Zephiyo

I tested my Bots/FF Mastermind on the Beta, and this is a substantial nerf - I mean it. Sorry for the long post, but I want to help as much as possible with information, so try to stay with me, here... The damage increase is nice on the pets yes, but the -Regen is a massive, massive nerf against harder content, and here's why: --1. Currently on Live, the Assault bot stacks 1,000% and sometimes 1,500% -Regen on a target. (I just tested this). We're talking easily 100+dps on a level 54 AV. That's more dps than all your pets combined against a non-debuffed level 54 AV. --2. To get full -Regen now, Masterminds have to take and slot three whole powers. This is a painful blow to power selection and bubbles. Even if you pick up the three powers and spend slots in them, it's only -600% Regen. 1/3rd of what you got in Live. So against 54 AVs your kill time is just destroyed. This exacerbates a problem MMs already have, which I'll explain so try to stay with me again here... Currently, a MM's biggest problem is effectiveness scaling via the Purple Patch. <-- that's a link! Purple Patch TL;DL - the higher in level the bad guy is over you, the exponentially less you do to it. This includes debuffs/damage/to-hit/etc. Masterminds have pets that are level 48, 49 and 50 - this is important to remember. You pets are not your level. This means Masterminds are as good as everyone else at level 50 content. They're quite good, in fact. Support with average-low damage, like defender. Now let's make the content level 54. All the other Arctypes are 48% as effective, except MMs because pets are 15%, 30% and 48% effective (in pet order). This means the higher level the content, the further Masterminds fall from the rest of the team. For example, I just did this on Live 15 minutes ago: Target: Arachnos Fortunata Mastermind's Pulse Rifle Blast against a 50 = 63 damage Mastermind's Pulse Rifle Blast against 54 = 30 damage -t1 Minion Laser Burst against a 50 = 3 ticks of 6.45 damage -t1 Minion Laser Burst against a 54 = 3 ticks of 1.2 damage The player does 47.6% of their original damage on +4. The t1 minion pets do 18.6% of their original damage on +4. Bump that content up to level 55 Challenge AVs and MM pets go to 8%, 15% and 30% effective. This is also a To-Hit reduction on your pets of -92%, -80% and -70%. They really struggle to hit the higher level you fight. 4star Hardmodes: Challenge AVs are 54+1, so t1 pets and t2 pets are basically doing nothing. The only saving grace was -Regen from the Assault Bot. In this patch that -Regen has been cut to 1/3rd and the MM has to actually hit with 3 attacks to get that 1/3rd. On Live I might allow a Bot Mastermind to come on 4star runs because of their -Regen against 54+1 AVs. With this patch there's no way Masterminds would be useful outside of their Secondary Power selection, which is already weaker numbers compared to other arctypes. In the end (thanks for coming), this is a buff to Masterminds doings Radio/Paper missions or fighting level 50s. However, In Taskforces and especially in Hardmodes, this is a huge nerf if only because of the -Regen loss. Here come my suggestions to fix the problems I see: --1. Above all else, pets should be the same level as the Mastermind. Even if their damage has to be nerfed because of it. If pet level is not matched to the owner, Masterminds will always scale worse than every other arctype. To be as good as everyone against a level 50, but worse than everyone against a level 54+1/+2/+3 is poor design. On 4star Hardmode content, MMs can't keep up - it hurts to watch. --2. Give some -Regen to all the Robot beam attacks. Not as much as -1,500% (that's really OP), but enough to stack up to -500% at least without the MM using pew pew. A Mastermind full-timing a support set like Kinetics or Electric Affinity rarely has the time for their gun, nor can they afford the power and slot picks. And if a Mastermind isn't full-timing a support set, they can have the option to add another 600% -Regen to the target on top of their Bot debuffs. Making all bots do minor -Regen with their lasers is consistent with damage-type design: energy beams do -Regen. As always, thanks for the wonderful work you Devs are putting in. Current power updates are my favorite patch notes. You work is so very appreciated! Edit: One typo so far...

I'll be on the side of 'the prices are fine or should be higher' and here's my opinion: 1. Most are 10 Aether. REALLY good-looking ones too, like the Master at Arms himself, or The All-Mother Devoured. Mind-blowingly neat costumes for such a dirt-cheap price. This is a steal. 2. Aether can be bought on the auction house. As of now, Live prices are 7mil each (3mil last week). This means for the very highest-end costumes, the most expensive ever, is still under 2bil inf. The price of building a few characters to max. Edit: Sorry, missed the 1,500 Aether one - that's over 10bil. So, to correct, 99% of them at this time are under 2bil and most are like 70mil. Those who don't want to farm Aether can just pile inf over time to buy the Aether. 3. Having long-term cosmetic goals is an amazing way to give us a reason to play. City of Heroes is amazing and I want to play it, but if I'm not working towards anything I don't feel as much enjoyment from playing. I feel like it's 'wasted time' if you will. Aether alone has made me play for hundreds of hours over the last few months (yeah before it came out because I was preparing toons) and I love the reason to play. And I'm sure this probably doesn't need to be said due to the opinion seemingly of the Dev team, but Empyreans should have no part in buying the costumes - only Aether. 1. Empyreans should be solely for the incarnate system for game consistency reasons. 2. People with 2k Empyreans (yeah me) would make Aether market meaningless.

