Masterminds are terrible.

[Abysmalyxia]

tl;dr I don't care that you're doing fine. I don't care that you faceroll +243/x9329473 Carnies. I care about the people not using Burnout to reactivate Gang War.

 

Quick and Dirty Suggestions to improve the Mastermind AT.

 

1. Allow Masterminds, for the love of God, to slot their ATOs into their attacks.

2. Increase the damage of *mastermind* attacks. Maybe to Corrupter levels? We're not asking to go full Peacebringer or anything Heaven forbid... Corrupter will do just fine.

3. MM Upgrade Powers (Think Equip or Upgrade Robot, those powers) grant a 2% Bonus to: Defense, Resistance, Damage, and Accuracy to any pets it's cast on and may be slotted out accordingly. In other words if I wanted my robots to be super resisty I would triple slot it with resistance giving all of my robots a 4% resistance buff across the board. They don't accept sets.

4. Replace Rez powers that are largely useless dead powers for an MM (not completely, but still) with toggle defenses in a manner similar to blaster sustains, with less on recovery and more about the status protections. If not this, find something to do with them.

5. Leadership. Masterminds (*minds*) are super awesome tough as nails fighters who get Tanker tier access to fighting pool percentages (seriously, check it out, nobody gets higher fighting pool percentages than tankers and... masterminds)... but their leadership skills, their entire job, is just about one step ahead of your local stalker. Your friendly brute might offer some pointers because the mastermind is just that bad at leadership. Not asking for defender tier here (although that would be nice and rather sane)... but you know, could we at least be on speaking terms with the controllers in this regard?

6. Dark Servant isn't a Pet and doesn't get Pet Enhanencements... but Tornado... TORNADO... does? Dubyateeyeffyo. I understand not everything in my fictional super hero game has to be sane, but *come on*.

 

There's more but you get the idea.

[Greycat]

1. You know, I never really paid attention to what the ATOs were slotting into. I *think* it might be because of the globals? But even those are centered on you... I don't know. I wouldn't argue with it.

 

2. This might be where it is because of the assumption you have pets. Maybe something that would scale up or down depending on the number of pets.

 

3. I'd let someone who plays with the numbers more look at that. Accuracy, especially for T1s (which, when you have three, are -2 to you,) I couldn't really argue on.

 

4. Which powers are you thinking of? I'd assume the first step there would be "tweak the powers," as opposed to replacing. Some - not necessarily just rez powers (*looks at Serum*) - are generally regarded as skippable, yeah. Or are you looking at powers on a secondary? Those, I don't think I'd remove, since they're useful on teams. It kind of *would* be nice to be able to resurrect a minion.

 

5. Another I'd let people who play with number balance look at. 🙂

[MoisesG]

so you want extra damage, extra defense, extra resistance,, extra accuracy and you want your robots to be "super resisty". you also want to have the leadership pool powers to be boosted just for you, or just the MMs not using burnout to reactivate Gand War.

gotcha!

[MTeague]

I won't turn down a buff, but I'm quite content with how my Ninja/Cold MM and my Beasts/Empath MM perform.  I certainly don't feel like they require a bunch of changes.

 

That said

• I do tend to ignore the MM personal attacks in my primary tree.  The damage / endurance cost simply isn't worth it most of the time.  There's better things I can do that that endurance instead.
• When soloing, both commonly stay in defensive stance, Tankerminding.
• My Beast/Empath uses Kick and Boxing and Crosspunch, all three, because the endurance cost is vastly less than the MM personal attacks and getting in melee range makes darn sure my pets are all in range of Supremacy and Pet Aura IO's.
• My Ninja/Cold uses a six slotted Infrigidate with 3 damage procs and 1 -Res proc, and other than that, grabs aggro by using Snow Storm. 

[ShardWarrior]

Having leveled a Ninja/Dark MM to 50 recently I have to say I agree Masterminds stink lol. 😁

[Bill Z Bubba]

I have three masterminds.

Demon/Time

Mercs/FF

Thugs/Pain

All three are in the 30s. All three suck compared to everything else I play. I know... I'm doin it wrong. Same thing with my blasters.

Really need to get one of these to 50 and properly decked out.

[Naraka]

25 minutes ago, Abysmalyxia said:

tl;dr I don't care that you're doing fine. I don't care that you faceroll +243/x9329473 Carnies. I care about the people not using Burnout to reactivate Gang War.

I don't think they're that bad.  My 2 MMs (Demons/Pain and Ninjas/Shock) started doing +2/x4 around level 20 to which I bumped them up to +3 once I got to 30 and they had earned some of the relevant pet auras (the 2 resist and the +regen one for the demons, and all them except the taunt/placate one for ninjas).  Some enemies can be a slog though, but I figure fights aren't suppose to be easy when you up the difficulty.

 

29 minutes ago, Abysmalyxia said:

1. Allow Masterminds, for the love of God, to slot their ATOs into their attacks.

2. Increase the damage of *mastermind* attacks. Maybe to Corrupter levels? We're not asking to go full Peacebringer or anything Heaven forbid... Corrupter will do just fine.

