Mastermind personal attacks

Considering that all Masterminds only have three attacks, would it be feasible to bump up the damage on all of them? As it stands, it's almost always a good idea to drop the personal attacks since many people consider them worthless.

Let's compare them all anyway as well:

Demon Summoning

• Corruption - Range, 80ft, Fire/DoT Toxic, -Res, 37.93
• Lash - Melee, 20ft, Fire/DoT Toxic, -Res, Knockdown, 53.1
• Crack Whip - Range Cone, 30ft, Fire/DoT Toxic, -Res, Knockdown, 50.86

Mercenaries

• Burst - Range, 90ft, Lethal, -Def, 33.03
• Slug - Range, 100ft, Lethal, Knockback, 50.16
• M30 Grenade - Range AoE, 80ft, Lethal/Smash, Knockback, 27.53

Necromancy

• Dark Blast - Range, 80ft, Negative, -ToHit, 30.59
• Gloom - Range, 80ft, Negative, -ToHit, 53.83
• Life Drain - Range, 60ft, Negative, -ToHit, +HP, 30.59

Ninjas

• Snap Shot - Range, 80ft, Lethal, 20.8
• Aimed Shot - Range, 80ft, Lethal, 30.59
• Fistful of Arrows - Range Cone, 50ft, Lethal, 27.83

Robotics

• Pulse Rifle Blast - Range, 80ft, Energy/Smash, 30.59
• Pulse Rifle Burst - Range, 80ft, Energy/Smash, Knockback, 50.16
• Photon Grenade - Range AoE, 80ft, Energy/Smash, Disorient, 27.53

Thugs

• Pistols - Range, 80ft, Lethal, 30.59
• Dual Wield - Range, 80ft, Lethal, Knockback, 40.37
• Empty Clips - Range Cone, 40ft, Lethal, Knockback, 24.16

Well ugh. Look at the tiny damage. No wonder everyone always tells me never to pick personal attacks. Some, like Ninjas, do especially bad. Even if they have a faster animate time, there's no secondary effect, and they do worse damage than the other sets. Demon Summoning has -Res allowing it to do a bit more damage with repeated hits, but even so.

Now granted, some have secondary effects, which can always hit with each attack (Demon Summoning's -resistance), while some have a chance to apply their effect (Thugs knockback, for example). But it's not always reliable except for the former set.

With that in might, bumping up the damage to all the attacks, not to ridiculous levels, but enough so that it's worth picking them up. Remember, they only get three attacks!

Oh, side note - Thugs' Empty Clips needs their damage to be divided into four attacks, since the guns are being fired twice from each gun. Dual Wield's damage is divided into two, so Empty Clips really should be four attacks rather than the four bullets somehow being compressed into a single attack. :3

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Ideon's Paragonwiki page
Member of Paragon/Rogue Knights
Arc: 60092 - Supa Rumble in the Park
"Keep living the dream, and never let any jerk tell you what to do."
-- High-Roller

It would be nice but it won't happen. The devs classed our team role as similar to tanks and balanced our dps accordingly. I use 1 st attack quite a lot in the early levels as a taunt and to supplement my overall damage. Of course I don't use it that much after 32.

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not going to happen, but for much more basic reasons. The developers have expressed the viewpoint in the past that:

• They are comfortable with not all archtypes being equally playable to all subscribers.
• They are comfortable with some archtypes being distinctly weaker in some stats than others.
• They are comfortable with players dropping powers
• that Mastermind personal attacks were deliberately weaker as the focus of the class was on the pets, not the player. Hence the increased control given to players over what the pets actually did.

Then there are other problems. For starters:

• Mastermind's secondary is buff / debuff.
• Aside from Force Field every other Mastermind set gets a -resistance power
• all but Dark Miasma and Force Field get a -defense power.

There are other factors too, like the Supremacy inherent that is a buff to pets, and the bodyguard mode, and so on and so forth. Basically the developers have put a lot of work into making Mastermind's an archtype that focus's on their pets and buffs / debuffs... not an archtype that focus's on their own personal attacks.

Given this development history, and the purpose of the class, and the fact that the developers have decreased Mastermind Damage on at least one occasion, the chances of selling the developers on a damage increase are... well... pretty low.

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It's annoying the personal attacks cost so much end, even if the damage never got changed. Alpha is ok with the cardiac slot now, and he'll upgrade some more when the sencond half of the slot comes out and I get him the Very Rare Damage one.
But the end cost is pretty lousy, all things said.

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Basically, the MM personal attacks are like the first three attacks you get for a Blaster or Defender. Then, for the rest of the attacks, you get henchmen that do those. So your nukes and burst damage attacks are being done by your henchmen. You're the foundation doing the little constant low damage attacks all the time.

It's possible that the devs could do to the personal attacks what they did with Blaster Melee attacks. Increase the damage, and then increase the recharge and End cost to compensate. In other words, turn the basic attacks into burst attacks. Unfortunately, this might result in Masterminds doing too much damage. A Mastermind's problem is that he can't fill out an attack chain with only three attacks, but give him a few Temp Powers, and some global recharge, and that changes. Add some burst attacks, and he's doing nearly the damage of a Defender.

