Focused Feedback: Pets & Henchmen Updates for December 6, 2019

[The Curator]

The following is a list of patch changes since the last Pineapple patch. For a full list of the consolidated changes (difference between production and test) see the main patch thread.

 

Pets & Henchmen Updates

 

• Mastermind pets which have been commanded to Stay or to Go To a location will hold that position and will not chase after targets or move closer to use powers that are out of range. Be aware this also means they will not move out of damage patches on their own.
• Mastermind pets in Follow mode will now always stay within a 100' radius of their owner, regardless if they are in Defensive or Aggressive stance. Pets that are primarily ranged attackers will try to stay in the Supremacy radius.
• The pet AI now ignores the aggro cap. This should prevent pets from standing around twiddling their thumbs in Incarnate Trials and other situations where many pets are attacking the same target.
• Pets now give a strong preference to selecting targets that are within 50' of the pet's owner. This helps melee-oriented Mastermind pets stay in Supremacy range more often, while still allowing them to move and effectively engage targets outside the range.
• A number of pets have been classified as "Ranged Only" pets. The AI for these pets will no longer change position in order to use melee powers such as Brawl. They still possess these powers and will use them opportunistically if a target is in range, but will not move in order to do so.
• The pets that no longer move in to use melee attacks are:
  • Demons > Demonlings
  • Demons > Ember Demon
  • Mercenaries > Soldiers
  • Mercenaries > Medic
  • Mercenaries > Spec Ops
  • Mercenaries > Commando
  • Necromancy > Lich
  • Robotics > Battle Drones
  • Robotics > Protector Bots
  • Robotics > Assault Bot
  • Thugs > Thugs
  • Thugs > Arsonist
  • Thugs > Enforcers

[Lazarillo]

10 minutes ago, The Curator said:

The pet AI now ignores the aggro cap.

Does this apply only to "main" pets, or does it, say, buff Gang War, too?

[The Curator]

It should apply to all pets.

[Apparition]

I am doing everything I possibly can to prevent myself from breaking down into dance at work right now.

[Myrmidon]

If these go live, Mastermind is back on the playlist.

[KelvinKole]

Seriously awesome work. 

[Microcosm]

This is fantastic. Question, is it possible to apply this to non-Mastermind pets that are also range-only? I'm thinking specifically of Warshade pets which like to kamikaze all the time, but there are probably some others.

 

Edit: Another example, the Mu patron pet is another completely ranged pet who should probably not fly right in the face of what it is attacking.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Microcosm

[RobotWaifu]

As a bots MM...

Hallelujah~!

[Sir Myshkin]

I can already hear the gears grinding on those All MM iTrials and MSR's

Edited December 7, 2019 by Sir Myshkin

[dangeraaron10]

I cannot wait to see these changes go live.  Can't wait to see how this changes MM gameplay across the various pet powers.  Maybe this is my opportunity to make that Bots/Traps character I've been wanting.  I might make a couple MMs after these changes!

[Haijinx]

Nice looking proposal 

[Demon Shell]

Most of this sounds great. And the implications these types of changes have for future enemy encounters/AI is a major plus.

 

However, I don't know about Demons suddenly becoming predominantly ranged. This is mostly with regards to Ember Demon, who I generally assume will be near me in mid-range.

 

Something I'll need to test when I have a moment.

[Tater Todd]

I just finished testing Mercs and I am truly impressed. This change alone might actually push me to remake my old Mercs Mastermind.  I need to do more testing but so far so good!

[btsumm_sup]

39 minutes ago, Demon Shell said:

Most of this sounds great. And the implications these types of changes have for future enemy encounters/AI is a major plus.

 

However, I don't know about Demons suddenly becoming predominantly ranged. This is mostly with regards to Ember Demon, who I generally assume will be near me in mid-range.

 

Something I'll need to test when I have a moment.

I don't like these changes for Demons. As a kinetic, demons all spread out (or any pets for that matter) doesn't work with kinetics. These changes will break my Demon/Kinetic and probably all pet powersets for Kinetics.  Please don't make these changes. You want pets to stay a range, you should make another command, that is "Attack at Range".  Please don't make these changes.  You need to look at powerset synergy.

Edited December 7, 2019 by btsumm_sup

[Monos King]

Nonono I need demons to not do that.

Other than that this is awesome.

[RadicalRay]

16 hours ago, Microcosm said:

This is fantastic. Question, is it possible to apply this to non-Mastermind pets that are also range-only? I'm thinking specifically of Warshade pets which like to kamikaze all the time, but there are probably some others.

I second this! Warahade pet AI is a big issue. 

[Doomrider]

11 minutes ago, RadicalRay said:

I second this! Warahade pet AI is a big issue. 

Ah, Micro beat me to it. I third this, Essences have no melee attacks so there is no reason for them to hug enemies like they do. Please tell me this can be fixed.

