Give masterminds more damage

[Steampunkette]

Just what it says on the tin. Give Mastermind attacks, but not Mastermind pet attacks, a little bit more damage. It won't have much effect on overall DPS of masterminds but it would allow players to make petless or few pet builds that are slightly more effective than whispering violence to NPCs.

 

Yes I know, masterminds are supposed to have pets. And blasters aren't supposed to blap, but we do anyway!

Edited August 13, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Razor Cure]

More damage to their attacks would be nice..but not for that reason, about Petless MMs!

Blasters can blap, and are totally meant to, as shown by Melee attacks within a lot of the sets.

A Petless MM, while possible, is going against the very idea of the AT itself.

[GM Sijin]

A petless MM is kind of a neutered corr. It would be, in my personal opinion, more worthwhile to make proper attack sets based on the unique mastermind attacks if you're after those aesthetics. Admittedly, that's a lot more work.

 

If you want a petless MM for a challenge instead, well... more damage is less challenge?

[biostem]

4 minutes ago, GM Sijin said:

A petless MM is kind of a neutered corr. It would be, in my personal opinion, more worthwhile to make proper attack sets based on the unique mastermind attacks if you're after those aesthetics. Admittedly, that's a lot more work.

 

If you want a petless MM for a challenge instead, well... more damage is less challenge?

We basically have 3 whip attacks and the swarm/bird animations.  All the other MM attacks exist elsewhere.  If you include a build-up power, and possibly some kind of PBAoE that doesn't use a whip/animal animation, that leaves 4 other powers to come up with.  If you're willing to reuse those animations, then it could be done without having to create all new animations.  Heck, you could mix the whip and swarm/bird attacks into 1 beast master/animal tamer type set, if you really wanted to.

[PaxArcana]

Exactly what GM Sijin says.  If you want a "Petless MM", just roll a Corruptor and call it a day.

[kelly Rocket]

Personally I'd rather see the attack powers removed from the MM primaries, and made into separate pools. So when you create a new MM you pick your pet power set, and then an attack powerset, and then your secondary.

 

So that you're not shackled to Dual Pistols just because you want thugs, or an even worse version of Assault Rifle just because you want Mercs, or (Worst of all) the horribly gimped subset of Archery just because you want Ninjas.

 

This would also open up further options in that since the pet type and attack type are now decoupled, you could easily create a bunch of new attack pools just by making subsets of existing blast and/or melee sets.

 

It would also allow for there to be a wider variety of attack powers to choose from, as you could expand the attack power "pools" to include more than just 3 attacks, and the player would just have to pick and choose.

[biostem]

3 minutes ago, kelly Rocket said:

Personally I'd rather see the attack powers removed from the MM primaries, and made into separate pools. So when you create a new MM you pick your pet power set, and then an attack powerset, and then your secondary.

 

So that you're not shackled to Dual Pistols just because you want thugs, or an even worse version of Assault Rifle just because you want Mercs, or (Worst of all) the horribly gimped subset of Archery just because you want Ninjas.

 

This would also open up further options in that since the pet type and attack type are now decoupled, you could easily create a bunch of new attack pools just by making subsets of existing blast and/or melee sets.

 

It would also allow for there to be a wider variety of attack powers to choose from, as you could expand the attack power "pools" to include more than just 3 attacks, and the player would just have to pick and choose.

Even if you took the 3 attacks and made them into power pools, you'd still need 2 more powers to flesh them out.  I suppose you could draw from other sets/powers to fill them out, but it'd still be work.  Also, what would you replace those attacks with?

[Weylin]

I'm definitely on board with the idea of giving MM's a separate power pool for personal weapons

 

As for the gaps that would leave... What about abilities to give your pets thematic buffs? Like soldiers putting up sandbags and becoming immobilized with a +res all

Edited August 14, 2019 by Weylin

[Steampunkette]

Lemme go roll up a whip corrup- oh.

 

Seems I can't. 😛

 

And until Hellfire Assault gets made, that's the only place to get whips.

[DMW45]

1 hour ago, GM Sijin said:

A petless MM is kind of a neutered corr. It would be, in my personal opinion, more worthwhile to make proper attack sets based on the unique mastermind attacks if you're after those aesthetics. Admittedly, that's a lot more work.

 

If you want a petless MM for a challenge instead, well... more damage is less challenge?

That... actually makes me think.  You couldn't make a full powerset with the special attacks MMs get, but an epic pool?  Maybe!

 

Whip Mastery, anyone?

