Mastermind Pets need end game survivability buff

[TheSpiritFox]

So, I've been trying out council at +4x8 and theyre absolutely shredding through pets. Like killing them as fast as I can resummon and buff them. 

 

Lets talk about how MMs work mechanically. 

 

First, if you set defensive mode or summon in defensive mode there is a bit of lag time before pets start attacking, about 5 seconds. And second, when pets are summoned they are completely unbuffed, and thus often even more vulnerable to random aoes and such, meaning that MMs in high level content often experience a cascade failure effect where once you lose pets, its impossible to resummon and rebuff because they die as soon as they are summoned. 

 

This problem, especially in higher level content like hardmode TFs, make the MM a liability compared to an AT which can be buffed by the team to the point that they're extremely hard to kill. 

 

Towards that end, the first all MM  buff that I propose is that Mastermind pets, when summoned, enjoy a 5-8 second window of 90% resistance to ALL damage types along with beyond softcap defenses (at least 68% to account for incarnate content) during which they dont attack, but are extremely difficult to kill and have time to be buffed on summon. This would not be much different for MMs in play from an offensive standpoint with the lag time before attacking in defensive mode. But would be an incredible change to allow us to reliably resummon mid battle and not get stuck in an endless loop of resummoning minions that get immediately one shot before they can even get off an attack or get buffed by say the protector bot bubbles. We should also increase the priority on protector bot bubbles if its not already super immediate so that if a minion comes up that does not have a bubble, the very next thing the protector does is bubble it. 

 

The second all MM buff that I suggest, given the fact that even normal content under buffs can slaughter pets wholesale, is consider a serious across the board buff to resistance for MM pets. I dont think giving them more HP itself is the solution, but I do think that given current content a scaling buff to all MM pets that starts at say 10% to all types at level 1 and hits 50% resistance to all types by level 50 is at this point fully justified. 

 

Homecoming has talked about the "power gaming" environment lately and has been adjusting things around that. MMs are the one class which hangs behind on general survivability compared to other "tanky" classes (which we were specifically designed to be, dont forget) because it only takes one lucky hit generally to kill a T1 or T2 minion. I do not think that its unreasonable, considering the damage climb at 50, to give all MM pets a base 50% resistance at 50 in addition to things like upgrade defensive buffs and secondaries and team buffs. The resistance would only take effect on minions specifically targeted by an attack or taking an aoe, not damage done through bodyguard, so it wouldnt increase bodyguard survivability all that much except for aoe attacks, which MMs are already more vulnerable to than any other class in the game by farrrrr. 

 

I think that these two changes are not only called for, but necessary for the health of the MM class in the "power gaming" environment of homecoming. In order for MMs to be competitive and indeed not a liability at the highest level content you are creating, they need baseline buffs to enable them to survive it, when its difficult to even get some combinations to a softcap OR hardcap with defense or resistance, there are some pet sets which can simply get nuked out of the game entirely now in the hardest content if they take an unlucky hit. Why would you take a /cold MM on a 4 star when you can take a cold corruptor which isnt going to lose its ability to do damage and have to choose between secondary powers or an endless rotunda of resummons. 

[Lunar Ronin]

In most other MMORPGs, pets get a high amount of innate AoE defense, which I think they need in Homecoming.

 

Many people forget or simply weren't around to know that up until Issue 16, the highest difficulty you could set for missions was +2.  +3 and +4 difficulty didn't exist.  Mastermind henchmen were never buffed to compensate.  It later turned out that just about everyone at Cryptic Studios involved with the design of the Mastermind AT was gone by the launch of Issue 8, and Paragon Studios developers didn't know what to do with the AT.

 

It was stated by one of the Paragon Studios developers in the post-sunset AMAs on Reddit that "Masterminds were the biggest mistake we ever made in the game."  (You have no idea how crushing it was to read that the developers of my favorite MMORPG considered my favorite AT by far to be the biggest mistake made in the game.)  They used Demon Summoning as a Going Rogue pre-order bonus in order to try to help sell it, and then later added Beast Mastery during the Freedom era in the Paragon Market, but Paragon Studios didn't understand the Mastermind AT, didn't care about the Mastermind AT, and basically left it to rot.  Mastermind henchmen initially didn't get the +1 Alpha level shift when it initially came out, until a screaming Mastermind player base forced Paragon Studios to add it as henchmen were getting slaughtered in Incarnate trials.  Then initially all of the Incarnate Hybrid abilities didn't work on Mastermind henchmen, and only after pleading and begging from Mastermind players did Paragon Studios finally get Support Hybrid to work on Mastermind henchmen.  The other Incarnate Hybrid abilities are still bugged to this day on Mastermind henchmen and are largely useless.

