Mastermind changes in beta

[Coyote]

15 hours ago, WindDemon21 said:

So something like the unchangeable fact that you can't reduce the recharge on your pets attacks and that you can't control when they actually use them such as aoes and controls? IE, the problem that is literally not possibly to address with coh's ai coding, and is really one of the main issues with masterminds that automatically makes them have issues that other ATs simply don't have to deal with?

 

@PsychoThruster already beat me to it, but I'll reiterate what they said...

Powers like Smoke Flash could be changed to be made more useful... maybe a PBAoE -ToHit debuff PLUS a 2-second flag on mobs hit that sets up Jounin and Genin to get critical hits against them. And add 2 more similar powers to replace the upgrade powers (or 1, and a debuffing attack), and then getting more Recharge would allow you to put out more debuffs and damage, so you wouldn't get so little benefit from getting +Recharge buffs. Pretty much all sets could thematically gain some kind of temporary damage boost... Smoke Flash blinds opponents so they can be critted, Set Lasers to Slaughter for Bots, Power of Midnight for Necros, Howl of Rage for Beasts, Focus on My Target for Mercs, He's Got the Loot! for Punks, Unholy Word for Demons... all could be some kind of temporary henchman buff or target debuff, so getting more Recharge to use it more often would help with damage.

 

It wouldn't be as big a benefit as an AT that has its entire offense get boosted by +Recharge, but it can be done.

[PureShot]

Recharge reduction on the pets is great, and a necessity.  MMs are truly useless without their pets, but.....AUTO UPGRADE Please.  It truly doesn't add anything in the way of over tuning the character. Just mellows the MASSSIVE amount of maintenance a MM has to deal with. They already have to play 6 other characters, why not give them the auto.

[TygerDarkstorm]

1 hour ago, PureShot said:

Recharge reduction on the pets is great, and a necessity.  MMs are truly useless without their pets, but.....AUTO UPGRADE Please.  It truly doesn't add anything in the way of over tuning the character. Just mellows the MASSSIVE amount of maintenance a MM has to deal with. They already have to play 6 other characters, why not give them the auto.

Because the dev response to auto upgrades is answered directly on the first page of this thread. It is not happening and is beating a dead horse.

[Mack008]

A bit different idea to help out MMs...

 

Allow the player to click on each pet to see all of his available attacks.  Each attack would have check mark next to it, which when unchecked means that pet will never use that attack.  So if I want my Soldier-Medic to only use his heal, I uncheck each of his attacks and leave his heal checked.  If I don't want my Robot Battle Drones to ever use their melee attack, I uncheck it and leave the rest alone.

 

That would allow players to tailor their pets attacks to their own play style.

[Squints]

Out of curiosity, will they allow Fallout from Rad Emission to work on dead pets?

[TygerDarkstorm]

23 hours ago, Mack008 said:

A bit different idea to help out MMs...

 

Allow the player to click on each pet to see all of his available attacks.  Each attack would have check mark next to it, which when unchecked means that pet will never use that attack.  So if I want my Soldier-Medic to only use his heal, I uncheck each of his attacks and leave his heal checked.  If I don't want my Robot Battle Drones to ever use their melee attack, I uncheck it and leave the rest alone.

 

That would allow players to tailor their pets attacks to their own play style.

This would be a neat work around for the current method of upgrading some tiers of pets over others.

[TheMoncrief]

11 hours ago, TygerDarkstorm said:

This would be a neat work around for the current method of upgrading some tiers of pets over others.

I'd prefer it if pet upgrades were never downgrades to pet firepower, personally. The fact that my Assault Bot does more damage if I skip the first upgrade on it is awful design. Fixing Flamethrower's animation time would be a huge help here, but I don't know what other pets from different sets might be better off without.

[TygerDarkstorm]

4 hours ago, TheMoncrief said:

I'd prefer it if pet upgrades were never downgrades to pet firepower, personally. The fact that my Assault Bot does more damage if I skip the first upgrade on it is awful design. Fixing Flamethrower's animation time would be a huge help here, but I don't know what other pets from different sets might be better off without.

Sorry, that's kind of what I mean. I like Mack's idea because I agree, it's bad design that some pets perform better damage without being given their upgrades. I also would prefer that pet upgrades not be downgrades.

[Coyote]

12 hours ago, TheMoncrief said:

I'd prefer it if pet upgrades were never downgrades to pet firepower, personally. The fact that my Assault Bot does more damage if I skip the first upgrade on it is awful design. Fixing Flamethrower's animation time would be a huge help here, but I don't know what other pets from different sets might be better off without.

 

The only ones that generally have problems with getting more powers are Mercs, who have a very slow Full Auto and a pretty slow Flamethrower... but at least the Full Auto is being fixed. Robots have Full Laser Auto and Flamethrower, both over 6 seconds animation (!!!). I don't think there are other henchmen who have an attack that's too bad, though Hurl Boulder from the Bruiser might be there. But Thugs don't really need a balance pass, hehe, while Mercs at least do... Bots aren't too bad, with nice AoE, good defense, and huge -Regen, at least they have some nice advantage to balance against a big single-target damage hole.