3. MM Upgrade Powers (Think Equip or Upgrade Robot, those powers) grant a 2% Bonus to: Defense, Resistance, Damage, and Accuracy to any pets it's cast on and may be slotted out accordingly. In other words if I wanted my robots to be super resisty I would triple slot it with resistance giving all of my robots a 4% resistance buff across the board. They don't accept sets.

4. Replace Rez powers that are largely useless dead powers for an MM (not completely, but still) with toggle defenses in a manner similar to blaster sustains, with less on recovery and more about the status protections. If not this, find something to do with them.

5. Leadership. Masterminds (*minds*) are super awesome tough as nails fighters who get Tanker tier access to fighting pool percentages (seriously, check it out, nobody gets higher fighting pool percentages than tankers and... masterminds)... but their leadership skills, their entire job, is just about one step ahead of your local stalker. Your friendly brute might offer some pointers because the mastermind is just that bad at leadership. Not asking for defender tier here (although that would be nice and rather sane)... but you know, could we at least be on speaking terms with the controllers in this regard?

6. Dark Servant isn't a Pet and doesn't get Pet Enhanencements... but Tornado... TORNADO... does? Dubyateeyeffyo. I understand not everything in my fictional super hero game has to be sane, but *come on*.

I don't see anything about transportation.  I think one of the most annoying parts of the AT is that you cannot stealth unless you dismiss them or pack grant invisibility which isn't even a full stealth and will still draw attention.  That and pets have a tendency to get stuck, either through pathing or because they might start attacking stuff or getting knocked into geometry could render them inert until you dismiss them.

 

I think, if you want to improve MMs by a large margin, giving them a pet stow command that basically puts them all on standby and out of sight so that when you deactivate it, they appear around you with all their upgrades.  If it was multifuntional as a recall, that would help a ton.  Make it so you can only activate stow while out of combat and deactivate at any time you wish.

 

As is, I think a lot of the misgivings of the AT can be worked around outside of altering how some powers can slot certain enhancements.  They're the only AT with a slot crunch of 18 slots for all their unique enhancements.

[Pzn]

I think it would be worth testing all MM pets summoning even to your level.  The biggest problem with MMs in my opinion is the purple patch making your t1 pet damage and sometimes t2 pet damage obsolete against +4 content.  It should be possible to maintain similar performance against even cons now while boosting performance against higher conning enemies by changing the default level of minions and then tweaking damage numbers afterward.

 

[Abysmalyxia]

46 minutes ago, MoisesG said:

so you want extra damage, extra defense, extra resistance,, extra accuracy and you want your robots to be "super resisty". you also want to have the leadership pool powers to be boosted just for you, or just the MMs not using burnout to reactivate Gand War.

gotcha!

Notice how all of my suggestions were intuitive? Like, for example, making Dark Servant qualifying as a pet... especially considering *tornado* does. How a person relatively new to the game would expect a Mastermind would excel at being a leader rather than being super good in a fist fight? Are you picking up what I'm putting down friend? Is it getting to ya?

[Bill Z Bubba]

49 minutes ago, Abysmalyxia said:

Are you picking up what I'm putting down friend? Is it getting to ya?

 

Oh nevermind.

Edited May 15, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, josh1622 said:

I think it would be worth testing all MM pets summoning even to your level.  The biggest problem with MMs in my opinion is the purple patch making your t1 pet damage and sometimes t2 pet damage obsolete against +4 content.  It should be possible to maintain similar performance against even cons now while boosting performance against higher conning enemies by changing the default level of minions and then tweaking damage numbers afterward.

 

Even if they wanted to add a slight reduction in accuracy so that your T1 pets would miss about the same before vs after, just having them not be lower level would help their survability vs incoming damage.

[Monos King]

 

[Galaxy Brain]

Let's consolidate this in the main MM thread, many ideas are repeated there 🙂

[SwitchFade]

2 hours ago, Abysmalyxia said:

tl;dr I don't care that you're doing fine. I don't care that you faceroll +243/x9329473 Carnies. I care about the people not using Burnout to reactivate Gang War.

 

Quick and Dirty Suggestions to improve the Mastermind AT.

 

1. Allow Masterminds, for the love of God, to slot their ATOs into their attacks.

2. Increase the damage of *mastermind* attacks. Maybe to Corrupter levels? We're not asking to go full Peacebringer or anything Heaven forbid... Corrupter will do just fine.

3. MM Upgrade Powers (Think Equip or Upgrade Robot, those powers) grant a 2% Bonus to: Defense, Resistance, Damage, and Accuracy to any pets it's cast on and may be slotted out accordingly. In other words if I wanted my robots to be super resisty I would triple slot it with resistance giving all of my robots a 4% resistance buff across the board. They don't accept sets.

4. Replace Rez powers that are largely useless dead powers for an MM (not completely, but still) with toggle defenses in a manner similar to blaster sustains, with less on recovery and more about the status protections. If not this, find something to do with them.

