A strange hunch about MM pets that rely on resists or resist heavy secondaries.

[Vulgaris]

I've done a bit of light testing with an arsenal controller with the beefy gun drone  pet and one res aura enhance to 90% res cap it. Parking in an AE against a specific elite boss (Using SS I believe, so only smashing damage) doing one damage type and watching as it just predictably takes damage in a very slow steady trickle and predictable values over a very dull but informative 6 minutes.  No buffs except the raw arsenal controller pet with one +10 res enhance to make it capped.

Which struck me as odd, as it's only around 600-ish HP max otherwise with zero def? Not too far off and maybe even less health and certainly less def than one of my zombies on my Necro/Sonic MM. And my experience with them and their expected durability is far different.

So I do the same thing with the same EB that does the same smashing damage type that the zombie is resist capped to, and the damage he takes feels so much more swingy and unpredictable.  And sometimes it feels like he takes a devastating hit contrary to their actual resist values.  It almost feels like the game from time to time "Forgets" my zombie's resist values at odd intervals or ticks. The chosen EB also did no -res, only -def which changes nothing since the gun drone also has 0 def. I am also NOT letting my sonic buffs lapse either.

I am also NOT running in bodyguard mode for the test, I have aggressive on and I gave one single fully upgraded zombie horde zombie the attack command and let him have at it with the EB to take some hits.

So my strange hunch is that maybe some of the fragility of (some?) MM pets may be due in part to some sort of oddity with how their defenses and resist values or upgrades calculate maybe?  Like their state of having defense or resist is somehow tracked with ticks or has to be constantly server checked. And sometimes you hit a "Sour" tick and the game forgets momentarily that they have resist at  all.

Or maybe the culprit is instead due to defender style second hand +res buffs. Like sonic might be the outlier since they're not originating from your character when applied to you, like your own native scrapper/sent/tanker toggles so they are being calculated oddly.
If anyone a little more in the know about MM pets could test or help sus this out I would also appreciate it. There has to be something obvious I'm overlooking.

Edited March 7 by Vulgaris

[Xandyr]

Would it have anything to do with level shifts?

[Vulgaris]

33 minutes ago, Xandyr said:

Would it have anything to do with level shifts?

I am not terribly sure- If that were the case it's also accounted for as both characters were the same level in the mission with wildly different pet damage received results. No incarnates enabled, no buff toggles. The only discrepancy I can maybe think of is the lower level conning of the first tier MM pets but I have no idea what that might be doing then to offset the visible RES in their combat attributes.

Edit: To append to this, Even in normal content from 20-40 and just idly playing I would often notice on my necro/sonic my pet's health sitting pretty and then one suddenly getting chunked, and this was in +0 difficulty +2 team size casual play. Like the really odd spikey damage from even conning enemies and at worst a red boss against capped res after factoring in the MM ATOs.

Edited March 7 by Vulgaris

[StrikerFox]

That's interesting. Maybe set up a tab for "Pet Damage Received." Fight the same boss and see how much damage each one of his attacks do. If the Gun Drone and Zombie are the same level, with the same +res, they should receive the same amount of damage. Like if a punch does 20 pts of dam to the GD, it will do 20 pts to the Zombie. If a kick does 30 pts to one, it will do 30 to the other etc.

Zombies are two levels lower than the MM. Are Gun Drones two levels lower than the Controller? Maybe test with the Lich? Are either the Controller or MM level shift to +1? Maybe unslot Alpha/Destiny/Lore incarnates so that each character is only lvl 50.

Also where is the MM situated? Are Sovereign/Expedient/Mark equipped? Is the pet within their radius? Open up the pet's Combat Attributes, view their damage resist to see if it dips at all during their fight. If they get out of range, they will lose 35% res to all damage types.

[Vulgaris]

1 hour ago, StrikerFox said:

That's interesting. Maybe set up a tab for "Pet Damage Received." Fight the same boss and see how much damage each one of his attacks do. If the Gun Drone and Zombie are the same level, with the same +res, they should receive the same amount of damage. Like if a punch does 20 pts of dam to the GD, it will do 20 pts to the Zombie. If a kick does 30 pts to one, it will do 30 to the other etc.

Zombies are two levels lower than the MM. Are Gun Drones two levels lower than the Controller? Maybe test with the Lich? Are either the Controller or MM level shift to +1? Maybe unslot Alpha/Destiny/Lore incarnates so that each character is only lvl 50.

Also where is the MM situated? Are Sovereign/Expedient/Mark equipped? Is the pet within their radius? Open up the pet's Combat Attributes, view their damage resist to see if it dips at all during their fight. If they get out of range, they will lose 35% res to all damage types.

I'll make a note to test this on brainstorm or something in depth to make it as even a clean slate as possible too. If not tonight then tomorrow or so.  The "track the attack damage relative to the other pet" is a good idea.  And I keep in range of em always as I'm painfully aware of the ATO aura distances and I kinda overly baby my minions.

 

Edit: Attaching images, Not the tidiest or most scientific of tests but I figured the resists that are absolutely capped with no question about it on zombies (cold and toxic) are good baselines, given there's level 50 Hellfrost Lords right outside portalinc.