[Arbegla]

15 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

The only ones that generally have problems with getting more powers are Mercs, who have a very slow Full Auto and a pretty slow Flamethrower... but at least the Full Auto is being fixed. Robots have Full Laser Auto and Flamethrower, both over 6 seconds animation (!!!). I don't think there are other henchmen who have an attack that's too bad, though Hurl Boulder from the Bruiser might be there. But Thugs don't really need a balance pass, hehe, while Mercs at least do... Bots aren't too bad, with nice AoE, good defense, and huge -Regen, at least they have some nice advantage to balance against a big single-target damage hole.

 

To be fair, the reason the Bots have a big single target hole is mostly due to skipping the Equip power on the Assault bot. That gives him a really nice Plasma Blast, that is single target (technically its a very small Targetted AoE, with a 5 ft radius), and does massive -regen, but because it also gives him a 7 second flamethrower, people skip it.

 

Bots also don't get any AoE until level 32. Its straight Single target (aside from the aforementioned Flamethrower) until you get Upgrade.

[PsychoThruster]

I'm probably in the minority, but I kind of like longer animations, and find it a shame that high level content essentially becomes about speed runs. I see it as a poor way to structure a game build on tab targeting combat. Seeing a giant robot roasting mobs for seven seconds should be great fun instead of an impediment. 

 

Totally unrealistic and unrelated to the topic tangent here, but I hope we get an experimental server someday that slows things down quite a bit. Maybe gets rid of IOs as we know them and implements enhancements that allow more controlled tweaking of powers. Like adding aoe at the expense of damage, range at the expense of recharge, etc. Maybe instead of defined archetypes you pick power set themes and build a list of powers that can include range and melee, with base stat modifiers changing based upon the number of melee/ranged/support/defensive powers you pick up. Unlikely I know, but a boy can dream. 

[Maxzero]

14 hours ago, PsychoThruster said:

I'm probably in the minority, but I kind of like longer animations, and find it a shame that high level content essentially becomes about speed runs. I see it as a poor way to structure a game build on tab targeting combat. Seeing a giant robot roasting mobs for seven seconds should be great fun instead of an impediment. 

 

Totally unrealistic and unrelated to the topic tangent here, but I hope we get an experimental server someday that slows things down quite a bit. Maybe gets rid of IOs as we know them and implements enhancements that allow more controlled tweaking of powers. Like adding aoe at the expense of damage, range at the expense of recharge, etc. Maybe instead of defined archetypes you pick power set themes and build a list of powers that can include range and melee, with base stat modifiers changing based upon the number of melee/ranged/support/defensive powers you pick up. Unlikely I know, but a boy can dream. 

 

The longer animation times would be fine if they had the damage to justify it.

 

Unfortunately they get super long animating attacks that only do average damage. In some cases its so bad that it actually lowers a pets overall damage.

[PsychoThruster]

Yeah I get that, my main is a mercs mm haha.

[Arbegla]

1 hour ago, PsychoThruster said:

Yeah I get that, my main is a mercs mm haha.

 

My main is a bots... No AoE at all until level 32, and even then, its via Full Auto Laser, which is a 6 second animation, or the Uber Rockets of Uber Knockback.

 

 

[Coyote]

3 hours ago, Arbegla said:

 

My main is a bots... No AoE at all until level 32, and even then, its via Full Auto Laser, which is a 6 second animation, or the Uber Rockets of Uber Knockback.

 

 

 

Protector Bots get a surprisingly good AoE in Photon Grenade, which is on the same timer and does almost the same damage as an Ember Demon's Fireball, and I put the Overwhelming Force Dam/KB2KD IO into the AssBot, and that all works out fine. Their AoE isn't really a problem.

[Arbegla]

5 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

Protector Bots get a surprisingly good AoE in Photon Grenade, which is on the same timer and does almost the same damage as an Ember Demon's Fireball, and I put the Overwhelming Force Dam/KB2KD IO into the AssBot, and that all works out fine. Their AoE isn't really a problem.

 

Still only available at level 32 😞

[TheMoncrief]

Can anybody with a Robotics MM on the test server say whether Full Auto Laser was included in the list of changes to all versions of Full Auto for a shortened activation time? It won't do anything about Flamethrower on the Assault Bot, but it'd be nice to have it not root my other bots for so long.

[Arbegla]

8 hours ago, TheMoncrief said:

Can anybody with a Robotics MM on the test server say whether Full Auto Laser was included in the list of changes to all versions of Full Auto for a shortened activation time? It won't do anything about Flamethrower on the Assault Bot, but it'd be nice to have it not root my other bots for so long.

