Shazbotacus

I feel you. I bring it up because one of OP's concerns was a lack of melee attacks, and I believed there were enough existing assets and animations that can be used to fill out some melee damage beyond the obvious rifle butt & bayonet.

I’d like to add in Crey’s energy weapons and that purple assault weapon for Beam Rifle. They’re available elsewhere, but not to Beam Rifle. In fact, proliferate all the guns between all the gun weapon sets, and let’s have some ones not available like the Uzi-style SMG used by the Hellion/Skulls Gunner mobs and the SMG used by tier 1 Mercs. There’s other gun models I haven’t thought of yet I’m sure, just take a look in the weapon display cases at a Natural store in Steel Canyon or at the Vanguard base. OP, consider renaming the thread to “Weapon Skin Proliferation.” :^)

Or we can borrow Vanguard’s energy/hard light bayonets that I’ve been wanting for a while :^) Add that to a rifle butt attack and a short-range plasma jet burst like I mentioned earlier and that’s three melee attacks. Maybe even make a kicking attack while still holding the weapon.

Pistol and sword, I’d rock it.

A buff should happen regardless, of course, but you’ll hear no objection from me if the buff includes bayonets.

Speak for yourself, I'd love to have a beam rifle with a Vanguard-inspired energy bayonet, with the butt stock Pummel as well. In another thread I suggested making a third melee attack with the weapon by reasoning it as a short-range, magnetically-contained beam of plasma (lighstaber, basically) held into the target with the Heavy Burst animation at melee, or slightly longer than melee, range. Possibly in a narrow 5' cone ala Headsplitter.

Hm, those Praetorian bots that Arachnos and Longbow stole... re-purposed, re-engineered, whatever, have some animations that involve using some kind of directed energy weapon from their right shoulder, and for weapons mounted on their forearms. That being said they are, though appropriate for the NPC they're used on, very stiff and "robotic" in nature and that might not fly with everyone's role play. These can be useful, possibly among other animations such as the Crab pack you probably already mentioned or others I may not be remembering right now.

Integrated weapons from a backpack worn with or without power armor. That's a really comic book hero concept there. Oh, as a side note, I wish I could have varied weapons like rocket launchers and whatnot like these Space Marine/Halo looking dudes.

Ah, I see. Makes me think of Valiance Online and their plan with three different kinds of pet classes.

So, kinda inverse from Mastermind? Player provides damage, pets have support and perhaps even debuff powers with maybe a touch of damage? Probably fewer of the pets or something?

There's no way to dip into Crab without lugging around the pack though, right?

I believe that “something” should include improved debuff/cc for Spec Ops, specifically to improve survivability by hurting the enemy’s damage output. Lower cooldown on tear gas/flashbang, AoE on web grenade, that sort of thing. Poor DPA and especially poor DPS. Though I don’t get the fuss over DPA as much as their shoddy DPS that makes taking things out take longer than it should. Changing them to do single shot -> burst -> heavy burst would cut down on activation time by a great deal and help both DPA and DPS substantially. If their full auto’s gonna be a wimpy 5 degree cone with low AoE damage anyways may as well change the third attack to single target with some bite to it.

I don’t know anything about runs or musculatures or that incarnate stuff I kinda just ignored on live, but I do know Mercs need some TLC bad.

I would also love to see that in action. I imagine it can be balanced with, say, a target cap and depending on how strong each zombie is. Each zombie only lasts 25 seconds also, so that plus a target cap can be used to set an effective maximum number of these things one player can have. An actual horde of zombies sounds really fitting for necro, and it might be a lot of fun to see in action. I know it looks insane, but I see so much potential in it. It reminds me of pet-specced Necromancers in Guild Wars; once they got their army of undead horrors built up, they became extremely powerful, but the fact each pet would decay faster and faster, eventually making keeping them healed impossible, meant they each had to be replaced eventually, new bodies had to be made, and so momentum had to be kept up to maintain the rolling death stampede. But we’re also splitting off the original topic of mercs. I’ve played Mercs when they launched with City of Villains. They’ve needed love since day 1; I know that for sure. Ninjas as well, in fact, but let’s stay focused for now. I am very hopeful that mercs will get some strengths so they can be competitive with the other primaries to at least some degree.

Yaaas, imma yeet a 🅱oneless endorsement your way fam 😂💯👌

Yes, please, I would love this as well.

Me, too.

There needs to be a super hero statue for this man.

It's the crash, the fact it only affects one of your henchmen, the 1,000 second (16m 40s) recharge, and its short duration of one minute. It's not up nearly often enough to be worth... anything. It is, hands down, the worst level 18 power out of all the Mastermind primaries. It is indeed a solid resistance buff on paper, but it's severely outweighed by the above problems.

