"Unique" inspirations and Masterminds

[UberGuy]

Currently there are two "special" inspiration types unique to certain content: Essence of the Earth (used to cap resistance to damage types output by Hamidon and his Mitochondria) and Ambrosia (used to protect against the special damage of the Crystal Titan in the Eden trial).

 

Both Hamidon+Mitos and the Crystal Titan are extreme damage environments. In the case of the Crystal Titan, lacking the inspiration is explicitly designed to be nearly instantly lethal, while Hamidon can be survived without EoEs, but the bar for buffs and tactics is significantly higher without them.

 

Like most standard inspirations, these special inspirations only work on the user. This is impractical for Masterminds, who would need far more of these inspirations to feed to their pets than a regular character. Unlike most other ATs who can have pets, MMs are designed with having and using pets in mind, and if their pets are consistently wiped out, the MM is far less capable than some other AT in the same situation. This creates a situation where it's exceptionally hard for an MM to keep up.

 

This post proposes a simple mechanical change for these inspirations to make the playing field a bit more level for MMs. There is an attribmod kModTarget_CastersOwnerAndAllPets. If I understand this target mode correctly, when the power target is "Self" the result is that the attribmod would apply to the caster and all their pets.

 

Combining this target mode with a power p_affected+p_autohit of "Self+OwnPet" and changing it to a radius effect would make these inspirations into a PBAoE that would protect both the caster and their pets.

 

If we consider it inappropriate that these inspirations should affect all pets, and not just those belonging to Masterminds, we can add in conditions on the effect along these lines.

if target>enttype eq player || target>arch eq '@Class_Minion_Henchman' || target>arch eq '@Class_LT_Henchman' || target>arch eq '@Class_Boss_Henchman' 

Note that this suggestion is intentionally narrow and mechanically specific. MMs have challenges in other parts of the game. This is just an attempt to address a specific area of them.

[arthurh35353]

I can get behind that. Really, I can get behind any inspiration getting this buff for Mastermind alone. They could use a little love and being able to 'inspire' their followers is very thematic.

[FireFox]

Your suggestion is probably one of the best written requests I have seen. Well reasoned, respectful, and  an attempt to give an actual method for the Devs to look at (Even IF your assumtions on the programming later turn out to be inaccurate.) and ballanced. Fully support this.

[Outrider_01]

2 hours ago, UberGuy said:

Like most standard inspirations, these special inspirations only work on the user.

Waste of effort to code specific inspirations and it clogs up your tray, already a hassle enough to feed your pets colored skittles.

 

Change MM inherent to act like the a toggle buff (kind of like Leadership, AoE but doesn't boost like leadership)  that transfers over inspiration buffs.  Once you consume an inspiration, its shared with every other pet.  Maybe not Respites, cause that would be a bit OP in survivability but Resist/Damage/Acc/Def inspirations; don't think status protection would be a good idea.

[Galaxy Brain]

1 hour ago, Outrider_01 said:

Waste of effort to code specific inspirations and it clogs up your tray, already a hassle enough to feed your pets colored skittles.

 

Change MM inherent to act like the a toggle buff (kind of like Leadership, AoE but doesn't boost like leadership)  that transfers over inspiration buffs.  Once you consume an inspiration, its shared with every other pet.  Maybe not Respites, cause that would be a bit OP in survivability but Resist/Damage/Acc/Def inspirations; don't think status protection would be a good idea.

could use the bodyguard method somehow where like, inspirations are *divided* amongst you all

[arthurh35353]

17 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

could use the bodyguard method somehow where like, inspirations are *divided* amongst you all

Why penalize them with a half-fix?

[UberGuy]

2 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

Waste of effort to code specific inspirations and it clogs up your tray, already a hassle enough to feed your pets colored skittles.

 

Change MM inherent to act like the a toggle buff (kind of like Leadership, AoE but doesn't boost like leadership)  that transfers over inspiration buffs.  Once you consume an inspiration, its shared with every other pet.  Maybe not Respites, cause that would be a bit OP in survivability but Resist/Damage/Acc/Def inspirations; don't think status protection would be a good idea.

These inspirations already exist and "clog up the tray" of all players of all ATs participating in the quoted content. This isn't adding new inspirations. It's making existing inspirations work better for MMs.

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, arthurh35353 said:

Why penalize them with a half-fix?

Was thinking more for normal insps, but something like the MM can pop an insp and gets full effect, Pets in Supremacy get X/Yths the effect

[arthurh35353]

Just now, Galaxy Brain said:

Was thinking more for normal insps, but something like the MM can pop an insp and gets full effect, Pets in Supremacy get X/Yths the effect

But tanks/brutes get to just get a full percentage of their health back. MMs are supposed to fill in a meat-shields role, but dividing their inspirates by 6 or 7 would make most of them fairly useless in high intensity fights.

[Galaxy Brain]

Just now, arthurh35353 said:

But tanks/brutes get to just get a full percentage of their health back. MMs are supposed to fill in a meat-shields role, but dividing their inspirates by 6 or 7 would make most of them fairly useless in high intensity fights.

Its a little complicated due to also having a ton of health bars and potentially the best mitigation in the game with how bodyguard works + the sheer output an MM can send out when the stars align... I think being able to give a pet an insp for full effect should still work, but for ease of use and to curb goofiness maybe like 1/2 value on normal inps or something for the pets would be nice

[arthurh35353]

2 minutes ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Its a little complicated due to also having a ton of health bars and potentially the best mitigation in the game with how bodyguard works + the sheer output an MM can send out when the stars align... I think being able to give a pet an insp for full effect should still work, but for ease of use and to curb goofiness maybe like 1/2 value on normal inps or something for the pets would be nice

A *set* level for medium and large inspirations, maybe, but small ones don't give a lot of health already or a big boost. 

