Mastermind suggestions (long)

[kelika2]

love the AT blahblahblah played a lot, resume here blahblahblah.  now that the token introduction paragraph is done lets get to some ideas that are hopefully doable:

 

In general:

Bump up all pets by 2 levels, like in incarnate trials/zones but all the time.

Henchmen only team teleport or flight.  Every single one of my masterminds I take Team Teleport on for a just-incase-moment or terrible terrain.  Alternative:  Allow the toggle for [Team Teleport]/[Group Flight] in the options window, not Null the Gull.  Allow>Consent Window>Block

All knockback mags changed down to .67.  Like with the Bruiser's Hand Clap early on got changed down to a .67 mag

All personal attacks 25-50% base damage boost

Global pet speed increase, ninja and beast speed is fast enough to keep up with most groups.

Bodyguard on whenever Defensive stance is on

 

 

Ninjas:

Personal attacks changed to shriuken throwing.  copy Genins attacks.  minor, moderate, aoe.  maybe take from dominators.

Whenever pets cast a "rain" ability, it is anchored to said target it used it on.  When the target dies, it goes away.  In this case its Caltrops and Rain of Fire

Jounin:  give them dart burst from Widows.  this fufills the -slow mechanic while still remaining thematic while still giving them aoe damage now

Oni: fire ball/fire sword circle instead of rain of fire.  range increase on breath of fire

Genin: add dragon's tail at level 6.  also global -endurance cost adjustments.  even with roughly 70% end reduction slotted into Genin they still suck wind after awhile

Unrealistic Oni revamp:  Change into Shogun.  Dual Blades, wider range PBAoE attacks, etc

 

Soldiers:

Serum: no crash, effects all pets, reduced effectiveness

m30 replaced with cone-burst

Soldiers:

axe the medic and pretty much give us 3 Soldier's of Arachnos (power wise)

1) Burst/bayonet base

6) Slug/mini-cone auto/frag grenade

32) Full auto, venom grenade

If wanting to keep the medic: remove Medicine Power pool stuff and give them a medi-grenade as a base ability.  recolor the poison from various venom grenades to be brighter/or blue.  heal over time

Spec-Ops:

Web grenade upgraded to toxic-web grenade.  DoT, AoE

Adding damage to Gas Grenade, like the gas turrets in the villain level 25 TF

mini-cone burst

Added Leadership abilities  Maneuvers(base)>Assault(6)>Tactics(32)

Commando:

Range increase for flamethrower and fuckshot

Instant snipe/LRM

 

Necromancy:

Life drain replaced with Dark Obliteration.  I forget the name of the shadow ball attack in patron power pool attack

Zombies:

use a different zombie model for these.  Reason why:  if the current zombies need to drop an inch or two they have this landing animation that takes a few seconds.  Caves, tunnels and stairs stall tier1s super hard.  Also wider cones for their vomits. 

Add another base attack, Bite.

Grave Knights:

Ditch the ranged attacks.  Replace Dark Blast(base) with Throw Scrap.  use the Throw Knives animation so they keep their weapon out.  replace gloom/drain life with Slice and Whirling Sword

Lich:

CC abilities are unreliable.  replace with nightfall and dark obliteration

Soul Extraction:

Usable on enemies, like Warshades.   As a Bubble and Dark user there is no middle ground where this power is anything more than an IO mule

 

Robotics:

Robots:  photon grenade at level 6 upgrade

Prot bots: remove single bubble, add mini dispersion bubbles.  add laser burst at level 6

Assault Bot:  laser burst at level 6

 

Demons:

Tier1s:   Fine, maybe make their melee flurry into a pbaoe cone

Tier2s:  Fine, maybe a size decrease

Tier3: fine, little end heavy

 

Thugs:

Tier1s: add a makeshift frag grenade at level 6.  tin can, boom, something

Tier2s: fine, little end heavy, increase radius of leadership so that the Bruiser/Arsonist isnt left naked most of the time

Tier3: add damage to hand clap

 

Beasts:

I just dont know.

Adding PBAoE attacks sounds dumb, even watching the cats stand up to wave for theirs is weird.  and I doubt adding a "too fast for the naked eye" leaping teleporting bites or something for more aoe

yeah this sounds dumberer the more I type.  they have solid defense, some self healing and making the dire wolf hit more targets falls back to the whole robots thing where its all backloaded in powers

[Redlynne]

[Soulstinger]

Eh.

 

Not on board for your necromancy changes.

[Yomo Kimyata]

What's the problem that you are looking to solve?  Make them 50% more powerful?  Just curious.

