Lewisite

Thats weird. I was in my thugs mm a few days ago and I seem to recall their defense was enhanced normally. Did you resummon your guys? You probably did, but its worth asking

I'll login in a bit and see what's going on, and post back.

Whats really surprising is just how evil /Dark's -ToHit is, but it does explain things I've noticed. I made a Necro/Dark awhile ago because I wanted to play with undead basically, I never considered it to be anything like a primary character.

/But He Kicked Butt/

I was thinking with little in the way of defense or resistances I'd suffer on the big spawns, but nope, he owns them pretty hard. Looking at the 60 -ToHit makes me think even incarnate content should be fairly survivable. I'm not 100% sure of how the relationship between ToHit and Defense works... but if they are essentially similar thats pretty powerful stuff. Word on the street 60 Defense is the new softcap for Incarnate content, anyone know how the mechanic for -ToHit works? Because if, say, +5 Defense and -5 ToHit are equivalent that actually shows /Dark to be stronger than most people think it is.

Neat to get some tables -- great work! It also exposes a lot of the secondaries for the poor performers they are, something this forum needed badly. Thats why you rarely see Trick Arrow and Poison MM's, except for the stubborn players

Maybe try posting the tables in Google Docs? You can post a publicly available read-only document.

Anyway, great post. I'm looking forward to seeing the tables, I suspect they'll show what I've suspected all along really -- but with tables

I'm essentially a MasterMind-only player, and I've played most of the possible combinations over the years since Villains came out... my experience is that the only solid secondaries for MM's are /Traps and /Dark -- both for exactly the same reasons -- they offer survivability if done "correctly".

/Traps when combined with Thugs or Robots can softcap the pets, and get the MM himself most of the way too. Both of those work extremely well, Bots/Traps is legendary.

/Dark offers the same thing from a different direction, -ToHit. You barely have to lift a finger to get the enemies -ToHit down to almost nothing with when the Dark Servant is up. The nice thing about Dark is that it doesn't require a certain primary to work great.

But the rest vary from terrible (/Poison) to so-so. People using the above two should have a great time with their MM's and should eventually be able to handle the Incarnate content as well as most other archetypes, but the rest are going to suffer.

Don't forget that against AV's purple triangles of doom render debuffs almost worthless while they are up!

I respectfully disagree.

The suggested changes hardly make up for the lack of recharge intensive pet slots, all the above does is make serum a power you might use occasionally, RIP slotting gives you permanent bonuses you can use all the time.

This is all opinion, I understand, but mercs suffer from poor survivability, and RIP slots provide a very solid bonus.

Mercs where my first MM, and my first to 50. Since then, I've switched off of them largely but there are things I miss about them when I'm playing the generally superior Robots or Thugs.

1) Lots of Dakka Dakka. Shell casings everywhere. You can really tell where a Mercs MM shot somebody up from the huge pile of shell casings

2) Full Auto + LRM. The commando gets two quite solid nukes. He rarely uses them at the right time, but they are super-cool never the less. Especially since MM's *FOR SOME INFURIATING REASON* cannot get Munitions Mastery, even though it would look sweet with mercs. I could use a bazooka too damnit.

3) Spec Ops snipe. Seriously long range, it makes a sweet attack for pulling mobs and, back in the day at least, they'd usually behave if you told them to attack a guy then immediately pulled him back when he started the animation. Usually the spec op gets away without getting dinged by the enemy too if you move him into cover. The recharge is short enough usually snipe is up when you start an attack. It also makes a sweet finisher for a mob running away. Spec-op rifle butt occasionally yielded hilarious results (like butting a demon overlord, lol!). Oh and the spec ops actually look cool and professional.

4) Loyality. You gotta hand it to guys who manage to remain loyal to a /Poison MM. That combination is so bad I found myself screaming into my walkie-talkie for more men that I'm sure even robots or zombies would have stopped bothering to showing up.

In more general terms, I found the generic soldiers to be somewhat more competent then most T1 pets, medic aside (who's dumb like the Arsonist but without the blaze of glory). Their cones are narrow but I actually had little trouble arranging mobs into an area where the boys could mow them down nicely. The basic thugs feel like they contribute little, similar with bots. Its probably not entirely true though.

Even though these days I roll with more potent builds like Thugs/Traps, Robots/Traps and even Necro/Dark.. I miss my Mercs

Anyone else still like Mercs, even with their suckage?

The sad thing is that poison trap isn't even that great a power. Its situationally useful.

Its just poison sucks so bad people are grasping at anything that seems plausible to implement.

Honestly, poison is a total loss, I doubt it'll be fixed ever, its just going to have to live on as a highly niche secondary thats rarely seen for good reason. Sure, it has its special little place where it works almost as good as traps or dark, but for most content its pretty awful.

Us poor suckers who actually took this set to fifty can be proud that we can endure!

Mercs/Poison FTW! After that, all the other sets seem awesome

Hi fellas.

First let me say, that Masterminds are my favorite class, in any game anywhere.

But I have to say, doesn't it seem like it flew off in a direction that the devs totally didn't anticipate?

For example. The idea is that the minions do the fighting and such while you provide leadership, direction and coordination.... says the description anyway

In practice, you taunt/fight while your minions form of a clumsy cloud of confusion around you. You end up taking the damage for your poncy minions...

They give you ranged attacks, but most of your powers require you to be in the middle of melee. Only demon summoning sort of gave in and gave you semi-melee attacks.


Anyway I love my MM's, but the class really makes no sense at all. :P Although it conceptually kinda works if your a blueside MM ironically -- that way taking the hits for your minions actually makes sense in a way.

Hmmm, I think replacing serum with a recharge intensive pet like auto turret would work better than anything you could do to serum.

It really should happen. The pets are the important part of an MM, its incredibly lame really that our *primary* isn't effected by set bonuses. Unfortunately.... the Devs have always seemed to have a kind of hate on for MM's, at least its seemed that way to me. MM's have so many long running unfixed bugs its sometimes very frustrating.

The new AI bugs are not really "new" at all anymore, the pet-zoning problems have been here for a while too. So, I don't know, if we can't even get bugs fixed I doubt we'll get much improvements, lol.

Well who knows ;P

You know those missions where you occasionally fight yourself? Like a Nemesis clone or something? You notice the pets are summoned pre-enhanced? I'd be fine with that. Honestly replacing lost minions in battle isn't a huge deal for me, its going through the hassle of re-enhancing them -- thats annoying and unfairly end-expensive -- it seems most of us agree that its the enhancing thats the unfair part.

Why not just have the pet enhancements a passive ability that just makes your pets summon equipped -- like NPC MM's do. MM primaries are too end-heavy in general anyway.

Well.

Your not going to have serious problems until your 50, then the challenge begins.

Certain combinations of primary and secondary perform very well, but in general I think you'll find most combinations struggle to keep their pets alive. Even the stronger sets can easily eat dirt pretty fast with incarnate content.

Poison is going to be a very rough ride at the end where most interesting content is seas of very tough mobs. Poor ninjas will die in waves ;(

This is opinion, but I think mm's in general are poor in incarnate content.

I don't know... I think a lot of these suggestions don't do enough for this set. Honestly compare poison to dark or traps. It is really bad compared to those great sets.

In my opinion, most of these tweaks will result in a set thats still weak, but thought to be "fixed" in the eyes of the devs. It will still lose hard end game.

Yeah, good points.

But its lame the bonuses do nothing... Maybe they just count for a reduced amount? Like half. Your not to likely to soft cap from just half. Not by just bonuses anyway. It would really even out some of the primaries like ninjas and mercs that have a rough time of things end game.

I mean I know it'll never happen anyway