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My MM Ideas


Saravarng

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So I main mm's and would say its my favourite class in the game however I feel severely underpowered when I compare myself to say my Brute, and while yes their play styles are different I can output anywhere near the damage I can on the brute, I feel this is mainly down the very low damage cap that is in place on pets, agreed they shouldn't each be outputting damage similar to that of a brute. That being said I think a cap of around 75 for tier 1 pets, 100 for tier 2 and 150 for tier 3 pets should hopefully allow for mm's to have a higher damage output that's comparable to that of the other AT's.

 

Another issue that I quite often see with my pets is that without the support of 2-3 support sets the pets simply aren't tough enough to survive incarnate content, my main mm is a bots/force field and even with the significant defence boost that he can give them they generally are not able to survive fights inside of an incarnate trial, especially against the bosses. While yes they should not be able to take the amount of punishment that say a tanker could take it would be nice if I wasn't having to re-summon the pets within 10 seconds of them running about again.

 

An issue that I have seen around here is upgrades, I dont think that they should be removed and auto applied to all of the pets, however I feel that rather than having 2 separate upgrade powers is redundant, they should IMO be merged into one and the benefits of the upgrade should be increased at each level that you get a new pet, starting at level 6 when you would get the power, from then on the upgrade should increase in effect and power at level 12, 18, 24 and finally at 32, this would free up 2 more powers for more useful benefits for the pet's maybe temporary buff similar to the powers in Sorcery such as Enflame and Spirit Ward. Powers like these seem IMO perfect for the MM playstyle of micro-management within combat, provided of course that these buffs would last long enough for a fight to take place as opposed to a 3 sec absorb shield like Spirit Ward, perhaps the power should last about 15 seconds and have a cooldown of about a minute so that they couldn't be spammed into every fight.

 

Currently I see very little benefit to taking the attack powers within the primary sets for the MM which obviously are not the main focus of the MM playstyle however I feel these powers could be more useful as say immobilizes or other CC powers which would be able to directly benefit your pets and allow the MM itself feel more useful in combat than just adding some small amounts of damage here and there.

 

These are just my opinions on what I think would benefit the MM's most, the planned changes for reduced summon time and cost are also a fantastic idea and I'm glad they are happening, keep up the good work Homecoming Team 🙂

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Are you talking about solo or on teams?

Because, my main is a necro/storm and I drag him through everything on teams.

Once in a while I'll lose a pet or sometimes I might lose them all but rarely does that happen. TFs/SFs/Itrials i run it all, you using binds or macros?

 

I agree that you have to micromanage them alot and yes their hp sucks, getting them to be a formidable fast moving force in end game is a pain but doable with alot of investment to really contribute to a team.

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Solo I tend to do fine with most of my mm's once I'm slotted up tbf, solo content and such is the one thing that mm's excel at I've found except some boss fights when the boss ignores the pets and rushes you, but in group content I tend to struggle and feel more like a defender with one power set a lot of the time. I still contribute to the team but the pets are not the contribution if you get my meaning.

 

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@Saravarng Hello fellow Mastermind!

 

I am sorry to hear you have difficulties with your /FF MM. Personally I think FF is adequate, but far from optimal, because it is a one trick pony. What it does, it does well, but lacks tools or options for other situations.

 

I do want to offer a bit of encouragement though. If you compare MM damage to almost any other AT, well, 9 times out of 10 you might feel lackluster. But that's not what MMs are for. Damage folks are a dime a dozen, from blasters to corruptors to stalkers to brutes and scrappers, I leave damage doing and focusing to others. I take great solace in knowing that I can bring far, far more to the table than mere "damage."

 

My main MM is /Electric so I will focus on that for an example - 

 

With /Electric, I can create a zone of status immunity for myself, my pets, and anyone standing in it. It also boosts their resists to ALL by nearly 18%. I can prevent damage taken with a + absorb, and I pack plenty of punch healing as well. I can even give everyone effectively infinite endurance, letting the people who DO specialize in damage, far better than I could ever be capable of, to really "give them both barrels" or "give them a full broadside!" resulting in a much stronger overall effective team. On top of all this, I am durable enough to outlast nearly everything I have come across yet to date. I am even durable enough by myself that even on the hardest content I could take a wrong turn, and know I am in very little danger of dying. I may not kill them fast, or even before the team finds me, but I sure wont die either! 

 

But when people ask what do MMs do, I usually reply with "What do you Want it to do?" because aside from Damage, you can personalize and tailor a MMs to do pretty much anything you want it to.

 

Want to be immortal? A MM can do that in spades! Robots or Demons are great picks for that, and Electric, Time, and Traps are all great pairings! And there are others too!