5. Leadership. Masterminds (*minds*) are super awesome tough as nails fighters who get Tanker tier access to fighting pool percentages (seriously, check it out, nobody gets higher fighting pool percentages than tankers and... masterminds)... but their leadership skills, their entire job, is just about one step ahead of your local stalker. Your friendly brute might offer some pointers because the mastermind is just that bad at leadership. Not asking for defender tier here (although that would be nice and rather sane)... but you know, could we at least be on speaking terms with the controllers in this regard?

6. Dark Servant isn't a Pet and doesn't get Pet Enhanencements... but Tornado... TORNADO... does? Dubyateeyeffyo. I understand not everything in my fictional super hero game has to be sane, but *come on*.

 

There's more but you get the idea.

Homesauce, you kinda have a tendency to post and respond to others posts in a rather uncouth fashion, as well as having, I'm sorry to say, rather questionable proposals.

 

I'm not saying masterminds are either good or bad, but your title, intro and proposal start extreme, venture condescending and then wax heavily biased.

 

If you want to convince your audience, perhaps something a bit more, well, respectful and thoughtful?

 

Because posts like this honestly make me jranger your ideas and become biased towards any future ideas you propose.

 

So, try again? Because maybe you do have a point and MMs need love, but this approach just wins resistance.

 

*Shrug* unless you were trying to come off that way?

Edited May 15, 2020 by SwitchFade

[Snowdaze]

These suggestions are not bad idea's and certainly would make a MM feel more impactful. But I agree with SwitchFade, your approach could sue some work.

[Troo]

their name is Abysmal..

[SwitchFade]

1 minute ago, Troo said:

their name is Abysmal..

That's Troo... 😁

[Outrider_01]

Dark Servant isn't a pet, its a walking swiss army knife

-Hold

-Immoblize

-Heal

-Tohit

 

It is basically a walking mini-back up controller/defender

[Emperor Cole]

6 hours ago, Monos King said:

 

Literally my first thought when I read the name of the thread lol

[ZeeHero]

How to Fix MM:

 

Quadruple pet HP, remove the end penalty, pets are now equal level to the character.

Edited May 16, 2020 by ZeeHero

[Black Zot]

3 hours ago, ZeeHero said:

How to Fix MM:

 

Quadruple pet HP, remove the end penalty, pets are now equal level to the character.

 

This.  I'd be fine with doing less damage than the average if I were allowed to DO said damage.  As-is, summoning anything but the tier 3 pet is a waste of end in high-level content because they die instantly to the first big aoe.  The +resist and +def auras mean basically nothing because of the massive tohit and damage bonuses plus-level enemies get against low-tier pets.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Black Zot

[thunderforce]

This is what Abysmalaxia actually thinks of the game. Please don't be dragged in.

[tidge]

These threads aren't crazy enough. Let's just imagine a different game where (at level 26):

• The T1 pet power lets you enslave up to 3 lower level (-2) player characters
• The T2 pet power lets you enslave up to 2 lower level (-1) player characters
• The T3 pet power lets you enslave up to 1 same level player character

The enslaved PCs become exactly like the current pets; they lose all agency. Then you can be a true mastermind (until you get enslaved by another mastermind) and you can have all sorts of cool options for your henchmen. Masterminds can lure PCs by using costume contests.

Edited May 16, 2020 by tidge

[SurfD]

5 hours ago, Black Zot said:

 

This.  I'd be fine with doing less damage than the average if I were allowed to DO said damage.  As-is, summoning anything but the tier 3 pet is a waste of end in high-level content because they die instantly to the first big aoe.  The +resist and +def auras mean basically nothing because of the massive tohit and damage bonuses plus-level enemies get against low-tier pets.

How often does this realistically happen in high end content though?

 

There are only really two scenarios where this happens:

- You are sidekicked to someone running content at +4 when no incarnate related bonuses apply.  In which case, yes, your tier 1 pets are going to be basically useless as the mobs will be like +7 to them (you are already -1 due to sidekick, and the t1 pets are -2 to you, so yeah.).  But this isn't really a "high level" issue so much as a "side kick + +4 boost don't mix well" issue.

- You are running Incarnate level content in a group and do not have your full set of incarnate level shifts yet.   In which case, that is more of a "you" problem, as you are already running at a handicap even before adjusting for mission modifiers like +4/X.

 

Also worth noting, Incarnate level shifts actually shift your pets MORE in + environments to bring them up to your level: For example, my MM is +3 incarnate.  In Dark Astoria, if I target my Assault Bot, it lists as 50+3, and my Battle Drones list as 48+5.  Meaning that in Incarnate content, ALL of your pets are always shifted to EXACTLY your level.

 

The issue you describe is mainly a I am sidekicked in a team runing +4 issue, and not an "high level, end game content" issue.

[Galaxy Brain]

@everyone,  take this to the main MM thread. Most of the same points are being discussed there with more data 🙂