 

It was not. Its been mentioned on the Beta forums a few times, and its on the list of things to be replaced. But as only the Battle Drones have that power, it doesn't have as much bang for the buck as Full Auto does (which Mercs, AND multiple ATs get access to)

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 3/20/2021 at 12:08 PM, PureShot said:

but.....AUTO UPGRADE Please.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

[Arbegla]

I'd rather you be able to rez/vengeance/fallout/walkie and any other powers that use dead bodies on your pets. Lots of sets have a rez, and being able to use it on your pets would be amazing.

[PsychoThruster]

1 hour ago, Arbegla said:

I'd rather you be able to rez/vengeance/fallout/walkie and any other powers that use dead bodies on your pets. Lots of sets have a rez, and being able to use it on your pets would be amazing.

 

I'm torn on this, I can see the logic in it but also some problems. 

 

Several sets offer nukes associated with the rez, which if able to be employed on henchmen would allow the AT access to damage usually associated with a blaster, relatively risk/cost free. At least by requiring a defeated a player as a target the support is utilizing the rez to turn around what is likely a tough situation or bad play. A MM on the other hand could simply send in a tier 1 henchie and pull off a massive nuke, any other MMs or Defs/Corrs could also chain their rez nukes on the pet as well. Granted you can do this now with a player, but it's somewhat balanced by the fact that most people don't have fun being a sacrificial lamb, henchmen have no such objections.

 

Additionally it makes detonator from traps even worse as it is a higher damage attack without actually having to sacrifice the pet. Granted most people skip that power but someday I'd like to see it tweaked enough that it becomes useful(I don't want any powers in any set to be easily skippable) and that could never happen if it's competing with rez nukes. 

 

Arguably it doesn't make sense thematically in the case of say bots, and perhaps zombies. But eh that's not such a big deal. 

 

There's also the recent changes designed to make pet replacement much faster and less endurance intensive, so the only real use for the resurrections would be as nukes. 

 

I think the reason behind requiring players as targets is the same as why Defs and Corrs can't self buff with shields, they start to deviate too heavily from the intended role of the AT. 

 

Then again this game already is pretty easy, and preED and IOs both allowed for the creation of ridiculous builds that trivialize the content so maybe none of the above concerns much matter in the grand scheme of things. 

 

All I want are changes that make the MM more interesting to play, and this would certainly do that. 

[Arbegla]

I can sorta kinda understand the "dead body nukes" being a bad idea, but those powers are already balanced around long recharge times, and are typically skipped anyways (cuz who really dies these days now?)

 

An easy fix could be to limit it so only the MM can affect their pets after death (so only the MM can rez/vengy/body nuke). And it'll make it slightly less abusive. Vengeance is nice and all, but it doesn't stack easily, and again, build diversity is fun.

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 3/13/2021 at 2:17 PM, Number Six said:

There's a lot of text here, but I can save you all a lot of time and back and forth.

 

We considered making upgrade powers auto a while back (9-12 months) because it was a player suggestion that had come up a few times, but ultimately ruled it out. The reason was that there has to be some opportunity cost to give the player an incentive to try and keep their pets alive. If you want to get them back up to full strength, you have to spend extra time not using your secondary powers to do it.

 

So while the changes on beta are intended to make life a little less painful when they do die, the intent is not to make it trivial to have an infinite supply of full-strength pets out.

I just thought I'd drop this here, since it keeps coming up.

 

I'd like to take a second here to point out a very specific portion of this post from a developer. Here: "We considered making upgrade powers auto a while back... but ultimately ruled it out."

 

Ok, did you all catch that part? See that was the part of the post where are developer said they're not going to make the upgrades auto powers.

[WindDemon21]

9 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

The developers have said that they're not going to do this. Asking repeatedly won't change that.

Wow someone is late to the party.

 

Sorry I meant: *drops phat beat*

Late to the party

Late to the party

Late to the party

Late to the party

Late to the party

*nsts nsts nsts nsts nsts*

 

Lol

 

All things granted though, it's not like anyone is ever incapable of changing their mind on such a thing like this, especially if there are more and more outcries of them being made auto like from people who aren't super frequent forumites. But for now obviously since they're not going full in depth on MMs it's not something anyone should expect of course, but still doesn't mean I wouldn't VEHEMENTLY cry out how much better it would be if they were auto like that person. I would be more curious to hear what people say about it on I believe cake or whichever server it was that already did this for their MMs.

 

@Number Six Also, I saw the NEW new patch notes for test, and I didn't see anything mentioning the upgrades at least being swapped to a pbaoe buff rather than targetted. Any chance this can still be done before the update goes live?

[Coyote]

15 hours ago, Arbegla said:

Vengeance is nice and all, but it doesn't stack easily, and again, build diversity is fun.

 

Vengeance alone is the reason why this won't ever happen. Especially on an AT that has Power Boost available as an Epic. By itself, Vengeance is easily perma-able 33% Defense with no holes, and knockdown protection. Add in Power Boost and you're soft-capped to all. Add in some IOs, Maneuvers, and some other pool defenses, and you're over 60% Defense. Oh, and it has a damage boost and enough +ToHit that you shouldn't need to slot Accuracy (except in the pet powers).