Masterminds in general

Hi fellas.

First let me say, that Masterminds are my favorite class, in any game anywhere.

But I have to say, doesn't it seem like it flew off in a direction that the devs totally didn't anticipate?

For example. The idea is that the minions do the fighting and such while you provide leadership, direction and coordination.... says the description anyway

In practice, you taunt/fight while your minions form of a clumsy cloud of confusion around you. You end up taking the damage for your poncy minions...

They give you ranged attacks, but most of your powers require you to be in the middle of melee. Only demon summoning sort of gave in and gave you semi-melee attacks.


Anyway I love my MM's, but the class really makes no sense at all. :P Although it conceptually kinda works if your a blueside MM ironically -- that way taking the hits for your minions actually makes sense in a way.

Anything ranged with /Traps fits the original MM description. Other than that, I see your point.

/Trick Arrow ..and you never need to get into a melee, unless you want to, i find it even better than dark at setting up the mobs for your pets.

I think the issue has to do with how you look at bodyguard mode, Lewisite.

I look at Bodyguard mode as your henchmen putting themselves in the line of fire for you. You are the primary target of your foes, which only makes sense as you are the evil genius, right? In bodyguard mode, as your opponents attack you, your henchmen protect you by taking bullets, shielding you from the flamethrower, and so on. But since the game can't make a minion jump in front of that lightning strike and take all the damage, it just averages out the damage across all your minions. And as your henchmen aren't perfect, (And what henchmen could equal your pure genius? How dare they consider themselves your equal?! Heads will roll!) some of that damage still gets through to you.

While in practice this is tankerminding with you being much sturdier than your pets, in concept it is you standing behind the protective shield of your minions as they insure your survival and bring pain to those who would dare lay a hand on you. They will pay!!!

Ahem.

If they fixed the pet AI it would go a long way to helping keeping within the scope of what they wanted or expected to do with Masterminds.

If you could actually rely on telling your range pets to STAY ( True stay, meaning not moving at all ) or chase a limited distance ( Move to get into range again ) and then return if you get too far.

The AI would have to be revamped to add in radio buttons and maybe a slider for distance. So you could differentiate what you wanted each pet to do.

I personally do not want my pets to chase the mobs to the end of the map. I would love to put a leash on my pets to say after X amount of feet come back to your original positions.

I think if they took the time to make some real finite controls that would put us on the way of true masterminding. Your pets doing what you want them to do.

Otherwise in many senses controller type pets are sometimes much more superior to mastermind pets. I know I have been in the situation of thinking if I try to kill that Singularity pet the NPC Warden is gonna hurt me bad. If I keep trying to kill that Warden that pet is gonna keep knocking me all over the place.

Yes less sturdy maybe but I can resummon and for less endurance and on top I have a bunch of other attacks I can use. I don't have all those choices with my mastermind. I know on my Dark set, Dark Servant is out longer then it takes to recharge.

Right now we have Stay which does not work.
Follow which does not work unless you or the pets does not have aggro.
Attack which sort of works, I know there are times my pets just stop attacking and I have to re-initiate the attack command.
Goto sort of works as long as you or pets do not have aggro.

Basically the commands work really, really well when your not fighting. But get into a battle and your fighting 2 fights. The NPC mobs and your control over your pets. The fire and forget pet model sometimes really does have some good qualities sometime.

If stay meant stay, I would die a happy man.

Some of the things that IMHO should be fixed first before we go wholesale slaughter on Pet sets and other MM issues:

1) Stay means STAY as others have said.

2) All pets should be on a 60' leash as a default. This is the range for Supremacy and most pets cannot survive outside of it for long. Pets should never move outside this range of their own volition. If the MM orders them or outside forces (like KB) move them then then that's fine.

3) All pets should have a simple If-Then command string added to their AI that allows them to fire their ranged attacks first and THEN close to melee. Pets never designed to be in melee should have NO melee attacks except Brawl and should always fire other ready attacks first.

4) Now that pets zone with us I'd almost rather go back to the old summon/upgrade system. A MM could summon and upgrade once and then not worry about it mission after mission, simply replacing losses as needed. However the auto-upgrade on summoned pets does seem to be a much more straightforward solution.