Are MM Thugs going to get an attack update?

[Jack Spanky]

Every other Mastermind set had some thematic secondary effect added to the MM attacks to encourage their being taken, some of them actually a bit useful. Demon whips do -res, Bots pulse rifle does -regen, Ninja arrows add crit chance to the henchmen attacks, etc. Poor neglected Thugs got nothing for their Dual Pistols, not even some kind of take on the parent set's ammo-swapping mechanic. I thought about rolling with the theme and giving them inherent black market armor-piercing ammo that would do -res or something like that, but that would just edge in on Demon's territory.

 

Maybe it needs a different angle. The Thugs set is all about rep and loyalty, with henchmen having leadership auras and calling on your boys for a gang war. How about something like...

 

Representing

Your Thugs are loyal no matter what, but they'll fight harder for a Mastermind who leads from the front. Each attack applies a stack of Representing to the Mastermind, creating a 15' radius 3% +dmg/+tohit buff aura to your Henchmen, max 3 stacks.

[Eiko-chan]

Dual Wield and Empty Clips both do Knockback; if Pistols got that too, that would be the set's flavour.

 

Slight historical correction, however: Thugs is the parent set; Dual Pistols was added to the game to alleviate the plague of petless Thug MMs that were people that just wanted to dual-wield pistols. 

[PoptartsNinja]

Bots, Mercenaries, Ninjas, and Zombies have gotten a recent overhaul to normalize their performance. The biggest difference is the way their upgrade powers work, but it also included work on their attacks to help them synergize with the actual pet set.

 

Demons, Beasts, and Thugs haven't gotten this overhaul yet but IIRC they're on the devs' radar.

Edited June 4 by PoptartsNinja

[Jack Spanky]

That's interesting, I assumed Beasts had when I looked up the primaries because of the Pack Mentality mechanic, but taking another look at it, yeah it doesn't have the slottable effects for the upgrades. And I had completely forgotten than the Dual Pistols attacks came in Thugs first as a sort of free preview, chalk that up to insomnia posting.

[Jack Spanky]

Also "chance to knockback" on mostly single-target, single damage type attacks is the least interesting gimmick/set theme in the entire game; it would be a lot more interesting if it also came with significant bonus damage to go with being the most resisted damage type, though.

[WumpusRat]

I'm really hoping the devs get around to updating the last three mastermind primaries "soon(tm)". Beast Mastery desperately needs it. After the updates, it is dead-last in terms of MM primaries, and a huge chunk of its damage output is tied to the passive effect of Fortify Pack, and you lose it if you actually USE the power, which is a bit nonsensical. The "best" way to use it at present is as a mule for defense IO sets, which feels shabby. 

 

Not to mention the beasts themselves have some animation pauses in their attack chain, making them attack a lot slower than they should.

[TheZag]

The MM primaries that got a rework received them because of how bad they were performing.  Im not saying beasts, demons and thugs will never be reworked,  but they were far ahead of ninjas, mercs, necro and bots before their updates.

 

 

[BrandX]

47 minutes ago, TheZag said:

The MM primaries that got a rework received them because of how bad they were performing.  Im not saying beasts, demons and thugs will never be reworked,  but they were far ahead of ninjas, mercs, necro and bots before their updates.

 

 

 

Really?  I thought Robots before the update were supposed to be one of the best 😮

[Lunar Ronin]

6 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

Really?  I thought Robots before the update were supposed to be one of the best 😮

 

Nope.  They did the least damage of all primaries.  Not just Masterminds, but all offensive primaries in the game, period.  Even behind Mercenaries.  It was just the regeneration debuff propping them up.

[TheZag]

7 minutes ago, BrandX said:

 

Really?  I thought Robots before the update were supposed to be one of the best 😮

 

I liked my bots better before their revamp.  I also didnt consider them bad.