MM/Pet friendly powerpool

Most of the new Incarnate content requires a level maneuverability that Masterminds lack, and it can be rather frustrating to keep up with teams even outside of Incarnate content. Abilities such as Team Teleport and Team Flight require a MM to delve 3 steps into a Pool Power tree just to have a fraction of the maneuverability of other classes, and use of these abilities annoy team mates and are looked down upon (despite the addition of Null the Gull).

I have a suggestion for a Pool Power tree that will enhance the quality of life for any set that relies heavily on pets, not just Masterminds. The goal is to grant MMs and other pet reliant sets the ability to enhance their pet's speed, while having team friendly movement powers that only affect the caster and their pets available for 2 power selections rather than 3.

• Tier 1: Well Conditioned, Auto Power
  Augments the run speed of all pets summoned by the user. A passive bonus slightly better than Swift is added to all pets. Also provides 30% resistance to slows.

• Tier 2: Rapid Response, Click
  Greatly enhances the running and leaping speed of all pets with a 25' radius by 30mph.

• Tier 3: Squad Teleport, Click
  This is Team Teleport that will not target any team mates. It will only affect the user and his/her summoned pets.

• Tier 4: Squad Flight, Toggle
  This is Team Flight with the same base speed as Fly. It would again only affect the user and his/her summoned pets.

• Tier 5: Ambush, click/toggle
  Phase, stealth, and place all pets within a 50' radius into an only affecting self state. This skill would have similar limitations as Phase Shift with a rapidly increasing endurance cost as time progresses. Once the toggle is released, all pets would reappear and interact with enemies/allies regularly.

The strength of pet-centric ATs (i.e Masterminds) is that they have many pets to use for attack and defense. This gives them advantages that non-pet ATs don't have. To balance that strength Masterminds have to endure the difficulties of maneuvering their pets and adapting to situations that are not pet-friendly.

Basically your pet powerpool idea removes some of the built-in disadvantages that exist in the game mechanics to balance ATs like Masterminds. While your idea is not strictly a bad one I see little hope that the Devs would ever allow such a powerpool to exist without new pet disadvantages in place to counter-balance it.

^Don't forget obscenely low hp for MM pets hp that is not protected by the 1 shot code

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Originally Posted by JuliusSeizure Most of the new Incarnate content requires a level maneuverability that Masterminds lack, and it can be rather frustrating to keep up with teams even outside of Incarnate content. Abilities such as Team Teleport and Team Flight require a MM to delve 3 steps into a Pool Power tree just to have a fraction of the maneuverability of other classes, and use of these abilities annoy team mates and are looked down upon (despite the addition of Null the Gull). I have a suggestion for a Pool Power tree that will enhance the quality of life for any set that relies heavily on pets, not just Masterminds. The goal is to grant MMs and other pet reliant sets the ability to enhance their pet's speed, while having team friendly movement powers that only affect the caster and their pets available for 2 power selections rather than 3. Tier 1: Well Conditioned, Auto Power Augments the run speed of all pets summoned by the user. A passive bonus slightly better than Swift is added to all pets. Also provides 30% resistance to slows. Tier 2: Rapid Response, Click Greatly enhances the running and leaping speed of all pets with a 25' radius by 30mph. Tier 3: Squad Teleport, Click This is Team Teleport that will not target any team mates. It will only affect the user and his/her summoned pets. Tier 4: Squad Flight, Toggle This is Team Flight with the same base speed as Fly. It would again only affect the user and his/her summoned pets. Tier 5: Ambush, click/toggle Phase, stealth, and place all pets within a 50' radius into an only affecting self state. This skill would have similar limitations as Phase Shift with a rapidly increasing endurance cost as time progresses. Once the toggle is released, all pets would reappear and interact with enemies/allies regularly.

There are 5 powers in this Pool shouldn't it be a PP and not an APP? As a PP I would respec out of the teleportaion pool for it especially if the squad teleport worked like "assemble the team" rather than "team tp"

/sign

I've ran every trial to date on my MM, and managed to t4 her out on just Lambda and Baf.

While my pets do die, when they aren't around me it doesn't automatically mean i die. My main form of mitigation is from higher +def numbers, which my toggles and FFG provide (and if FFG doesn't keep up with me, its literally a button click away)

The main problem I have noticed is that folks are using bodyguard mode as a crutch, and when it fails they don't have much of a way out to prevent cascading failure of thier mitigation.

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Originally Posted by Techbot Alpha MMs are NOT ultimate, unstoppable killing machines like people keep harping on and on and ON about.

Tell that to my bot/traps, and even your own. You've listed multiple things that just about any other AT wouldn't be able to do that you've managed to pull off with realitive ease.