 

The level conning does appear to be influencing the received damage and that could be the reason why the poor t1 zombies just eat it from time to time even resist capped. Given they are probably getting purple conned by what's "only" orange+ to me.

Lich and The Tricannon seem to be taking 1:1 the same damage as well.

So at 50 as a MM T1 pets are 48, T2 are 49, and T3 is 50. And Controller pets come out at 50 as well.

So potentially it's just the level conning just overpowering the +res maybe - But even the base numbers don't look that crazily different between them.. Which doesn't explain the extreme spikes entirely still.

My most surprising takeway is that controller pets and MM's T3 pets are more or less same powerscale.

Edited March 7 by Vulgaris

[StrikerFox]

The difference looks minimal when viewing damage from a DoT, 1.8 dam vs 2.19 dam. But difference equates to almost 20%. That's equivalent to the Zombie having a permanent Achilles' Heel debuff applied to them. If it was a bigger hit, say GD/Lich was hit for 200 dam, the Zombie would take around 240 from that same hit. Maybe launch the pets at a lvl 54 Rikti pylon. The damage difference between pets would be more noticeable.

 

Some players were vocal about eliminating the level shift for tier 1 and 2 MM pets. They take more damage, do less damage, easier to get hit, needs higher acc to hit, mez effects last longer etc. All with a lower base max HP. But I don't recall reading any "Fix MM" threads since i27.5 was released in late 2022. 

[Maelwys]

Your T1 Zombies are -2 to the mob you're fighting, so they'll take 22% higher damage from all of that critter's attacks and the critter will be getting +20% accuracy.
Your T2 Grave Knights are -1 to the mob you're fighting, so they'll take 11% higher damage from all of that critter's attacks and the critter will be getting +10% accuracy.
Your Lich and the Tri-Cannon will be even-stevens.

Also be careful of thinking that Defence debuffs don't matter if you're on "0% Defense". Everything attacking you or your pets in PVE will have an 50% innate basehitchance, which can effectively be increased up to 95% by debuffing your defence even if your starting Defence is listed as zero (Critters max out at a 95% chance to hit you). Your Defence can be debuffed to a minimum of -100%, rather than to a minimum of zero.

[Vulgaris]

Super useful information there actually and I had no clue even after playing all this time anything near an exact figure for how level conning and damage received works.  That would certainly explain why I feel like the numbers aren't lining up. Even worse if you're running content with any level plusses then... So a +4 would be more like a +6 artificially for your typical MM's main glut of minions.

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Vulgaris said:

 So a +4 would be more like a +6 artificially for your typical MM's main glut of minions.

Yep, and that's actually where the real problem comes in.

Things stay manageable as long as you aren't fighting mobs that are more than about 4 levels above you.
Compared to fighting even-level enemies, vs +4s you'll deal just under half of your "normal" damage to them, whilst taking nearly half as much extra damage from their attacks.
That's TOUGH; but it's still perfectly doable for a well-built character.
However then things start to ramp up rather drastically.

When fighting +5s, you'll deal a bit over a third less damage than you would deal to +4s (and take about 8% more damage).
When fighting +6s, you'll deal just half as much damage as you were against the +5s (and taking about 7% more damage).
When fighting +7s, your damage output gets halved yet again (and again, you'll take about 7% more damage).

So your damage output rapidly drops off a cliff. And to make matters worse, as soon as you start fighting +6s or higher the enemy starts getting ToHit buffs, not just accuracy buffs. And ToHit buffs blow directly through your +Defence. Which means if you're aiming to Softcap your pets, you'll actually need to ensure that your T1 henchmen are sitting at 5% higher defence than the regular 45% softcap if you're ever planning on fighting +4s; and 10% higher if you're planning on fighting +5s.

The pet level scaling works OK until your difficulty slider is about +2/+3; but after that it gets wonky pretty fast.
This is one of the reasons why the MM sets that deal the bulk of their damage via their T3 pet (such as Bots) tend to perform better at +4/+8 difficulty settings; and why you see so many Masterminds having to continually resummon their T1/T2 henchmen during non-incarnate endgame content.
 

Edited March 7 by Maelwys

[Crysis]

All of this is why the level shifts pre-Incarnate need to be adjusted.  T1 henchmen should be perma boosted up a level so they are -1 to the MM and the T3 should be even leveled to the MM.  Then boost the lot of them to even leveled to summoner in Incarnate content as it is right now and call it good.
 

I really feel the nerfs to Freezing Rain after this last patch on my MM’s.  They dealt enough -Res or -Def to help me offset the big level shifts native to primary henchmen right now.  Taking that away made it harder to hit stuff and when they do it’s not much damage.  I hope the Devs are listening and will just remove a level from the level shifts from MM’s and call it good for PvE.

[Riverdusk]

It is why MM is the one AT I rarely join higher level teams with while leveling them up.  Already that puts you -1 to the leader of the team and -1 to all the mobs you are fighting.  If you join a team doing +4 content, the enemies are at +5 to you and your tier 1 pets are fighting +7's.  That means they are basically doing nothing at that point and are very likely to constantly be one shot.   Even your tier 2's are fighting +6, so they really aren't doing much either.  

