Comrade_Kalt

I think I figured it out!

I was thinking back to WoW... *runs and hides from the hail of Anti-WoW spam, then comes back an hour later* and was trying to think about how some of those Warlocks were able to decimate me so badly in PvP if I wasn't careful. Then it hit me: He (the warlock) was not my primary target because his pet disappeared when he died! He was my primary target because he was a very dangerous one in his own right! Perhaps the Dev's should consider buffing up those often skipped Primary Pool attacks with some nasty side effects or extra damage. Then, when someone teleports me away from my mercenaries, I don't throw my keyboard off my desk, swear like a sailor at the top of my lungs and wait to die. Instead, I pull out my machinegun and blast the %@&# as best I can while my posse hotfoots it to help me. Even if I don't win (which alot of the time I might not), I don't feel like I was totally undercut and dead meat from the get go.

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What's the point of being a pet based class when your pets are treated as non-exsistant? All the PvP strategies in the world aren't going to save you from something that can just ignore your defences and attacks and just kill you, which is a surprisingly large amount of thing in PvP.

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Ok, I'm gonna concede that that is a huge hole in my logic. Yeah, players being able to "strike for the head" of the MM beast is a big problem, one that other ATs don't have to deal with in the same fasion. But what should be done about it? I can't think of anything short of disrupting the Hero's ability to even target the Mastermind that will solve the problem from the Dev's standpoint, and we all know how big an inherent Phase Shift ability would go over.

Maybe we need to look at other Pet Based classes in other games. They've been around since the earliest days of the MMO, anyone know how other games have delt with "PvP and the Pet Class" issues?

I don't mean to get under anybody's skin with this comment, but I haven't seen it made and I think it needs to be said...

To be perfectly clear, what is the common Mastermind doing while his pets are trying to duke it out with the Hero?

If he's standing still like a statue being an immobile toggle platform, he is naturally going to be killed (and really should be killed) rather quickly, bodyguard power or no...

I'd like to point out that defenders haven't been complaining (or at least I don't see them complaining) about being the initial squishy target in group PvP. Why? Because they're used to being more active in their defense. But Masterminds aren't, because the PvE game has largely taught us that pets will take aggro reliably and we can just stand around. Not so in PvP.

People talk alot about the setup time for the pets. What nobody seems to mention is the setup time for the battle! Stalkers stalk their prey, blasters seek out their advantageous positions, defenders assemble their posse, why aren't masterminds planning ahead of time? Isn't the Mastermind's job is to be tactical where his boneheaded minions cannot be? Terrain usage, clever maneuvering, and active application of the secondary set powers would seem to allieviate alot of the problems we're complaining about...

And yes, a mastermind ambushed with an explosive fireball or a BU snipe is going to fall quickly. But most squishies do. Aren't most people SUPPOSED to die quickly in an ambush situation? Otherwise what would be the point of ambushing? Instead of complaining about BG, wouldn't our time be better served plotting some nasty PvP strategies? Seems to me if you want to be able to survive a massive onslaught, you roll a tanker or a brute. Least, I rolled a Mastermind because I wanted to, well, be the brains not the muscle...

Maybe if they replaced the not so useful first attack with some sort of reverse taunt ability? One that forced the target to attack a random henchman instead of the Mastermind himself?

Personally, I think there was a much better way to deal with this Mastermind PvP problem, so I think I'll post it and see what everyone thinks.

What if, instead of dying the second their mastermind bites it, the henchmen continued fighting? What if they doggedly chased the person who killed their leader until either he/she or they themselves are dead?

This would change the dynamic. Suddenly the hero would have to make the tactical decision "Is that attackless Mastermind really my primary target?" I think this would give MMs higher survivability because, most of the time, the enemy would naturally come to the conclusion that the top tier pet is the primary target and the MM himself, along with his lower tier minions, is more the mop-up material instead