 

So, yes.  Mastermind henchmen need a major buff.  I'm sick and literally tired of constantly being told that "Mastermind are not welcome," when they're my favorite AT in the game by far and nothing else in the game plays like them.

Edited February 27 by Lunar Ronin

[TheMoncrief]

Not sure that these specific ideas are necessarily the correct ones to address the problem, but the problem in the title is absolutely one that needs to be addressed. Mastermind pets are super squishy in any environment outside of soloing.

[Glacier Peak]

It doesn't sound like there is any problem to solve. If a player is on +4/8 solo, the content should be difficult.

[TheSpiritFox]

7 minutes ago, TheMoncrief said:

Not sure that these specific ideas are necessarily the correct ones to address the problem, but the problem in the title is absolutely one that needs to be addressed. Mastermind pets are super squishy in any environment outside of soloing.

 

Within the current game systems these seem like the simplest fixes for the devs to actually implement to solve the problems. Obviously, this is a starting point. I dont know exactly what the ideal math would be for it, but given the rise in 4 star content and that without a very well set up team my pets absolutely disintegrate, obviously SOMETHING needs to change here. 

[Clave Dark 5]

The AT's mechanic is part of the problem.  As the MM/pet team starts to take damage, especially big chunks, the pets start to drop, which means the MMs damage goes down.  I don't think any other AT suffers this was, imagine being a Blaster that took a huge slam of damage and then lost their nuke, or the Build Up or something. 

 

When you start to lose, you spiral down into losing faster.  And then, yeah, there's the whole panicked and terribly slow trying to re-summon and rebuff, while taking more damage, or trying to guess if some secondary power might be better here or what...

[Glacier Peak]

Just now, Clave Dark 5 said:

The AT's mechanic is part of the problem.  As the MM/pet team starts to take damage, especially big chunks, the pets start to drop, which means the MMs damage goes down.  I don't think any other AT suffers this was, imagine being a Blaster that took a huge slam of damage and then lost their nuke, or the Build Up or something. 

 

When you start to lose, you spiral down into losing faster.  And then, yeah, there's the whole panicked and terribly slow trying to re-summon and rebuff, while taking more damage, or trying to guess if some secondary power might be better here or what...

Masterminds are not meant to be in melee range during encounters. They send their Henchmen in to attack enemies, absorb alpha strikes, and when they inevitably defeated, the Mastermind can resummon them from a distance or from relative safety. 

[Clave Dark 5]

I didn't say anything about melee vs. range.  Blasters aren't meant to be melee either, so my analogy to losing capability as they suffer heavy damage still applies.

[Glacier Peak]

3 minutes ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I didn't say anything about melee vs. range.  Blasters aren't meant to be melee either, so my analogy to losing capability as they suffer heavy damage still applies.

Correct, I said that. Blasters are absolutely supposed to be in melee AND range. 

[TheSpiritFox]

25 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

In most other MMORPGs, pets get a high amount of innate AoE defense, which I think they need in Homecoming.

 

Many people forget or simply weren't around to know that up until Issue 16, the highest difficultly you could set for missions was +2.  +3 and +4 difficulty didn't exist.  Mastermind henchmen were never buffed to compensate.  It later turned out that just about everyone at Cryptic Studios involved with the design of the Mastermind AT was gone by the launch of Issue 8, and Paragon Studios developers didn't know what to do with the AT.

 

It was stated by one of the Paragon Studios developers in the post-sunset AMAs on Reddit that "Masterminds were the biggest mistake we ever made in the game."  (You have no idea how crushing it was to read that the developers of my favorite MMORPG considered my favorite AT by far to be the biggest mistake made in the game.)  They used Demon Summoning as a Going Rogue pre-order bonus in order to try to help sell it, and then later added Beast Mastery during the Freedom era in the Paragon Market, but Paragon Studios didn't understand the Mastermind AT, didn't care about the Mastermind AT, and basically left it to rot.  Mastermind henchmen initially didn't get the +1 Alpha level shift when it initially came out, until a screaming Mastermind player base forced Paragon Studios to add it as henchmen were getting slaughtered in Incarnate trials.  Then initially all of the Incarnate Hybrid abilities didn't work on Mastermind henchmen, and only after pleading and begging from Mastermind players did Paragon Studios finally get Support Hybrid to work on Mastermind henchmen.  The other Incarnate Hybrid abilities are still bugged to this day on Mastermind henchmen and are largely useless.