I had a thread in the suggestions forum detailing my understanding of Mercs’ problems and a way to address them. Maybe I should go and copy that first post here too. Eh, why not. I'm gonna touch up my original post like a second draft and post it here. It's generally agreed that among the Mastermind primary sets, Mercenaries stands out in its mediocrity. As someone who loves the idea of leading a team of soldiers yet is dismayed at the mercs' lack of worthwhile strengths, I'd like to take a serious look at trying to put them on par with their competition. To start off, we must first understand what is seen as wrong with Mercenaries. That is, there isn't much to say about it: Mercenaries lack both meaningful damage and survivability. Compared to Thugs they only have their inherent resistance against S/L and the Medic's one heal to keep themselves alive while Thugs Enforcers give all their henchmen about 15% defense against everything. Also compared to Thugs, Soldiers hover around 1.34 damage per activation cycle in their single target attacks while Thugs get around 2 and 1.8, or a little over two thirds more "DPS." Spec Ops look like they were meant to help survivability through hard crowd control and offense debuffs like the Lich from Necromancy, and that fits very well with their theme of using modern weapons to fight with. However these powers are on such long recharge timers (2-3 minutes) that they are not even available every fight. So let's get to addressing these issues. Remove Brawl? Let's get this out of the way. I won't be suggesting removing brawl here; that discussion is a topic unto itself that concerns Masterminds as a whole. I'd very much like to focus on just Mercs for this discussion please. Addressing Damage Part of what really hurts Mercs damage output is the obscenely long activation time of their standard shooting attacks. Burst -> Heavy Burst -> Full Auto all take a long time to finish firing. I'd suggest keeping their recharge and total damage and changing them to Single Shot -> Burst -> Heavy Burst, and setting the activation time of Burst to be more like what players get from Assault Rifle: 1.00 second instead of 2.67. Like this, we end up with activation times of 0.9, 1.00, and 2.67 respectively. This should bring the damage per activation cycle of the Soldiers' three attacks of this new chain to 1.94, 1.71, and 0.96 if my calculations are right, so much closer to Punks. It may also be desirable to change Heavy Burst to a higher damage single target attack. The arc was only five degrees anyhow, and damage went down the drain for it; up Heavy Burst damage per activation cycle from 0.96 to 1.8 or so and leave AoE damage to the Commando. This might also carry over to Spec Ops, replacing their snipe with Single Shot and moving their Burst up to the next damage/recharge tier. Just use the firing sound of the Snipe for the Single Shot. What about Heavy Burst? That depends on how much we want to Spec Ops to focus on weakening enemies to protect the squad or just doing more damage. If we favor higher damage, then move Heavy Burst up another tier of damage/recharge so Spec Ops has a single target attack chain of 3 powers. Otherwise, let's explore what would help them cripple enemies better below in Addressing Survivability. Moving on to Commando, my one gripe is LRM Rocket. It does decent damage but not for its 4 minute recharge. Like the Spec Ops, the Commando doesn't need a snipe. I'd replace this with just another AoE grenade: Incendiary Grenade as a heavy fire damage over time with similar damage spread over 6 seconds, shorter 80 foot range, and a much shorter 30 second recharge. Personally, though, I hate the guy's ugly default assault rifle "frankenrifle." I really wouldn't mind replacing all his attacks with a bunch of grenade launcher powers using the PPD grenade launcher for a weapon model. It'd spice up the Mercs arsenal for visual appeal for sure. You've got all sorts of damaging ammunition available in 40mm like grenades that include frag, incendiary, anti-tank, and maybe even poison gas. 40mm has even been used with buckshot as well. If there's some curiosity about leaning more into melee, you could also make his brawl not suck (he's a super soldier after all) and give him Pummel, maybe even a "bayonet" attack where the weapon is smashed into the target like a battering ram (the grenade launcher is pretty big.) What the hell, I'm going to show you guys my fantasy Commando. Behold: Basic: Brawl: Except it's a good attack now. Anti-Tank Grenade: This shaped charge bores through its target with a jet of molten copper for extreme single-target fire damage. Frag Grenade: Single hit of decent smash/lethal damage in an area around the target. Upgrade One: Pummel: Straight smashing damage melee attack with the back side of the grenade launcher. Incendiary Grenade: Long-lasting and very high fire damage-over-time applied to enemies in an area around the target. Upgrade Two: "Bayonet" Smash: Straight smashing damage melee attack by ramming the grenade launcher into the target. Poison Gas Grenade: Drops poison clouds on enemies within the area effect, potentially doing extreme toxic damage to whole groups if they can not move away. Just like Assault Bot's incendiary missiles. As you can see, I believe the Commando should take the premier role of area effect damage for Mercs. Just think of the Assault Bot from Robotics. Being in melee won't hurt this guy quite so much if his attacks are mostly plain area effect as opposed to being cone-shaped. The Commando should be defined by high amounts of raw damage; no secondary effects, just plain killing power, and should be almost as effective as the Assault Bot in wiping out crowds of minions. Addressing Survivability There's not much to dealing with Medic. As a component of Mercs survivability, he is not adequately focused on his healing role. I'd replace his Frag Grenade on final upgrade with an area effect heal around himself or a friendly target. One might even consider making his Stimulant an area effect large enough to get the whole squad in one application. Finally, Spec Ops again. I want to compare these guys to the Lich in that they seem like they were originally intended to focus on helping survivability by crippling an enemy's offense over doing much damage. Let's begin with Spec Ops' debuffing and crowd control powers. Web Grenade has a good Immobilize and -recharge component on it, but it's only applied to one target for 15 seconds out of a 30 second cooldown. I'd suggest some area effect at the least so it can apply its -recharge to multiple enemies and slow their rate of attack. Rifle Butt... might change that into Beanbag, basically ranged stun rather than melee. Now for the CC grenades, Flashbang and Tear Gas. Respectively their cooldowns are 2 and 3 minutes, do -5% To Hit and -20% damage, and CC with Mag 2 Stun and Mag 3 Hold. It's pretty clear why Tear Gas has a longer cooldown than Flashbang, but in both cases it's just too long. Spec Ops, to protect their squad, need debuff powers that can be available often enough to be used at least once every fight, and that have enough up time on their debuffs that it matters. Achieving a respectable amount of debuff up time might mean sacrificing a bit of hard CC, and I'm fine with that. One AoE CC is enough anyways, and I don't think this set should be so heavily reliant on the binary nature of hard mez effects. So I propose splitting them between hard, binary CC and a strong debuff with more up time, and it might look something like this. Stun Grenade: Replaces Flashbang. Mag 2 Stun for 6 seconds (level 1) on a cooldown of 45 seconds. Loses vestigial -5% To Hit Tear Gas Grenade: Loses Mag 3 Hold, keeps -20% damage, duration extended to 30 seconds, and cooldown reduced to 45 seconds. Addressing Serum Jesus this power is just bad. Possibly justifying a special case overturning of the "cottage rule" levels of bad. It's like an armor set's T9, but it crashes after just one minute, recharges in 1,000 seconds, and only affects one henchman. For realsies. Super soldier serums are a neat trope, but not specifically helpful for supporting the whole set of henchmen. What can we do with this thing? 1. Aerosolized Regeneration Serum - Assists Survivability The player lobs a grenade-like canister and releases the ARS around a target henchman, affecting all nearby henchmen in a 25 foot radius with +600% Regeneration for 30 seconds on a 4 or 5 minute recharge. This, with base regeneration, should mean about 40% health regenerated every 12 seconds, or full healing done in half a minute. 2. ACE Support - Assists Damage Teleport in a soldier wearing the ACE, Aerial Combat Exoskeleton, which is a full body suit of power armor with a jet pack for flight. He carries a scary grenade launcher like the one used by the PPD, and rains several types of destructive grenades for massive area effect damage and scorched earth on your enemies for a full minute before teleporting out to refuel and rearm. Like Assault Bot but purely area effect focused. Recharges in ten minutes. Can be targeted and shot down. Alternatively, summon a sky skiff with a similar armament of high-yield rocket propelled explosives, but that'd look silly to use on indoor missions which is most of them. 3. Simple Solution Just cut that recharge down to like ten minutes, make it affect the whole squad, and remove the crash bro, like instead of the one needle it's an aerosolized gas from a grenade or something and spreads the Serum's effects to all your henchmen.