[Monos King]

Also the window of pet aggression while in defensive mode is way too short right now. If they aren't being attacked they stop attacking in like 4 seconds instead of generally until the attacker is dead. Really inconvenient having the pets sitting there doing nothing, and not wanting to sacrifice damage sharing by putting them on 'Attack target'.

[Draeth Darkstar]

These changes look like an amazing start to making Pets and Henchmen less frustrating to work with.

 

There's a lot more that could be done with Pets, and, especially Mastermind balance, but since that's not the focus of this patch, I'll just say that I have two suggestions that would make a major impact without getting into the nitty-gritty of set-to-set balance:

• Pet levels. They need to be the same as the player, always. Back on live, the Mastermind pets going to -1 and then -2/-1 level for minions / lieutenants was done in CoV beta as a cutesy thing to mimic NPC group level scaling, and never changed despite years and years of people saying it sucked and made Masterminds scale terribly against high end content. The live devs did eventually make things more fair by giving the minion and lieutenant pets a +2 / +1 extra Incarnate Shift so that Masterminds weren't literally unplayable in the endgame content, but this change really needs to be made game-wide and the Incarnate Shift removed instead.
• Pets, especially Henchmen, are too fragile. A huge part of this problem is the aforementioned interaction with the Purple Patch; the other major component being that ridiculously massive damage AoEs are extremely prevalent in high level content. Just about every major MMO now has a mechanic that causes Pets to take reduced damage from AoEs due to their relative squishiness compared to a player to direct attacks combined with the fact that AI is not smart enough to avoid AoEs and it's too taxing to try to make a pet avoid them as a player. City of Heroes really needs this mechanic. Badly. Playing a 40+ Mastermind against +3 or +4 content often devolves into an endless cycle of resummoning pets and rebuffing them literally as fast as the power recharges, only for all but the boss to be dead before you've even finished the power chain - and this is with either Defense or Resist capped pets. If I build for my pets to hit these caps it should mean something. It takes a lot of power and IO investment to do that just doesn't pay off the way it does on other ATs.

 

In regard to the ranged pet AI changes affecting half the Demons, I to some degree agree with the above posters that it's generally better to keep your pets all together and this seems like it'll make that very hard, but at the same time those pets genuinely do not perform well in melee (partly because of aforementioned squishiness problems), so it's a bit of a wash as is.

Edited December 8, 2019 by Draeth Darkstar

[Monos King]

14 minutes ago, Draeth Darkstar said:

These changes look like an amazing start to making Pets and Henchmen less frustrating to work with.

 

There's a lot more that could be done with Pets, and, especially Mastermind balance, but since that's not the focus of this patch, I'll just say that I have two suggestions that would make a major impact without getting into the nitty-gritty of set-to-set balance:

• Pet levels. They need to be the same as the player, always. Back on live, the Mastermind pets going to -1 and then -2/-1 level for minions / lieutenants was done in CoV beta as a cutesy thing to mimic NPC group level scaling, and never changed despite a decade of people saying it sucked and made Masterminds scale terribly against high end content because of it. The live devs did eventually make things more fair by giving the minion and lieutenant pets a +2 / +1 extra Incarnate Shift so that Masterminds weren't literally unplayable in the endgame content, but this change really needs to be made game-wide and the Incarnate Shift removed instead.
• Pets, especially Henchmen, are too fragile. A huge part of this problem is the aforementioned interaction with the Purple Patch; the other major component being that ridiculously massive damage AoEs are extremely prevalent in high level content. Just about every major MMO now has a mechanic that causes Pets to take reduced damage from AoEs due to their relative squishiness compared to a player to direct attacks combined with the fact that AI is not smart enough to avoid AoEs and it's too taxing to try to make a pet avoid them as a player. City of Heroes really needs this mechanic. Badly. Playing a 40+ Mastermind against +3 or +4 content often devolves into an endless cycle of resummoning pets and rebuffing them literally as fast as the power recharges, only for all but the boss to be dead before you've even finished the power chain - and this is with either Defense or Resist capped pets. If I build for my pets to hit these caps it should mean something. It takes a lot of power and IO investment to do that just doesn't pay off the way it does on other ATs.

I don't know... I practically exclusively play masterminds and I can farm and solo AVs once I'm IO'd out and such. And in PvP certain builds of MM are nigh unstoppable too. If you could give some considerable suggestions I could probably see more your way, as the pets are pretty squishy generally; I'm definitely in favor of them being at least the same level as the summoner. But other improvements seem like they might quickly make MMs unmanageably powerful.

[Tenkay Volts]

Maaan I'm really looking forward to dusting off the Mastermind and getting back into it. I remember the biggest killer of my Demon/Traps MM was dumb pet behaviour, I can see these changes going a very long way to setting up better positions.