 

So, yes.  Mastermind henchmen need a major buff.  I'm sick and literally tired of constantly being told that "Mastermind are not welcome," when they're my favorite AT in the game by far and nothing else in the game plays like them.

Thank you for this. I never knew much about how MMs were treated by the studio, but I have always been drawn to Pet Sets and besides nothing else in the game playing like them, no other pet class in any MMO, ever, plays as well and as enjoyably as a mastermind. Everything else, pets are utility, or a little additional damage. I mained a Warlock in WoW and even Demonology spec your pet did maybe 35% of your damage overall, not the vast majority of it, and you only got one to control, and the controls were much more basic than what we get to play with with MMs. 

 

I appreciate learning that we werent buffed when +4 was added. That matters quite alot, especially with the level shifts. And yeah, it would be lovely to like be able to take assault hybrid, fire it off, and have it show up on all the MM pets naturally like other classes get to use it. It would be awesome if they inherited melee hybrid for more survivability as well. 

[Lockely]

Glacier, I usually find your additions to most threads to be useful, but you are entirely out of your depth on this one.

11 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

Masterminds are not meant to be in melee range during encounters. They send their Henchmen in to attack enemies, absorb alpha strikes, and when they inevitably defeated, the Mastermind can resummon them from a distance or from relative safety. 

 

This here shows you don't have a clue how MM actually plays. In order to get the effectiveness out of our pets, we have to be right alongside them to give them our Inherent buff, plus all the Leadership buffs we're forced to take. We have to be next to them for Bodyguard mode to work.

Sending them in to absorb the Alpha and then spending nearly a full minute re-summoning and buffing over and over and over again in high level content for nearly every pack of mobs is not consistent with any other AT's play style.

MM pets are tissue paper even when they're on a full tanky build like Bots/FF. As soon as something breaks through all the +DEF you give them, they implode and then so does the MM unless you've run away preemptively, depriving them of your Supremacy buff and making them even worse.

[TheSpiritFox]

7 minutes ago, Lockely said:

Glacier, I usually find your additions to most threads to be useful, but you are entirely out of your depth on this one.

 

This here shows you don't have a clue how MM actually plays. In order to get the effectiveness out of our pets, we have to be right alongside them to give them our Inherent buff, plus all the Leadership buffs we're forced to take. We have to be next to them for Bodyguard mode to work.

Sending them in to absorb the Alpha and then spending nearly a full minute re-summoning and buffing over and over and over again in high level content for nearly every pack of mobs is not consistent with any other AT's play style.

MM pets are tissue paper even when they're on a full tanky build like Bots/FF. As soon as something breaks through all the +DEF you give them, they implode and then so does the MM unless you've run away preemptively, depriving them of your Supremacy buff and making them even worse.

Exactly. The idea that MM pets are disposable? Then the mastermind should do all of the damage, pets should do almost none, and pets should have TAUNT. 

 

Pets are not disposable when 90% or more of your damage comes directly out of them. 

[Glacier Peak]

27 minutes ago, Lockely said:

Glacier, I usually find your additions to most threads to be useful, but you are entirely out of your depth on this one.

 

This here shows you don't have a clue how MM actually plays. In order to get the effectiveness out of our pets, we have to be right alongside them to give them our Inherent buff, plus all the Leadership buffs we're forced to take. We have to be next to them for Bodyguard mode to work.

Sending them in to absorb the Alpha and then spending nearly a full minute re-summoning and buffing over and over and over again in high level content for nearly every pack of mobs is not consistent with any other AT's play style.

MM pets are tissue paper even when they're on a full tanky build like Bots/FF. As soon as something breaks through all the +DEF you give them, they implode and then so does the MM unless you've run away preemptively, depriving them of your Supremacy buff and making them even worse.

