General Observations Re: Itrials

So I've played various MM's through the incarnate content plenty now and I've got a solid grip on them. Here are some observations regarding these and MM's.

BAF is actually easy as pie. Obviously the mobs are tougher, but aside from that there are no real challenges specific to an MM here. Aside from obvious things like, don't try and solo Siege with just brawl, etc. Pets are good at getting the escaping resistance guys. Your pets sometimes get snipped by the tower lasers, but well, better them than you or a real team member honestly.

Lambda I find to be a completely miserable experience. Rolling the guys on the perimeter is easy enough. You won't be able to do much to the turrets, they'll be dead by the time your pets show up and they won't do much to them anyway. The part where you split up to get the grenades is utter trash. The team will move ahead far too fast for you to bring pets. The enemies are tough enough, and richly equipped with AoE's you won't have a good time soloing them until you've gained some level shifts. Once outside its a bit of a mess but not as bad ultimately. Lots of mobs with lots of AoE's, but at least your near the team. Actually fighting Marauder himself is fine.

Lambda feels designed to irritate MM's really, it makes mobility demands on you that your pets can't do. It sucks. You just end up suffering through it rather than really playing it.

I can categorically state that as a Ninja/Trick/Soul Mastermind (yes, I'm a glutton for punishment) that on both BAF and Lambda, and almost certainly Keyes Island ... the only way I can play these Trials is as a PETLESS Mastermind.

In BAF, my Ninjas are beyond disposable. Any AoE at all slaughters them wholesale, rather than retail. Against Warworks, my Ninjas are One Shot What-was-that? They don't even act as speedbumps during the Nightstar and Seige phases. I'm basically reduced to being a Trick Arrow Artist, who serves no purpose other than to Debuff things (and hope I don't get any aggro). It's ridiculous.

In Lambda, my Ninjas are not only beyond disposable, they're beyond useless. During the outdoor phase, Praetorian Mez and AoEs just mop the floor with Ninjas, without even noticing they were even there. During the grenade/acid gathering phase, all my Ninjas are good for is drawing unwanted aggro and dragging entire TRAINS of hostiles throughout the map to very BAD effect. During the Marauder phase, all it takes is one artillery bombing and my Ninjas *MUST* COMMIT SUICIDE by charging Marauder and dying horribly (en masse) in one hit. I'm basically reduced to being a Trick Arrow Artist, who serves no purpose other than to Debuff things (and hope I don't get any aggro). It's ridiculous.

I haven't hopped onto the Test Server to check out Keyes Island ... but from everything I've read and heard, it's going to be even *MORE* of a "Masterminds Don't Belong Here, GO AWAY!" Trial than the two we've already got. If anything, I'd like Black Scorpion to come to this forum AND EXPLAIN how the design of the Keyes Island Trial will *NOT* unfairly penalize Masterminds for existing.

It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...

Yeah, it does seem some pets are better at surviving the trials then others.

I personally play nothing but Robotics. I've noticed on my Robotics/Dark I don't have any trouble at all during BAF. I do however, have only a little bit of trouble during Lambda, at of course, the splitting part.

It does seem that if you're a Mastermind, it's better to be on the Acids team, seems to work out much better for them. But even during that phase, I just spike each container and move to the next, it's really the best thing you can do. During that phase it's definitely good to have barrier, will keep you and your pets alive during those spikes.

The only thing I can suggest for Lambda if you're a Mastermind, is to be on the Acids team. Also, if you don't have any of your Incarnate abilities, I would recommend doing BAF until you get your first 2 abilities (Judgement and Lore), they don't need to be Very Rares, but just having them will definitely help.

I tend to pretty much only sign up for BAFs with my MMs. If for some reason it swaps to a Lambda I tend to switch toons as, yeah, the acid/grenades part sucks, even with all tier 3 incarnate powers.