Spoiler

 

 

[Outrider_01]

tl;dr - Instead of a power pick to collect picks or restrain range such as the range that run into melee give Doms another self inherent type power that pulls them back and completely restrains them while shutting down their instant reaction every time NPC shoot in their general direction.  And something that restrains ranged type feom brawling or change them into something like the flying gun turret in device or malta engineers.

[M3z]

As someone who plays MMs almost exclusively in pvp, I'll say they for sure need the level boosts (for ALL pets it makes no sense why the pets are lower level and this just weakens them both in pve and pvp).

 

As far as necromancy changes, they need a damage boost and the knights need to be going for melee attacks 90% of the time or they need to remove the weapon draw animation for their swords. I'd even be fine with them just removing all of the knights ranged attacks as headsplitter/disembowel are most of a necros total damage output (lich doesn't do that much damage and zombie damage is very small). In pvp necro is a pain to play even as a necro/kin(capped movespeed pets) because the knights don't really go into melee all that often(they spam gloom/dark blast). Knights also need crit modifier turned on for pvp! Makes absolutely no sense why it's turned off. Because there are no slows/CC (which kills 90% of MM builds from being viable in pvp by the way) that last long enough or are effective enough to slow an enemy down for the pets to move in and attack, the rare times that knights do manage to get into melee (and this is RARE even with speedboosted pets) they should be rewarded for getting in melee in the first place. MMs are in a bad enough place as it is, this would be something small that would help MMs be just a little more viable in pvp.

 

Also I almost feel zombies need gloom or darkblast or they need to lower life drain's cooldown from 30 seconds to 10 or 15, their combined damage output from all 3 pukes is 150 which is almost nothing. Either another attack or reduce cooldown on siphon life.

 

Soul extraction should be able to be used on a live pet as well.

 

tl;dr Agree with the OP, MM pets are WACK and necro needs some love

[shadowrex]

Been playing a mercs/traps MM and love the theme. I think giving them venom grenades and addressing cool-downs would be a huge boon for them. Love the ideas! The commando has like a 4 min recharge timer for his big attacks...compared to the Assault Bots 16 seconds.

 

I also think the Commando or Lt's should get an aura like the Thugs. Or maybe give him, or them, a skill that is a party buff. Really would love to see the merc brought in line with the other MM sets

Edited December 9, 2019 by shadowrex

[DrRocket]

I play a Necro/Dark MM

 

I love life drain and it is a key power towards the survivability of my pets and thus me. I have installed the 6 aura IOs to make them tougher, and I follow them within 20 feet and spam the aura heal while having life drain as a secondary personnal heal and enemy debuffer.

 

What I really need is a new command button:

 

"All Attack what I target" 

 

Pets automatically target what is being targeted by me, as it is I have to retarget, then click on all pets attack. This consumes valuable time, when trying to keep them healed while also trying to take care of other team members, and be aware of the combat environment, it does get rather hectic.

 

Incidentally, I disagree with OP on changes, I like very much the ranged attacks for my pets, pretty good when fighting aerial foes.

Edited December 9, 2019 by DrRocket

[Riverdusk]

Honestly the thing that's always bugged me about grave knights is why they don't have some lethal resistance.  They are basically skeletons.  If anything swap out the toxic resistance for lethal.

[Galaxy Brain]

The AI changes on test will help a lot of sets, but let me throw my 2 inf in:

 

Mastermind Primary Attacks:

Double the Damage / Recharge of all these to make the end cost worth it, as well as make them good for Procs and generally whacking a target or two every so often. MM's cannot make traditional attack chains as-is, so making the few attacks they get actually worth using as a pick would be nice and give many pairings a bit more to do as they level. 

 

If this is done, maybe alter the effects of the T2 attacks to be more mez / debuff oriented compared to the more DPS oriented T1 attacks.

 

General Pet QOL:

Make them faster moving, dragging your guys along is never fun.

Increase the base HP / Regen of pets to help scale vs higher end content. The resist/defense auras help here but the HP is lacking.

When summoning pets, provide a bigger window of intangibility or a massive absorb shield to help with bigger fights where re-summoning happens often.

 

Ninjas:

Add in some /Martial Assault and /Ninja (Blinding Powder?) abilities to the pets to update their offense a bit. 

Smoke Flash should grant defensive stats to the selected Ninja on top of offense. Make it a TAoE as well for other nearby ninja to benefit.

Give the personal Archery Attacks something special... right now they're the only MM attacks with no secondary effects.