[Myrmidon]

Make it so.

[xColdxFusionx]

59 minutes ago, arthurh35353 said:

But tanks/brutes get to just get a full percentage of their health back. MMs are supposed to fill in a meat-shields role, but dividing their inspirates by 6 or 7 would make most of them fairly useless in high intensity fights.

Emphasis mine, but this is something I've seen come up a few times since I've joined this community:

To the best of my knowledge, Masterminds were never meant to be a meat shield class. They're meant to be a support class along a similar line to Defenders or Corruptors, albeit in a more self-sufficient capacity thanks to coming with their own pre-baked ally party. The fact that they make decent tanks thanks to Bodyguard and pets as extra health bars is purely coincidental.

 

With that in mind, giving Masterminds some sort of improved interaction with inspirations, such as being able to use them as mass buffs at even partial potency, would be both interesting and appreciated. Mastermind is the only class in the game that uses pets as its primary interaction source, and the fact that you can only buff one pet at a time when you have a team of 6 or more at your disposal means that Masterminds sit in a particularly strange position where a core mechanic of the game becomes not only more difficult to use for them, but also less useful overall - especially at higher levels - due to only applying to a small portion of the character. Such a change would likely require a serious look at the numbers involved, so I don't expect it any time soon, but it could be an avenue to look at in the future.

 

Another potential version of this idea to consider: What if a Mastermind using an Inspiration gave each pet under his control a copy of the next stage down? (Using a T2 Defense inspiration would give the pets a T1, for example.) Again, some balance considerations would need to be made, as well as considerations for certain special enhancements (EoE and Ambrosia, in particular) but it would be an interesting mechanic to explore.

[UberGuy]

11 hours ago, xColdxFusionx said:

Emphasis mine, but this is something I've seen come up a few times since I've joined this community:

To the best of my knowledge, Masterminds were never meant to be a meat shield class. They're meant to be a support class along a similar line to Defenders or Corruptors, albeit in a more self-sufficient capacity thanks to coming with their own pre-baked ally party. The fact that they make decent tanks thanks to Bodyguard and pets as extra health bars is purely coincidental.

This reference to their role as a meat shield is based on early dev commentary from Cryptic back in the earliest days after MM's appeared in CoV, possibly during the beta period. It's not clear to me that they actually intended MMs to play tank in any formal way, particularly since they have no in-powerset aggro management tools. The mention of them doing so was seemingly based off the idea that pets represent a theoretically "infinite" supply of Hit Points to be fed into the grinder of foes.

 

I think there's pretty strong evidence against this notion in practice, since Brutes actually got most of the Tanker-like features that let Tankers play the meat shield role pretty directly. To wit, AoE Taunt as an in-powerset power, Tanker-level resistance caps, and the highest base HP of the original CoV ATs. (Bear in mind that, for most of their pre-sunset existence, CoH and CoV's respective AT sets were exclusive to each sub-game.) It's also important to remember that MMs didn't go live with Bodyguard, so they actually couldn't use that to support their efforts to tank foes when they first came on-scene. I'm sure an MM could "off tank" to a degree, and possibly do it better than other CoV ATs at the time (especially if they invested in Presence). But I don't think that was ever really a practical design goal that made it to any live implementation of the AT.

Edited February 14, 2021 by UberGuy
Late night typos

[Replacement]

11 hours ago, Outrider_01 said:

Waste of effort to code specific inspirations and it clogs up your tray, already a hassle enough to feed your pets colored skittles.

 

Change MM inherent to act like the a toggle buff (kind of like Leadership, AoE but doesn't boost like leadership)  that transfers over inspiration buffs.  Once you consume an inspiration, its shared with every other pet.  Maybe not Respites, cause that would be a bit OP in survivability but Resist/Damage/Acc/Def inspirations; don't think status protection would be a good idea.

Counterpoint: Uber's suggestion isn't about balance; it's about an entire AT being effectively shut out of playing their class in particular fights.

 

Consider this a test run for the actual mechanisms of shared inspirations, with the discussion on the balance implications to follow.

[Bionic_Flea]

The OP makes a lot of sense.  MMs get hosed in a lot of raid and league content and this would lighten that burden a bit.

[Galaxy Brain]

11 hours ago, UberGuy said:

This reference to their role as a meat shield is based on early dev commentary from Cryptic back in the earliest days after MM's appeared in CoV, possibly during the beta period. It's not clear to me that they actually intended MMs to play tank in any formal way, particularly since they have no in-powerset aggro management tools. The mention of them doing so was seemingly based off the idea that pets represent a theoretically "infinite" supply of Hit Points to be fed into the grinder of foes.

 

I think there's pretty strong evidence against this notion in practice, since Brutes actually got most of the Tanker-like features that let Tankers play the meat shield role pretty directly. To wit, AoE Taunt as an in-powerset power, Tanker-level resistance caps, and the highest base HP of the original CoV ATs. (Bear in mind that, for most of their pre-sunset existence, CoH and CoV's respective AT sets were exclusive to each sub-game.) It's also important to remember that MMs didn't go live with Bodyguard, so they actually couldn't use that to support their efforts to tank foes when they first came on-scene. I'm sure an MM could "off tank" to a degree, and possibly do it better than other CoV ATs at the time (especially if they invested in Presence). But I don't think that was ever really a practical design goal that made it to any live implementation of the AT.

 

TBF, MM's did get Bodyguard in the very first CoV patch (Issue 7 on 6/6/06 hehe), though yeah they were live for a solid half a year or so without it.... but for most all the game they did have it.  That said, even without Bodygaurd the ability to spread aggro among targets that are not you (a lot of the boss pets have big AoEs that draw aggro) and support them directly / just resummon them in a pinch does present some fundamental issues if you could freely share insps x7.