 

Want to tank? Well you can tankermind! In fact in discord there have been blurps of discussions about how best to include the new Fold Space into tankerminding, along with musings of adding experimental pool into the mix, because apparently, you can load the Vial power to be very proc-favored, which would pair VERY nicely with caltrops!

 

Want to solo? MMs are still one of the most solo capable ATs fresh out of the box! They may not be the "fastest", but they really can be made to solo nearly "everything", which is not something even the fastest farmer can boast.

 

Want to farm? They can do that too! In fact, when I 2 box my /electric and my /time, I clear maps far faster than any other farmer I have tried, simply because I can aggro so many MORE mobs at a time, survive them all, and overlap 2 patches of Assault Bot Fire, Bonfire, Web Grenade, and just watch everything just melt. Even Elite Bosses don't last very long. And I am not fighting 2 or even 3 spawns at once, I am fighting 7 or 8 spawns at once. (at least on the moon map.) So in "total", I am doing far, far more damage than a brute is capable of. Not individually mind you, but in total vs the current map. And trust me, seeing 40+ enemies taking a spamming number of contant "10-10-10-10" damage is a very good feeling.

 

Want to be the healer? Well you sure can! Some MM secondary's are fantastic total support packages, which can make even defenders go green at the gills. And even if you are a healer specalist, you can STILL solo, which some defender setups might have difficulties with.

 

Want to Debuff/CC? Well, /Dark will be your best companion in this friend. I have seen some /Dark setups that were so effective in this that our enemies only wish they were dead, but there are other secondary's that are almost just as good too! I have never tried it, but I have heard fantastic things about /poison. 

 

Want fun themes or fun activities? MM's got you covered hon! MM's can do all SORTS of fun things that no one else can, from Hunting down and killing every GM/AV as a /traps, to bringing perma-gangwar thugs for an absurd amount of chaos, or even using burnout for x2 gangwar for sheer and utter lunacy that would make even the Joker approve of. One can even specialize as an Aerial combatant with Group Fly and A ranged pet such as Robots or Mercs, firing down at your enemies with impunity. There are so MANY different things you can do, only on an MM, that no other AT can even dream of.  

 

Which to me, is the "real" power of the Mastermind. Their varied approach to combat and "how" you want to fight. A blaster is always going to blast. A scrapper is always going to melee. A stalker is always going to stealth. But with a mastermind, you can personalize it, indeed, sometimes within the same build! Letting you fight in different ways even on the SAME character, which is something only the Warshades and Peacebringers can do, but MM's even trump them in this as well, for they can do multiple roles at ONCE.

 

To summarize, I love Masterminds. I even run two of them, and might possibly start running a team of three! They are the Royalty of Support to my mind, and can literally be made to do anything you want them to do, and leave the damage tunnel vision to the other ATs built for that. 

 

So please, don't get bummed out when you see that brute run ahead and fight in the swarm. He is doing what he is meant to do!.... But that's "all" he "can" do. While you, my fellow mastermind, "can" be capable of so much much more, with a little planning, forethought, and discussions with your minions.

 

Best wishes!

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Honestly I agree with what you're saying about MM's, but my point still stands about the pets themselves, yes you can build the MM to do whatever and be good at it, but what I mentioned were direct buffs for the pets themselves that I feel would make them more viable rather than having to rely on your MM's powers to do all the work, I could be wrong but I think the way an MM is supposed to be played is to rely on the pets not the other way around. However I do agree with you that there is loads of possibility within the MM that you dont get in other places, IMO I just think that they need a few more buff's to the AT to get it to a state in which I would be happy to run majority of Itrials rather than just BAF and Lam. 

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1 hour ago, Neiska said:

@Saravarng Hello fellow Mastermind!

 

I am sorry to hear you have difficulties with your /FF MM. Personally I think FF is adequate, but far from optimal, because it is a one trick pony. What it does, it does well, but lacks tools or options for other situations.

 

 

The issue that I see here is that absolutely no other AT in the game can be limited down to basically a one trick pony by which secondary set they pick, I have found this to be a MM issue only, which is why I recommended changes to the primary sets so that this issue does not occur. Obviously I could always roll more MM's but the point being that I shouldn't really need to have to do so in order for me to feel like I'm playing the game.

Edited by Saravarng
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16 minutes ago, Saravarng said:

Honestly I agree with what you're saying about MM's, but my point still stands about the pets themselves, yes you can build the MM to do whatever and be good at it, but what I mentioned were direct buffs for the pets themselves that I feel would make them more viable rather than having to rely on your MM's powers to do all the work, I could be wrong but I think the way an MM is supposed to be played is to rely on the pets not the other way around. However I do agree with you that there is loads of possibility within the MM that you dont get in other places, IMO I just think that they need a few more buff's to the AT to get it to a state in which I would be happy to run majority of Itrials rather than just BAF and Lam. 

