Mastermind Attack powers - Please take a look at them - The endurance is painful

[JayboH]

11 hours ago, arcane said:

This is not a commentary on the endurance question specifically, but it’s a mistake to frame the pets as only a burden and not a massive asset. You can’t get an accurate look at MM balance without considering the incredible things MM’s get. Such as having effectively more HP than tankers or having insane AV killing single target damage potential.

I brought up Mercenaries for this very argument.

 

I gave you a scenario where I thought you could make the first part of your argument too.  I addressed this.

[JayboH]

11 hours ago, Apparition said:

 

 

A Corruptor or Controller not using his or her primary is effectively a second class Defender, and would be better off as Defenders.  A Mastermind not using his or her primary is effectively a second class Corruptor or Controller, and would be better off as Defenders.

I wrote it in a way where we take a specific view for a reason.

[JayboH]

10 hours ago, chi1701 said:

Im all for buffing masterminds, but not in terms of endurance. Would like to see pets get automatic aoe defence buff (applied in pve but inactive in pvp) to help their survivability, remove the upgrades and have them always active from level 1 and replace them with active buffs similiar to how world of warcraft hunters pet commands "your minions do x ability (based on pet) to make it more pet central. 1 command could be offensive and other defensive etc. Not a very descriptive idea but it something unique to class.

I forget who, but someone had mentioned that basically Cardiac is a Mastermind's best friend - like it's almost expected that a MM takes Cardiac (or Vigor I suppose) due to the extra endurance expense.  I dislike being pigeon-holed intentionally by design to have choice limits.  I'm not saying you can't pick other options or that the designed burden can't be overcome mind you.

[TombTyrant]

I don't think we should conflate boosting 3 powers with making a petless mastermind viable. No class that skips 5 powers in their primary is likely to be very good.

[chi1701]

10 minutes ago, TombTyrant said:

I don't think we should conflate boosting 3 powers with making a petless mastermind viable. No class that skips 5 powers in their primary is likely to be very good.

 

Only class that can skip more than 5 powers in primary is keldian since the get more choice or primary abilities are not useable in their chosen spec, form builds.

[arcane]

9 hours ago, TombTyrant said:

I don't think we should conflate boosting 3 powers with making a petless mastermind viable. No class that skips 5 powers in their primary is likely to be very good.

My Poison/Dark’s newest PvE build has 4 primary powers and 4 secondary powers and would like a word with this post 😉 

 

And then there’s Blaster secondaries that only have 3 mandatory powers generally speaking, etc.

 

Also, the OP literally mentioned petless masterminds as part of his motivation so not much conflation is going on, no.

Edited July 29, 2021 by arcane

[TombTyrant]

A desire to run petless masterminds does not mean that mastermind attacks are not too expensive for what they do. The entire issue of whether you can run petless or not is secondary to the need for those powers to be examined. This is true whether brought up by the original poster or follow up posts. Reducing the issue to only being the concern of self gimping challenge builds is reductionist.

[skoryy]

12 hours ago, TombTyrant said:

A desire to run petless masterminds does not mean that mastermind attacks are not too expensive for what they do. The entire issue of whether you can run petless or not is secondary to the need for those powers to be examined. This is true whether brought up by the original poster or follow up posts. Reducing the issue to only being the concern of self gimping challenge builds is reductionist.

 

Ok, now explain why they are too expensive given mastermind damage per endurance.

[arcane]

12 hours ago, TombTyrant said:

A desire to run petless masterminds does not mean that mastermind attacks are not too expensive for what they do.

Sure, that has no bearing on the fact that they’re not to expensive 😉

[TombTyrant]

They might be. I sure feel like I run out pretty quick if I do anything other than order my pets around. 

 

But, as I said earlier, I actually think they should be given extra damage or effects and the cost can remain high, for balance reasons. That's my suggestion.

[SmalltalkJava]

Yes. MM attack endurance is too high.  The only secondary that really alleviates it is Nature.    It's kind of a bummer that the endurance price is so high.   It makes people not want to take them due to saving endurance for their secondaries. 

