I'm a bit biased, but the real answer is "as powerful as you want it to be." If the NPC is going to be "stealing" XP and tickets from the player, then you have to compensate them in some other way. If a mission is insanely fun but the XP is low, people aren't going to complain too much (I say this from personal experience - see arc in sig), so to me that's the equation you should be working on. Is this guy here adding enough fun to make up for any rewards that are missing?
If the answer is yes, then the balance is right. If he's not adding much to the mission but he's stealing all the XP, then your answer would be no.
Since you're getting consistent complaints that he isn't strong enough, then I'd say you bump him up to a boss and see what happens. You do have two other classes above that to work with if the complaints still continue.
I think it is a matter of preference.
Personally I hate most allies that do lots of damage because that damage comes comes off of your experience reward and sometimes your tickets (if they kill a mob by themselves before you can even hit it). Sometimes, like AVs, a strong damage ally is necessary though.
For regular fighting I like an ally who is like Psi Control and Empathy/Kin. Beef me up and hold the mobs while keeping their damage to a minimum.
There is nothing wrong with a Leut ally if that is what is called for in the mission. Players have to learn to protect and/or heal their allies if they expect to keep them around. If they go from fight to fight without rest or checking ally and suddenly their ally dies, that is just poor play IMO.
Sometimes you don't WANT to make an ally who can absorb all the damage in the mission, and there is nothing wrong with that.
Actually a fun thing to do might be to create a mission with lots of minion level allies and the trick is to keep them all alive and herd them to final battle.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
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I think it is a matter of preference.
Sometimes you don't WANT to make an ally who can absorb all the damage in the mission, and there is nothing wrong with that.
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I agree with these 100%. I also think the opposite can be true and it all comes down to the experience you're creating.
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Actually a fun thing to do might be to create a mission with lots of minion level allies and the trick is to keep them all alive and herd them to final battle.
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This reminds me of that lowbie redside mish in which you get 4-5 wolf spiders to help you wipe out a bunch of snakes. The allies drop really easily, but until then it's all grins and LOLs when you roll up on some snakes and break out the DAKKA.
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I'd have to say "it depends". Some architects add allies specifically to help deal with custom mobs, EBs or AVs that might be difficult to handle solo. Others add allies to help drive the story. Adding a very powerful ally can make players the co-star of their own stories and smacks of Mary Sue-ism, especially when said allies are obvious reproductions of player characters.
Test your missions with a variety of ATs; if the ally is helpful but not TOO helpful, you're probably fine. If you find yourself following in the allies' wake while they clear every mob, you might want to reconsider (like a mission I played that had 10 - that's TEN - red Elite Bosses "helping me out").
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Agreed, it depends quite a bit. Usually, I use the ally's concept and the idea that a boss-class critter should be about equal to a player character as a benchmark. if the ally's concept calls for an inexperienced character or especailly squishy AT, I might use lieutenant. For tankers, I usually use elite boss. Other stuff it depends, but I usually use boss.
"If I had Force powers, vacuum or not my cape/clothes/hair would always be blowing in the Dramatic Wind." - Tenzhi
Characters
if there is one ally and you "need" it to solo
boss - the same toughness as a hero in theory
if there are multiple allies and you "need" them to solo
lt
if there are allies for flavor that you don't need
minion
in the OP case I would say boss
players should have to pay attention to the ally. Lazy players don't want to - but they aren't just a buff. They are an ally.
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(like a mission I played that had 10 - that's TEN - red Elite Bosses "helping me out")
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If you haven't already tried mine, it has a mission with 21 Elite Bosses as allies, so I've got them beat (unless you did try mine and just didn't find them all).
Hopefully they're all Thugs Masterminds. 
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Unless the mission contains an AV, EB, or a multiple-boss spawn, there is no need for an ally above Lt, unless the story requires them to be beefier, in which case they could be a boss. I find that creating allies with an attack primary (set to standard) and a defensive or buffing secondary (cranked up as high as you want it) lets them survive without KSing too much. An earth control/thermal should be ok as a boss, but if people are just complaining because they want the free buffs and there isn't a particularly tough fight that they might actually need the free buffs for, then I'd say leave him as a Lt.
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I add an ally if it advances the story, but my rule of thumb is no less than a lieutenant, no more than one level below the end boss. End boss is a lieutenant or a boss, ally is a lieutenant. End boss is an EB, ally is a boss. End boss is an AV (something I'd probably never actually do), ally is an EB.
What I suspect you're seeing people react to, though, is that some archetypes just don't have any means of keeping allies alive. I did a lot of my early testing with masterminds, and got used to being able to shield or heal allies. You might also be doing your testing with defenders, controllers, tanks, or corruptors. But if somebody is soloing with a scrapper, blaster, brute, or stalker and the ally runs off by themself, or does something equally stupid that draws too much aggro, they're stuck unless they want to wait around until the ally regens their hit points.
But any ally powerful enough to take the kind of abuse that allies sometimes take without any help from the player, is also powerful enough to solo most of the mission. Which is why I mostly stick with boss end bosses and lieutenant minions. I may yet write stuff where the last mission has an EB end boss and a boss ally. Nothing above that.
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Hopefully they're all Thugs Masterminds.
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haha
Well, I guess you'll have to play it to find out. 
I'm not saying my arc doesn't take it to an extreme that should be replicated. Far from it. I totally agree that the mission you're doing dictates how tough the ally should be.
Then again, to me the MA is there to experience things you can't find in the "official" content. Seeing almost two dozen superspeeders zipping around your mission is certainly something you can't just run across doing a Positron TF. It's terrible XP, but it's a hilarious sight that makes for a lot of fun.
