The Master of the Mind (suggestions for improving Mastermind ATO's and Play)

[SeraphimKensai]

Masterminds are an often misunderstood AT. To be fair, it is the AT I've the least experience with, as in Live I never leveled one past lvl 24. By comparison now I have 3 lvl 50+ IO'd Masterminds of the following sets:

Robotics/Empathy, Demons/Electrical Affinity, and Thugs/Time.

 

Over the course of my play I feel that there's a couple of obvious ingrained issues with MM's in general the first being the Mastermind Endurance Tax, and second being the Effectiveness of the Henchmen.

 

I've tried for awhile to consider the best way of addressing these issues and I think the most pragmatic method would be a slight redesign of the existing Mastermind ATOs.

 

Mark of Ascendancy currently has a recovery bonus in it's 5th slot of either 3% or 4%, depending on whether it's Superior or not. I'd propose we change that from Recovery to Endurance Discount of 3.75% or 5% depending of whether it's Superior or not. You might be holding up a red stop sign here and be wondering "wait...what??? you want to take away from my recovery"  but wait I've got you fam...the existing proc in the set gives endurance/pet +resistance/regen aura. What about if we change the Endurance portion to a 4% recovery bonus similar to how miracle's recovery proc works while maintaining the pet resistance/regen aura portion. That might be enough right there to dare I say...Fix the MM Endurance Tax.

 

Command of the Mastermind could be used to address the Effectiveness of the Henchmen by... replacing the 6th set bonus with an effect that gives a +1 level boost to your Tier 1 Henchmen, and the Superior Command of the Mastermind 6th set bonus could be a +2 level boost to your Tier 1 Henchmen and a +1 level boost to your Tier 2 Henchmen. This overall would make MM Henchmen much better especially when dealing with Incarnate content as it puts them up to your level. Once again....Dare I say did I just fix the Effectiveness of the Henchmen?

 

 

I'm hoping on a plane now so I'll be excited to check any thoughts on this after I land. As usual, thanks.

[arcane]

I haven’t touched my Masterminds since the last round of major changes. I suspect whatever endurance troubles they have are already gone though: 

 

^Barely anything left to Masterminding that costs endurance. It’s not obvious to me that any such “Endurance Tax” exists.

 

As for level shifting henchmen, that’d be a very radical change in need of extensive testing (would require that henchmen need a *massive* boost in effectiveness and not an incremental one), but, even if they do decide it’s not overpowered, I would be strongly against tying it to set bonuses/procs. Masterminds have a hard enough time working all the enhancements and procs  they need into their few pet powers as is. I can’t see wanting to 6 slot any pet set what with all the aura procs (6 of them?) and 10% recharge bonuses (3 of them) I’m already trying to squeeze out of them.

 

If they do level shift, it seems more likely they’d have that baked in from the start and would then lower all the base damage/etc dramatically to compensate.

Edited June 24, 2021 by arcane

[SeraphimKensai]

The big end crunch for MM's is more tied to their attacks and secondaries.

 

I'd be open for testing MM pet levels, but at high level especially incarnate content pets are quite frequently destroyed because of tier 1 pets being -2 levels and tier 1 pets being -1 of the caster, and mobs are based around the level and settings of the mission holder, so at an extreme your tier 1 pets could be -7 levels lower than the regular trash mobs if the MM is also sidekicked, godforbid a MM tries to use their pets on Tyrant for the Magisterium Trial where he spawns at lvl 54+5.

Edited June 24, 2021 by SeraphimKensai

[arcane]

Yeah idk about the end tax. Doesn’t sound like an MM specific problem.

 

Just keep in mind that level shifts would be giant boosts to a lot more than pet survivability. You’d have to be ok with dramatic nerfs to pet power scalars to balance out the effect level shifts would have on them. 

[Arbegla]

2 hours ago, arcane said:

Yeah idk about the end tax. Doesn’t sound like an MM specific problem.

 

Just keep in mind that level shifts would be giant boosts to a lot more than pet survivability. You’d have to be ok with dramatic nerfs to pet power scalars to balance out the effect level shifts would have on them. 

 

The Mastermind Tax is the fact that all of the secondary powers cost 25% more endurance for a Mastermind than they do for other classes, with the same set, for the same or lower value. I can't remember if the MM buff/debuff numbers are even on par with Corruptors, but I thought they were lower than Controllers for sure.

 

That 25% endurance cost is pretty nasty, because its BASE endurance cost, so even with equal slotting, the powers still cost so much more to use.

[arcane]

12 minutes ago, Arbegla said:

 

The Mastermind Tax is the fact that all of the secondary powers cost 25% more endurance for a Mastermind than they do for other classes, with the same set, for the same or lower value. I can't remember if the MM buff/debuff numbers are even on par with Corruptors, but I thought they were lower than Controllers for sure.

 

That 25% endurance cost is pretty nasty, because its BASE endurance cost, so even with equal slotting, the powers still cost so much more to use.

Interesting. I’m guessing that was to balance out how much MM’s can do with zero endurance.

[plainguy]

 

6 hours ago, Arbegla said:

 

The Mastermind Tax is the fact that all of the secondary powers cost 25% more endurance for a Mastermind than they do for other classes, with the same set, for the same or lower value. I can't remember if the MM buff/debuff numbers are even on par with Corruptors, but I thought they were lower than Controllers for sure.

