The Mastermind

I've commented a few times that it has always irritated me that my Mastermind is so dependent on his pets. I've suggested that Masterminds be given at least one serious attack to call their own.

There's precedent, both in the comics and in CoH.

While it doesn't translate perfectly, there are many characters in the comics that you might consider Masterminds. Lex Luthor, Dr. Doom, even the Joker. In CoH, you have Lord Recluse. In each case, the Mastermind is a serious threat, all on his own. His pets (Luthor's robots and traps, Doom's robots and summoned threats, Joker's gangsters, Recluse's Arachnosites, etc.) are supportive.

Not so, for us. We are actually weaker than our tier 3 pets!

Now, I realize the need for balance, and I realize that the MM class is pretty strong as it is. I'm not saying the AT needs anything, except for concept, and so I suggest the following.

Each primary set, as its Tier 9, would have a toggle (named appropriately) that would change the way the character plays. Activating the toggle would dismiss all pets and disable the summoning powers. The Mastermin would gain several personal bonuses and buffs to make him the threat.

The power would:
1. Double health
2. Add a flat amount of damage to all attacks (dependant on level)
(eg. Suppose the amount is +100 damage to all attacks. The Pulse Rifle blast that did 50 damage would now do 150. The Force Bolt that did 5 damage would do 105.)
3. Add a buff to Resistance and Defense (minor, say 10% Defense, 20% Resistance, unenhanceable)
4. Slightly increase Regeneration and Recovery.
(The actual values would need to be determined for balance)

The Mastermind could leave the toggle on as long as desired, but it would have a long recharge once deactivated.

What do you think? Can you suggest an alternative that would allow us to better emulate the examples from the source material and the game itself?

I like the idea of the power but Masterminds of all kinds like having Minions around regardless of how powerful they are and the fact that is should be a clickie not a toggle would work too.

With a crash? I thought of that too, but in that case it would need to be rather more powerful. Perhaps if it left the pets in play in addition to the buffs?

I believe the OP is describing a kinetic in a way.

One question, you do realize that our final upgrade is our current primary tier 9 right?
I would not give away that power for a self buff, no matter what.

You could simulate this effect by eating a tray full of inspirations.

I'm not a huge insp-muncher on any character, but least of all on my MM's, because I find it kind of fiddly to drop them on the pets, so they tend to stack up in my tray.

So eating a few lucks and damage pills for the final boss in a mission would definitely give you that "Ha ha! I've been holding back until now and letting my minions do the work! No face the true might of Doom!" feeling. Put your pets into bodyguard mode as well - that shifts power from them to you.

Best of all, you can do it today with what we have in game.

On the OP:

I can see this being a workable idea if, and only if, they combined the two upgrades in each powerset into one upgrade, and moved it up to 12 or 18. This would obviously be all kinds of violation of the cottage rule, and will never happen.

But even then, you'd have to sacrifice power slots to take personal attacks, which weakens your ability to support your henchmen.

If it replaced other powers, that would suck, as it would obviously not replace the personal attacks. Thugs would lose gang war, robotics would lose repair (which I actually quite like on my bots/traps, its saved my assbot any number of times), mercs wouldn't miss serum too much, but overall I don't think the sacrifice would ever be worth the gain.

Last, the power would need to desummon your pets and then resummon them once dropped, else it truly would be worthless. A better iteration of this power would be a pet sacrifice power, that let you kill your currently summoned pets in order to give yourself a host of powers and buffs. If you want an example of the idea in action, check out WoW warlocks and Meta form (though that one doesn't require a pet sacrifice).

Rather than making this a standard mastermind power, I think it would be better to just fit it into demon summoning where serum, repair, gang war, etc are.

Masterminds are a pet class. Say what you want about lore, comics, whatever, the fact is that the actual class concept is pets.

Quote:

Originally Posted by DrMike2000 You could simulate this effect by eating a tray full of inspirations. I'm not a huge insp-muncher on any character, but least of all on my MM's, because I find it kind of fiddly to drop them on the pets, so they tend to stack up in my tray. So eating a few lucks and damage pills for the final boss in a mission would definitely give you that "Ha ha! I've been holding back until now and letting my minions do the work! No face the true might of Doom!" feeling. Put your pets into bodyguard mode as well - that shifts power from them to you. Best of all, you can do it today with what we have in game.

The biggest issue with pet insp that I see is that you cannot drop an inspiration onto a pet unless the pet is not currently executing an attack, it can be frustrating to try to drop a green or a red onto your assault bot when he's flamethrowing all over the place. You can however queue an inspiration that will execute the next opportunity.

Try these commands.

/inspexec_pet_name (petname) (inspiration)
/inspexec_pet_target (inspiration)

I set up the following binds

/bind 1 "inspexec_pet_target righteous rage$$inspexec_pet_target focused rage$$inspexec_pet_target enrage"

/bind 2 "inspexec_pet_target uncanny insight$$inspexec_pet_target keen insight$$inspexec_pet_target insight"

/bind 3 "inspexec_pet_target phenomenal luck$$inspexec_pet_target good luck$$inspexec_pet_target luck"

/bind 4 "inspexec_pet_target resurgence$$inspexec_pet_target dramatic improvement$$inspexec_pet_target respite"

/bind 5 "inspexec_pet_target robust$$inspexec_pet_target rugged$$inspexec_pet_target sturdy"

These macros are awesome. They execute on the lowest order inspiration first, so if you've got an enrage and two righteous rage's and hit 1 twice, you'll use the enrage first, then one of the other two. If your tier 3 is in trouble, you can pound defensive follow with the pet selected and then mash 4 to drop an inspiration or two into it in about two seconds.

