Please make MM upgrade powers passive

[Riverdusk]

1 minute ago, Rudra said:

If you are summoning a whole fresh set of pets, by the time your character finishes animating the last power, even if the last pet is not yet targetable, you can select any other pet, apply the upgrades, and all pets still get them. If you are summoning replacements, then target any existing pet, including Dark Servant if you went /dark, or any combat NPC being escorted, and apply the upgrades to them, and it applies to all your pets. Pet summon completion time is easily bypassed.

 

Fair enough, I forget that trick a lot of times in the heat of combat.

[Rudra]

1 minute ago, Riverdusk said:

 

Fair enough, I forget that trick a lot of times in the heat of combat.

Also, as a heads up in case anyone is unaware, if you are having problems targeting one of your pets for anything? Whether an upgrade or a heal or any other reason? Simply click them in the pet window and it selects them.

[gameboy1234]

13 hours ago, PeregrineFalcon said:

Unfortunately, the Homecoming developers have already said that they will not make the upgrades passive. I think that summoning and resumming and upgrading is part of the intended gameplay loop.

 

I suppose I could go find the post if you really need me to.

 

It was part of the game play loop when the recharge time of the upgrade powers was much longer, and only one pet could be upgraded at a time.  Right now, the upgrade recharge is so short that it's just busy work.  There's no "game play" there, it's just tedium.  I'm not advocating for returning the powers to their old behavior, but I do think that there's no game play or good design in the current scheme any more.  It needs at rethink, or at least some tweaks.  Making the upgrade powers automatic based the pets' current level would be good too, and would work with the level scaling in the mentor/sidekick system.

 

[gameboy1234]

14 minutes ago, Rudra said:

Also, as a heads up in case anyone is unaware, if you are having problems targeting one of your pets for anything? Whether an upgrade or a heal or any other reason? Simply click them in the pet window and it selects them.

 

You can also clear your target with Esc, and then mash the upgrade power twice.  They work just like any other targeted power.  The first mash with a clear target selects the closest available valid target, the second mash fires off the power.

 

My cursor can often get lost in the screen confusion, I find this more reliable than trying to click when things are really happening fast.

 

[Rudra]

3 minutes ago, gameboy1234 said:

 

It was part of the game play loop when the recharge time of the upgrade powers was much longer, and only one pet could be upgraded at a time.  Right now, the upgrade recharge is so short that it's just busy work.  There's no "game play" there, it's just tedium. 

I may be wrong, but I believe the reduced recharge times and the AoE upgrade effects were implemented on Live. So that would make you wrong about the game play loop as described not being relevant. And it isn't tedium since it does affect all pets and the MMs secondaries can keep the pets alive so as to not need to be re-summoned and re-upgraded that often.

[kwsapphire]

8 hours ago, Col. Kernel said:

There are keybinds for targetting teammates.  How do I make a keybind to target a specific one of my T1 or T2 henchmen?  I'm not making custom keybinds to tag my T1s and T2s by name for every MM I have.

 

 

That's exactly what I do though, make custom targeting macros for each pet on every MM. 🙂 The first six buttons in Tray 2 are pet select macros. Tray 1, for my pacifists. I'm not saying you should do this. It's the only way to select specific pets (without clicking in the pet window), though, I'm afraid. 

Edited Friday at 08:43 PM by kwsapphire

[kwsapphire]

3 hours ago, Rudra said:

And neither does the MM have to do anything at all a lot of the time. I've set my MMs to Walk through entire maps and not hit a single key other than for moving the character and completely cleared the maps. Can a Blaster do that? We have trade offs for the ATs. Each excels and is hampered in different ways.

 

Honestly? Sounds like you're a terrible Mastermind. My Pacifist/Soloists are more active than that. I'll make a note not to team with you, if you can't be bothered to even use your secondaries. 

[kwsapphire]

2 hours ago, Rudra said:

Also, as a heads up in case anyone is unaware, if you are having problems targeting one of your pets for anything? Whether an upgrade or a heal or any other reason? Simply click them in the pet window and it selects them.

 

Not if they haven't finished being summoned. You can click on the pet window all you want, you can't select them until they're "here." (Edit) And FWIW, it's totally possible for the Upgrade power to miss a pet that hasn't finished summoning. I just tested it again to be sure, and am happy to record and post to YouTube if anyone has doubts.

Edited Friday at 08:48 PM by kwsapphire

[battlewraith]

5 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

 

Honestly? Sounds like you're a terrible Mastermind. My Pacifist/Soloists are more active than that. I'll make a note not to team with you, if you can't be bothered to even use your secondaries. 