Edited August 14, 2019 by DMW45

[lobster]

46 minutes ago, Weylin said:

I'm definitely on board with the idea of giving MM's a separate power pool for personal weapons

 

As for the gaps that would leave... What about abilities to give your pets thematic buffs? Like soldiers putting up sandbags and becoming immobilized with a +res all

 

I wonder if it would be possible to just give them the choice of the 3 attacks and separate that choice from the primary itself?   So you pick dp+demons or whips+bots or whatever.  I don't see any balance issues with that.  I've only taken an attack on one MM anyway, but I get that people want to...for reasons.

I still think they shouldn't have given them attacks in the first place, as it gives players the wrong idea about what the set is about.    HUH.  OK.  Now I'm on a roll here.  Pull all the attacks out, make them separate little choice pools that every mm gets to pick, and they fill in the same levels, etc. BUT also, add a couple extra support mini-pools for those of us who dgaf about attacks.   Mini buffs and controls that are thematic, etc.

Quick ideas off the top of my head, not well thought out at all:

• One could be an improved presence pool, for those actually wanting to be Tankerminds : single target taunt, aoe taunt and a power that makes your targeted pet do a taunt.
• A military buff style set, similar to what you suggested - have a  "bunker down" power that locks the pets in place (just forces them to play a specific emote, then roots them, no new gfx) and gives them some +def, but also debuffs their max range or something (so it doesn't become the flat out best option), maybe have a single target heal, and maybe move the merc serum power here, buff it, and give Mercs a real power.
• A magic style set, similar to sorcery.  Can use the animations from the demon buffs, sorcery, etc.  Give a minor all-pet resist buff, a minor aoe debuff (say, slow+-tohit or something), maybe a single target heal - would go great with a set like /FF.

[Steampunkette]

Heh... Interesting throught: Scaling Damage Buff based on how many pets you have out.

 

No pets? Full bonus!

Tier 1 pets? 1/3rd smaller bonus.

Tier 1 and 2 pets? 2/3rd smaller bonus.

 

It'd be like the Defender Vigilance inherent. 30% more damage with no pets, each set of pets you summon reduces the bonus by 10%.

 

Well. 30% at level 20+. At level 1 it's 6%.

Edited August 16, 2019 by Steampunkette

[Sniktch]

I'd be onboard with either buffing the damage of the attacks OR reducing their END costs by 50%; as it sits, the only MM attacks ever taken outside "petless" MMs are the Demon ones because -Resist.  You don't even see them being used as set mules because MMs benefit so little overall from set bonuses, and honestly even the whips are fairly atrocious effect-to-END-wise.  Lash does roughly as much damage as a Brute or Tanker tier 2 attack, and it costs 10 END, for example.  The Tanker/Brute 2's generally cost 5-6.

 

I do get the thematic the devs were going for originally - problem is, it gives the entire AT 3 hard-pass powers per Primary from a strictly numerical view, and even a character-focused player has to do SOME degree of 'filtering' within the game framework for the things that just don't give enough bang for buck, purely due to the limited number of powers and slots we have.  So yeah, make the MM attacks worthwhile in one way or another.

[Galaxy Brain]

Myself and @Scrapuloushad been talking about this in discord, but outside of raw damage it would be nice if MM attacks carried more debuffs or control like the demon attacks per set as well. 

[Scrapulous]

Yeah, when GB and I discussed it (mostly GB's analysis and design work bounced off of my reactions, tbh), the fundamental constraint was the wretched MM damage scalar. Every idea we discussed for the attacks had a fundamental obstacle, which is that it is nearly always worth less than any other thing you could be doing with that animation time or endurance (whichever your constaint is) from your primary or secondary or pools.

 

.55 is a crippling scalar, and means that any attack you give to a MM will basically be a pea shooter that isn't worth its opportunity cost and is only considerable when you have nothing else to do with your resources. The fact that they gave attacks to MMs anyway mostly represents a noob trap with the exceptions of proc shenanigans and the beasts and demons cases. That beasts and demons have attacks that are useful besides their damage is strong evidence that the Paragon design folks understood that MM damage was useless by the time they designed those sets.

 

I think the petless mastermind concept is just one possible use for this idea and debating whether it's viable or not is a side discussion that isn't particularly valuable to the question of whether MMs should be allowed to do more damage. Even if we get an agreement from every current and future person on earth never to make a petless MM, that still leaves unsettled the question the OP raised, which is whether MMs should get to do more damage than currently.

 

Scrap

[PaxArcana]

Having the attacks have a stronger Debuff element would work, IMO.  If it was good enough, I might actually take attacks of my own when playing an MM.  🙂  ((I haven't, since five days into i6 ...))

[Bossk_Hogg]

5 hours ago, Galaxy Brain said:

Myself and @Scrapuloushad been talking about this in discord, but outside of raw damage it would be nice if MM attacks carried more debuffs or control like the demon attacks per set as well. 

Agreed. The beast ones at least build stacks of pack mentality. I would be nice if all the attacks got something meaningful, aside from chance to knock down...