City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Are we hated?

Atheism

By Atheism,
Posted on: 2010-03-05 03:43 in Masterminds

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
My ice/mace tank too. Never took taunt. Has never slotted taunt enhancements in any power. And yet... only knockback happy peeps or well played trick arrow defenders can steal aggro from me. Specifically blasters who spam 100% chance for KB aoes to the point my auras can't taunt enemies, and I can't hit them due to constantly chasing enemies around.
It's been a while since I've played my TA/A Defender and I'm asking purely out of curiosity... how is the TA Defender stealing aggro from you? Oil Slick arrow + Disruption arrow? I'm not remembering it generate that much hate (as long as I let the tank / brute / generic meatshield absorb the initial blow). Sorry for the thread derailment.

 

Posted

Personally, I've experienced no hatred on any of my masterminds.

Whether I'm at the market, in a strike force or just on a regular team.

The closest any of my masterminds have come to hatred is well-intentioned and accurate advice.

On a side note Edgewater, what server are you on?
I'm on Virtue.

Eastern Standard Time (Australia)
is 15 hours ahead of
Eastern Standard Time (North America)
which is 5 hours behind
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Valorin View Post
It's been a while since I've played my TA/A Defender and I'm asking purely out of curiosity... how is the TA Defender stealing aggro from you? Oil Slick arrow + Disruption arrow? I'm not remembering it generate that much hate (as long as I let the tank / brute / generic meatshield absorb the initial blow). Sorry for the thread derailment.
I was in a team of my TA/A defender and seven tanks of various flavors. Including an ice armor tank. This was before I got Oil Slick Arrow btw. What with spamming my aoe debuffs as often as they were up, and using my aoe attacks... I was reliably pealing aggro off all seven tanks.

I'd let them go in first to generate hate, then unload Glue Arrow, Disruption Arrow, and Poison Gas Arrow. And then have nearly all the enemies turn to shoot me instead of the tanks struggling to hold aggro off me.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

Wow, that's impressive. I don't recall ever getting that much agro on my TA/A defender... or on my Bots/TA MM for that matter.

Nice work!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
I was in a team of my TA/A defender and seven tanks of various flavors. Including an ice armor tank. This was before I got Oil Slick Arrow btw. What with spamming my aoe debuffs as often as they were up, and using my aoe attacks... I was reliably pealing aggro off all seven tanks.

I'd let them go in first to generate hate, then unload Glue Arrow, Disruption Arrow, and Poison Gas Arrow. And then have nearly all the enemies turn to shoot me instead of the tanks struggling to hold aggro off me.
My theory is that persistent area effects provoke aggro back at you. My ninjas MM is constantly getting attacked by enemies who won't fight my ninjas, and that's pretty much the only reason I can think of. Maybe the caltrops my ninjas drop are interpreted as coming directly from me?

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Valorin View Post
Wow, that's impressive. I don't recall ever getting that much agro on my TA/A defender... or on my Bots/TA MM for that matter.

Nice work!
Heh, it sure did surprise the tanks I was teamed with. At one point someone asked me why I had slotted taunt enhancements in all my powers. ^^

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

I love MMs but here are a few reasons why I tend to avoid MMs on my team:

1) I like to run Speed SFs/ITfs and MMs have a tendency to slow down my team.
2) Lag. MMs especially bots tend to create a significant amount of lag (ITFs especially)
3) Crowding map. Maps in this game are too small. I hate caves and even though you can get around pets now they create visbility issues since many of the maps were created without MMs in mind.
4) pet buffers. Many MMs have a solo mentality and thus tend to buff pets instead of teammates. This is beyond irritating.
5) Pet aggro. Many MMs don't know how to control their pets and create unnecessary aggro.
6) AVs that use pets to buff. Some AVs such as romulus on the last ITf mission use pets to heal and buff. This becomes increasingly irritating after having to tell a MM to please either move their pets into range or dismiss them and the MM ignores you or starts to fight with you.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokyo View Post
I love MMs but here are a few reasons why I tend to avoid MMs on my team:


6) AVs that use pets to buff. Some AVs such as romulus on the last ITf mission use pets to heal and buff. This becomes increasingly irritating after having to tell a MM to please either move their pets into range or dismiss them and the MM ignores you or starts to fight with you.
They fixed this a while ago.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokyo View Post
I love MMs but here are a few reasons why I tend to avoid MMs on my team:

6) AVs that use pets to buff. Some AVs such as romulus on the last ITf mission use pets to heal and buff. This becomes increasingly irritating after having to tell a MM to please either move their pets into range or dismiss them and the MM ignores you or starts to fight with you.
While most of your reasons can be understandable, this one struck me as rude. Even with using such things as go-to, spamming pet controls, and having near perfect pet control... you will still have that random tier 1 ranged pet which insists on running up and punching the enemy. As such it is hard, nay nearly impossible to completely prevent pets from going into melee.