 

I do much better if I make sure to only join teams my level or lower while on the road to level 50 with a MM.

 

I think it is a big part of why MM isn't the least popular AT, but it is one of the least likely to reach level 50 (at least so I've heard).  People start them, join higher level teams, see their pets constantly dying, and decide to try a different AT. 

[Crysis]

Don’t forget with all this number crunching that MM Supremacy adds +25% damage and +10% ToHit as long as henchmen are in range of MM.

[OdinAZ]

On 3/7/2024 at 11:26 AM, Maelwys said:

Your T1 Zombies are -2 to the mob you're fighting, so they'll take 22% higher damage from all of that critter's attacks and the critter will be getting +20% accuracy.
 

 

  What about just skipping the T1's.  Is that a crazy strategy?  Taking your Primary attacks or secondary buff/debuff?

[Maelwys]

Plenty of petless Masterminds exist.

 

It might not be optimal in terms of damage output to skip them; but occasionally constantly babysitting and resummoning pets (or having them stand around blocking narrow corridors - geometry can get wonky in some cave maps since you can only shove them out of the way if there is space behind them) can be detrimental to a team's performance.

[tidge]

9 hours ago, OdinAZ said:

 

  What about just skipping the T1's.  Is that a crazy strategy?  Taking your Primary attacks or secondary buff/debuff?

 

When in Bodyguard mode,, the T1 contribute to the MM's pool of Hit Points. I would not skip them, although I do play some PUG content where I don't bother summoning them.... mostly because of the level shift, sometimes because of the AI.

 

IMO: More than any other AT, Mastermind's have to be actively considering the content they are playing. This is not to say that they can't get into a mode of play where they very rarely have to change their thinking, it's just that different content can force a reconsideration of a style of play that "works" otherwise. Because modes are mostly only visible to the MM, this may not be obvious to other players teaming with the MM.

 

I also believe that what I wrote above applies to changing playstyles as the MM levels up. Early in a MM career it is crucially important that the (very few) henchmen "stay alive". Later, it is much less important to be concerned about individual henchmen.

 

 

[WumpusRat]

On 3/20/2024 at 6:58 PM, OdinAZ said:

 

  What about just skipping the T1's.  Is that a crazy strategy?  Taking your Primary attacks or secondary buff/debuff?

 

It's been tried before, but the problem is that you're down three minions, meaning the bodyguard split becomes 40% for you and 20% for each minion, instead of 25% for you and 12.5% for each minion, meaning you and your minions take a good chunk more damage per hit. Not to mention that unless you're fighting purely purple-con mobs, the tier-1 minions DO churn out a pretty good chunk of damage. Also, mastermind attacks have such low scaling that your personal attacks won't really make up for having those three extra minions. 

 

Bear in mind that the number of targets on the field also contributes to your own survivability, as well as the survivability of your other minions. If it's just you, the two tier-2's and the one tier-3, there are only four targets for enemies to pick from. Which means more damage dumped onto the other minions, meaning they'll end up dying faster. If a tier-1 dies, you can toss another one out without a big loss to your damage output. If a tier-2 dies, it's a bigger loss. If your tier-3 dies, it's a substantial loss. Even more so if you've only got three minions on the field to start with. You'd have to play much more carefully, and at that point why not just take the difficulty down a notch and use all six minions?

 

Additionally, when you start doing incarnate content, all your pets are level-shifted up to be equal to you, so skipping the tier-1's would greatly reduce both your survivability as well as your damage output. When you get all three of the incarnate level shifts going, all your pets are level 53. 

Edited March 25 by WumpusRat

[Maelwys]

13 hours ago, WumpusRat said:

Bear in mind that the number of targets on the field also contributes to your own survivability, as well as the survivability of your other minions. If it's just you, the two tier-2's and the one tier-3, there are only four targets for enemies to pick from. Which means more damage dumped onto the other minions, meaning they'll end up dying faster.

Slight caveat here - there are certain situations (which happen only very occasionally in regular content, but extremely regularly on AE farming maps) where you have more than 17 hostile critters nearby. In those cases the aggro of the entire mob cannot be held by one single entity; and whilst it's of great benefit for a player character to have some pets to help "herd them up"... having multiple pets, some of which are WEAK can actually be detrimental because those pets inevitably die and aggro starts to pinball madly all over the place.

This is actually why my Bot/Kin needs to worry about resummoning their T1s on AE farming maps - I can easily have 30+ foes madly gyrating directly underneath my hovering mechcluster of doom; but only 17 of them are aggroed onto my Assbot; the others are mostly split across the Drones (with their Full Auto spam) instead of across my MM themselves plus the Protector Bots; who all have considerably higher "effective HP" due to purple patch scaling. In most cases I can reliably pull most of them onto my MM via Bonfire and Fireball spam, but that's still only a maximum of 34 simultaneous foes accounted for; which, yes, seems like a lot, until you actually see two ITF's worth of foes crammed into one tiny asteroid map...

[Ashford]

This is why the best mastermind build in CoH has and always will be illusions/FF controller. unkillable minions, unkillable in general.