Oh my, 60ft is certainly a lot closer than I realized for Supremacy - outside of Melee range, certainly, but not 80ft that I assumed. What's the farthest ranged attack from a Henchmen I wonder. Leadership buffs are not forced onto players of any Archetype - players select them based on trade offs. I'm curious what are your expectations of Masterminds in a solo or team environment? Perhaps I could better understand your position if I knew.

Edited February 27 by Glacier Peak
onto was missing from sentence

[Rudra]

19 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

23 minutes ago, Glacier Peak said:

minds are not meant to be in melee range during encounters. They send their Henchmen in to attack enemies, absorb alpha strikes, and when they inevitably defeated, the Mastermind can resummon them from a distance or from relative safety. 

Says who? If you read the rest of the thread, you'd see someone talking about how the studio has treated masterminds. You're treating us like we're defenders, and we are not. Yes, we were meant to be in melee range. They gave us bodyguard for a reason. Certain pets are melee, for a reason. We have secondaries with PBAOE buffs. 

 

You clearly do not play masterminds much and dont know what you're talking about. You are clearly here just to hear yourself talk. Please exit my thread. 

I do play MMs, and @Glacier Peak isn't wrong, though (s)he is missing part of it. Ranged pet sets allow the MM (and pets) to hang back and lay down support fire while also letting the MM use more support abilities. Melee focused pet sets do require the MM to be closer to the fighting to keep the pets bolstered by Supremacy though. However, on a team, which you should be on for the higher difficult content, by which I mean Hard Mode content, even melee focused pet set MMs can hang back a bit to reduce the amount of hate they have to deal with to buy themselves time to replace lost pets, support the team, or lay down some added fire of their own.

[Rudra]

18 minutes ago, Lockely said:

This here shows you don't have a clue how MM actually plays. In order to get the effectiveness out of our pets, we have to be right alongside them to give them our Inherent buff, plus all the Leadership buffs we're forced to take. We have to be next to them for Bodyguard mode to work.

This is not actually true. Supremacy has a 60 feet radius. So do all three Leadership toggles. And Bodyguard Mode applies so long as pets are within range of our Supremacy (edit: and we are in Defensive Follow). So we do have some wiggle room even on melee focused pet sets.

Edited February 27 by Rudra

[Glacier Peak]

4 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I do play MMs, and @Glacier Peak isn't wrong, though (s)he is missing part of it. Ranged pet sets allow the MM (and pets) to hang back and lay down support fire while also letting the MM use more support abilities. Melee focused pet sets do require the MM to be closer to the fighting to keep the pets bolstered by Supremacy though. However, on a team, which you should be on for the higher difficult content, by which I mean Hard Mode content, even melee focused pet set MMs can hang back a bit to reduce the amount of hate they have to deal with to buy themselves time to replace lost pets, support the team, or lay down some added fire of their own.

That's right! I just remembered - five years ago the Homecoming team updated the Masterminds' Henchmen AI to give a strong preference to selecting targets that are within 50' of the owner. This helped melee-oriented Mastermind Henchmen stay in Supremacy range more often, while still allowing them to move and effectively engage targets outside the range.

[Clave Dark 5]

Many ATs were designed originally to be ranged-only, but as the game plays today, they can be melee fairly easily.  If MMs are the only AT that are still required to stick to that design philosophy, then you're describing a gimped AT.

 

But I do think @Glacier Peak has a point: the root of the problem here is power creep.  I think it began back on Live when they introduced Incarnate content and didn't, imho, scale up MMs enough to face that.  Now as IO'ed builds-to-the-gills and +4/4star stuff becomes more and more the norm, that gap is just widening.

[biostem]

I think the HC devs have addressed a small portion of this frustration via the now enhanceable def/res MM pets get via their upgrade powers.  That being said, I think the level penalty for the T1 & T2 pets should be removed.  Further, I'd love to see something akin to the different side of the hybrid support incarnate tree, where a MMs own buff powers have an increased effect on their pets.  Further still, perhaps supremacy could be given an additional click ability, which essentially summons a fresh set of pets, which receive all upgrades that the casting MM owns, (recharge time can be adjusted for proper balancing).

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, biostem said:

That being said, I think the level penalty for the T1 & T2 pets should be removed. 