Two well-respected 4star content runner friends of mine say Katana/Bio gets 1min pylon runs with -res procs (though I don't have the experience personally). So really that's nothing special for fire melee now that it has -res procs. I imagine if EM could get -res it'd be a solid 40-50 second pylon drop. Pylon benchmark is skewed with debuffs due to the purple patch. This is why Masterminds can Pylon in like 40 seconds but drop a level 54 EB slower than even a sentinel (pre this buff). Matter of fact, the purple patch is why Mastermind pets are basically useless when you're fighting +4 +5 and +6 enemies. Against a +4 your Minion pets are 15% effective. 15% out of 100%. That being said, -def doesn't really fit with fire melee in my opinion and I think it should be removed because: 1. -Def has pretty much always been on radiation attacks or lethal attacks. Fire Swords used to be lethal but are now pure fire damage(which I love) and therefore -def breaks the game's power continuity of predictable debuffs from the damage types. 2. Fire has always been single-mindedly focused on damage (see Fire Blast, Fire Control, Fire Assault, Fire Anything) rather than some sort of additional modifiers. Consistency should be sustained with the only exception of possibly adding something useful to Breath of Fire just because it's not good as-is (see my above post). 3. Weaker, long animation sets are rescued because of damage procs and -res procs. Fire Melee should not need damage and -res procs to rescue it. It won't be broken OP because a Kinetics in end-game will make proc builds do double damage while Fire Melees will probably only get a 50% boost or so. 4. Fire Melee shouldn't have such easy access to -res debuffs through procs. If its main thing is damage, then it should have a dependency on others for debuffs. A Fire Melee should be able to get really excited when they see a support in the team that packs a ton of -res. Furthermore, a support should be able to think to themselves, 'Oh, well I have -res so we'll be perfect together!'

Here's my thoughts about changes after making and using several builds in the Beta... ---Set as a whole--- Fire Melee does almost as much DPS as Energy Melee and Street Justice -- I think it should do a tad more than other sets. Energy Melee(Stalker) has tons of stuns while out-DPSing fire. Street Justice(Scrapper) has -res, -def, knockup, stuns, -dmg debuffs and still will out-DPS fire. I suggest increasing the DoT duration of Fire Melee attacks by a few seconds, and/or adding some -regen since burns are hard to heal. This would make it more thematic and push its damage to be on par with the highest DPS melees. Fire Melee's only specialty is more damage which doesn't show when it's outperformed by sets that also pack debuffs. ---Breath of Fire--- I have never found this power useful on any Arctype at level 50. 1. The animation is painfully long, cancelling out any usefulness of its damage. I would much rather use some SingleTarget while waiting for another Fire Sword Circle to come up. 2. Breath's short range and narrow cone leaves me no desire to waste a power slot and a few bubbles. It doesn't feel good to have to move back to make use of the cone. Some things to mix/match that would make Breath attractive to use at level 50: 1. Have triple the arc (which probably doesn't fit the theme too well). 2. Have a super low animation time, like 0.5s (but high endurance cost to make up for it). This would allow your mouth to be spewing out fire effects AS you attack with your unused hands (this would be unique and really neat to see). 3. Have a pretty strong -regen effect, like -300% for 10s. This would make it useful against EBs/AVs but not too strong against hordes. 4. Be a single target attack that has some sort of useful DPA(Damage Per Animation) to it. Whether or not the end result damage numbers are changed, I very strongly recommend increasing the amount of damage ticks on Breath. It gives way more dopamine to see x10 ticks of 10 damage than to see x4 ticks of 25 damage (see Ignite from Assault Rifle). ---Stalker Fire Melee--- Due to Scrapper ATOs and Stalkers missing out on Incinerate, my scrapper appears to be hitting higher SingleTarget numbers than my stalker with a similar build. I suggest removing Breath on Stalker and adding Incinerate unless Breath is made into a SingleTarget attack. This would make Stalker the King of SingleTarget damage as they should be. Greater Fire Sword is a 13s cooldown on Stalker. This should be brought down to 12 seconds because: 1. Greater Fire Sword is 12 seconds cooldown on every other melee arctype. 2. The 1 additional second hardly means anything in level 50 content so it's really not a groundbreaking buff. 3. Most powers in the game (with a few exceptions like claws/savage) have an even number on their cooldown. Making it 12 seconds would be consistent with design. Thanks for the work y'all are doin'! Power Set adjustments are by far my favorite content updates. Edit: As it stands currently, Greater Fire Sword can cause high pitch stacking audio by sheathing/drawing repeatedly. The sound is already on the cast therefore it should be removed from the draw. Otherwise, if you use it just before it comes up, you get the exact same sound twice. This will also protect ears from the high pitch audio stacking if someone is having too much fun spamming the weapon draw sound.