I figure one thing that can be done is to change the attack chain on Soldiers from Burst -> Heavy Burst -> Full Auto to Single Shot -> Burst -> Heavy Burst. This should cut down on activation times by a good amount. You might extend this to Spec Ops as well. Frankly, snipe doesn’t serve them well and the CC grenades make their theme work fine by themselves. Go from Burst -> Heavy Burst -> Snipe to Single Shot -> Burst -> Heavy Burst. Keep that nice snipe sound and use it for single shot though. This also has the effect of having each “bullet” do more damage. It just kinda bothers me seeing six guys with assault weapons furiously mag dumping on one minion to kill it. Mercs go through far more ammunition than they can possibly carry in any given mission. Of course that’s just one action out of several that would help Mercs.

I’d like to use the regular citizen stance. Hands down at side, the occasional cough, that kinda thing.

I had made a post in the Duo thread. Maybe it'll fit here too, especially the part about doing a melee attack with a ranged attack animation. Second paragraph.

That gets me thinking, if it’s something high for endurance cost, like 2/sec, maximizing endurance recovery and putting cost discounts on new Hasten to keep it up might become a new big goal for builds.

I guess if you had to make Hasten inherent, uh, what if it were a toggle instead? Possibly with a high endurance cost? What effects on peoples’ builds and game play would this have if it still did +70% recharge speed like notmal? Was that mentioned before? 17 pages is quite a bit to search through on a phone. ”In times of great stress, heroes (or villains or anyone anywhere between) can push themselves harder to use their powers at a greater rate, but tax their bodies in doing so.” Everyone pushes hard for “perma hasten” with their fancy IO set builds with mules and whatever anyhow.