The Oni should get Warmth from Thermal Radiation to help survival a bit? Ninjas downfall is they are made of origami, any added survival like Smoke Flash giving +Def or a heal would be amazing.

 

Mercenaries:

The recharge on Commando Attacks is atrocious. If Assault Bot can launch missile swarms twice a fight why cant this guy be Rambo?

Same deal with Spec Ops crowd control. 

The Medic is in an odd spot as a T1 pet. Maybe it could be a special, 4th pet and have a 3rd normal soldier?

 

Serum is in contention for one of the worst powers in CoX. The effects are essentially only good for the commando who has his own problems, and then it is not up nearly often enough + has a devastating crash. I'd rather replace this with the Gun Drone from /Devices, but revamping this power to either effect the whole squad and be a 3rd upgrade of sorts or something would be groovy. Really anything would be better.

 

Thinking on this more, replace Serum with "Field Specialist". Straight up a 7th pet (the medic) who has the current layout of the Medic. This new medic can administer a Serum that boosts the defense, resist, stamina, and damage of allies for a short while and then costs a small amount of endurance afterwards (watered down old serum, but is applied much more often), and can summon a Gun Drone for added offense and covering fire. 

 

Zombies:

Soul Extraction should work on defeated enemies. The rank determines the soul's strength like with the zombies.

Perhaps even lower the recharge and duration and allow for multiple ghosts?

The set has a unique 7th pet that unfortunately relies on your pets going down and eats into your gameplay. Making it rely on defeated enemies fits the theme and allows you to more efficiently play.

 

Beasts:

Not enough exp with them, but they seem to have messed up attack chains. Looking into this could help a ton with how they are supposed to be high-offense. 

Make the Pack Mentality stacks actually stack higher and be easier to obtain while fighting. Overall net boost to the set.

 

Robotics:

Repair should have either a shorter cooldown or maybe a slight "splash" of healing. It's good but sorta situational.

[Tigress]

I believe beasts would be getting a huge upgrade if their buffs were not 2 second cast times but constant auras. They should be the single target damage kings for their lack of ranged attacks, but even in this regard, they get outdamaged by pretty much all the other pets on a regular basis.

[shadowrex]

I wanted to recap some great discussion from this thread as well as add some additional suggestions

 

General:

• Bump up all pets by 2 levels
• Henchmen only team teleport or flight. 
  • Alternative:  Allow the toggle for [Team Teleport]/[Group Flight] in the options window, not Null the Gull.  Allow>Consent Window>Block
  • Instant cast “assemble the team” ability that is henchmen targeted only. 
• All knockbacks changed to knockdowns (I'm assuming this is the same as OP changing magnitude to 0.67)
• All personal attacks base damage boosted, endurance costs and recharges tweaked. This helps MMs with less active secondaries at least have usable primary skills
• Global pet speed increase
• Bodyguard on whenever Defensive stance is on
  • Can bodyguard always be on as part of the MM’s passive (e.g. all damage the MM receives is split between any henchmen within X’)? 
•  Increase the base HP / Regen of pets to help scale vs higher end content. 
• When summoning pets, provide a bigger window of intangibility or a massive absorb shield to help with bigger fights where re-summoning happens often.

Ninjas:

• General
  • Personal attacks changed to shuriken throwing similar to Genins attacks that are minor, moderate, and an AOE.
  • Whenever pets cast a "rain" ability, it is anchored to the target it used it on. When the target dies, it goes away.  
    • In this case: Caltrops and Rain of Fire
  • Add in /Martial Assault and /Ninja (Blinding Powder?) abilities to the pets to update their offense a bit. 
  • Smoke Flash should grant defensive stats to the selected Ninja on top of offense. Make it a TAoE as well for other nearby ninja to benefit.
  • Give the personal Archery Attacks something special... right now they're the only MM attacks with no secondary effects.
  • Add "Exploding Shuriken" from Weapon Mastery somewhere?
• Jounin:  
  • Give them dart burst from Widows.  This fufills the -slow mechanic while still remaining thematic and still giving them AOE damage 
• Oni: 
  • Replace rain of fire with Fire ball/fire sword circle 
  • Range increase on breath of fire
  • Give some thermal radiation abilities (warmth? Maybe the thermal shields which would be henchman and MM targeted only similar to protector bot shields)
  • Total Revamp: Change into Shogun.  Dual Blades, wider range PBAoE attacks, etc
• Genin: 
  • Add dragon's tail at level 6.  
  • Global -endurance cost adjustments

Mercenaries:

• General
  • Updated passive for each henchmen - Body Armor + "Guerrilla Tactics" that add both increased resistance and some positional defenses
    • Alternative or additional since they are highly trained soldiers: Physical Perfection/Superior Conditioning with +regen and +recovery
  • Give all henchmen "Life Support System" from the unimplemented Utility belt power pool
  • Add "Targeting Drone" from Weapon Mastery somewhere?
• Serum: 
  • Serum is in contention for one of the worst powers in CoX. The effects are essentially only good for the commando who has his own problems, and then it is not up nearly often enough + has a devastating crash. 
  • No crash, effects all pets, reduced effectiveness
  • Replace with a 7th pet to add space for DEF and RES IOs
    • Gun Drone
    • "Field Specialist" with current layout of the Medic. This new medic can administer a Serum that boosts the defense, resist, stamina, and damage of allies for a short while and then costs a small amount of endurance afterwards (watered down old serum, but is applied much more often) Potential summons for the Specialist: “Gun Drone” for added offense and covering fire “force field generator” for defense, or Acid Mortar for -res/def
  • Replace with “swap ammo” to change henchmen’s damage type from the highly resisted lethal. Similar to Dual Pistols (incendiary, cryo, toxic)
  • Replace with an "all in one" leadership toggle (maneuvers, tactics, assault) that only effects henchmen 
• M30: 
  • Replace with a cone-burst
• Soldiers:
  • Replace the medic and revamp soldiers to be more like soldiers of arachnos
    • Burst/bayonet base attack
    • Level 6 upgrade: Slug/mini-cone auto/frag grenade
    • Level 32 upgrade: Full auto, venom grenade
  • If the medic stays:
    • Remove Medicine Power pool skills and give them a medi-grenade as a base ability.  Recolor the poison from various venom grenades to be brighter/or blue.  Heal over time
    • Additional suggestions instead of having custom skills: 
      • Poison skills such as alkaloid 
      • Pain domination (enforce morale? Et al. may be too off theme) 
      • Change the medicine powers to have increased range, and instant cast times similar to protector bots heal
      • Add “suppressive fire” from Dual Pistols, “beanbag” from Assault Rifle, or “taser” from Devices as a stun 
• Spec-Ops:
  • Upgrade Web grenade to wide are web grenade, or toxic area web grenade with  DoT, AoE, and -RES (could be a part of either the lvl 6 or 32 upgrades)
  • Add Surveillance from “Bane Spider Training” to add -RES and -DEF and update Stealth to “Cloaking Device” for theme
  • Add damage to Gas Grenade, like the gas turrets in the villain level 25 SF
  • Add a mini-cone burst for AOE
  • Add Leadership abilities like Thugs LTs: 
    • Maneuvers(base)    
    • Assault(6)
    • Tactics(32)
  • Recharge tweaks on crowd control abilities
• Commando:
  • Range increase (flamethrower, et al.)
  • Instant snipe/LRM
  • Recharge tweaks. For example, the Assault Bots recharge for missiles is 16 seconds and the Commandos Rocket Launcher is 4 minutes
  • Missile leaves a burning field/patch with -regen or ADD “incendiary grenade” AOE fire damage and -regen at lvl 32.
  • Could also ADD “Ignite” from the assault rifle powerset
  • Lvl 6 or 32 upgrade gives Commando “incendiary ammo” from dual pistols and causes -regen and minor DOT

Necromancy:

• General
  • Life drain replaced with Dark Obliteration/a dark AOE attack
  • Overall damage boost to pets
  • Give all pets a minor "cloak of fear" similar to dark armor
• Zombies:
  • Change the zombie model. 
    • Reason why:  if the current zombies need to drop an inch or two they have this landing animation that takes a few seconds.  Caves, tunnels and stairs stall tier 1’s super hard.  
  • Wider cones for vomits 
  • Add another base attack, Bite.
  • Add gloom/dark blast or lower the cooldown of lifedrain
  • Maybe revamp them into "Savage Melee" type scrappers 
• Grave Knights:
  • Ditch the ranged attacks.  
  • Replace Dark Blast(base) with Throw Scrap.  Use the Throw Knives animation so they keep their weapon out.  
  • Remove weapon draw
  • Replace gloom/drain life with Slice and Whirling Sword
  • Enable critical modifier in PvP
• Lich:
  • CC abilities are unreliable.  
  • Add nightfall and dark obliteration/AOE
• Soul Extraction:
  • Usable on enemies, like Warshades.   

Robotics, demons, and thugs seem to be in a relatively good place so I won't harp on them although some folks above have added some minor changes. The general consensus for beasts is a lot of folks don't know enough about them, me included.