I keep wondering what the level settings were for this scenario lol.

[Rudra]

22 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

 

Honestly? Sounds like you're a terrible Mastermind. My Pacifist/Soloists are more active than that. I'll make a note not to team with you, if you can't be bothered to even use your secondaries. 

Holy hells. Way to misinterpret what is being said. The point is that I can very much with any of my MMs regardless of primary-secondary combination just turn on Walk on the character and be perfectly safe as my henchmen annihilate everything on the map trying to threaten me. What I am not saying is that I don't use my secondaries, because when I'm on teams or running through +4/x8 on my MMs, I do. Damn, how can you misread my post that badly?!

 

23 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

 

Not if they haven't finished being summoned. You can click on the pet window all you want, you can't select them until they're "here." (Edit) And FWIW, it's totally possible for the Upgrade power to miss a pet that hasn't finished summoning. I just tested it again to be sure, and am happy to record and post to YouTube if anyone has doubts.

You can select any pet in the pet window and that pet will be selected. If you are trying to upgrade a pet you just summoned and you have other pets? Select one of the other pets and apply the upgrade through them. It's that simple. Or are you intentionally misreading my posts?

[kwsapphire]

13 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I can very much with any of my MMs regardless of primary-secondary combination just turn on Walk on the character and be perfectly safe as my henchmen annihilate everything on the map trying to threaten me.

 

Bald-faced lie. Unless you're only going into missions you've out-leveled so far that everything is gray. Or you have a whole team carrying you. 

 

Quote

You can select any pet in the pet window and that pet will be selected. If you are trying to upgrade a pet you just summoned and you have other pets? Select one of the other pets and apply the upgrade through them. It's that simple. Or are you intentionally misreading my posts?

 

As I said, the Upgrade powers can and will miss pets that haven't finished summoning. So yes, you can select another pet and upgrade it... and the newly not-quite-yet-summoned pet won't be upgraded. But I guess if you're "walking" through missions of gray enemies, it doesn't matter if some of your pets miss the upgrade, huh?

Edited Friday at 09:19 PM by kwsapphire

[Rudra]

2 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

14 minutes ago, Rudra said:

I can very much with any of my MMs regardless of primary-secondary combination just turn on Walk on the character and be perfectly safe as my henchmen annihilate everything on the map trying to threaten me.

 

Bald-faced lie. Unless you're only going into missions you've out-leveled so far that everything is gray. Or you have a whole team carrying you. 

Don't call me a liar. I run my MMs at +0-+2/x3 and just walk through missions. It's not difficult. At all. No team necessary. And you can't get inf' from grey mobs. An MM with sufficiently built pets can take on anything in the game unless you max the difficult and tank it. I ran my MMs through Lambda routinely before I stopped bothering with the iTrials. And never had a problem keeping my character or my pets alive. Can't Walk through them, you have to practice active pet management and keep an eye on everything going on, but it was never a difficult task. Even Marauder's nuke wasn't a problem. You just watch for the trigger, pull your pets out of the radius, and then send them back to beat on him some more after the nuke. There is no other AT in the game except maybe Controllers/Dominators that can just walk through missions without bothering to do anything at all and be perfectly safe.

 

7 minutes ago, kwsapphire said:

As I said, the Upgrade powers can and will miss pets that haven't finished summoning. So yes, you can select another pet and upgrade it... and the newly not-quite-yet-summoned pet won't be upgraded. But I guess if you're "walking" through missions of gray enemies, it doesn't matter if some of your pets miss the upgrade, huh?

I have never in my life playing this game after the pet upgrades went AoE had that problem of my upgrades missing my pets unless the pet somehow ran to the far end of room/map outside of Supremacy range. And if the pet did? I select that pet, set it to passive, upgrade it, and then it's all good.

[arcane]

To be fair to Rudra here, isn’t every mastermind terrible?

[kwsapphire]

15 minutes ago, arcane said:

To be fair to Rudra here, isn’t every mastermind terrible?

 

A lot of people seem to feel that way, and this very thread is a request to make them slightly less terrible, so.. yes? 😄

 

I still love them. I'm a glutton for punishment. 

[Ghost]

35 minutes ago, arcane said:

To be fair to Rudra here, isn’t every mastermind terrible?

And that’s why they are going to be eliminated from the game.

 

Think of all the wonderful “suggestions” it will eliminate from the forums!

 

[tidge]

My attitude and comments on this topic (henchmen upgrades)  aren't really any different since the last round of MM upgrades:

 

I agree that the first upgrade should be baked in, it make no sense to me that it should have to be applied because both (a) it comes so early and (b) it comes before the T2 and T3 henchmen are available as power picks.