Ever since the introduction of Apex and Tin Mage tfs, people often complain about how hard it is for a MM to play in a team. In fact, since people start doing speed run tfs, say ITF and LG, MMs are always having hard time trying to catch up with the rest of the non-MM teammates, who have already been contributing a lot to the mission. In a fast-tempo rapid moving team, while other ATs can still contribute according to their inherent role, the usefulness MM is just below suboptimal.

Please don't get me wrong, I love MM and I have a lot of them. I think it is a very unique AT amongst other MMOs. I am still playing them regularly. The crux of the problems, and others have brought up the topic recently, are the pets' moment and survivability. I really want to keep my pets with me within 15-20 feet all the time; 30ft if I am generous. But those pets are just all over the place. The faster the MM moves, the more chaotic the pets become. So often they end up out of buff range and in harm's way. With their low defence/resistance, particularly the tier one pets, they are causing a lot of headache where in some circumstances it is just not enjoyable to play a MM any more.

Group Fly and Team Teleport are not particularly helpful either. I met one MM with Group Fly recently and he switched it on at the mission door while waiting. I was on a defender at that time. I got caught within the vast aura and could only move verrrrry sloooowly. I almost got killed by the nearby mobs because no way I could run away from them. He got told off almost as soon as he switch the power on.

I have seen on some hugely popular channels actively excluding MM from certain TFs/trials. It is not very often but it does happen from time to time, which ought not to be really. Why a perfectly good and unique AT has to come to this... low...

ATs are getting revamp one-by-one through out the years. Dom's Domination; Defender's Vigilance; HEATs; Stalker's Hide; Brute's Fury (I can't remember the chronological order). I suppose it is MM's turn now. It is, indeed.

Agree with this...I have played two MMs through the trials, and a third through apex/tin mage only.
On the normal incarnate tfs, if the team is going fast..and most are, my zombies are basically dead before I can even think about healing them. Dont even get me started on the Director 11 fight...or the sewer part of Apex.
I know that teams 'could' go slow, but why should they have to slow down for one member? Hell, I wont slow down for any single person on the team if the rest can, and want to go fast.
As people said..it just seems like a poor design, where MMs are concerned. Not that I really know how they could make more MM friendly.
For the trials..bafs are great for my 2 mms, especially door fighting. Lams...same as the others here. I dont even bother with pets during collecting..just used my secondary (dark and storm). I have never gotten the thread table..on either toon.

On thing they could try.... all of teh lore pets have a +50% aoe def bonus..I think something like this would be a huge help for MMs on the trails. Maybe make it a lower bonus, but something. Aoes just shred most pets way to fast, especially melee dependent ones. Even some kind of hp buff for lower tier pets.

BAF is straight forward not much issues there.

Lam can be a pain depending on the secondary you have running. Traps, Dark, Trick Arrow I can see being useful during the canister/crate phase. For me running during that phase is not much of an issue because of being capped without pets. So having a stealth proc in super speed affords me the ability to run in and drop a poison trap followed FFG and the rest. Of course I usually just follow along with my other pet which is the guy playing the Tank or Brute and make his job easier by dropping down my trap toys.

Once you get the 2 bumps in levels it makes everything much easier though. Purples are reds and reds are orange. Instead of everything being Purple and red cons.

Has anyone tried an all or mostly MM Lambda with level shifts / ipowers? I can see (barring nastier than usual lag) such a league burning through the warehouse / training facility phase killing everything in and out of sight. A minute of time is added with each crate destroyed by both teams, so it's rather like safeguard mishes in the sense that you can make it last as long as you want--within reason and in theory because there are what? 20 crates? and as long as both teams are moving and destroying the crates, both teams will get more time. I guess 10 additional mins are theoretically possible?

I haven't (and won't) run an MM on Lambda because of the problems mentioned here and elsewhere on the boards, but I would be game for trying something like this (though mine wouldn't have level shifts, so . . . ).

I can seen BAF being "ok" for MMs since there's not much "mobility" issue.

Lamba..oh yeah, every time we have MMs on the team, they just die. I don't understand why they even bother summoning the pets.