With the pet window open, dragging and dropping is not a problem anymore, just remember that if a pet is doing something at the time, it will only queue the last inspiration you tried to use. I've tried to drop a yellow and red on my assault bot in combat and only had the last one fire more times than I can count (which is when I figured out defensive follow will interrupt their attack chain long enough to get off two to four inspirations most of the time)

But it works, and works well. Its easily reachable from wasd movement controls as well. I keep a full row of blues and a full row of greens at all times, for emergency healing of myself and my bots (bots/traps) and a row of two awakens and some break frees. The rest cycle constantly as I drop whatever shows up there into whatever bots. Lucks on protectors which have taken hits to soft cap them, yellows, and reds on the assault bot, oranges on whatever I select first to get them out of the way for more inspiration drops, and extra greens on anything thats not at full health.

My mastermind can hold his own pretty well with fighting, leadership, and concealment, but he's a ninja/traps so...

I'm pretty sure if Positron were to actually take this idea seriously & implement it..there would obviously have to be a trade off.

I imagine that trade off would be the removal of bodyguard mode in order to maintain a sense of balance or whatever.

Remember game balance.

You cannot add a feature without removing an existing one.

You know...it just dawned on me...I know the "real" reason behind this suggestion......

this guy is a fan of the Thugs primary.

Only problem is...with GR on the horizon...Dual Blaster set on the way....you will no longer have to go petless anymore to get the cool, dual blaster look.

Like someone else has said some other thread
your promoting that people make more petless masterminds!

Heh, I actually play bots (though I do have a Thugs MM based on the Joker).

As for encouraging petless MMs, I say sure! After all, there are times when the comic book equivalents (as I said above, Luthor, Doom, Joker, Recluse, etc.) fight without their cronies/assistants/what have you.

This is a videogame about superheroes. Not a comic book. This is something that must be kept in mind at all times.

The whole point of playing a MM is to have fun with the pets. Fighting on my own is something I can do with any other character.

And MMs feel powerless to you on their own?

My Mastermind can summon storms and bring down lightning from the skies, teaching foes to heed the thunder.
My Mastermind can control the very shadows and wield dark curses from the nightmare realms.
My Mastermind can weave impenetrable shields and plot for world domination behind an iron veil.
My Mastermind can lie and trick himself out of any situation, making fools of those who don't fear his arrows.
My Mastermind can channel the very essence of pain, enslaving legions and crippling any resistance.
My Mastermind can light the path of zeal with an undying fire and beacons of burning rage.
My Mastermind can trump the best strategy with a myriad cunning traps and ambushes.
My Mastermind can stifle all life around him, turning the air into deadly mists and all your blood into poison.


You're really going to have to convince me that any of my Masterminds need to learn how to do something as crass and unnecessary as punching. They're incredibly powerful on their own as they are already.

Leave my tier 9 alone. I don't mind the fact that the Assbot has more health than me. I like his ability to rain death in the form of incendiary swarm missiles. I like the seeker drones put out by my protector bots. I love the laser light show of my drones.

My typical strategy: Dive in head first and take the alpha, then lay traps and immobs and taunt like your sixth grade bully. I am unkillable.

If you don't feel powerful, you're playing your MM wrong.

Perhaps what the OP is looking for could be satisfied by making a high recharge Crab that includes all 3 pet summons. No, you don't control your pets but you are capable of being self-sufficient.

I dunno, personally I've never wanted to "Hulk out" or whatever, as a MM. I like the RTS type elements of controlling resources.

Don't misunderstand me, I'm not saying the AT doesn't work well as it is, I'm just thinking about how it might be given another dimension that would ADD to how it works now.

Yes, it's not a comic book, but it's a game BASED on comic books. Besides, as I said, precedent exists IN THE GAME in the form of Lord Recluse, Arbiter Sands and others.

Of course, this idea would mean a rearrangement of the powers to some extent. As such, I really don't expect it would ever happen, I'm just throwing the idea out there for discussion.

I'm totally happy with the way my Masterminds play. I totally embrace the true idea of the mastermind. He sits back and uses his pawns to do all his dirty work. When I'm playing, I'm working on hitting the mobs through my minions. They do all the work while I'm buffing / debuffing or healing or something else. I'm working and plotting out the strategy of winning the fight. I’m keeping track of where my minions are and who is running off doing what so I can call them back to me before they are causing more trouble or calling them all back to regroup and heal up and what not.

I'm happy with the teir 9 final training power. I'd hate to lose it to something useless to me as a buff with a crash. Like stated above, use insp. to get the same effect without the crash and you keep the powered minions too.

Even if you do have a buff toggle that lets you go at it solo...look at what you are left with...the first three tiers of a blaster. That doesn't sound like a whole lot of fun to me.

Just because Recluse can do it, doesn't mean we should...he's an NPC, and can't really be defined as just a Mastermind.

My main problem with this idea is that I didn't pick an MM because I want to take on enemies myself.
I want to send my loyal legions to rip apart anything that stands in my path.
If I wanted to get my hands dirty, I'd be playing a different AT...

While we're on the topic of absurd ideas...
I wish I had a power that allowed me to sacrifice my T2 and T1 pets to in order to summon an EB. (Until this happens, I'll just continue to use Shivans and be stupidly powerful, even with my terrible build.)

Again I'll remind you, though, my suggestion wouldn't stop you being the mastermind, sending your pets out to do your bidding. I also wouldn't drop the second upgrade, I'd just move it to Tier 8 and swap out something else (what would depend on what's expendable in any given set). It would just give you that option of saying, "So, you've bested my minions, now see what power I possess!"

Umm its called kill the foes before they get a chance to move :P Bot/Pain MMs can do this fairly good.

Also MMs ae the = too tanks on villain side they can take more total dmg then any other toon but pets ae there weakness and strength.