 

That 25% endurance cost is pretty nasty, because its BASE endurance cost, so even with equal slotting, the powers still cost so much more to use.

6 hours ago, arcane said:

Interesting. I’m guessing that was to balance out how much MM’s can do with zero endurance.

 

 

Back in the day the endurance punishment was created to prevent the Mastermind from doing too much damage..  

Simply put. If endurance was better and the attack powers were better a well skilled Mastermind would not need to resummon pets so much and then could do many more attacks.  
So to prevent this they made sure after a few attacks you would hear that low endurance tone and went back to controlling your pets..  
They just wanted you to weave a few attacks in with your pet attacks. 

I hate to poo,poo on an improvement for Masterminds with the reduction in recharge and endurance to summon pets.. But it did nothing for Masterminds in the bigger picture.
This improvement only benefits players whom lack good pet control and are NOT numkey pad bind controls or have poor builds and do not understand the game mechanics. 

My first simple suggestion(s).

Fix the powers and endurance for Masterminds.. EG Pistols from Thugs,  More endurance and no secondary effects..  So you paying for a power that is worse..  

Honestly when I look at powers across AT it is difficult to understand if there is even a realistic formula to describe a base power.. EG what is the base endurance to cause a base amount of damage. 

But I digress as usual.

My base suggestion is reduce the endurance cost for Masterminds around how many pets they DO NOT have slotted in their builds and /or maybe also Upgrades.. 

This would allow Masterminds with less pets to get more attacks and be able to use those attacks as they level.  
Currently a Mastermind cannot level without pets.. The endurance drain makes the character useless. 

Yes we will hear may comments of why would you want to level without pets and what is the point.. ETC..  The whole point of Masterminds is they are the Mastermind behind the Pets.. Controlling them..  

And yes I get it.. Many years ago that might be true..  I think we need to roll with the changes of gaming as well. 
But REGARDLESS my suggestion ATM poses ZERO threat to the traditional Mastermind build..  

 

What this does do is OPEN THE DOOR to option of creating a build with less pets and using Power Pool attacks and Ancillary/Epic pool attacks  a possible viable option for a player to build upon.. 

I would hope along with this the Dev teams might consider some DPS improvements to maybe the Primary power attacks based on less pets.. Again the concept is the Mastermind having less pets has the time and skill to improve his attacks.  Less pets means I need to be better with my attacks. 

Again as a reminder this is based on the BUILD.. Builds can only be changed at a trainer.. 

My simple point with this is to show that this can work..
Personally I know it can work at level 50 with Incarnates slotted as I have a bunch of Petless and Semi Petless Masterminds at level 50 which can handle 8/3 mission settings.

Once this is seen to be doable and viable leveling option. 
Then we can start to consider giving options for more attack instead of pets or upgrades. Or the UPGRADES, upgrade the Mastermind new unique attacks that replaced the pets.

Eventually at the end I would like to see even other variants.

You want the Assault Bot, I want the new Mega Cannon attack. 

You want the Battle Drones, I want the Robot Drone that heals and buffs. Similar to Device Targeting Drone. 
I don't want 3 Battle Drones I want to be able to call One Drone out of a choice of three that does one specific thing. I can only call one at a time which desummons the current one.. 

Again EG..  A Healing bot.. A stationary cannon/gun..  a Hovering gun.. ( This was Gun Drone original set up ) 

We can't change the Arch Type Framework, they are baked in.. Okay.. Make a Mastermind only Power pool. 

 

But for now..  Less pets = More Endurance..
If making some other changes is viable then great.. EG a little more HP.. ETC..  





 

Edited June 25, 2021 by plainguy

[GraspingVileTerror]

I think what might help Masterminds in general is to standardize the number of Powers in the Primary which can slot the ATOs.  As I understand it, the Sets which already have 4 Powers to Slot the ATOs in to perform better than the others before we even bring ATOs in to the mix, which just exasperates the gap between the likes of Demons or Thugs, and Mercenaries.

 

I'd propose that all the Tier 6s (Level 18 Powers) be re-examined as Pet Powers.

 

Mercenaries is the easiest:  Replace Serum with a Call Medic Power, replacing the original Medic with another Soldier.  Give this new Medic a Serum-Lite, so no slotting options are lost, only improved.

 

Robots isn't much trickier, and I think a "Nano Swarm" Pet could replace the Repair Power, which would be a sort of Seeker Drone that Heals instead of Harms.  Take the Devouring Earth Swarm model, change the texture to ramp up the specular layer and the reflection map, so they look like little silver swarms of metal.

 

Ninjas is the tough one.  Maybe create a non-combat "Sensei" who tosses the Smoke Flash bombs out?  We can workshop it.

 

I don't know enough about Beast Mastery to speak to it, though.  I've not got any of them high enough to take Fortify Pack yet.

[Katharos]

You shouldn't feel bad about removing a recovery bonus, honestly. They suck. I am very supportive of any effort to combat the endurance tax on MMs. It would make more sets viable for solo play, and I still strongly feel the biggest problem for MMs as an AT is how disparately they perform depending on their secondary.
 

 

The matter of unique muling I think is most elegantly solved by allowing the upgrade powers slot them. I think I saw someone suggest that somewhere, but I can't remember who and where off the top of my head.