I've said it before, the new content has made me really dislike playing MMs...like Apex (blue flame) and Barracuda SF.

I want to like my summoner class but the pets just die so quick. And I only play Merc, Ninja and Necro.

It's no longer about how you control your pets. It's more like "why bother controlling" them if they just die in 2s? It's not my fault that my pets just want to "run in" and an AV kills them in one hit. There is no "sit" command so they stop running in.

Yeah this whole thing lately has been really bad. I think its fairly obvious none of the Devs actually play MM's. Or even play in a team with MM's in them. I think part of the problem is that MM's are generally such strong soloers that the Devs feel they are powerful enough as it is, but fail to take into account the reality of group dynamics and how people ACTUALLY play in teams. ie, No one clears anymore.

Then you have outlier combinations like Bots/Traps that are generally extremely strong against just about any content really, but still fail in teaming situations. I get the impression that they are like, "Oh well, this Bots/Traps guy can easily solo the statesman so that archetype is still fine." Ok fine, but without my pets I'm a weak version of a corrupter, and on a team, especially a TF, I'm obliged to not bother with the pets -- and this is still assuming they are not acting buggy (ie, running off to train every mob on the map shouting "Following you!" as they go).

Not sure how to fix it, but the content won't change so the entire archetype has to instead.

You all are going about Lamda the wrong way, welcome to our good friend the Inspiration tray. Nom Nom Nom RAGGH must be your battle cry in Lamda during the grenade phase where you ignore your pets entirely then re-summon them and order-attack them to each crate in series. If you have any kind of decent recharge you should face plant no more than once during that phase.

Five oranges (Plus your shield) and three purples to five (Assuming you have ANY kind of +defense in your build) is sufficient to soft cap you with the enemies in there, or at least leave you alive long enough to smash the crates. The turrets yes your going to do nothing to but you can still contribute to the rest of the TF. Yes you have to eat a full breakfast of inspirations every sixty seconds and that should not be required for trials. But your other option is doing nothing much. Use your minions like the disposables faceless hordes they are.

There are builds that let you breeze through an Lamda, that build is called Robotics/Traps or Robotics/Force. For the rest of us just blitz it, it is the hardest content (Aside from the damn shadow shard) in the game and with a Tier 3 Barrier it's quite possible to stay in Melee with Maurader, just wait for his warning to go off, count to 4 then fire off your barrier, the attack should arrive 2-3 seconds later and you and your pets will be at 90% to everything and the attack should miss them all, and if it does hit you hey one-shot rule back off and eat your inspirations and get back in there.

If you did not take Barrier as a MM, well just get used to re summoning them.

I've taken bots/dark & mercs/storm through the trial system (T2 judge, T3 all the rest). BAF is, as you said, easy.

Lambda just takes more work. For the turret phase, keep pets in BG & focus on your secondary. Sometimes they will show up and do damage or eat some damage for you or something friendly like that. I generally leave pets in BG the entire time for a Lambda. The entire time. Giving them an attack command frequently gets you killed as aggro adds up and your shared HP pool goes away.

It was a bit of a learning curve on the first one (bots/dark), but by the time I got to the second one, I rarely died on the Lamda. And by rarely, I mean that even on a 50+0 merc/storm, I usually finished the TF without dying once. Sometimes I would die 3-4 times, but even then I'd only hit the hospital once. Depends on the team makeup - and luck, depending on where pets get stuck in the map/break LOS/BG.

On pretty much every single run, people blitz the glowy phase. I was frequently the first one to each glowy. Pets do not cause unmanageable trains, no more than anyone else.

*It helps to get invis via SS+Stealth of some sort.
*Also, let someone else initiate the attacks on the glowies because you are FRAGILE.
*USE INSPS. They are not just there for looks. If you have to hosp, stock up on purple/oranges/greens/BFs and a couple wakies. If I do die, I am usually able to wakie->BF->RUN while the rest of the team has aggro.