And some primaries, you WANT the pets in melee. That's where they do the most damage. But then, your telling anyone who's pets melee to dismiss them. Which means your telling the mastermind they may as well have not come alone. Your removing half what they do.

And then there's sets like /poison. It has a really nasty debuff in Noxious Gas. And the debuff is centered on a pet, who must be sent into melee. But of course, you don't want them sending pets into melee.

By the same token, you should insist everyone on the team stays at range. Even the brutes, stalkers, scrappers, and tanks. For that matter, better avoid having a kin along. They will be right there in melee range too. And anyone smart will be right next to the kin. Can't have a dominator either. They have melee attacks. What about the newest mastermind primary? Yup, the pets love melee. And their good at it from what I've seen. The mastermind will probably be right up there too using their whip attacks.

But then, melee is to be avoided at all costs isn't it? Wait a minute. I just was on a ITF yesterday. Our entire team consisted of melee, a single controller, and a single corrupter. And yet, we not only won the fight. We steamrolled it. The only party wipe was due to several ambushes during the second time we dropped Romulus. And yes, we had pets being used too. The team leader was afraid the pets would be used against us. And yet, they were a help. Heck, I kept summoning a pet every minute or two.

but all that melee should have made Romulus impossible, or at least annoying right? Not really. It's all in your timing. I almost took my thug/ta on the TF. And you know what? The team leader at the end said he almost wished I'd brought that instead of my crab.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokyo View Post
4) pet buffers. Many MMs have a solo mentality and thus tend to buff pets instead of teammates. This is beyond irritating.
Pretty much this. Nothing worse than the therm shielding all of his pets but no one else on team gets em.

/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Nights_Dawn View Post
Hazy is right
Can't get enough Hazy? /chanjoin robo's lounge today!

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
While most of your reasons can be understandable, this one struck me as rude....

I stopped reading at this.

MM pets still fuel romulus's healing nictus and regeneration. It is not rude to ask a MM to keep their pets at a range distance if you know your PUG team is having trouble pushing past Rom's regen and healing; it's practical.

Now I know many peoples response to this would be 'well then don't play on a pug team." My answer to this is; "shutup."

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Hazygreys View Post
Pretty much this. Nothing worse than the therm shielding all of his pets but no one else on team gets em.

And it happens so frequently to the point where I've stopped accepting invites from MMs unless I personally know the player to be competent or a friend knows the MM is a competent team member.

Oh, I forgot one other thing:

The AFK MMer. The MM player that puts their pets in defensive and places a team member on follow.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokyo View Post
I stopped reading at this.

MM pets still fuel romulus's healing nictus and regeneration. It is not rude to ask a MM to keep their pets at a range distance if you know your PUG team is having trouble pushing past Rom's regen and healing; it's practical.

Now I know many peoples response to this would be 'well then don't play on a pug team." My answer to this is; "shutup."
When you tell the mastermind that they can't use their entire source of damage, that is rude. It also precludes some very nice debuffs. You forget, not every pet is designed to stay at range. And even with good mastermind controls, it is pretty much impossible to prevent pets from at least half the primaries from meleeing. Nor would you want to.

If your so worried about pets fueling Romulus's healing, aren't you equally worried that the scrappers and other melee ATs are fueling it? Or, you could do what my ITF team did. You could take out the nictus that are healing Romulus first, and prevent it from happening.

Primaries which either can't easily, or shouldn't be kept at range:

Ninja
Necro
Demons
Thugs (arsonist keeps brawling no matter what, and bruiser is a melee pet to begin with)

So your telling me that you'd never bring a mastermind along because your afraid of a preventable situation. If the nictus AVs keep healing Romulus using pets or team mates, kill the nictus AVs.

