Masterminds and the Conservation of Ninja/Inverse Ninja Principle

[Steampunkette]

A mastermind without their ninja (or thugs, or mercenaries, etc) is soon to follow them. But in the media, that's not exactly true. The conservation of ninja, whether heroic or villainous, clearly indicates that the fewer ninja on the battlefield, the stronger and more skilled the remaining ninja will be.

 

This is also born out in other parts of CoH, when you have to fight your way to the AV through minions, lieutenants, and bosses to challenge the much stronger leader.

 

I would like to suggest a slight change to Supremacy. One that will smooth out MM gameplay in general without adding extra power to them, overall.

 

A passive power which provides 60% additional damage, and a 30% endurance discount. Yet for every minion, 10% damage and 5% of the discount is removed.

 

This can help smooth out standard MM gameplay when a few of their minions die, allowing them to do a bit more damage. It also supports the conservation of ninja principle, and has a third benefit: It improves some less than optimal builds in a marginal way, increasing the number of ways you can play a mastermind.

 

The "Boy and Big Robot" build would enjoy the boy gaining a 50% damage buff and a 25% end discount.

The "Top 3 Minions" build would enjoy a 30% damage buff and a 15% end discount.

The "Minionless Mastermind" would get to swing a whip that still does fairly bad damage at +60%, and costs less.

 

It also tracks with their end cost increases for their support powers (Infrigidate costs everyone 10.4 end, but Masterminds 13, for example.) The extra 30% end costs exists to offset the additional 6 attackers the MM can bring, but if they don't have the 6 minions it's a burden on top of their precarious situation!

 

However, this change does not

 

A) Increase the ability of a Mastermind beyond it's current levels.

You're always better with your pets, you're just less trash without them. And since it's a damage bonus applied to your character it counts toward the cap. A Whipstermind on a team with Fulcrum Shift doesn't deal any more damage than they currently do, which remains very low. Slightly less expensive, though. And a full clear of 8 Masterminds on the ITF will deal precisely 0 points more damage than they currently do.

 

B) Make lower minion builds optimal.

Even with a +60% damage bonus on your 3 core attacks and the entire Fighting Pool your base damage is still 0.55. So you're at a massive disadvantage without your minions, even before considering your force-multiplication abilities in your secondary that aren't having full effect without your minions to take advantage. It does make lower-count MMs slightly more attractive in team situations due to the issues of NPC AI and character count on the screen, just for reduced confusion.

 

Conservation of Ninja. It's a solid quality of life improvement for MMs (particularly in the summoning phase when you start out with a 30% end discount) that essentially self-balances their damage and force-multiplication against the number of minions they have active!

[tidge]

I can speak a little to the "a boy and his robot" (both before and after MM revamp for Robotics).

 

The current version of Robotics is better for MM+T3only, but it is still somewhat lacking... I blame the poor-ish ST damage more than the actual damage scale.