 

I disagree that the second upgrade should be automatic, because the level is is available at is necessary for the content that begins to appear at that level; it really is a "level up" for earlier level "powers" (the henchmen) necessary to scale MM performance at the higher levels. (This sort of level scaling is IMO observable from an AT that gets appropriate low-level attacks but lacks a similar sort of "power up": Kheldians. It's why the Nova forms are great at lower levels but kinda weak at higher levels... but I digress)

 

I am satisfied with the current implementation of the first upgrade. Aside from all the post-live MM improvements (summon times/times, group buffing, map->map travel, opening up T2 secondary power choice, etc.) the ability to slot certain useful enhancement sets in those first (and in some cases, second) upgrades was a boon to MM builds that choose to take advantage of them. This implementation would not have been my choice; I think the (my words) "ya gots to apply the first upgrade as an intended cost of getting better performance" argument is somewhat weak(*1) but I don't feel obligated to try to analyze/prove/disprove that hypothesis when the final choice of auto/non-auto first upgrade will make no measureable difference (to me). It is obvious (at least to me) that reworking the primaries by replacing multiple powers and trying to come up with something else would involve analysis/effort for both balance and code... and the payoff would be of questionable value (IMO). (*2)

 

(*1) The argument about the first upgrade being auto/non-auto feels "goopy"... or at least more "theoretical" than "empirical"... but as noted in my text above, players did get an improved set of enhancement slotting options, so minimally (from my PoV) there was a buff to those powers that I appreciate.

 

(*2) Having played MMs for long enough on HC (also live, but that is irrelevant for this point)... buffs/upgrades applied to henchmen are 'flaky' in both expected and (somewhat) unexpected ways. The primary upgrades almost always 'stick' (when the henches are fully summoned and clustered) but I frequently observed some applied buffs (mostly Incarnate buffs) don't 'stick' to all henchmen... and others may have discovered that a non-upgraded henchmen will usually 'get a free upgrade' when changing zones/maps. I only mention this because there is more going on 'under the hood' to give us the IMO good state of affairs MM enjoy today.

[kwsapphire]

I did some testing. I knew the outcome, but good science is based on good data.

 

I took two different masterminds into +0x3 Arachnos missions. Summoned bots, turned on Walk, and watched.

 

Level 19 Mastermind with 3 Battle Drones, 1 Protector Bot, and Maintenance Drone. Single Origin Enhancements.

Result: All bots and I were dead by 2nd group.

 

Level 50+3 (fighting at 50+1) Mastermind with all 6 bots plus Maintenance Drone. Single Origin Enhancements.

Result: All bots and I were dead by 4th group.

 

Level 50+3 (fighting at 50+1) Mastermind with all 6 bots plus Maintenance Drone. Same as above, but respecced with Sets. (Yes, I spent several hours creating and crafting a set build for this toon just so I could test this.)

Result: All bots were dead by the 7th group, and I'd have died if I hadn't gotten fed up and flown away. I didn't even make it to the last room.

 

Reminder that Bots have the most healing (amongst themselves) of any MM pet.

 

So no, you can't Walk through a WHOLE mission without clicking a single power. You will, at the very least, have to turn off walk to resummon and upgrade pets between each group. Good thing, too, because if masterminds truly could summon pets once and then walk through a whole x3 mission, the Devs would be planning a hefty nerf.

 

As for micromanaging my pets during Lambda ... it's not Marauder's nuke that kills them. It's ALL THE OTHER AOE, from beginning to end. As a Mastermind, I can do my own thing, stay back and whittle away at groups, and maybe survive.. but I certainly won't be helping seek out crates or containers. You know, the thing the league is supposed to be doing? I realized last night that Tin Mage and Apex are two more trials that I'll never bring MMs into again. Even after slotting full sets, I spent most of both trials resummoning and upgrading pets. It was obnoxious.

 

Perhaps I shouldn't have spent so much effort into debunking a claim from someone with a reputation for bad takes, generally being wrong about everything, and complaining how much their toons suck and always die. But I'd hate to think a new player thought they must be doing Masterminds wrong if they couldn't live up to this unrealistic standard. 

 

As for Masterminds being removed from the game? Well, "Walking through missions" isn't the only thing that smells of cow plop.

Edited Sunday at 02:04 PM by kwsapphire

[Ghost]

2 hours ago, kwsapphire said:

 

 

As for Masterminds being removed from the game? Well, "Walking through missions" isn't the only thing that smells of cow plop.