Is that so hard? Or do you think the Statesman TF is impossible without a perfect team lineup because you never thought to remove the towers buffing Recluse? It's still hard, but not impossible if you do things right.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
When you tell the mastermind that they can't use their entire source of damage, that is rude. It also precludes some very nice debuffs. You forget, not every pet is designed to stay at range. And even with good mastermind controls, it is pretty much impossible to prevent pets from at least half the primaries from meleeing. Nor would you want to.

If your so worried about pets fueling Romulus's healing, aren't you equally worried that the scrappers and other melee ATs are fueling it? Or, you could do what my ITF team did. You could take out the nictus that are healing Romulus first, and prevent it from happening.

Primaries which either can't easily, or shouldn't be kept at range:

Ninja
Necro
Demons
Thugs (arsonist keeps brawling no matter what, and bruiser is a melee pet to begin with)

So your telling me that you'd never bring a mastermind along because your afraid of a preventable situation. If the nictus AVs keep healing Romulus using pets or team mates, kill the nictus AVs.

Is that so hard? Or do you think the Statesman TF is impossible without a perfect team lineup because you never thought to remove the towers buffing Recluse? It's still hard, but not impossible if you do things right.
You seem to be making rather naive assumptions based on your lack of comprehension.

So i'll end this discussion with this post.

 

Posted

Not once have I been uninvited to a team for being an MM, and my pets have always been welcome to attack, defend, and other shenanigans of thier own will. (As long as I'm smart enough to not cause a total-party-wipe, which is truly rare) The one issue I've ever had is my AssBot's massive KB, yes he does damage, but those missiles tend to annoy me as well as everyone else, especially Tankers and Brutes.

I really think that teams need to understand that we MMs only really contribute fully to the team when our pets are out and attacking, or at least defending the other players. To that end, I'd like to see a "follow and defend target" command. I know it sounds strange, but think for a moment how a MM could help with that.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Tokyo View Post

MM pets still fuel romulus's healing nictus and regeneration. It is not rude to ask a MM to keep their pets at a range distance if you know your PUG team is having trouble pushing past Rom's regen and healing; it's practical.
It's also practical to move the healing nictus out of healing range if you're having problems. That way, the MM can use his pets and you'll be able to bring down Rom.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Atheism View Post
It's also practical to move the healing nictus out of healing range if you're having problems. That way, the MM can use his pets and you'll be able to bring down Rom.
Or better yet, remove the healing nictus from the fight all together by killing it. I could be wrong, but I think that's a tactic Tokyo believes to be useless.

Since the heal seems to be an ally affecting version of dark regen, it would stand to reason that ANYONE in melee range would be a problem until the healing nictus is down. Not just pets. But those other players too.

Better avoid controllers too. They tend to have pets out, and fire controllers have pets that prefer melee. Can't have anyone with dark miasma either. They might be bringing out Fluffy in range so he can debuff and heal the melee guys. Can't have that because it's another target to fuel nictus healing.

Oh wait, if you kill that nictus it's not healing.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

The Mastermind's job is to manage and buff their pets, not the other players. You want buffs for the players, bring along a Corruptor (or, in coop, a Controller or a Defender, of course). We won't mind if he or she doesn't buff our pets and concentrates on buffing players. Of course, since most of our buff sets have one power that's useless on pets, we'll gladly use it on anyone else who happens to need it (ie, the rez). And obviously our debuffs'll be out for anyone to make use of.

 

Posted

Me, I can and do buff players if I have them. Here's the thing. Let's say I'm running a /ff mastermind. I'm level 26 and have all six pets. And I'm on a full team. Putting both bubbles on all my pets and all the players can and will drain my endurance fast. And in the middle of combat, my main focus wont be watching your health bar and buff icons. It'll be watching my pets.

However, I always start with my pets when buffing. Thus when they start blinking I know your buff will go down soon too. Here is the thing though, I may not have the time or endurance to refresh your buffs too. Heck, I may not even be able to keep the buffs on my own pets sometimes. And when the team's doing well, I may not buff you anyway. Don't feel bad, I'm not buffing the pets in that situation either.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
Or better yet, remove the healing nictus from the fight all together by killing it. I could be wrong, but I think that's a tactic Tokyo believes to be useless.
My understanding was that the healing nictus heals itself just as much as it heals Rom, and it has more hitpoints than Rom, and obviously you can't separate the healing nictus from itself. Essentially, all else being equal, it's easier to kill Rom than it is to kill the healing nictus (i.e. if you can't manage the former you won't manage the latter).

