until they get a rework. After all they do less DPS than controllers, making them the lowest damage AT in the game right now, and I doubt they'll suddenly do more than blasters with this change.