 

Honestly, if the MMs did actual damage relative to others, I would say the MMs would be OP at that point. Largely the only thing holding them back, is their lower damage. But there are ways to compensate -

 

interface onhit powers, I find the -res one works well for pets, with a dot.

musculature alpha - does indeed affect pets!

some pets can slot damage procs, and it does make a difference.

Some pets can benefit from the "build up" Soulbound IO too. I always slot one into my assault bot.

Also not everyone is aware, but you can "drag and drop" inspirations onto your pets. Such as +damage and whatnot. Just click and drag it onto their hitbox! So long as they aren't in the middle of an action, they will pop it and benefit from it, just as if you used it yourself.

Some sets have +damage buffs, such as Forge from the Thermal Secondary, which I believe is around 30% or so? Not shabby at all for your T3 pet!

And the usual stuff like assault toggle, proper Accuracy/damage pet slotting, etc.

 

Also worthy of note - the theory crafters in discord are musing that putting Assualt into the Hybrid Incarnate Slot might be a big deal for MMs soon, with the quickly re-castable pets. Such as popping Assualt, then Repopping pets (who in turn benifit from the assualt buff), and then rebuff them with your usual pet set "upgrades." So while its not "for sure" yet, but it is "possible" that MMs might be getting a sort of back door damage boost soon.

 

I am not involved with this theory crafting personally, but as I understand it, testing and such is still going on.

 

So while you are right that pets have a lower damage cap, if they didn't, honestly MMs would be pushed into OP'ness IMO. They can already be tailor made for what you want to do, and if the damage on "all" of them were raised, that would make the more offensive-minded setups such as /storm even moreso. MMs damage can vary greatly, depending on pet choice and secondary power selection. I am afraid that with your Robots/FF choice, you are likely dead last for damage output, or close to it. Especially when compared to something like a Thugs/Storm build who might do 2 times as much damage as you do.

 

While I certainly will never win any DPS races, I never felt my damage was completely inconsequential either. 

 

Have you considered a different secondary? Your choice in secondary's matters greatly for how a MM will play, what it does, how much damage/healing/support it brings, and so on.

 

PS - Edited for clarification

Edited by Neiska
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As I said I have a few MM's, the bots/ff was just my main and my original from live, I also have a mercs/traps, demon/thermal and just yesterday a necro/dark lvl 50 mm's. Each has a slightly different role to each other and play differently from each other but I have only really tested my bots/ff up against itrials and such as I suspected I would run into the same issues as I did with my first. Perhaps I should go back and try them in this content a bit more and see how the other 3 play in those situations. But yes if the damage cap was increased too much they would become OP and as such damage cap changes would have to be tested in the Beta before ever being implemented into the main game.

 

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Mhm, I did not mean to insinuate that "you" personally were unaware, I try to go into detail for future people who may read this and also may learn something.

 

But yes, hopefully Assault hybrid will be more important for us soon, but perhaps there are ways to boost our "effective" damage, such as more sources of -res procs? Any power pool or epic pool choices that may not boost their "damage", but reduce/debuff? We might make more headway in effectiveness if we started thinking of options for that as well?

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3 minutes ago, Neiska said:

But yes, hopefully Assault hybrid will be more important for us soon, but perhaps there are ways to boost our "effective" damage, such as more sources of -res procs? Any power pool or epic pool choices that may not boost their "damage", but reduce/debuff? We might make more headway in effectiveness if we started thinking of options for that as well?

This I think could work as a better solution than straight up increased damage, and I think it would work well to include things like this into the primary sets of the MM, that way you could tailor the debuffs and such based on what type of pets you would be running. For instance some sort of acidic grenade for mercs that would reduce smashing and lethal resistances as that's mainly what the mercs output

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Well, here is a list of what I can think of off the top of my head, as far as what sources MM's have to boost not pet damage, but "effective damage", to perhaps bypass their damage cap -

 

Enhancements - 

Fury of the Gladitor - -res proc

Annihilation - -res proc

Achilies Heel - -res proc

 

Incarnates - 

Interface Reactive - -res/fire dot proc

Interface Degenerative - -hp/toxic dot proc

 

Pets (robots in particular)

Explosive Strike - smashing proc

Soulbound Allegiance - Chance for buildup

 

Now, the wiki says that the -res can stack up to 5 times, per source. So all your pets with Reactive, will only have 5 stacks of -res at most, from the Interface. What I can't answer though, is if Fury/Annihilation/Achilies behave in the same manner, or if they stack at all either with each other or with Reactive Interface. (that's a question for the theorycrafters, who are far more knowledgeable than my humble self, so apologies for that.)

 

But in theory, you should be able to use Reactive Interface (that pets benefit from and can proc themselves), combined with Explosive Strike + Chance for buildup, on top of where ever you can sneak in Fury/Annihilation/Achilies further -res procs.