It’s happening, and it will be glorious!

 

No more complaining.

No more calls for clowns.

No more threads about MMs.

An end to world hunger.

 

There will be no more need for mods on here, because everyone will be living in harmony!
(Sorry googlymooogly)

 

#banMMs

 

[Rudra]

3 hours ago, kwsapphire said:

I did some testing. I knew the outcome, but good science is based on good data.

 

I took two different masterminds into +0x3 Arachnos missions. Summoned bots, turned on Walk, and watched.

 

Level 19 Mastermind with 3 Battle Drones, 1 Protector Bot, and Maintenance Drone. Single Origin Enhancements.

Result: All bots and I were dead by 2nd group.

 

Level 50+3 (fighting at 50+1) Mastermind with all 6 bots plus Maintenance Drone. Single Origin Enhancements.

Result: All bots and I were dead by 4th group.

 

Level 50+3 (fighting at 50+1) Mastermind with all 6 bots plus Maintenance Drone. Same as above, but respecced with Sets. (Yes, I spent several hours creating and crafting a set build for this toon just so I could test this.)

Result: All bots were dead by the 7th group, and I'd have died if I hadn't gotten fed up and flown away. I didn't even make it to the last room.

 

Reminder that Bots have the most healing (amongst themselves) of any MM pet.

 

So no, you can't Walk through a WHOLE mission without clicking a single power. You will, at the very least, have to turn off walk to resummon and upgrade pets between each group. Good thing, too, because if masterminds truly could summon pets once and then walk through a whole x3 mission, the Devs would be planning a hefty nerf.

And yet yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day on my Ninja/Dark MM doing the Organ Grinders Flashback doing exactly that at +0/x3. I entered the missions, turned on Walk, and walked through the missions. Only on 1 mission did I have to turn off Walk and support my pets because I got jumped by 3 groups of Rikti on a sewer map.

 

3 hours ago, kwsapphire said:

As for micromanaging my pets during Lambda ... it's not Marauder's nuke that kills them. It's ALL THE OTHER AOE, from beginning to end. As a Mastermind, I can do my own thing, stay back and whittle away at groups, and maybe survive.. but I certainly won't be helping seek out crates or containers. You know, the thing the league is supposed to be doing?

If your team stays together in the crates/containers part of the mission? You most definitely can keep your pets alive. If they scatter? Then let them. Do what you can or just go prepare for Marauder's arrival.

[battlewraith]

4 hours ago, Rudra said:

And yet yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day on my Ninja/Dark MM doing the Organ Grinders Flashback doing exactly that at +0/x3. I entered the missions, turned on Walk, and walked through the missions. Only on 1 mission did I have to turn off Walk and support my pets because I got jumped by 3 groups of Rikti on a sewer map.

 

If your team stays together in the crates/containers part of the mission? You most definitely can keep your pets alive. If they scatter? Then let them. Do what you can or just go prepare for Marauder's arrival.

I think most people aspire to to more than 0/+3. That's not much of a flex. I also don't think I've been on Lambda where people didn't scatter. I think that's the norm.

[Col. Kernel]

On 3/14/2025 at 4:06 PM, Rudra said:

Holy hells. Way to misinterpret what is being said. The point is that I can very much with any of my MMs regardless of primary-secondary combination just turn on Walk on the character and be perfectly safe as my henchmen annihilate everything on the map trying to threaten me. What I am not saying is that I don't use my secondaries, because when I'm on teams or running through +4/x8 on my MMs, I do. Damn, how can you misread my post that badly?!

That's what I got from it as well. 

 

On 3/14/2025 at 4:06 PM, Rudra said:

You can select any pet in the pet window and that pet will be selected. If you are trying to upgrade a pet you just summoned and you have other pets? Select one of the other pets and apply the upgrade through them. It's that simple. Or are you intentionally misreading my posts?

That is incorrect info. 

Click on summon T1, and T2.  Once the T1 is complete click T3 and immediately try to click the T3 in the Pet window.  You can't.  If you upgrade another henchman instead the T3 won't get the upgrade.

Do you even play an MM, ever?

[Rudra]

1 hour ago, Col. Kernel said:

That is incorrect info. 

Click on summon T1, and T2.  Once the T1 is complete click T3 and immediately try to click the T3 in the Pet window.  You can't.  If you upgrade another henchman instead the T3 won't get the upgrade.

Do you even play an MM, ever?

