so, have the recent changes made your MM trials better?

I took my bots/traps on an iTrial once. I was bored out of my mind, felt useless and kept dying. In Incarnates Ascend the MM archetype got a few fixes to make their iTrial experience better.
Supremacy makes hench con at our level.
Upgrades cost half the end
Being an AT capable of buffing some also can take advantage of the new aoe shields change.

So my question is, have these 3 things made any difference in your enjoyment of iTrials on your MMs?

Took my bots/storm MM on a Keyes run today. My thoughts are..

I pretty much gave up even bothering with my pets. Between healing myself, healing team mates, and debuffing mobs, I found it easier to just forget them. The damage from teh pulse seemed to change a lot at random...sometimes in BG mode I would take next to no damage and my pets wouldnt be touched, then another time, still in BG, they all just...died.

I view keyes as still being very MM unfriendly. Pretty much reduced to using your secondary to help out. Over the whole trial..I enjoyed a single bit..just one. In the bunkers, I had all my pets out and was shredding the mobs so people could duck in and grab temps to rush up to the terminals. THAT was fun..I felt useful. The rest of the time..not so much.

Haven't done baf or lam yet since the changes however...given that the avs on baf cna pretty much one shot anything short of a brute/tank who is at lvl 53, I dont think pets suddenly being 53 will help much..melee pets are still going to get wiped out easier than ranged.

Also on lam, my biggest issue is that teh collection phase basically forces a team to zoom along. Sure, I guess I could summon all my pets and solo a crate in one area while the rest of my team ran together..but I think thats pretty counter to the league idea. And again, having pets at lvl 53, wont really help when your sprinting through the base with the team.

Incarnate Trials reduce MM Primaries to Second Class Citizen status (ie. not even hero or villain!). Pretty much like what the Apex TF does. All you're left with is your Secondary ... which if it's Trick Arrow, the "trick" is on you.

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

I have had the complete OPPOSITE experience of what you guys are describing... I have a decked out demon/thermal and he is a beast. Most times, I NEVER have to resummon, save for the exceptional T1 pet here and there. One thing I found to be most helpful was to create a macro for "petcom_all goto" which forces them to go to a certain location. This is how I can keep them near me and my heals/buffs, and keeps them out of melee range. I have T4 barrier, so this may a huge help for my pets, but all in all, I deal a **** ton of damage with my debuffs and I end up getting Rares/VR all the time. Again, demons are mostly ranged, so the other melee-based pets may have a harder time.

As for the LAM, during the middle section where you're blowing through and grabbing the Nades and Acids, just unsummon your pets and follow along to buff/heal/debuff. I never die during this section... but [vengeance] may help is that regard

Concerning the Keyes Trial, I LOVE THIS one on a MM. In BG mode, the antimatter pulse does at the most like 50 damage to me. My biggest worry was keeping AM's aggro off of me. His aggro will knock you flat on your face before you can type, "help."

Hope this was helpful!

Keyes is great in terms of how BG protects you from pulses, awful in terms of how often AM may aggro on your pets causing them to fight back causing the pulse dmg to increase in magnitude for everyone else(???) My first pug keyes was a success but I would never want to do it again.

The other trials were doable once you got all the lvl shifts so this con at your lvl system is a nice change of pace

I do fine on Lam and Baf but I suffer on Keyes.

keyes trial is annoying for the massive dmg pulse (which is good for mm cause it doesnt hit pets, bad for the mm though lol)

BAF is now a heckuva lot easier to do with a mm, the pets dont get 1 shot as much fighting the AVs, lambda is still kind of rough because of the speed/stealthing of the sabotage phase

It's kinda hard to tell since my new lvl 50 Ninja/FF hasn't got any level shift yet. I have noticed that the Group AoE buffs benefit my pets a lot because nobody would single buff with your pets fire shields or cold shields but now my pets can benefit from them, which makes a big difference in their survival.

I've done 3 BAFs so far and in each one I got Common reward. Weird. When I did BAF with my other toons, I had problem getting Common ones. It was always either Rare or Uncommon.

BAF: Fine. Really like the new AoE buff. Even my non-alpha Zombie/Dark was enjoying it and making some good contribution.

Lamb: Fine, until the running around stage. Pets still hopelessly lost and trailing way too far behind out of sight out of Supremacy range, agro-ing unnecessarily to have any really use in them.

Keyes: Haven't taken my MMs to there yet. But I can already see the problem: again, pets trailing too far, or out of LoS, and agro-ing unnecessarily.

I did 3 runs of BAF last night and the new group buff certainly helps a lot when people gather in the same area. In fact, in one of the runs, none of my pet even died once, which is totally shocking because before the group buff, I had to resummon and reupgrade all the time.

My pets benefit other people's thermal shields and cold shields.

I haven't done Lam with any of my MM but I can see how that part can be difficult. The problem is that you don't always have to skip everything. People pretty much know the location of the crates so it won't take that much time to kill a group or two that are in the way. I sometimes take out a crate and the explosion takes out 50% of the surrounding mobs and I'll try to finish them off rather than letting them roam around. You can get exp too by killing them so I don't see why we have to skip them.

Yes. It makes a huge difference, both in your damage output, the need to summon pets, and how often you run out of end.

Great changes all in all.

