Official Thread for Masterminds: Thugs
By
008Zulu,
Posted on: 2006-05-01 11:49 in Developers' Corner
yeah i noticed that over-equip/upgrading too, and saw that their costumes were flickering between the different versions
that pyro sure dies fast, lol
I only played a Thug MM for like 5 minutes but...the thug pets/henchmen are REALLY slow...I was waiting like a minute or two for my henchmen to get caught up to me to fight a Longbow boss.
I was using flight and was stopping every now and then so it wasn't like I was just SuperSpeed'ing away from them...
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I only played a Thug MM for like 5 minutes but...the thug pets/henchmen are REALLY slow...I was waiting like a minute or two for my henchmen to get caught up to me to fight a Longbow boss.
I was using flight and was stopping every now and then so it wasn't like I was just SuperSpeed'ing away from them...
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They do seem to have a horrible time keeping up. Even with just sprint on they're always lagging far behind.
Yes the overlapping is an issue...I mentioned a post or 2 before yours. I noted the superjump icon on the pets didn't really mean anything as they did not superjump anywhere and just sprinted from point to point. Further, I was uber exited to see my MM thugs with second upgrade and for gang war. MY thoughts:
Second upgrade, just unviable (where would I store all those bags 
) also seems to be empty as they bend down and pull out nothing! The costume happens instantly as the power is executed.
Gang War should be renamed "Rubbernecker Delay" or "Barred from Gangs" as they do nothing. Once they lost agro of the initial target, they just stood around. I recommend to make them "controllable" as a whole (example, put pet meter in the pet window for "gang war" and you move them as a whole just like you control the spirit from the Necro set)
Graphically I was impressed, but damage wise or squishy wise, I was not. Maybe there was too much happening as Pl'd 40 with no idea of how to use all those extra powers, but something still left me wanting. Hopefully the event is still p when I get home to test some more.
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I see Gang War helping alot. Now, about how much a high level MM has to do when using thug/ff... I believe Elvis said it best:
Stop, look, and listen
that's my pholosaphy
It's called rubbernecking baby
but that's all right with me
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
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I only played a Thug MM for like 5 minutes but...the thug pets/henchmen are REALLY slow...I was waiting like a minute or two for my henchmen to get caught up to me to fight a Longbow boss.
I was using flight and was stopping every now and then so it wasn't like I was just SuperSpeed'ing away from them...
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They do seem to have a horrible time keeping up. Even with just sprint on they're always lagging far behind.
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QFT. Use those legs boys!
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It should be noted that the Jump Icon is Super Leap not Super Jump. Super Leap is a mob power that allows them to do large vertical leap but still do only mediocre Horizontal leaps. Sounds rediculious I know, but thats the way it works out. Mob AI tend to suffer a bit with using travel powers intelligently in general.
Scanned back a few pages and didn't see this mentioned, but the Bruiser on my MM despises close combat. He'll hapopily sit back and hurl every 10 seconds or so, without ever closing to melee range and doing real damage. It's like the reverse of the kamikaze bot syndrome! The one pet I want in close combat refuses to go there without GoTo.
Please make the Bruiser less of a chicken and change his AI so he actually enters clsoe combat willingly 
After having tested Thugs finally here is my opinion. Bruiser kills the set for me. The Punks and Arsonist are great as is. The Enforcers are the stars of the set imo. Bruiser just seems odd. Gameplay wise, and graphically. Almost all of my damage comes from the Enforcers and Arsonist, with the aid of the Punks. Which usually leads to my Enforcers dying first. Even before my Tier 1 guys.
As mentioned already the Bruiser has range problems. To be effective he must melee. At range he will Hurl a boulder what seems like every half hour. He doesnt run to melee on his own. When he does get into melee range he is decent... decent. Graphically he just doesnt suit my tastes at all. Hes supposed to be this big bulky bruiser thug dude, and he is shorter than my Enforcers. His attire is also lacking. Compared to the awesome fully upgraded Enforcers and the nice detail on the Arsonist, heck even the fully upgraded Punks look like more thought was put into their appearance.
Anyway, just my opinion! I likely wont play Thugs on live, but they do have some neat things. Enforcers rule, probly my favorite Tier 2 henchmen. Bruiser needs an overhaul.
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After having tested Thugs finally here is my opinion. Bruiser kills the set for me. The Punks and Arsonist are great as is. The Enforcers are the stars of the set imo. Bruiser just seems odd. Gameplay wise, and graphically. Almost all of my damage comes from the Enforcers and Arsonist, with the aid of the Punks. Which usually leads to my Enforcers dying first. Even before my Tier 1 guys.
