MM pets should be at the same level as the MM

[Weylin]

The damage and such should be reduced accordingly, but the downleveling really hits hard when you're in groups that prefer fighting enemies at +3 levels.

Essentially, your T1 henchmen only hit for 1 damage because they're attacking something +5 levels to them. They're rendered useless except for their bodyguard effect.

[Black Zot]

Agreed.  Minions are fragile to begin with; anything that cons higher than yellow will squash them easily while laughing off their offense.  Collectively, they do a character's worth of damage baseline, but most of that gets whisked away by the underlevel penalty.  Everyone is hurt by this to some degree, but for MMs the effect is basically multiplied by the number of pets, then magnified again by most of those pets being even lower level.

 

I ran a Thugs MM in a group a couple months ago and we ran into an AV that, for some reason, spawned as +4 even though we were running at +0.  Re-summoning my pets was a complete waste of time and end; poor guys never even got a swing in before a Footstomp deleted them.

 

The Live devs sorta half-acknowledged this problem by level-shifting minions for Incarnate content only, but that's a bandaid on a massive laceration.

Edited August 28, 2019 by Black Zot

[Vayek2]

agreed. All pets should default to whatever level the player is.

[Galaxy Brain]

+9000000000

[William Valence]

This is something you have to be really careful of.

 

MMs are not really in a bad spot. There's inter-set imbalance that should really be addressed, but MMs as a whole are a winner archetype. My Necro/Dark, Mercs/Traps, and Ninja/Time were all able to solo Manticore, Penny, and Ms Liberty in RV when they were on test before the shutdown (All +4 with pvp DR). Penny and Ms Liberty without incarnate slotting. With Alpha and Interface I dropped them both at the same time. If you improve MMs in this way, what do you take away to make it balanced?

 

Don't get me wrong, MMs are my primary AT, but if you don't re-balance them then MMs just stronger and that seems gratuitous. And if you re-balance the T1s so that they do less damage while being summoned at your level, aren't you just changing the appearance of the numbers without changing the result? Isn't that a waste of time/resources?

[MetaVileTerror]

Perhaps an IO Set could be made which level shifts the lower Tier Henchpets up?

[PaxArcana]

/JRanger

 

And I say that, as a die-hard and devoted MM player.  Having all six pets be identical to your own level, would be absolutely and ridiculously overpowered.

[biostem]

8 minutes ago, PaxArcana said:

/JRanger

 

And I say that, as a die-hard and devoted MM player.  Having all six pets be identical to your own level, would be absolutely and ridiculously overpowered.

The OP noted "The damage and such should be reduced accordingly" - By making them the same level as you, this would remove the issue of them being so much less effective than the enemies you're facing, due to the purple patch and so-forth, when facing off against enemies higher level than your own.

[Steampunkette]

Yeah. Same level, reduced damage and debuff values to compensate. Either that or at least an increased ToHit/Accuracy value to counter the Purple Patch.

 

As it is there's more than a few Masterminds who have taken the "No tier 1 pets at 50" approach because they're largely worthless without significant buffing and healing far beyond the rest of the pets.

[biostem]

I wonder how difficult it would be to add a version of the T1 and T2 pet powers, which only summons 1 of them, but at the same level as you and sufficiently buffed to compensate for the loss of the other 1 or 2...

Edited August 28, 2019 by biostem

[William Valence]

Alright, then the question is, how much less damage?

 

If you spawn them in at even level their damage goes up 25%.

 

Against +4 targets their damage goes up 320%. If I remember my parsing correctly the T1 pets, even at a -2, tend to out-damage bosses and support Lts. At +4x8 they should do about half the damage of Boss/combat Lts. With the Lts at .3x for -5 levels compared to .15x at -6. Lts and boss being roughly equal damage output at +4.

 

If you reduce their damage enough to keep them normal at +0, to avoid buffing them in normal content, then the minion henchmen will outpace Boss/Lts at +4. Dramatically increasing their performance. I just can't honestly say that I agree they need it. I personally think they don't need it.

 

Oh, and this would also jack the power of proc builds through the roof. That would be an absurd increase in power from that too.

 

[Steampunkette]

Simply reduce the Mastermind Pet's base damage for their attacks by 32% seems reasonable, to me. The point is to make sure they're able to land hits and survive marginally better than a -6 with 500hp. They'd still HAVE 500hp, but at least all damage against them wouldn't be multiplied by 166% (independent of buffs)

 

[Ry]

Personally the level of the pets being lower than the MM itself has never bothered me. Its not a HUGE gap and frankly Masterminds can buff/heal the hell out of their minions or debuff the enemy so the gap is closed. I dont think making them even level to the player and reducing their damage is a good option, for me personally I like keeping tabs on my pets and controlling who gets healed/buffed. It helps me feel more involved when playing. And in terms of power Masterminds are CERTAINLY not weak, not by any stretch of the imagination.

[gameboy1234]

My first 50 was a MM and this was before AoE buffs.  You have no idea how many buffs I had to throw out at the start of each mission, even solo.  (I was Bots/FF.)  You kids are just weak these days.

 

But perhaps for incarnate content the pets should get a level shift equal to the MM's level shift.  That would at least make them not totally useless on incarnate content.  (I'm not playing a MM now so I have no idea what the current incarnate content is like for MMs.  I seem to recall that it sucked pretty hard on live.  I switched to my tanker and my Fort for incarnate stuff after a while.)

 

Other than that, take your damn leadership buffs kids.  And slot pets like hell for accuracy.