While doing any incarnate content, it is removed. The T1 and T2 pets get level shifts to pump up their levels equal to the MM's incarnate shifts + the negative level shifts the T1 and T2 pets endure. Only for as long as they stay within Supremacy's range though.

[biostem]

6 minutes ago, Rudra said:

While doing any incarnate content, it is removed. The T1 and T2 pets get level shifts to pump up their levels equal to the MM's incarnate shifts + the negative level shifts the T1 and T2 pets endure. Only for as long as they stay within Supremacy's range though.

That still, ultimately, puts them lower than the MM themselves, though, yes?  So the pets would get like +3 from your level shift, then -1 or -2, so a net of +2 or +1, which still isn't great, especially since some enemies are even above level 54...

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, biostem said:

That still, ultimately, puts them lower than the MM themselves, though, yes?  So the pets would get like +3 from your level shift, then -1 or -2, so a net of +2 or +1, which still isn't great, especially since some enemies are even above level 54...

No, it does not. It puts all the MM's pets at equal level to the MM. So using a 50+3 MM as an example. The T1 pets would normally be level 48. While in incarnate content, those same T1 pets would be level 48+5. They get the same +3 incarnate level shifts as the MM and they get another +2 level shifts for being T1 pets in incarnate content.

[biostem]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

No, it does not.

Thanks for the clarification.  Still, doesn't help in non-incarnate content.

[Rudra]

4 minutes ago, biostem said:

Thanks for the clarification.  Still, doesn't help in non-incarnate content.

True, which means MMs have difficulty with +4/x8 missions outside of incarnate content. (They still have difficulty in +4/x8 content even in incarnate content.) However, as someone who plays MMs and has successfully done +4/x8 content? It is still doable. It just isn't worthwhile unless you enjoy the difficulty it presents. Then again, I'm not afraid to run from a fight when it starts to look untenable, re-summon, re-upgrade, and then re-commit to the fight until I've finished the mission. Even if it means exiting the map to be able to do so.

 

(Edit: I find +2/x3 or +2/x4 to be a sufficient difficulty on my MMs to be a challenge without being a slog.)

Edited February 27 by Rudra

[Glacier Peak]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

True, which means MMs have difficulty with +4/x8 missions outside of incarnate content. (They still have difficulty in +4/x8 content even in incarnate content.) However, as someone who plays MMs and has successfully done +4/x8 content? It is still doable. It just isn't worthwhile unless you enjoy the difficulty it presents. Then again, I'm not afraid to run from a fight when it starts to look untenable, re-summon, re-upgrade, and then re-commit to the fight until I've finished the mission. Even if it means exiting the map to be able to do so.

Mastermind players can also drag an Ultimate inspiration on to their Henchmen for a temporary level shift. Assuming the player has the inf, it's a nice boost when fighting in regular content. 

[Lockely]

1 hour ago, Glacier Peak said:

Mastermind players can also drag an Ultimate inspiration on to their Henchmen for a temporary level shift. Assuming the player has the inf, it's a nice boost when fighting in regular content. 

 

Henchmen take individual Insps, they don't share, so thats 6 Ultimates to temporarily buff the whole team, or ~6 million Inf for every 3mins of buffs. On top of that, they have to be dragged out of combat because henchman interrupt their ability to accept insps with their auto-queued attacks.  You see this especially bad with Bots. Good luck even feeding them a heal Insp let alone an Ultimate most of the time.

On top of that, they're still wafer thin in Incarnate content where they get appropriate level shifts, so you'd be dumping ~6m inf into a bin and lighting it on fire as they get either evaporated by the alpha, or a lucky KB turns them into fancy, gold plated dust.

Surely the solution to this isn't "Spend several ATOs worth of Inf every mission on Inspirations." If summoning and buffing replacements was less time consuming, I don't think any of us would mind their current state, but as of now I have to not only cast all three of my summons, then wait for them to actually animate in and appear, then cast both my upgrades, then cast any specific buffs (i.e. shields), and THEN get back into the fight.

The only thing I can think of is perhaps adding additional global set bonuses on the Superior Mark of Supremacy ATO. At 3/6 it summons your pets with the L6 upgrade equipped, and at 6/6 it summons all your pets with the L26 upgrade equipped. Does it pigeonhole MMs into taking it? Yes, it's creating one problem to solve another, but I think similar to Stalker's Guile: + Chance for Hide, that's a tradeoff we'd take as a compromise.