As mentioned already the Bruiser has range problems. To be effective he must melee. At range he will Hurl a boulder what seems like every half hour. He doesnt run to melee on his own. When he does get into melee range he is decent... decent. Graphically he just doesnt suit my tastes at all. Hes supposed to be this big bulky bruiser thug dude, and he is shorter than my Enforcers. His attire is also lacking. Compared to the awesome fully upgraded Enforcers and the nice detail on the Arsonist, heck even the fully upgraded Punks look like more thought was put into their appearance.
Anyway, just my opinion! I likely wont play Thugs on live, but they do have some neat things. Enforcers rule, probly my favorite Tier 2 henchmen. Bruiser needs an overhaul.
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I have to agree on the Bruiser. The real problem, is Hurl which is granted from the lv 32 upgraded (Along with Knockout blow and Footstomp). I've started to NOT upgrade my bruiser with the lv 32 upgrade, 'cause I want to use him as a tank damnit! And without Hurl hes even better at dps, tanking, and well, everything.
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but ko blow and footstomp roxxor 
Not really following the history of this thread, color me "dont want to read 45 pages"
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After playing thugs at 40 levels on the test event, they seem really weak compaired to my bots at the same level. You guys should really consider some damage buff somewhere. The brute seems WAY underpowered for a teir 3 pet.
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I agree. I played the 40 Thug MM last night again and nothing noteworthy. I was excited about this new set, but so far not too excited about working my thug on test too much as it is.
The Bruiser just likes to hurl those boulders. No melee...didn't even see him do the KO Blow. ON the upside though, the recharge for the 2nd upgrade was significantly fast. I was almost able to uprade both simoltaneously.
All the MM sets seem to be well balanced, but this one feels way off. The concept is nice, don't get me wrong. But one thing is the set in theory and another in practice.
Lets hope for some tweaking before I7 hits live.
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The Bruiser doesn't seem to use his powers correctly. It seems pretty rare that he will use KO Blow or Foot Stomp if he is right next to the enemy. Both attacks have greater than normal melee range and he seems to use them consistantly when in that range, but out of melee range. He will use KO Blow occassionally in regular melee range, but not as often. Foot Stomp I don't think I've ever seen him use when right next to the opponent.
The way he decides what attack to use also seems to be messed up. Sometimes he will use one of Jab, Punch or Haymaker to attack 2 or 3 times in a row, even though he had to have other attacks recharge in that time, especially on the times it was one of the latter two. I've also seen him go through 3 spawns in a row and not once throw Haymaker, and then he starts using it again.
If these problems aren't addressed, it really hurts the effectiveness of the Thugs set.
With the problems I mentioned, the Bruiser is actually a pretty mediocre damage dealer. I did some testing against Council from newspaper missions as a Thugs/Dark and a Necro/Poison MM. During the tests no secondaries were used besides the heals to keep the henchmen standing and I only counted the tests against the regular human soldiers, who I believe are neutral to both smashing and lethal damage. The only henchmen used was the Bruiser with both Enforcers and the Enforcers always on passive, near the Bruiser and not attacking, and a single Grave Knight. With the bugs mentioned earlier in this post, the Bruiser almost always took longer to defeat enemies than a single Grave Knight would. If I could trick the Bruiser into using KO Blow and Foot Stomp, he did kill quicker, but it didn't seem easy to get him to use them. When I used both Grave Knights it didn't even seem close. Both were moved into melee range on passive before starting to ensure they would use melee attacks and not stick to only ranged.
I actually like the Bruiser as is. He's not really a damage dealer... rather he's the pet who peels enemies off when they rush into melee range with YOU. I like him sticking close. He can really take a beating. The enforcers and thugs and arsonist do MORE than enough damage. I like the bruiser as more of a bodyguard.
On the subject of speed, yes, thugs ARE slow. Especially compared to ninja. Seriously, build a ninja MM and then a thug MM and compare the run speeds. Thugs definitely need a speed buff.
What I'd like to see as far as improvements is a way to forbid your base thugs from running into melee (PLEASE) and a formation control similar to the DAoC bone dancer... so you can order your pets to form up in a circle around you.
Well fortunatly thugs will use ranged attacks and melee attacks when in melee range, unlike bots who just brawl in melee range. Comes in handy by adding yet another attack into their chain while in melee range.
"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton
Madam Enigma's History
Yes, but they also die instantly to PBAoE and mob melee attacks which are inevitably more brutal than their ranged attacks... and getting into melee range causes the mobs to "notice" the thug all of a sudden.
