page 3 [FOCUSED FEEDBACK] Mastermind Archetype Adjustments

[Maxzero]

On 11/19/2025 at 2:48 AM, Arbegla said:

 

I ran some incarnate level (+7/x8) missions on test just to see if I could and I noticed that 1) Incarnate romans suck, but more importantly 2) The procs that I do have slotted seemed to do full damage on the mobs. I run the support hybrid so I wasn't able to test that specifically, but my degenerative interface proc worked wonders once I got the hang of fighting level 57 mobs.

 

Sure but there are also nerfs to 'base damage' to partially counteract the buffs from the level changes. How are THOSE changes going to work in Incarnate content?

[Maxzero]

12 hours ago, Neiska said:

 

I understand this is a "warm-up." But given to the changes in the past 5 years, I have little faith that MMs will be actually made better. Most of their changes to MMs over the years I have disliked. The new sets are fun. Generally, dislike the primary shake-up they did 2ish years ago. (Robots in particular.) It hasn't "all" been bad. But I have low expectations that MMs will be made superior or "better" than they are currently, even less that they will nerf the things like ATS or powersets that are already OP. 

 

I mean lets be honest a Crabber or Illusion troller is a MM but with benefits.

[Valeraxiel]

12 hours ago, Neiska said:

 

I understand this is a "warm-up." But given to the changes in the past 5 years, I have little faith that MMs will be actually made better. Most of their changes to MMs over the years I have disliked. The new sets are fun. Generally, dislike the primary shake-up they did 2ish years ago. (Robots in particular.) It hasn't "all" been bad. But I have low expectations that MMs will be made superior or "better" than they are currently, even less that they will nerf the things like ATS or powersets that are already OP. 

  This. SO MUCH THIS. I really dislike the "C'mon guys wait and see trust the process hurr durr, it'll be better yiff yiff" that I've been seeing. MMs have been waiting. For years. We aren't sought after ever because we come with too many issues and not enough upside compared to other ATs. One look at multi-star content, fast-moving teams or even a goddamn cave and we get the "Uhh, can you swap?". Already playing one of the most complex ATs, and we've been mid AF for a min now. Meanwhile DP/Martial, Ice, Fire, Dark, SS, Bio, Inv etc etc Blasters/Corrs/Scraps/Brutes have just been dumping on the game for AGES and its cool. Hell, even Fire/Kin Trollers ran rampant for a while. But here is where we draw the line of "But what if its too good?" GOOD. High skill things SHOULD have an equivalent level of reward, or else why bother (and don't give the that "Love of the Game" or "For the plot")? Why would I wanna play at 120 percent compared to my peers, to only be 70% as effective? I don't, but that's how it feels playing MM outside of the niche scenarios that have already been covered in this thread. TLDR: We have enough things working against us. Its ok to let us actually be strong. Tune it THAT way. Signed, a tired MM enjoyer.

[tidge]

Is this WIA?

 

+MaxHP boosts (from set bonuses) are showing the same amount of net HP for each tier of henchmen.  This was checked while standing in Dark Astoria.

[Dispari]

59 minutes ago, Valeraxiel said:

  This. SO MUCH THIS. I really dislike the "C'mon guys wait and see trust the process hurr durr, it'll be better yiff yiff" that I've been seeing.

 

I don't think I said that. Just that panicking and posting doom and insulting people a bit premature (and immature).

 

It's not like I don't also want MMs to thrive. I bought CoV because of MMs. I made a Necromancy MM day one and swapped to City over Guild Wars, because I didn't have to find corpses just to have pets. MMs have always been my favorite AT because I play pet classes in every game they're an option. They're currently awful and I will acknowledge that. They pretty much have been ever since the difficulty maximum was upped to +4. And the reasons are many. Once the holidays are over and devs get back to work, I will absolutely be looking over the changes and offering my feedback to help them improve.

 

19 minutes ago, tidge said:

Is this WIA?

 

+MaxHP boosts (from set bonuses) are showing the same amount of net HP for each tier of henchmen.  This was checked while standing in Dark Astoria.

 

Yes, it's based on the owner's HP values. They get more than they "should."

[tidge]

I finished up the Dark Astoria Heather Townshend arc at +3x8 (so even level in Incarnate). Clear all with no Lore pets and no active use of Hybrid.

 

M3: both took 17 minutes, but on Live I stopped 3 times to dump recipes! [I realized this was going to skew results, but I wanted that Purple recipe drop on Live :)]

 

M4: both took 11 minutes, with the only noticeable difference being on Beta, one of the final creatures necessary to defeat flew away at light-speed and went farther than I have ever seen an enemy go in this mission... up the hill and past the next room. This probably cost 15-30 seconds.