 

Just a straight and easy % loweri.g would fix it.   Easy peasy fist step

[PainX]

dunno only comparison i have is my dom's call hawk/swarm/unkindness and my MM's call hawk/swarm/ravens they feel the same end wise

Edited July 31, 2021 by PainX

[plainguy]

11 hours ago, PainX said:

dunno only comparison i have is my dom's call hawk/swarm/unkindness and my MM's call hawk/swarm/ravens they feel the same end wise

If you look at mids you will see there is a difference..

 

EG Call hawk on Mastermind does 49  Damage and on Dom it does over 100 for the same endurance.

 

I would imagine at the start of the game they probably had a set of formulas and numbers that went something like this..

1 point of DPS equals X amount of endurance. 

Then they added variances for Range Melee and then other elements like AOE, CONE.. Debuffs..

Then at some point they had to add some variance based on Arch Type.. 
I recall the endurance penalty wasn't there at the start of masterminds, but somewhere near coming live they seen some sort of DPS creep. Basically the Pets Plus attacks was making them out DPS some Arch Types.  

 

As time when on I just think they played around with numbers and such until it seemed right and everyone was happy. 

 

At the end of the day any Arch Type and build can run out of endurance if not properly setup.  But with Masterminds you just have to cognitive of your endurance. You can't fight at that pace you fight with other AT. There has to be a deliberate cadence in your attacks. 

When the pets die everything then falls off.  You have 2 options.. Run away from the fight or try to summon in the midst of a fight depending on your build.  If you summon during a fight you have a chance of loosing all your pets again as there is a window of about 14 seconds with summon and upgrading where pets are defenseless, but can take damage and die again. Which is common.

 

Or you run off and resummon. Either scenario is a clearly a DPS hit for masterminds. 

Now I am not saying OMG my Blaster finishes this mission in 5 minutes and it takes my Mastermind 10 minutes.. That is horrible.  
But we have to measure something on the arch types.. Damage Per Second seems to be the common measure.  DPS wise with the slower paced endurance cadence and pet wipes you are doing less DPS.

 

Look when a single Tier 1 pet dies I keep moving on.. The 14 seconds of buffing is just not worth my time. The amount of damage they do is not game shattering. Especially against mobs 4 to 6  levels higher than them. 

 

This my Summoning ideology.    

2 Tier 1s  down = resummon

1 Tier 2 or Tier 3 down = resummon

 

Otherwise I move on. 

 

The attacks should be doing MORE damage based on the endurance we pay..  Or give us options to pick up something to protect the pets instead of attacks. Leave the attacks for someone who wants them. 

I will tell you when the attack are fun.. When your level 50 petless/ semi petless mastermind with incarnates. Then it is cool because you are not starving for endurance as cardiac helps that out. Then yes with Procing your doing some cool damage. 

[Uun]

19 hours ago, plainguy said:

EG Call hawk on Mastermind does 49  Damage and on Dom it does over 100 for the same endurance.

 

Normally, a power does x amount of damage multiplied by the ranged damage or melee damage multiplier for the AT. A mastermind has a ranged damage scale of 0.55 vs. 0.95 for a dominator. So all else being equal, a dominator will do 72% more damage than a mastermind using the same power. That said, dominator  secondaries aren't a good comparison. Many of the powers taken from other sets had their damage and recharge adjusted when they were ported over. On a mastermind, Call Hawk is 0.3256 damage scale (for each tic) and costs 9.62 endurance with a 6 second recharge. The dominator version is 0.52 damage scale and 10.97 endurance but has a 14 second recharge.

 

A better comparison is Slug. It does 50 damage on a mastermind, 102 damage on a blaster, 59 damage on a defender, etc. All versions are coded as 1.64 damage scale * the ranged damage multiplier for the AT and recharge in 8 seconds. All versions except mastermind cost 8.53 endurance, while the mastermind version costs 10.66. As previously stated, this is by design and ALL mastermind powers use 25% more endurance than the versions other ATs get. 

 

There are two ways this could potentially be changed - either remove the endurance penalty or increase the mastermind damage multiplier from 0.55.

[arcane]

22 hours ago, plainguy said:

The attacks should be doing MORE damage based on the endurance we pay..  

Have you been reading the thread responses at all? Masterminds generally have highest DPE in game.