I noticed during the RV event that, when I gave both upgrades to a henchman in quick succession, in the pet window I would end up with two buff icons that both indicated they were for the first of the two buffs I used. I.e., if did Equip followed by Upgrade, I'd end up with two Equip icons and no Upgrade icon. Then, if I Upgraded again, I'd get a third icon, giving me a total of two Equip and one Upgrade. If I started with Upgrade followed by Equip, the result would be the reverse.
Since I'm not familiar with thug powers, I don't know if there was a problem with the actual powers granted, or if it was just a display problem on the pet window.
Also I'd like to request that the upgrade icons not be tagged "auto" powers and not be hidden when you select that option. Henchmen die frequently enough that you want to be able to see who needs upgrades in the middle of a fight without having to change your display options.
Also, and I suspect it applies to all MM henchmen varieties, but having them in Defensive often means they are very slow to respond to attacks. For example, I could be shot three times from a single pillbox turret before my henchmen would react.
And even when they do react, they don't behave the way I'd want them to. There were a couple of occasions where they just stopped fighting, or where they ran away from me (out of supremacy/bodyguard range) while on Defensive.
The way I'd like to see Defensive work is, they'll respond to any attackers and prosecute the fight until the target(s) are dead, or they cannot continue to attack without leaving supremacy range, at which point they just resume following. Also, Ninja/Zombie AI should prioritize targets they can melee within supremacy range over targets they can still reach with ranged attacks outside of supremacy range.
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Also I'd like to request that the upgrade icons not be tagged "auto" powers and not be hidden when you select that option. Henchmen die frequently enough that you want to be able to see who needs upgrades in the middle of a fight without having to change your display options.
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Agreed.
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Also I'd like to request that the upgrade icons not be tagged "auto" powers and not be hidden when you select that option. Henchmen die frequently enough that you want to be able to see who needs upgrades in the middle of a fight without having to change your display options.
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True. The upgrades are by no means "Auto" powers. Those I want to be able to see and verify at any given time as they are not inate to them when summoned.
I'm not sure who thinks the Bruiser has "subpar" damage, I was trying out a lvl 40 Thug/Dark on test and he was hitting with KO Blow for 272+ Damage and doing over 110 with Footstomp AoE.
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I'm not sure who thinks the Bruiser has "subpar" damage, I was trying out a lvl 40 Thug/Dark on test and he was hitting with KO Blow for 272+ Damage and doing over 110 with Footstomp AoE.
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Dang , that beats every pet except maybe the assault bot.
Yeah but the assault bot and others actually use their powers.
Without a specific petcom for the Bruiser to go to a location next to his target he likes to stay in the back and rely on the sub-par hurl boulder every 10 seconds; he melees willingly about 5% of the time, where he actually does damage.
So yes, without micromanging his location every fight, he does subpar damage.
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I'm not sure who thinks the Bruiser has "subpar" damage, I was trying out a lvl 40 Thug/Dark on test and he was hitting with KO Blow for 272+ Damage and doing over 110 with Footstomp AoE.
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He has good potential damage, however, to get him to do that damage requires much more effort than any other MM does. He almost always will only use both those attacks just outside melee range, and after using he rarely if ever moves into melee range on his own nor does he use Hurl. If he would use them consistantly in melee range he would do much better. Thats not counting the times he just stands there waiting for a power with a longer recharge to attack when he has powers like Jab which recharge in a few seconds. As it is, to get the most out of him, you'll want to issue an attack at range to get him to use Hurl, move him just outside melee range for KO Blow, Foot Stomp, and Hand Clap, then move him into melee range for Jab, Punch, and Haymaker. Considering how even using goto they don't always stop exactly where you aim (since you are going for specific distances it is important), that can even more goto commands to accomplish while with a Necro/ or Ninja/ MM I just issue an attack command, a goto on the enemy and then another attack command and I'm done.
I may be a bit more critical of the Bruiser than some because my highest level villain is a SS Brute, so I have decent experience with the same powers the Bruiser uses.
I am still almost definatly going to create a Thugs MM when I7 goes live, but I think it is important to bring up the issues with it beforehand so that it can hopefully be fixed or at least improved a bit while still on test.
Got quite a few bugs as evidenced by this picture while playing Recluse's Victory:
Buggy Thugs
First one is that I accidently found out you can over-upgrade the thugs as you can see on the right.
Second is that the as a result, some of the thugs are alternating in costume as you can see, all thugs are upgraded but in the moment of this screen shot, one punk is back to basic costume.
Third is that the Enforcers here have overlaped with the Bruiser, and this can possibly cause nav/pathing issues to be sure.