Masterminds ride the razors edge between over powered and gimped. The patch was a dramatic improvement for my bots. I have 3 lvl 30 damage SOs in all my powers and when I used them for the first time after the patch my jaw dropped. I could smell nerfbat. then I began to think of how MMs were balanced on control over pets and their behavior. IF my bots all use their snipe style power all at the same time I can bring a white con freak minion down to 25% health with the Alfa strike(i also run assault and tactics YMMV). if this was consistent every time I told my bots to attack then I would be thinking were overpowered. but pet AI is different every time I issue an attack. some attacks miss, some pets use their more powerful attacks wile another runs into melee range. ive even noticed that my protector bots run into brawl distance but have no brawl attack. And if there is a Boss with an AOE attack forget it, my only bot left standing will be my assault bot. I did the lvl 25 respec, the AV at the end could wipe out my bots in 2 volleys consistently, and my PFF was almost useless.
The MM is also the only AT in CoX that requires real skill to play. for example setting up kill zones and choke points require stragity an planning, then you have to maintain control over pets so they don't aggro the map. These guys that can solo on the highest difficulty are using every trick they can to win, I highly doubt they are just sending their minions into a 16 mob spawn an going afk. control and stragity are key to MMs, people that do it well make us seem overpowered, people that are bad at it make it hard for MMs to find a team.
In short our damage got a bump, but were still squishy, we cant zone with our minions, when we die and the team looses a large chunk of damage/aggro, and we still require a lot of micromanagement. I think the trade offs for the small boost in damage are still enough to keep us balanced.