[arcane]

2 hours ago, Uun said:

 

Normally, a power does x amount of damage multiplied by the ranged damage or melee damage multiplier for the AT. A mastermind has a ranged damage scale of 0.55 vs. 0.95 for a dominator. So all else being equal, a dominator will do 72% more damage than a mastermind using the same power. That said, dominator  secondaries aren't a good comparison. Many of the powers taken from other sets had their damage and recharge adjusted when they were ported over. On a mastermind, Call Hawk is 0.3256 damage scale (for each tic) and costs 9.62 endurance with a 6 second recharge. The dominator version is 0.52 damage scale and 10.97 endurance but has a 14 second recharge.

 

A better comparison is Slug. It does 50 damage on a mastermind, 102 damage on a blaster, 59 damage on a defender, etc. All versions are coded as 1.64 damage scale * the ranged damage multiplier for the AT and recharge in 8 seconds. All versions except mastermind cost 8.53 endurance, while the mastermind version costs 10.66. As previously stated, this is by design and ALL mastermind powers use 25% more endurance than the versions other ATs get. 

 

There are two ways this could potentially be changed - either remove the endurance penalty or increase the mastermind damage multiplier from 0.55.

Thanks for the useful data. 🙂

[TombTyrant]

This is useful data and I think moves me more firmly into the position of upping the AT's base damage. 

[plainguy]

21 hours ago, arcane said:

Have you been reading the thread responses at all? Masterminds generally have highest DPE in game.

I get what you are saying..

 

If I am correct.. Which I am pretty sure I am.

 

You are saying since the pets are summon and forget, If it cost you 53 endurance to summon and buff and if you let them just fight a group of mobs if it took them 10 minutes to kill that group you would have only spent 53 endurance..

 

Whereas if you were a blaster for example you would spend 200 endurance and kill them in 1 minute.. 

 

I am pretty sure this is what you are saying..

That is understood.

 

But this is a false base line.. 

Because I understand you want to do the wiki math and say it cost 53 Endurance to summon and upgrade the pets and the pet attacks at Min and Max do this..  

 

But I would simply challenge you to a simple test.. 

Would be happy to meet on test..

SOs only to make it easier.. 

You summon the 6 Pets.. I will make another base Arch Type.. Tanker, Blaster, Scrapper, Defender..

We set the setting to 8/3 and you stand back and direct the pets to attack without assisting them.  Any time a pet dies you must summon a new pet and upgrade them. 

I would say you can let the pets to continue to attack. 

IF you can't summon a pet or upgrade you must announce it so we can record the time.. As this will be a penalty towards the time.

Your only requirement is you must have 6 pets out at all times.. 

 

Then we have the other arch type fight to clear out the group. 

I am sure your DPE will go up.. I am sure we will be waiting some time for the pets to kill off the group..  I am sure you will be re summoning A LOT.. I am sure you will run out of endurance or will have to wait to re summon and upgrade due to pet wipes.. 

Mind you, we cannot run away from combat.. It is what it is..  You can dodge around but you have to be within the ring per say.

We can add a similar penalty for a player death. 

 

OR just a simple visual.. 

Test server.. 

SO build.

Endurance and health slotted out same..

attacks are slotted out the same.. 

Mastermind and a Blaster..

We record the recharge on attacks..

We then fire away until the mastermind is out of endurance.. 

Then we do the same for the Blaster.

I am thinking Dual Pistol and Thug as Dual Pistol was created from Thug Mastermind and they have same attacks. 

I am POSITIVE the Mastermind will run out of endurance faster.. 

We can add in the DPS from the pets against the single target.. We are not looking at AOE. But we can include a single hit from the AOE against the main target.. 

The fight stops when the toon runs out of endurance. 

My only concern is the pets delay in stopping attack would add some additional damage after the endurance drops..

 

Again Pet wipes matter.. I honestly wasted some time in game just summoning and upgrading pets to just get some numbers.. 

The FASTEST I can get is 14 seconds. That means summoning 6 pets and Upgrading takes me 14 seconds.  It is about 7 to 8 seconds of Upgrade time. 

So summoning a single Tier and adding upgrades is at minimum of 7 to 8 seconds.. Again just some in game summoning plus stopwatch on Phone..  It takes about 10 seconds for a Single Tier and Upgrade..

 

Again I get what you are saying.. But this game is not static.. We are not fighting level 1 mobs.. 

