Revisiting the AoE Upgrade

So, this has been bugging me ever since I started replaying Masterminds since they changed them.

I understand it reduces setup time by a good deal to have the Equip and Upgrade powers AoE, but they're just so endurance expensive now. It makes playing pets like Ninjas pretty darn frustrating because when you lose one teir one pet, which happens every fight, you have to spend nearly your entire endurance bar to resummon and re-upgrade.

Now, I'm sure people land on both sides of the fence here. People like the new AoE upgrades. I personally prefered the old single target upgrade, since you could easily resummon a tier 1 pet and reequip, without having to rest. It makes playing a MM tedious for me because I'm constantly spending my entire endurance bar resummoning one pet.

But what if we reintroduced the power, by allowing you to have a choice between the old and the new equip, or perhaps even granting the ability to do either?

Of the two cons, I would much rather not be spending my time standing around buffing all of my pets again. I'm more concerned with the situation where all my pets die and I need to apply their enhancements quickly than I am the minor annoyance of the occasional minion biting it every other spawn.

I typically don't even resummon minions until at least two of them are dead.

Before, we would spend just as much endurance upgrading all the pets. Although, I don't think the aoe change was needed personally. Setup didn't take that long before. One recharge SO in the first upgrade, two recharge in the second. And setup was pretty fast. Now setup includes "Wait for endurance". And if on a team that doesn't give me time to recover endurance, well let's just say I've had a few teams lately get mad at my ninja/poison because I'm unable to use Alkaloid.

Why do they get mad about it? Because it's very noticeable when I'm unable to heal my pets. If I can't heal them due to lack of endurance, my pets die. I also then can't afford to resummon them, so am standing around waiting for endurance. nor can I toss a heal or two at my team mates when their in critical condition. And the more of my pets are dead, the more likely a mission will go *****. Even a brute recently noticed the correlation between how many of my pets are dead, and how quickly the party gets wiped out in tough fights. If I have the endurance to keep my pets alive, we tend to survive. If not, we tend to die.

Possible end-all solution:

Both upgrade powers are passive, always on, no endurance cost

Overpowered? How about:

First upgrade power is passive, always on, no endurance cost
Second upgrade power stays as its current form *OR* changes back to a single target power

How about slotting the upgrades for EndRedux and making this all a moot point?

Why not leave the powers AoE but have the endurance cost based on the number of targets it affects (like repel). First you'd have to make it so that you could couldn't recast the same buff on a pet that already has it, then make it so that it goes through and buffs each pet (that needs it) and costs you endurance each. If you don't have enough endurance to rebuff all of them it stops halfway (and you have to recast it again later at which point if buffs whatever pets are remaining that need it).

I realize that this is more coding but seems like a much more polished solution that having multiple powers.

End redux in the upgrades

End redux in the summons

+recovery from the set bonuses

a blue inspiration or two after your initial summoning or pet wipe.



Right there are 4 things that make your end problems much more manageable.

You only have to do a "full" summon once, unless you die, and that I would think would usually be sometime before you are in mission and the team is waiting on you.

Summoning 1 or even 2 tiers of pets with both upgrades ,to "refill" your horde, should not be killing your whole end bar. If it is you have slotting problems.

I'll throw my vote in the 'let us pick' pile. I don't mind the AoE upgrade at the beginning, when i first log on (as pets follow us now.. makes me happy) but when a pet dies, like my assault bot, my survivability drops massively, as i don't have his damage to counteract all the mobs i fight. and then i have to spend 90 endurance to resummon, and reequip, and reupgrade him.. for 1 pet. Which, even with end accolades, recovery sets, and end reducts in my upgrades, thats still about 3/4 of my usable end GONE for 1 pet.

So letting us pick, would be a good idea.

I wish they made more MM buffs AoE. Its a total joke that some teams expect me to buff them when I dont even have enough time to buff my own guys. Making the shields and thaw in therm an aoe buff would make life so much easier.

Maybe they could program the powers to scale the end cost on targets hit by the buff.

I doubt they will make anything easier for MM's. I understand that choosing which pets really need what buffs (prioritizing) is likely seen by the devs as some form of balance for the beastly AT, and removing that may bring on the nerfray.

IMO now that pets zone with you I'd rather go back to the old system.

But then I play a very aggressive storm so endurance is of a premium and losing a single pet is far more frequent than losing multiple/all pets.

Individual buffing was a major PITA when you had to re-summon every new mission, now for me at least the new PITA is tanking my endurance because a single pet dropped.

I do like the idea of the upgrades being changed to something like Repel, and using endurance according to how many targets they upgrade. Given that it would also have to check the target to see if it is upgraded or not instead of just hitting everything in range like a normal power might make it hard to implement though.

That said, I prefer the present setup. One thing it lets me do that I couldn't with the old; when something wipes out most or all my pets at once, as long as the summoning powers are recharged I can resummon and upgrade in moments. That's important if it's something like Positron, or if I'm in the middle of a ship raid and just got rezzed.

What settings are you at that you drop a pet every spawn?