Elthenar

Once again, I am requesting that MM pets be given the same flight speed cap as the MM himself.

Why. MM primaries all do damage of some sort. Whether it's melee or ranged is the single biggest difference. It's the secondary that changes how you contribute to a team the most. For example, is there a bigger difference between a thug/dark or demon dark or between a thug dark and a thug TA?

Agree with almost all of it with a few caveats. One, lore pet. The Banished Pantheon Ravager is the best by a fair margin. It has huge AOE's and it offers a beefy -res debuff. It's the only one with a -res debuff so it boosts the DPS of your pets and your whole league. Additionally, If you have a secondary that will help keep things alive like MM's tend to, I go with the core pet. For those that can't, like a TA MM or an AT like my Blaster, I go with Radial and a pet choice that can do so for me. Two. I agree about the Destiny slot. Clarion is the clear top choice. The one exception is if I have a secondary that gives strong AOE CC protection, like FF, Sonic or traps. Those sets also lack healing, making Rebirth attractive and Clarion less necessary Three. You take on Hybrid is dead on accurate.....for now. When the next patch drops and MM's can resummon and rebuff their pets often and cheaply, Assault will become more attractive. It will be little trouble to click Assault and drop a whole new set of pets without it seriously impacting your blue bar.

You should. A MM's contribution to the team is usually based around their secondary.

This made me chuckle. I have the exact opposite characters. A ninja/cold and demon/storm. For great laughs, put the Overwhelming Force KD IO in the Genin. Watch them throw Street Fighter juggle combos on people

My ninja/cold is fairly solid. With the shields, fog, maneuvers and auras I can get there positional defenses from 43 up to 50% for the Jounin. Then add in all the cold debuffs and CC, it's an effective combo.

When you are tinkering with pet mechanics, would it be possible to buff henchmen max flight speed to match that of the player? They still have the old 58 mph cap, which makes the new Group Fly still rather sad. A MM pet can hit that cap with base, unenhanced group fly.

No. Not even close. Disregarding a targets resistance, merc damage is sad. You could literally double the damage of every merc power and they would still be bottom 2 in damage.

It's because Mercs were the first set made for Master Minds. That's a big reason why it is so sub-par. It's why their design is so bad, it's literally the first draft for the whole damned AT. Thugs were not released until after COV came out. It's a much better designed set. In fact, That's consistently true across the board with MM's. The weakest sets are all the old ones. Of the original sets, only Bots are good.

Elec is that tanky? I've never really fooled with it

I did and in much more detail

One big bugaboo with the beta patch is that the MM itself now has a flight speed cap of 80 something percent. The pets still have the 56% number. They pets can hit that cap with an enhanced Group Fly at level 50. Making the pets have the same fly speed as the MM would be greatly appreciated. I'd also love to be able to make group fly only affect me and my pets but I am not sure that change is within the scope of this patch. It's something I've been banging the drum for for years. Even with Null the Gull, if you turn on Group Fly there will always be 1 or more people that get hit with it and get mad.

I'd say the question is well answered but there is one more tidbit to add. If I understand the mechanic correctly, Achilles Heel will only proc off attacks that have a -def effect. For the soldiers, that is every attack available to them except for the medic's grenade. Even their cones. With the Spec Ops, it's only their two starting attacks. With the Commando, it's only burst. Further, with Spec Ops or the Commando, those are single target attacks. That means one soldier alone can apply the debuff better than both specs or the commando. In short, not only are the Soldiers the right call for the Achilles Heel proc, it's the better choice by a huge margin. As a side note, give them the Overwhelming Force Kb to KD IO as well. It not only replaces a damage IO but the effect is hilarious with that many attacks.

I made a merc-nature before reading this and I a must agree with most of it. +1 for putting overwhelming force in the T1. I do that on most of my MM's with the exception of Bots, AssBot burn patches with KD added are just hilarious. If I run an Assault Hybrid, I prefer the Radial. The pet damage cap is fairly low and Nature gets their +damage pretty high as it is. If you end up on a team with a /kin or even another plant, it's very easy to run up against the cap. The double hit nature of Radial gets around that. You get your damage and still have some ceiling left to use outside buffs. Lastly, you didn't mention Entangling Aura. It is an excellent form of CC and is capable of locking down large groups. I am been tinkering with the idea of using Fold Space to group things around me to get held. The real beauty of it is that Overgrowth gives such a large endurance break that the end cost isn't prohibitive even before you get Incarnates and IO's.

Mercs need a massive overhaul. You could literally double the damage of every single power and they would go from worst damage to 2nd worst. That is not hyperbole. One assault bot can out damage the entire merc set.