 

Since I'm not going to have much time to actually dive into the game to check this, does the aggro still reset when new commands are issued such as a GoTo command? One of my biggest strategy bugbears about MMs second only to them just being downright uncontrollable up till now was the fact that if you did try and order them to move to a location, especially in defensive mode, it'd reset their aggro and would idle around for a while until something either hit it or me (which tends to take a while on softcapped defense 😏)

Edited December 8, 2019 by 10kVolts

[Sovera]

Noooo, don't tease us with this and then take two months to roll them out!

[M3z]

I really like the MM changes but would also like to include additional changes for consideration:

 

Small note about me, I run a top competitive pvp team in CoH and have been playing since i8 playing on test ladder and highest level of CoH pvp. 

 

Below I have listed a few small changes for MMs that I think will be beneficial for them in both pve and pvp. In pvp, because mez durations are so small (2 second base duration for MMs) and because slows can no longer reduce max movespeed (this essentially means slows DO NOT WORK IN PVP) these changes are to buff MMs to allow them to compete with the other ATs. MMs used to rely on exclusively on slows/mezzes to set up their offense slowing an enemy down long enough to allow pets to move in and kill. Because they can no longer slow/mez in any effective manner I have made these suggestions with that in mind.

 

WISHLIST CHANGE

• Allow you to select what attacks you want a pet to use (I realize this is something that is probably not possible but would be very nice)
• Allow you to micro which attack a pet does (also not another change I expect to be doable but would help so much)

PETS

• Boost base level of all pets to match MMs or by +1/+2
• Boost pet damage base damage by 25%
  • (why this change? MMs used to rely on slows/mezzes to allow pets the time to move in and do damage. Because they are no longer able to do this pets need to be more threatening in brief engagements. Also MMs are the slowest AT in the game as they are forced to stay in BG mode or risk getting 2 shotted. This means they are limited to their pets movespeed. If that is the case the pets need to be more threatening to make up for this extreme limitation)

NECROMANCY

• Turn back on crit modifier to knights in pvp again (they never melee anything to begin with so at least they can be rewarded when they do decide to)
• Either remove weapon draw on knights or make them prioritize melee (MAINLY headsplitter/disembowel) more than they do (they love spamming ranged attacks which sucks given their melee attacks are 75% of a necros damage output)
• Knights prioritize headsplitter and disembowel over all other attacks
• Reduce cooldown on life drain to 15 for zombies (30 sec base CD is absurd given they have barely any attacks to begin with)

THUGS

• Bruiser prioritizes KO Blow over all other attacks (in pvp given the fast nature of the movement, the bruiser will be hurling boulders 99% of the time. Honestly if there was a way to just make him run in and KO Blow everytime it's off cooldown that'd be ideal)
• Increase bruiser fury generation (I'm guessing if it's the same as brutes it's 2 per hit, if it were increased to 15 or 20 that would help)

 

MMs really are not playable outside of controlled 8v8 Arena settings with special rules like incarnates disabled. In zones MMs are unplayable (judgement basically just one shots all of your pets and you cannot catch enemies). Because you cannot slow or CC enemies long enough for pets to do anything MMs need to be more dangerous in the fast paced engagements. They have some of the greatest weaknesses of any ATs (lowest HP, pets are extremely slow, limiting MMs ability to fight back without leaving BG mode). You can't even use TP foe strats anymore because when you use TP foe on an enemy they become unaffectable for a brief period!

 

Anyways I realize PVP community is small and many people are not onboard with making pvp changes so if I had to choose just a few changes at the VERY least I would want knight crit modifier turned on and the melee attack prioritization for bruiser/knights which I think everyone could agree.

 

If any of the homecoming team manages to read this thanks!

Edited December 8, 2019 by M3z

[InfamousBrad]

As someone who hasn't been on my Demons/Thermal lately, I should double-check, but I think you're wrong about Demons being primarily ranged. Demonlings have a very short attack chain and depend on their claw attacks for about a third of their already pitiful dps, if I remember right, and the Ember Demon's main damage comes not from his thrown fireball but from his breath weapon, and cones do better fired from medium to close range. Not only that, but the Ember Demon's +resist aura and relatively short radius AoE heal are calibrated around the assumption that all six demons will be moving more or less together. So I think they should continue to do what the Ninjas do: open from range, then move together to melee.

 

Similarly, we all cry about the Arsonist rushing to melee range, but if he uses that breath-weapon cone attack at maximum range, it's going to hit only one target most of the time, which is a heck of a nerf. I'd rather see him even slightly up-armored (say, some smash/lethal resist) than see him set to prefer-ranged.

 

But nitpicks aside, you've definitely got the right idea here.

[Captain Powerhouse]

The AI never uses cones from max range, it uses always tries to use them from half cone max range. I think that’s a bit drastic, and 2/3 might be better, but 1/2 is what it is at the moment.

Edited December 9, 2019 by Captain Powerhouse