 

Sure we can run a test where the rule is clear out the map and calculate endurance only and you then you can spend 5 hours just trying to kill the mobs without any pet deaths to only spend 53 endurance and get 3 bubs of experience where as I ran 10 missions and got 30 bubs of exp and spend 1000 endurance in the same time.  

 

Hang your hat on this DPE nonsense all you want. The discord and the chat copied to the these forums from discord say a bit different. Thus the endurance and recharge changes on masterminds. 

 

Again you need to include realistic game play  with your process here..

 

 

 

 

 

[arcane]

Pets do wipe fairly often at high difficulties, but, against +4x8, any other AT is still going to use way more endurance cleaning up the entire mob than the MM would just recasting their T1 summon a couple of times and re-upgrading. The T2 and T3 most likely don’t need to be resummoned every mob. 
 

As for running tests on SO’s or without using one’s secondary/pools, I have no interest in testing arbitrary conditions I literally never use. I have never slotted a single SO since live.

[plainguy]

On 8/1/2021 at 11:51 AM, Uun said:

 

Normally, a power does x amount of damage multiplied by the ranged damage or melee damage multiplier for the AT. A mastermind has a ranged damage scale of 0.55 vs. 0.95 for a dominator. So all else being equal, a dominator will do 72% more damage than a mastermind using the same power. That said, dominator  secondaries aren't a good comparison. Many of the powers taken from other sets had their damage and recharge adjusted when they were ported over. On a mastermind, Call Hawk is 0.3256 damage scale (for each tic) and costs 9.62 endurance with a 6 second recharge. The dominator version is 0.52 damage scale and 10.97 endurance but has a 14 second recharge.

 

A better comparison is Slug. It does 50 damage on a mastermind, 102 damage on a blaster, 59 damage on a defender, etc. All versions are coded as 1.64 damage scale * the ranged damage multiplier for the AT and recharge in 8 seconds. All versions except mastermind cost 8.53 endurance, while the mastermind version costs 10.66. As previously stated, this is by design and ALL mastermind powers use 25% more endurance than the versions other ATs get. 

 

There are two ways this could potentially be changed - either remove the endurance penalty or increase the mastermind damage multiplier from 0.55.

I am all for it..

 

Honestly ANY IMPROVEMENT beyond the current situation would be great. 
Stack the powers like Kick, Punch, Crosspunch.  

Again anything beyond what it is now. 

 

 

 

[TombTyrant]

There's probably no call for hyperbolic testing conditions such as this.  However, a good question is how comparable are a Blaster and a Mastermind playing fairly well, making reasonable choices, and laying out their powers in a way that makes sense on a mob to mob basis? How does they compare in terms of damage output, survivability, and endurance management? And how, ideally, should they compare?

[JayboH]

On 8/2/2021 at 1:14 PM, arcane said:

I have no interest in testing arbitrary conditions I literally never use. I have never slotted a single SO since live.

That's how the game is supposed to be balanced though - SOs.  The devs are interested.

[arcane]

44 minutes ago, JayboH said:

That's how the game is supposed to be balanced though - SOs.  The devs are interested.

Sure. For me, pretty much every character sucks bigtime with SO’s, so I am NOT the person you want to ask to try to discriminate between bad and worse.

[PainX]

looked up savage/beast to figure out why they felt similar btw simple they use the same base end on every single power they share as far as i can tell

[Naraka]

Endurance economy is a bit out of whack across the board, really.

 

Most ATs can completely alleviate END with various tools OR just slotted out powers to make them more economical when used in conjunction with Stamina, IO uniques and inspirations...even MM.

 

That being said, if we're throwing out some suggestions, I'd recommend having Assault mode grant a moderate +END discount per pet in attack mode (i.e. not bodyguard mode) to give that kind of tactic an advantage.  Maybe also a +pet buff every time you use an attack to offensive pets (the ones not set to defensive) would be a kind of compromise here.  When picking a build for my MM, your overall animation time is a factor since some secondaries require a lot more button presses than others.  Adding more variables to the mix (putting some of your pets on offense to make your attacks cheaper, switching to bodyguard mode to turtle up, popping big cooldowns so you can set all your pets on offense and max out damage, etc) I'd welcome since the standard play of MM can get rather repetitive and boring.