So if you're going for an ally that's a bit of help (which is the case probably 75% or more of the time) then I wouldn't do anything above a boss. I tend to add allies for more of a "HOLY CURSE WORDS, DID YOU SEE THAT!?" factor, though.
One other thing about damage allies is I prefer if they are optional rather than required. That way if you are strong enough to solo everything in the mission without them, you can leave them behind and get all the Exp/Inf/Tickets, but if you need them you kill one spawn and you are much stronger.
That doesn't fit every mission design but I find very often the allies aren't a part of the mission just there for buffage. Those should be optional.
I did this in Mail Strike! where there are 4-6 bosses and an optional ally right near start. My Dom can solo bosses easily especially with lots of minions to work up Domination, so why share the mission with an NPC? My Corruptor on the other hand is quite hard pressed and can use the backup.
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You can't please everyone, so lets concentrate on me.
Personally I find avoiding optional allies a little immersion breaking as I generally have to barrel past them and kill their spawn outside of sight of them which just feels way too gamey when I'm trying to enjoy a story.
In any case optional or no, allies should really only be there if the story calls for it. If the mission is too hard for most characters without them then it is probably time to tone down the mission.
When allies are included I personally highly appreciate when they're lieutenant only (ideally with a defense set so they stay alive better). I can't stand being paired up with an elite boss who is not only stealing rewards, but also showing my character up in a story that theoretically is supposed to be player centric.
Just my 2 cents in any case.
Infatum on Virtueverse
Disclaimer: I've not played your arc, so this is a more general response.
Part of the problem is likely to be that the toons that need the ally are likely to be the ones that don't have any way of protecting or aiding them.
You can't drop a green on them or even get them to rest, so the only way for most toons to have them back to full health between encounters is to wait around staring at the walls for minutes at a time, which many find annoying enough that they're not going to do it.
Allys are aggro magnets. Even aside from the marginal AI, solo players may be more likely to be accustomed to using stealth, or to have tactics that depend on it. This leads to the ally taking the alpha unintentionally.
Allys don't use insps. If a player toon sees a problematic encounter, they can chug an insp or few to even up things; but the ally can't.
Allys are not a renewable resource. If a player gets surprised by a difficult encounter (especially with odd custom mobs) and goes down, they can get back up or hospital, restock insps, and come back in. But if the ally goes down, there's no way to bring them back. If the "big fight" was balanced with the assumption that the ally(s) was necessary, it may not be winnable.
A significant fraction of the arcs I've played that had allies were less well designed. Adding an ally should be nearly a last resort in balancing the arc; too many people seem to chuck one in to try and cover for poorly-crafted and poorly-tested encounters. (There are some arcs where the ally is a major part of the plot; the risk there is all to often Mary Sue-ism.)
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Personally I find avoiding optional allies a little immersion breaking as I generally have to barrel past them and kill their spawn outside of sight of them which just feels way too gamey when I'm trying to enjoy a story.
In any case optional or no, allies should really only be there if the story calls for it. If the mission is too hard for most characters without them then it is probably time to tone down the mission.
When allies are included I personally highly appreciate when they're lieutenant only (ideally with a defense set so they stay alive better). I can't stand being paired up with an elite boss who is not only stealing rewards, but also showing my character up in a story that theoretically is supposed to be player centric.
Just my 2 cents in any case.
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Yeah I did an arc that had 2 allies that were EB's. My character only served to lead them around while they killed everything.
It was bad.
I think it's hard to balance allies for all levels and ATs. The arc in my sig has gotten several feedbacks that the last mission (against an AV) is too easy with the allies, but when I test it solo, the allies and I wipe about half the time. Or maybe I just suck as a player...
One approach to avoid XP-stealing is to try to place the allies towards the back of the map. The back/middle/front bugs on some maps make this difficult, but it can help if you want the ally for the end-boss, but from a story perspective you don't need them from the start.
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Yeah I did an arc that had 2 allies that were EB's. My character only served to lead them around while they killed everything.
It was bad.
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Then don't pick up the allies, case solved.
Allies are always optional. If you can't beat the arc without them, then bring friends.
And if you're going to have an EB and throw in allies, if you make them less than a Boss then you should not have bothered as they're simply going to die during the EB's alpha strike.
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And if you're going to have an EB and throw in allies, if you make them less than a Boss then you should not have bothered as they're simply going to die during the EB's alpha strike.
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That's not entirely true. In my first real arc, the last mission features three Aly's who represent teen heroes you've rescued who don't intend to just run for the door. All of them are built as Lt's, and the end boss is an EB with a medium gaggle of guards, and I've understood he's quite beatable.
Of course there are some other twists to that last fight. Maybe I need to make my EB at the end 'hard' rather than 'standard'....
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I have a very short arc with a final rating of 4 star (999+).
It has an ally in it. The Ally is a lieut. earth/thermal. I picked this 'controller theme' because its low DPS, to avoid robbing the player of exp/tickets. It can also mesh with almost any other AT at any level, including other controllers.
Problem is the most consistent feedback regarding the ally is that it dies (or they think it went missing when they thought it was an immortal ally). I suspect most people solo this arc. After all, if they were not solo, why do they care about the ally?
So, if you like the ally, and it really helps you (+DMG, +TOHIT, +status protection, Foe -DEF, Holds), would you not want to protect that asset? Should there not be a challenge or cost if you let them die? Should I of made them boss or higher, effectively making support oriented toons less 'supportive'?
What do you think? If you want to see what I'm talking about, ARC: 1541
(FYI: I've had people say its overpowered, but that's not nearly as often. I realize I cannot make everybody happy.)
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