Yes, MMs do have it harder on the Lamda than the other ats I have tried (I've taken everything through the trials except Stalkers & Khelds), but it's not unsurmountable. I do think it renders the pets *mostly* useless for damage - I use them basically for HP sacks (I do not buff them in the glowy phase) and would like to see something done about their survival BUT don't let that dissuade you from doing Lambdas.

I admit that I have yet to try it with melee pets (not that the ranged pets don't just rush in and suicide all the time too....), but I plan on doing that before too long. I'm just having a hard time finding one I like enough at the moment.

I managed to do decently on the Lambda collection phase by (1) having inviso with SS plus the stealth IO, and (2) putting the pets in passive as soon as a crate went down and running along with whoever was taking point. The pets come back out of passive and into defensive/BG again after someone has smashed into the next objective, distracting some of the nearby spawn. Not all would make it to the next glowie every time, but if some of the rest of the team was running along it would keep all the spawns in between from focusing just on my pets. Conversely, if a pet gets shot instead of one of my teammates, I'd consider that overall a good thing because having a teammate die probably does count against overall league "success" in some way, if only by slowing it down, I'm sure a dead pet doesn't.

I have not had a chance to try it yet, but I know at one time when you issued a BG mode command, it was several seconds till the pets would fire on anyone. I think it was to prevent balance issues, whereby they would only ever be out of BG for fractions of a second while firing with keybinds. I wonder if spamming BG mode commands repeatedly while traveling around would keep them from shooting mobs and aggroing them, but preserve your shared BG damage with them.

So MMs are going to be getting a major buff in Incanrate trials with I20.5:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Positron There is a legitimate concern over the USEFULNESS of MM pets in Incarnate Trials (where they start running up against the "purple patch"). We are going to attempt to remedy this in the next Keyes patch. Look for this patch note: -Supremacy will now grant 2 Incarnate Shifts to Minion Pets and 1 Incarnate Shift to Lieutenant Pets while participating in an Incarnate Trial. This means that Minion pets will be level 48+2 and Lieutenant Pets will be level 49+1. These Shifts will stack with any granted by Incarnate Abilities.

Personally I think this will help a lot with the problems melee sets are having. Since all of your pets will be your adjusted level for the purposes of the purple patch the damage they take will be substantially reduced which should make keeping them alive considerably easier. The fact that they'll do more damage is just icing on the cake.

I'm not having trouble with my MM on Lambda or Keyes. Then again, I don't mind constant resummoning as needed.

Barrier 120 sec is your friend I was considering trying the +regen rebirth but decided against it the pets just don't have enough hp to make the regen worth it

Great news indeed! Thanks for listening to us, Positron!

May I add to that a suggestion to reduce the auto-summon range from 100ft' to 30ft', or thereabouts? It does help the MM to keep the major part of his offensive powers close to himself instead of spreading thin all over. Also remove the summoning animation when the pets are auto-summoned (like a parcel dropping from the sky as in robots). Better if they suddenly appear from nowhere naturally as though there were there all along - like they just come out of a lift in a multi-levels indoor map.

Something there is another thing I have said elsewhere before: modify the current goto and stay commands into forced-goto and forced-stay commands where the pets will be rooted at a location and will not be moving away at all. Currently, no matter what, the pets still run about whenever pleases them, which can be a bit annoying. Add a 10000mag of Immo to both GoTo and Stay commands should do nicely. With the new incarnate level shift, I am hoping the pets are going to last a bit longer at melee range. But still, this is going to be useful to keep ranged pets and lower tier pets out of harm's way and within heal/buff range.

I suppose all these - if implemented - should cover most of the serious shortcomings of the pets mobility and survivablility.


(... help me to put it in perspective: does a 48+2 pet the same as a regular 50 character without any incarnate slot? Or perhaps what does a 48+2 pet most similar to? A defender? In terms of HP, accuracy and damage?)

Ah yeah, ok. It looks like the Devs decided to give us some serious love

Oooh, maybe I'll have to stop saying they hate us now