Frequently. My main is a Ninja/Dark MM. And every pet gets the upgrade if you apply the upgrade to any other pet as long as that pet is in range. Every time I have to summon replacements, I don't spend any time trying to target the replacement henchmen, I simply target any pet in view, including combat NPCs, and apply the upgrades to them, and all my pets get the upgrade if they lack it. Every time.

 

Edit: My dark servant is usually right by my side during most fights, so I apply my pet upgrades through him most of the time. Otherwise, I just click an already out pet in the pet window and apply the upgrades to my replacement pets through him.

 

Edit again: And yes, you can't target a newly summoned pet until after the summon is complete. However, you can still upgrade that pet through other pets. As long as the name is green, that is, the pet's name is there, even if the animation for the summon is not yet done, you can upgrade that pet through any other pet.

 

Edit yet again: Hells, you can upgrade your pets through your enemies. If the enemy you have targeted has a pet as its target, the pet upgrade applies to the enemy's target and through that target, to your other pets. I just did that by accident in the game just now.

 

Yet another edit: That's the thing about MM pets. They have to exist to be upgraded, but they don't have to be active. As long as the summon has progressed enough for the pet to finish spawning, even if the pet cannot yet be targeted by you, the pet can be upgraded. Try to upgrade before the pet actually exists? And it won't work. You don't have to wait to be able to target them to upgrade them though. Not since the upgrades became AoEs. You can't target them until they go active as pets at the end of the summon animation, but they are available to be upgraded before then.

 

Edited Monday at 03:54 AM by Rudra

[tidge]

19 hours ago, Col. Kernel said:

That is incorrect info. 

Click on summon T1, and T2.  Once the T1 is complete click T3 and immediately try to click the T3 in the Pet window.  You can't.  If you upgrade another henchman instead the T3 won't get the upgrade.

Do you even play an MM, ever?

 

*Some* of what is described here is a combination of (summoning) animation (mostly the henchmen 'appearing', AFAIK the MM's animation and time before effect is how longer before the pet window shows the hench) AND server-client delay w.r.t. to "mouse click"/"target selection".

 

In the scenario quoted here, if the T3 is *in* the pet window and has completed its animation/position registration at the server, tossing the upgrade on a hench/pet near the newly summoned hench will apply the ugrade to a henchmen (sooner than you could have by waiting to click on it).

 

This is similar to how during something like a Nemesis invasion players can't target some spawns right away, but henchmen and pets can.

 

I believe the client/server positioning lag can also work against MMs in certain examples when there is an asynchronicity in times when MM (in bodyguard mode) gets to an enemy, henchmen get to enemy, enemy hits the MM, henches take damage (from bodyguard mode, and/or AoE) before the game gives them credit for being close enough to qualify for certain buffs anchored to the MM. I've zipped up adjacent to enough Giant Monsters "too quickly" and the henches end up taking a LOT more damage than if I approach the Giant Monster more sedately.

[srmalloy]

22 hours ago, Rudra said:

And every pet gets the upgrade if you apply the upgrade to any other pet as long as that pet is in range. Every time I have to summon replacements, I don't spend any time trying to target the replacement henchmen, I simply target any pet in view, including combat NPCs, and apply the upgrades to them, and all my pets get the upgrade if they lack it. Every time.

And I just finished going through all of my Mastermind bind files to preface the binds for the upgrades with '+targetcustomnear alive mypet$$' to make the bind target the nearest pet, eliminating the need to double-tap the first use to target a pet. I can corroborate from testing with my Necromancy/Marine Mastermind that I can run through the Skeleton/Grave Knight/Lich summons, then slap the first empowerment on a Skeleton while the Lich is still untargetable, and the Lich gets the empowerment.

[PeregrineFalcon]

On 3/14/2025 at 1:59 PM, kwsapphire said:

A lot of people seem to feel that way, and this very thread is a request to make them slightly less terrible, so.. yes? 😄

So here's the problem.

 

If the devs take any steps to make MMs minions more durable, a subject that was very popular last year, it essentially ruins the /Sonic and /FF secondaries. Making the upgrades faster, or making them automatic or passives, has much the same effect. Sure, it doesn't keep them alive longer, it just makes replacing them quick and painless. Either of those two things changes the MM game play loop and increases the MMs DPS.

 

If you don't want to be constantly resummoning and/or upgrading your minions then take action to keep them from dying. Place them in a spot that makes them less vulnerable to the enemy, give them inspirations, heal them, take the /Sonic or FF secondaries to make them tougher, team up with a tank, etc.

 

There are a lot of ways you can make your minions more durable, and prevent from having to constantly resummon and upgrade them, other than just asking the devs to buff them.