What's In a Henchman?

The Henchman is certainly a core element of the Mastermind archetype, as they provide the bulk of the firepower and damage intake of any given build. It's a class designed around indirect distribution of power and presents its own unique approach to the game that is not present in any other archetype. Most of the power does not come from the Mastermind himself, but from his Henchmen, and they become more effective depending on how the Mastermind interacts with the battlefield while the Henchmen are doing the dirty work.

Playing through the game since Issue 6, I've found Masterminds to be substantially easier to build for what used to be called "Relentless" difficulty than any other archetype. Something about having seven (or more) distinct targetable weak spots and sources of damage shifts the game as a whole into easy mode. Just today I rearranged a build I had on a Mastermind using the second build feature, and rather haphazardedly assigned Enhancement slots and didn't even get it fully slotted with SOs 'cause I ran out of Inf. It still handles +2 enemies with bosses quite easily and I could run around missions blindfolded and still clear the map.

So I got to thinking... What is the extent of what the Henchman brings to the table? Is it really just another source of damage and an aggro target? Bodyguard stance notwithstanding, do Hencmen amount to anything more than mobile turrets?

Another thing that came to mind is... What can a Mastermind be without his Henchmen? Other than dead meat, that is. There are many decent attacks in the Patron pools for Masterminds (strong melee and AoE among them), Tanker-level Damage Resistance from the Patrons as well, and their secondary powersets can be helpful in team settings or to debuff the enemies and make them fall more easily. On top of the powers available to Masterminds, IO set bonuses can be employed to achieve unusual stats as well. With the +HP Accolades, only +6.7% HP are needed from IOs for a Mastermind to surpass the base HP of the next squishiest archetype, the Defender. What else can IOs do? Can damage be buffed to be comparable to a non-Henchman archetype? Patron resistance is remakrable as-is, but can a Mastermind's personal resistance be pushed to the hard cap of 75%? Just how effective can a Mastermind be without Henchmen?

Bringing everything full-circle, is it possible to make a self-sufficient Mastermind in his own right, and give him Henchmen as well? Would such a character be overpowered, or would the Mastermind's personal effectiveness be affected by the need to watch after his Henchmen?

I'm not all that versed in slotting for set bonuses, so I'm really not all that sure of what can be done. This is all theoretical, of course, but I'm still terribly curious... What is a Henchman by himself, and what can a Mastermind be without them?

I don't think a MM can be made into much without the pets, you can probably cap defence (Maybe just ranged and take hover to cover melee) and you can also probably get up to 65% S/L resistance on top, so you won't be easy to kill.

Yet the most powerful tool (Aside from henchmen) that a MM has is his secondary set, and that will never be as powerful as a defender or corruptor. You can possibly end up as a weak defender, but will never be any more, because having such a low starting point means that any other AT with a similar amount of effort can surpass you.

As for what a henchman is without his MM, just send a pet into a mob alone and unbuffed, wait 5 seconds and you will see: not very much.

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

There have been many Petless MM ideas but, as the post above me said, all you can do to maximize survivability for the MM is Soft-cap and avoid Melee confrontation. But its not recommended since a MMs secondary will not be as effective as other ATs.

The pets themselves cant survive very well without a MM to guide/buff them. Depending on the pets of course, Zombies can heal themselves and have quite the Scraps and Controller to help them out. Mercenaries cant do very well on their own since they dont have anything special about them. Robots have high defenses due to their Bubbles and have Mez protection and Psi resistances plus the awesome AssaultBots -regen and fire patches. Ninjas are like Zombies but rely more on faster kills and small DPS/Controlling Oni. Thugs have a brute, a Corrupter, and stacked Leadership. They also have Gang War in which completes their solo ability.

(All of the above for the pets have been upgraded but not buffed by the secondary of the MM.)

A henchmen by himself is decent if slotted correctly. The Mastermind by himself (with the appropriate secondary) can do decently at best and dreadful at worst. They were made for each other, although seperate they perform adaquately (the Mastermind himself/herself varrying on the secondary in question, and the pet also varrying by the slotting in question).

Henchmen make wonderful distractions, as well as being fodder for alpha strikes if you are built to recover quickly. Honestly neither is impressive alone, but together the henchmen and Mastermind can perform feats that alone they could only dream of.



Henchies <3 the Mastermind

A Mastermind without henchmen is like a wagon without a horse. Useless.

Thanks for the input, everyone. I've been pouring over numbers for the past day (since I have nothing to be thankful for), and I've found some interesting things that I thought I might share. Though on the whole, the following is true: The Mastermind and his Henchmen are all pieces of a whole, where the pieces by themselves are generally inadequate for any given task.

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Originally Posted by PrincessDarkstar You can possibly end up as a weak defender, but will never be any more, because having such a low starting point means that any other AT with a similar amount of effort can surpass you.