[Arbegla]

5 hours ago, Maxzero said:

 

Sure but there are also nerfs to 'base damage' to partially counteract the buffs from the level changes. How are THOSE changes going to work in Incarnate content?

Unless I'm mistaken, the only nerf is to base to hit, which as explained isn't that bad overall. There isn't a nerf to base damage as far as I can tell. If anything, you'll be doing more damage against +3s because the purple patch doesn't affect the scalars.

 

Now as for incarnate content, were MM pets were already even level, from my own personal experience it feels like the pets are surviving slightly more, but that could just be from the IOs I have being slotted and affecting pets now. There shouldn't be any noticeable changes in incarnate content from what I understand.

[Thezanman]

5 hours ago, Maxzero said:

 

I mean lets be honest a Crabber or Illusion troller is a MM but with benefits.

Illusion controllers are even more useless than MMs in high difficulty content due to phantom army being unbuffable: it is physically impossible to increase their accuracy (beyond slotting in the power) with e.g. Tactics or set bonuses, so they're limited to like 35% accuracy max in 4 star content.

[Gobbledigook]

12 minutes ago, Thezanman said:

Illusion controllers are even more useless than MMs in high difficulty content due to phantom army being unbuffable: it is physically impossible to increase their accuracy (beyond slotting in the power) with e.g. Tactics or set bonuses, so they're limited to like 35% accuracy max in 4 star content.

Don't Controllers have holds and buffs and pets are just a smaller part of their kit? where as with MM's the pets are pretty much everything to them.

[Thezanman]

3 minutes ago, Gobbledigook said:

Don't Controllers have holds and buffs and pets are just a smaller part of their kit? where as with MM's the pets are pretty much everything to them.

Generally yes, but Illusion in particular doesn't do much outside of pets. Of course there is the secondary set for support but MMs have that too. I just don't think it makes sense to say that Illusion controllers are a "better version" of MMs when they have their own weird issues with pets.

[tidge]

1 hour ago, Arbegla said:

Now as for incarnate content, were MM pets were already even level, from my own personal experience it feels like the pets are surviving slightly more, but that could just be from the IOs I have being slotted and affecting pets now. There shouldn't be any noticeable changes in incarnate content from what I understand.

 

On my full-kit build(*1), I didn't notice much of a performance reduction in Incarnate+3 content (so, 'even level'). Everything takes slightly longer, or the same.

 

From my testing, the biggest performance change was against the level-less Giant Monsters. These will be harder solo; I don't expect multiboxers to have any issues, unless they are super lazy.

 

(*1) Robotic/Traps MM, that I've basically tuned for "whatever" content. That is... it was built long ago to debuff enemies, keep aggro on the MM and to pour damage where needed.  Put another way: I can change playstyle enough that this build works in a realtively wide variety of content. The other builds on teh same character are now "silly" ideas like having only one henchmen or no henchmen at all. I have other MMs I like less that have alternate builds for different content because they need them.

[Thezanman]

I went to check how the level and base ToHit changes would affect Necromancy's Soul Extraction, and got some strange results. First of all, the summoned souls are all still one level lower than the Mastermind, which I feel should be changed to even level as well. Then I looked at their hit rates, and found that the Spirits and Tortured Souls are inheriting the ToHit penalties from the T1 and T2 henchmen they summon from, despite the fact that the souls are all the same level on both live and beta.

 

 

 

This means that the Spirits (summoned from T1 Zombie Horde) are not only less accurate due to being one level lower, but also have a lower base hit rate for no reason, so they are getting hit with two separate accuracy penalties. EDIT: Tortured Souls (T2) are also getting a double accuracy penalty after leveling up further. Maybe they could just have their base ToHit reverted to normal, but I would still prefer to have all the souls' levels raised to match the Mastermind's, even if it means giving a ToHit penalty to the lower tier souls. As it is currently, Wraiths have the same lower hit rate as T2 henchmen despite being summoned from the T3 henchman, and all of the souls still experience skewed damage scaling against higher level enemies due to purple patch, which this update is meant to address in order to allow for easier balancing in the future.

 

Edited 12 hours ago by Thezanman

[Captain Powerhouse]

3 hours ago, Thezanman said:

I went to check how the level and base ToHit changes would affect Necromancy's Soul Extraction, and got some strange results. First of all, the summoned souls are all still one level lower than the Mastermind, which I feel should be changed to even level as well. Then I looked at their hit rates, and found that the Spirits and Tortured Souls are inheriting the ToHit penalties from the T1 and T2 henchmen they summon from, despite the fact that the souls are all the same level on both live and beta.

 

 

The extractions being summoned at -1 is a bug and just pushed a commit.

 

Extractions before this being summoned at even level was an unnoticed bug, though. They were always intended to be tied stat wises to the henchmen they get summoned from.