I did a Keyes Trial on my +3 bots/traps last night. It went quite well for me once I started ignoring conventional wisdom on how it should be done:


1) Leave your pets in bodyguard mode. With the 75% pseudo-resistance from having six pets out, you can ignore the pulse damage.
2) As soon as possible, break off from the team. At a level shift of +3, I could solo groups of enemies just fine, and being away from the group means Anti-Matter doesn't aggro on me.
3) When you get a temporary power, pass it on to someone else. Don't bother trying to get your pets up the ramps.
4) During the third phase (reactor "Infinity"), pick a bunker and fort up there. Every minute or so, the game will give you a fresh set of targets, and they're so tightly packed that Incindiary Swarm Missiles will shred them in no time flat.
5) The final phase is a straightforward AV fight. I don't know how BG mode and Disintegration interact, but Obliteration Beam and Entanglement are merely minor nuisances.

Just did Keyes on my Demons/Thermal.

With BG mode on, the pulse has next to no effect on me. So I ended up heal others. The problem began when moving up the reactors: the pets just could not keep up. They were hopelessly silly that they just could not go around the skywalk without falling back to the ground; and then got agro-ed and killed. So to be effective (as in being able to use the pets without constantly losing them), an MM had to be confined to the ground floor. Otherwise, it would just be a case of keep summoning or just using the secondary powers most of the time (could be quite boring for /FF).

That is after all a pathing problem with the AI...

All other stages are fine. Occasionally the pets were trailing way too far because of the lag.

So from my experience of the 3 trials, MMs are best suited for stationary fight and support. Once the team starts moving, the offensive efficiency of an MM falls rapidly.

I haven't done Keyes yet because I don't feel like doing Keyes or Lam without even one level shift, but after reading the posts here, I wonder if MMs are better off using Group Flight? I don't know the map but if the pets have trouble "going upward", maybe they get rid of +acc for a reason to encourage Group Flight users?

Is Group Flight going to be somewhat useful in Keyes?

Like I said, I have no idea about Keyes but I just find it interesting that they improve Group Flight all of sudden.

Some friends threw together a baf yesterday so I thought I'd give it a try. The good news: my mm didn't die and my pets lived mostly. The bad news: I was bored out of my mind. I guess MMs no longer appeal to me. I guess I already sort of knew that but actually experiencing it makes me sad. My MM was my first toon, first 50 etc. A shame as I no longer enjoy playing him.

Just did a successful Keyes run with 2 MMs in the league. There were 3 reactors, none of the pets make it to the second level of each of them. They just could not follow. I saw a few made it to the first level on reactor 1. That was it. The remaining 2, those MMs were petless MMs once the ground level objectives were completed.

The reason I noticed that was because one of them were a /therm and I needed his heal. For most of the trail before the final stage, he was a petless MM using only his secondary power.

The recent changes do make the pets more survivable and MMs' lifes a lot better. But ultimately the major problem with MM is the pet AI. No amount of survivability can change that if the pets are just not there by the MM's side.

My only problem with Keyes (Bot/Force) is Antimatter deciding to ruin my pets randomly.
Lambda I still feel pretty useless for on the warehouse/lab and Marauder phases, however. Pets just aren't conductive to running around like headless chickens with a bunch of loose enemies agroing everywhere.

I24 Proc Chance = (Enhanced Recharge + Activation Time) * (Current PPM * 1.25) / 60*(1 + .75*(.15*Radius - 0.011*Radius*(360-Arc)/30))
Single Target Radius = 0. AoE Non-Cone Arc = 360.

Never took an MM on a trial prior to the recent changes, so don't know how bad it was...

Since changes, I'm Incarnatin' my Thugs/Traps MM.

BAF: no problems: felt useful during all phases; just have to insure your pets aren't attacking AVs until they reach the league designated points. Easy.

Lambda: felt useful except sabotage phase, like every other MM. I ran around with group and tried to help with my piddly personal attacks, but mainly just hoped FFG would catch up and offer some protection.

Keyes: Been on 3 (all successful). Have no major troubles getting pets up ramps, etc. My key to having pets not attack Anti-Monitor is to use an Attack/Passive Macro. Basically, I pick a Target, use macro, Pets attack Target only. Once target is defeated, they instantly enter Follow/Passive mode. I then pick next target, rinse and repeat. I can fight Adds with AV right in the mix without worrying my pets will snag him. The Pulses never really seem to nail me that hard, even though I was almost never in bodyguard mode except at the end. Med Pools helps with what damage I get...

My biggest problem in the trials is that aggravating 'Pets-Ignore-You' bug. They'll just stand in one spot and not follow you or do anything else. If the bus is heavily in effect, dismissing and resummoning doesn't help. I know this bug isn't confined to trials only - that it can show up elsewhere, esp. when zoning, but it seems to manifest more in the trials for me. In fact, it's only trials for me lately *shrug*

/macro Kill releasepets

When they are bugged, you have to use the releasepets command and resummon. The dismiss command doesn't do anything in that instance.

What I've noticed, is that the more you drag the same pets around from zones to missions to trials without resummoning, the more chance they have at being bugged. Since I leveled my MM before the pets follow you like that, I kill mine after every mission with the macro and resummon them. No bugs that way.