 

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There are also binds you can make to feed your pets Inspirations, also, the Hero Alignment Power is like a mini-Build Up for your whole team.

 

Bots/FF is just hard to boost damage on, mainly because /FF doesn't have very much offensive power. Depending on what Power Pools you took, you could get some debuffs going, and then use those as well. (Experimentation has a single target debuff in it, that you can proc out to make pretty nice)

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9 hours ago, Neiska said:

Now, the wiki says that the -res can stack up to 5 times, per source. So all your pets with Reactive, will only have 5 stacks of -res at most, from the Interface. What I can't answer though, is if Fury/Annihilation/Achilies behave in the same manner, or if they stack at all either with each other or with Reactive Interface. (that's a question for the theorycrafters, who are far more knowledgeable than my humble self, so apologies for that.)

 

Interface stacks up to 5x per TARGET, not sure why it says source. So basically one MM will usually max out the -Res stacks by themselves, which is fine when soloing... when teaming, you generally want to have different Interface debuffs, though the only ones useful in general are -Res and -MaxHP. I do think that the one with Immobilize (Spirit?) should be useful with Bots, since it gives a chance to Immobilize mobs in the Assault Bot's swarm patches.

 

All of the other -Res procs stack up to 1x per TARGET. Having more sources makes it more likely that the proc will be on the target at any particular time, but like the -Res Interface, they are also less effective on teams than when soloing since more players will have them.

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4 hours ago, Arbegla said:

Depending on what Power Pools you took, you could get some debuffs going, and then use those as well. (Experimentation has a single target debuff in it, that you can proc out to make pretty nice)

 

If looking to increase damage via pools, the best one is the Willpower pool, for Weaken Resolve... this has a minor -Res debuff, but also a 90% chance to proc an Achilles Heel IO, which otherwise you can't slot on a Bots/FF build. Then, slot the Annihilation -Res proc in an AoE from an Epic, and you have 2 of the 3 possible IOs. You could actually slot the last one if you take an Epic that has both an AoE and a PBAoE like Mu. I'm not sure it's worth it, though, except on an AV.

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/FF is really overdue for a revamp.  I get and appreciate that the Homecoming Devs like to be cautious and deliberate, and try to figure out what they can do that will minimize unhappy surprises for the players. That's a good, solid, professional, admirable way to operate. 

 

But really, /FF needs help. You can get amazing amount of mitigation out of it, true.  And so can /Time. And /Cold. And /Empathy. And /Thermal, and /Traps, and /Rad, and /Dark.... but all of them bring something else to the table. Now, it's true, FF does not JUST bring Defense to the table.

Force Fields brings: 

  • Defense 
  • Permanent Personal Status Protection on a AT that usually has none. 
  • Detention Field.  While not perhaps popular, it can isolate a specific nasty target while you blow up a crowd around it. 
  • Knockback Out The Wazoo.  Again, not exactly popular, but can be used to protect against foes who would otherwise bypass your defenses. Mobs that are flying the friendly skies are not attacking you or your pets or anyone else. 
  • PFF.  Can be used to soak alphas and such if you were so inclined, so your pets aren't as carved up by it, on the initial pull of a Big Meanie.  Some care is required though, as it will suppress Pet Auras and Supremacy as part of the "only affects self".

It's not quite a one trick pony. But the reality of the current state of the game, is no one gives a flying bleep about anything but the first two tricks. And that is not likely to change in the near future.  It's godlike if you're exemping down to lower levels. Midrange teams will sing your praises.  45+.... not so much.  I have no idea how you thematically squeeze better offensive powers into the set though. Not unless Knockback ITSELF started carrying extra damage as mobs are flung into walls, slammed into the floor, etc. 

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1 minute ago, MTeague said:

I have no idea how you thematically squeeze better offensive powers into the set though.

 

Detention Field could crush the target to death. Locked in an inescapable, unbreakable force field that is slowly getting smaller until it crushes you to a fist-sized lump of SOMETHING UNPLEASANT.

Then, the heroic Mastermind picks up the lump and sends it to the local jail center for arrest and processing. Probably not fingerprinting, though. 😁

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16 minutes ago, Coyote said:

 

If looking to increase damage via pools, the best one is the Willpower pool, for Weaken Resolve... this has a minor -Res debuff, but also a 90% chance to proc an Achilles Heel IO, which otherwise you can't slot on a Bots/FF build. Then, slot the Annihilation -Res proc in an AoE from an Epic, and you have 2 of the 3 possible IOs. You could actually slot the last one if you take an Epic that has both an AoE and a PBAoE like Mu. I'm not sure it's worth it, though, except on an AV.

 

My mistake, I was thinking Weaken Resolve, but I called it Experimentation. You named it right. That's what I get for being on the forums at work.

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