Consider that if the Mastermind is doing exactly the same damage as all of his henchmen put together, either a) the Mastermind and his henchmen together are still doing only as much damage as another AT, meaning the pets are REALLY weak (this is where Controllers are) or b) the Mastermind + pets end up doing twice as much damage as any other AT in the game. That's really not going to work.

A Mastermind really CAN'T do more than about 25% of his overall damage. That's innate to the concept of an AT which does most of his damage with pets. The unfortunate thing is that when you spread that 25% across three attacks, you end up with very individually weak attacks. I think perhaps a better solution would be to simply lower the End cost, so the attacks are worth using, or to give the MM some sort of situational boost, like more damage as his henchmen start dying.

I've also said I'll like to see MMs be able to taunt with their attacks by slotting Taunt in them. It may be difficult to do this, though, while retaining the ability to have no Taunt by not slotting. (For instance, there may have to be a positive Taunt mag that can be slotted, and then a negative Taunt mag that is constant. That may very well be outside the limits of how status magnitude works )

You also CAN compensate for a Mastermind's lower damage mod by using Temp Powers, Pool Melee attacks, and slotting IOs and procs. (Thanks to Bodyguard, there should never be any problem with an MM using melee attacks) MM personal damage is NOT as low as most people believe it to be. The problem is not the damage, it is the investment required in order to get that damage, and that you must often sacrifice more efficient pet abilities in order to get it.

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Looking at those attack figures Crack Whip is standing out as an aberration. It's damage is nearly twice that of the other AOEs.

I'd support the other Tier 3 attacks getting a buff up to around it's level alright, but nothing more.

However adding more/higher debuff effects to the non-Demon attacks might be worthwhile too.

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Yeah, I'm able to chug along perfectly well using vet power attacks, which I suppose is a gift horse. Even so, I'd rather use my Thugs MM's pistol attacks to supplement my minions instead of Sands of Mu, Black Wand etc, as Pistols are more thematic. But Vet Attacks hit much harder and cost zero slots - it's a no brainer which to use. As I'm approaching 50 I'm getting two of the attacks anyway to slot purples in but I haven't needed them in forever.

I'm have no problem with MM attacks being weaker, but I shouldn't feel like I'm shorthanding myself for picking them at all

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Ideon's Paragonwiki page
Member of Paragon/Rogue Knights
Arc: 60092 - Supa Rumble in the Park
"Keep living the dream, and never let any jerk tell you what to do."
-- High-Roller

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Mmm...

I find this an interesting proposal and not with out merit.

Going against it, was that an MMs damage is in my opinion originally envisioned to be done thru their pets, thus the Master really did not need powerful personal attacks.

Also going against it are the secondary power sets. Granted some have no damage properties such as pain for instance and the self buffs from it are nothing to get excited about. But you can go the dark side as a secondary and it does provide some reasonable firepower and very good holds.

So one may ask, why is there a need for more powerful personal attacks?

From the evolution of the various new TFs and missions, the role of pets and their survivability is highly questionable. Also considering that the controlling of them is not very effective. I often tell my pets attack this guy, he is beating the day-lights out of me, and some will come and others will just go wondering around. It seems pets do not understand the command "stay" or at least they stay while you are watching them, but as soon as you move away or attack, they abandon their position. In the case of Romulus, it would be great if I could tell my pets, please stay here, outside of the healing nicti range, and range attack Rommie, but we know that will never happen. Go to Kahn, and Reichman quikly PBAOEs all your pets to nothingness since they will not range fight. Apex, another pointless situation for pets. Frankly when I go to many of the new content the use of my pets is totally counter-productive to the team, so as I result I don't summon them at all, and try to support the team the best I can with the little I got.

So from the situation to being in a team, doing new content, and pets being mostly a pest to the team than a benefit; it does make great sense that a Master Mind's own personal powers really need to be upgraded to fit the new evolving role of the Master Mind in a team during new content enterprises.

Hugs

Stormy

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I don't want mastermind attacks to do more damage, but I do believe they need something to make them worthwhile picks.


What I would love to see is the attacks given a gauntlet-like taunt effect.

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I would love to see not necessarily a change in damage, but a change in secondary effect (or potency of).

The attacks in Demon Summoning, for example, are useful in that they always apply -res for both your pets and teammates, making them useful debuffing tools. Same with Necromancy.

But then you get Robotics' attacks. The first does nothing aside from its damage, the second has a chance of knockback, the AoE has a small chance to do a piddle stun. What use is that? What's worse is that this set is the only opportunity to use the Pulse Rifle in the entire game, and it's not worth it at all.

There's no way that the devs intended these powers to be completely overlooked, why even have those three attack powers if that's the case? My suggestions:
1. Add desirable secondary effects to every personal attack that happen every time the attack hits. For example, -regen for the two single target Pulse Rifle attacks, and then a knockdown for Photon Grenade with the same chance to stun.
2. If there is no desirable secondary effect to add, raise the damage or lower the endurance cost.
3. Add a mini-vengeance effect for pets that applies only to the MM in question. If your Frost Demonling dies, you're granted with +15% damage and +5% to-hit buff for about 10 seconds OR until you summon another one. If your Demon Prince dies, raise that to +45% damage and +15% to-hit buff. In this capacity it's possible for the Mastermind to utilize his personal attack powers in dire situations, but not enough to make blasting his number one priority.

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