Dechs Kaison

Done.

Build 1: Standard Bots/Traps, built to survive WW4 and destroy small continents like Asia.

Build 2: Petless/Trapless man build that primarily uses whirlwind, patron powers, and pulse rifle blasts to affect as many enemies as possible.

I like to think that your mastermind is the offensive version mine wishes he could be without losing the metric crap-ton of survivability I built in.

I bet you even have hasten. I wish I could fit hasten. But Leadership, Provoke, Teleport, and Aid Other are all more important...

I guess I could do without the three Teleport powers. Swap recall friend for Hasten, Teleport for Super Speed, and Team Teleport for Aid Self.

Wow, that could give me more offense and survivability. But sweet Teleport! Teamport! Vertical movement without using a jetpack! Maybe it's worth it. Aid Self? Hmmmm. I already have huge regen and +max HP. Maybe Aid Self is overkill.

Damnit, Adeon! I'll spend hours contemplating this and sitting in mids! Then hours again doing the actual respec! Then hours again buying the new IOs I deem necessary!

For what it's worth, I know a duo of corruptors that did an entire mothership raid, pre-i19. Pylons, bombs, giant monster, no incarnate stuffs. All done by two people.

Sounds like you do what I do, except I add one more chaotic step in. Because I actually like chaos.

Team Teleport.

That's how I keep my cats herded.

Half? HALF?

What, as a bots/traps can I do that gets recorded as "participation?"

Provoke. Aid Other. Webnade. Ice Blast.

Actually, you can see your leaguemates. There's an option on the minimap to toggle the display of non-team league members.

Sounds like an excellent excuse for evolutionary engineering (alliteration aside). Tell him which one of the two is the least bad (I don't have mids while I'm at work to do this), and he can make another two builds which make changes to that. Then we pick the best one again and he makes changes and comes up with another two builds. Et cetera, ad nauseam.

Yeah, it's a right shame that nobody ever runs the ITF anymore since it's a year old.

Not just longer, but faster tick rates, debuffs, and auto hit. Dark Armor has a damage aura. What we pay for that offense is in taunt duration and requiring a to-hit check. It also makes sense to pulse less often.

Invincibility and Against All Odds in particular are strong because they include debuffs. Chilling Embrace adds several layers of debuff. The threat formula takes these debuffs into account.

That's one of the reasons I run Oppressive Gloom. I'm not sure whether it ticks faster, but it gives me a chance to have an offset tick at the very least. One second: Death Shroud. Next Second: Oppressive Gloom. It also layers a stun into my threat formula as well.

This is another good point I hadn't thought of. If the other tank was level shifted and you were not, he could be as much as three levels higher than you. That would make all of his taunt components roughly 50% stronger than all of yours.

There's a lot more to the threat formula that even our devs don't know. It's apparently that complex and buried.

1. I said bots/traps. Pay attention.
2. I didn't say bots/traps was OP in a specific situation. I said it's OP everywhere, so your comparison is invalid. Pay attention.

I didn't say that MMs are overpowered. Pay attention.

I said that bots/traps is OP. Pretty much all variations of bots, thugs, traps, and dark are a bit over the top. The rest of masterminds sit about where I'd expect in the balance of the game.

Except that I said Ninjas and Mercs are only underperforming when compared to Bots and Thugs. Pay attention.

The problem here is that ninjas and mercs are not underpowered. They're pretty well balanced. Ninjas and mercs are not the outliers here, bots and thugs are.

As Silas said, the only thing "extraordinarily derp" here is the claim that two primaries are useless.

Blatant hyperbole is bad for your argument.

Yes, your heals are less than a controller's, but your PBAoE heal hits seven targets as opposed to just one if you're solo. And your single target heal can be used solo. How else could you balance that?

Your damage is not less than a defender's. If it is, that's most certainly a build problem and not the fault of your powers.

You certainly have no less survivability than a blaster. Not only do you have the ability to heal yourself, you have 75% resistance to everything if you leverage bodyguard mode. Even more while your buffs are active.

Just pointing out the fallacy here: Ninjas may be underperforming, but that doesn't mean Masterminds as a whole need a buff.

The build from my video's been posted before. Here's the link.

It's pre-i19, so it'll take a bit of work to make it useful again, but the framework is certainly there for you.

Taunt is auto hit on AVs, otherwise my tank would have no means of holding Lord Recluse's attention.

It is not auto hit against players.

Not that I'm aware of. I was here for the introduction of MMs, but I missed the introduction of IOs and any history as to why they work with MMs the way they do.

I will venture a guess that there is one hell of a technical reason they can't. The code and time to code required to make this happen could be daunting.

Allowing these bonuses to propagate through would certainly shore up a lot of weaknesses in the other pet sets. Softcapped demons and ninjas? Who wouldn't want that?

I would love to see my bots inherit all the +HP bonuses I've built for as well.

You're starting to get into the way way OP side of things, though.

Let me just finish with: Yes, I would like to see the invention system benefit MMs more than it does right now, but I do think there are much larger balance issues here that this would create.

Actually, you don't need to bother. Your aggro list will be sorted by rank so that the higher ranked opponents get priority when it comes to attacking you.

Example: If you walk into a room with 17 minions, 17 LTs, 17 bosses, and 17 AVs, then proceed to hit everything with an attack to aggro them all at once, only the AVs will be hitting back. The others will stand there until one of the AVs dies.

Or if you're on a team, they will attack the teammates.

Even more than this: Taunt is auto hit. Raider Engineers triple stack FFGs? no problem. Death Mage floors your accuracy? No problem. Lord Recluse has eleventy billion defense? No tankin' problem!

Except they really don't.

Any "looking at" MMs get as a whole would more than likely end up in nerfs.

Yes, my bots/traps can solo GMs. No, that doesn't make him OP. He can also solo +4/x8 missions. That wouldn't make him OP by itself either. The fact that he can do both? Yes, I think it does.

What you people want is for the devs to look at the underperforming MM sets. Specifically ninjas and mercs. Problem is, they're underperforming when compared to things like bots, demons, and thugs. So it's still not going to end with ninjas getting pulled up to the level of bots. It'll end with bots being pulled down.

So, again, no they really don't need "looking at."

No. But that's not to say you need it. Do controllers have full time mez protection?

Another quote from the guide:

I agree, but I wouldn't count this as a point against dominators in this discussion. If we're talking about the most DPS and pylon soloing, we're already including high end builds with a lot of influence thrown at them.