Never checked into that to see exactly how accurate it is, but it's what I've always heard/read (and more or less matches my experiences).


The reason melee players are more tolerated than melee MM pets in that one particular fight is that the MM typically has their dps split over multiple melee pets: one player's worth of dps provided to the team but multiple players worth of healing provided to Rom. The e.g. scrapper can provide their dps with only one player's worth of healing for Rom. All but the most obsessive team leader will accept 1 dps for the team at the cost of 1 heal for Rom, but is less likely to be happy about 1 dps for the team at the cost of 5 heals for Rom. So while the Thugs MM having a Bruiser out probably isn't a big deal, asking that Ninjas MM not to summon their Genin and/or Jonin is indeed just being practical - the team is more likely to win without the Genin than with. That's not to say the request is never worded rudely, but the request itself is just looking at what's best for the team's success.

It's basically the same principle on a smaller scale that says the plant control guy probably shouldn't use Carrion Creepers.



Quote:
Originally Posted by JD_Gumby View Post
The Mastermind's job is to manage and buff their pets, not the other players.
I'd say the Mastermind's "job" is the same as any other player's on the team: use whatever powers and take whatever action that will bring the best results to the team. If that means buffing the players instead (or as well as) your pets, do that. If that means buffing the pets instead or as well as the players, then yes, do that. Flexibility is an attractive trait in a teammate.

 

Posted

Since it seems that the heal is based on the same principle as Dark Regen, more pets wouldn't matter much. And uhm, the team I was on DID kill the healing nictus. We did so because Rom was being stubborn about going down.

For those not aware, Dark Regen consistently over heals. One enemy=1/3 your health back. 3 enemies means you recovered to full from 1 HP. Anything more then 3 and it's just green numbers. And that's without slotting heal enhancements in it.

If the nictus's heal is on the same principle, then it doesn't matter if there's 8 targets, or 38 targets for it to hit. Either way it's a massive over heal. It's the same reason Ghost Widow is such a pain. Well, that and her mag 100 or so hold.

So if the complaint is "mastermind pets fuel the heal", then you should complain about anyone on the team being in melee range. Even the tanker thus would be providing a 1/4 to 1/3 heal. The kinetics defender who is using fulcrom shift? Their also providing a large heal. The scrappers and brutes too. And if you have 3 people in melee, wouldn't that indicate you have to kill him BEFORE the heal goes off... or you can't kill him anyway?

But of course people are pulling him away from the healing nictus first to prevent that. Thus, what is the problem with melee based henchmen again?

Mind you, I can't say for sure how big the nictus heal was. The team was all in melee. Yes, including the /kin corrupter. And transfusion was being spammed, as was Warmth. As such it was impossible to tell which green numbers were ours and which were enemy heals.

"The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every class is unfit to govern." Lord Acton

Madam Enigma's History

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Madam_Enigma View Post
Mind you, I can't say for sure how big the nictus heal was.
I've never paid enough attention to say for sure, but I get the impression it's 200-250ish per target "hit" by it. Most teams I've been on were able to just plain brute force dps through it (or would have, if one or more team member had played a bit smarter). It's not an overheal situation unless you swamp it with targets or have a really low dps team.

edit: It's more like an aoe Twilight Grasp in terms of magnitude, recharge, etc, with a heal per target hit. Unless I've been totally misunderstanding it all this time, which has precedent

 

Posted

Just noticed this thread.

If anything, for years I thought Stalkers were the most hated. They were the most useless at any rate. Completely pointless until they made the most recent changes. Now I don't mind them or mind playing them.

MMs are fun, they add a little buffage to the team, and can tank.

My new Youtube Channel with CoH info
You might know me as FlintEastwood now on Freedom

 

Posted

I've been wandering through Cimerora and been invited to ITF pick-up teams with both my Necromancy/Dark and Bots/Forcefield Masterminds, and never been given "special" instructions regarding the pets. The *only* time I've ever had anyone say anything was with my Plant/Thermal controller, when I was told not to use Carrion Creepers.