Absolutely. No matter how high a Mastermind raises his base stats, any other archetype can easily do the same and be far out of reach of anything the Mastermind can ever hope to attain. On the other hand, the game is balanced around... I think it was balanced around Dual-Origin Enhancements, to be honest, and certainly Single-Origin are adequate for any given purpose. There are lots and lots of players out there who do NOT make an effort to raise their base stats, so a buffed-up Mastermind may be able to outperform them in some areas.

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Originally Posted by BlissKnight There have been many Petless MM ideas but, as the post above me said, all you can do to maximize survivability for the MM is Soft-cap and avoid Melee confrontation. But its not recommended since a MMs secondary will not be as effective as other ATs.

With maximized survivability, wouldn't the Mastermind be in a position where melee becomes a viable option? When extra powers were added into the Epic sets in Issue 13, Masterminds got a few good melee powers, such as Knockout Blow, Thunder Strike and Oppressive Gloom. These all happen to be mez powers as well, which provide mitigation from incoming damage, so they could certainly be set up to work in a melee Mastermind build, especially if the Mastermind is able to shrug off a few punches.

I know a melee Mastermind sounds like a terrible joke, but it's not as farfetched as even I once thought. See below.

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Originally Posted by Bookkeeper_Jay Henchmen make wonderful distractions, as well as being fodder for alpha strikes if you are built to recover quickly. Honestly neither is impressive alone, but together the henchmen and Mastermind can perform feats that alone they could only dream of. Henchies <3 the Mastermind

I did find that certain slotting for Henchmen can make them effective on their own, even the tier-1 goonies. Each becomes like a Lieutenant in his own right, and the tier-2 and tier-3 Henchmen become, on average, even stronger, but not quite to the level of a Boss.

But like you said, they're leaps and bounds better together, and with the Mastermind backing them up.

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Originally Posted by Scythus A Mastermind without henchmen is like a wagon without a horse. Useless.

Sounds good in theory, doesn't it? Though after looking at the numbers, I don't believe this is entirely true.

I've identified that combat effectiveness is generally a two-fold interweaving of survivability and aptness to dispatch the enemy. For the most part, for a character to be effective, he needs to be able to take a hit as well as dish one out. Here's what I found:

Hit Points
The Mastermind has the lowest HP of any archetype, weighing in at only 803.2 at level 50. The next-lowest are Defender and Controller with 1017.4 (26.7% buff), then the Corruptor and Epic Archetypes with 1070.9 (33.4% buff), then Blaster with 1204.8 (50.0% buff). With clever use of set bonuses, I'm convinced a Mastermind is able to get himself 30% extra HP which, when coupled with the 20% from Accolades, comes out to a 50% boost to the base stat... That is to say, Blaster-level HP.

The only catch here is that maximizing hit points will not allow for much of a boost to damage, as there are only so many Enhancements to go around.

Other Survivability
It happens to be that Mastermind gets the same Damage Resistance modifier as Tanker, which is the highest in the game. With Tough and the Epic shield (save for Scorpion Shield, which is Defense), a Mastermind gets 27.5% + 15.0% = 42.5% resistance to Smashing and Lethal. Enhanced, this comes to around 66.7%, which is two-thirds of all incoming S/L damage.

These shields apply to ALL damage types in PvP (if for some reason you decided to take a petless Mastermind into PvP), which means the Mastermind becomes immune to 2/3 of all incoming damage. Throw this on top of the boosted hit points and put in a dash of knockback protection and you get one hardy little critter. Imagine a Blaster with 66% resistance to all damage, at least in terms of surviability.

Damage
Masterminds don't have the lowest damage modifiers out there, but they're pretty close. For both melee and ranged damage, Mastermind is on a scale of 0.55. The next lowest ranged damage is Defender with 0.65 (18.4% buff), then Corruptor with 0.75 (36.4% buff). There are lots of easy damage buffs in IO sets, even without encountering the Law of Fives, so a 36.7% buff is not out of the question.

However, like with HP, if you're going to buff both survivability AND damage, you're not going to get stats that are as high as the theoretical maximum with the number of Enhancements available to slot.

Trial Build
I've put together a build for the Mastermind I mentioned in the first post of this thread (Thugs/Poison) that buffs both HP and Damage while using no pets, but auxiliary melee damage instead. The build comes to 1144.5 HP (40.25% buff), 0.67 damage (22.0% buff), 66.75% Damage Resistance (Smashing and Lethal) and 8 Knockback Protection. The build also throws in a fair amount of Toxic damage for kicks.

The build also makes no use of purples or PvP sets (save for the Toxic damage), as I want to have a chance of actually making this thing. When my Mastermind is 50, I'll be using the alternate build to see just what it can become with no Henchmen.