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MMs are balanced around a number of factors; 1) They need pets up and running to have meat/metal-shields for their otherwise pitiful HP

While the MM base HP is really low, at just over 800, once you add in Accolades your sitting on about 1000hp, which isn't too shabby in its own. Once you add in HP boosting powers such as frostwork, and t4 rebirth (with the +Hp) your can easily cap your HP at 1606, which is the same as blasters and stalkers.

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2) They need pets up to do any meaningful damage, due to poor personal attacks

While it is true that the personal attacks that MMs have do very low damage at very high end costs, there are plenty of ways to do damage outside of pets. Look at how controllers do damage. Most of the damage they do is in the form of pets, or APP/PPPs, which is how MMs can also do decent damage without their pets around. They also have the same debuff numbers of corruptors and controllers in most cases. Take for example trick arrow, which is shared by defenders, corruptors, controller and MMs. Acid arrow does the same -res and -def for corruptors, controllers and MMs, and flash arrow is only 1.25% lower on MMs then corruptors and controllers, and poison gas arrow and glue arrow summons the same pet for all 4 ATs.

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3) They have lower buff/debuff numbers than things like Defenders or Corruptors (unsure about Controllers)

As already mentioned, MMs are on par debuff/buff wise with corruptors and controllers (looking over thermal shields for a second, which controllers, corruptors and MMs all have access to, and the numbers are identical for the +res shields, slightly lower on forge for MMs (15% tohit/30% dam for MMs, 20% tohit/40% dam for corruptors/controllers) and on par for -resistance in melt armor (-15% def, -22.5% resistance for MMs, -20% def, -22.5% resistance for corr/controllers) Other powersets play about the same way, with MMs maybe losing 1 - 5% on corr/controllers for -tohit and -def values, but keeping the same +resistance and -resistance values, which are usually much more valueable to teams then -tohit and -def)

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4) They usually have a higher focus on DoT, rather than the raw and usuaully higher burst damage of such ATs as Brutes, Scrappers and Stalkers

While this i can't really argue, taking it as a comparison between Brutes, scrappers, stalker and even tankers, but when compared to corruptors, controllers, and defenders, the DoT aspect is about on par, due to powersets like AR, dark blast, dual pistols, fire blast, and just about any control powerset. Are you trying to compare a ranged damage/support/pet AT with a melee oriented/armor AT and then saying its unfair for the ranged damage/support/pet AT due to lower damage numbers? Show me a brute that can boost others resistance by 20 - 40%, or lower an enemys resistance values by upwards of 60% and then you might have a fair comparison.

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5) They suffer far more from AoEs than other ATs, due to the relatively low health of pets, shields and buffs not withstanding.

This is only true in non trial situations as all of the trials have been modified to prevent AoEs to cause a cascading failure in a MMs mitigation due to pets. Nearly all of the major AoEs either completely ignore pets, or do 1/2 base damage to them. Marauders Nova fist, and Antimatters Pulses do 0 damage to pets, and any of antimatters AoEs do 1/2 damage to pets.

Also while this game is balanced around SOs, its always balanced around buffs and shields, and with the current changes to allow all of the major buffs to become AoEs, MMs actually benefit the most from buffs and shields, due to the layered nature of bodyguard mode.

Even in non-trial content, well played MMs, like yourself, usually have a hard time dying quickly to high AoE enemies due to the player, like yourself, knowing how to either avoid the damage completely or finding ways to prevent your pets from being hit. The radius on bodyguard mode allows you to effectively soak most AoEs without your pets being hit by them, and if your pets are hit, you have many ways to either get them back up on their feet, or prevent some of the damage from causing a cascading failure.

I know your a good enough player to adjust on the fly, I've read plenty of your antics. Saying MMs are at a disadvantage due to the above reasons, yet still being able to do what you do really doesn't make your points very accountable.

Plus there is always the fact that the pets will instantly teleport to you when you get a certain distance away (i think its about 125 feet?) so if you do happen to zoom ahead of your pets without a means for them to catch up they usually fall back in line pretty quickly.

I coulda swore it was you techbot that shows us some AV/GMs soloing. Then again, it could've been Dechs, and for whatever reason i seem to get you two confused *both decent bot/traps players*

If i am mistaken i am sorry, but i still personally don't feel MMs have it any worse then anyone else, and that MMs actually have the easiest time on trials, due in part to being able to ignore the majority of the mechanics (I'm being disentregrated? Nifty, now why isn't my HP bar moving? Oh yea.. bodyguard mode and rebirth +regen stacking with triage beacon.. nice..)

As well as being able to basically ignore nova fist's warning, and being able to soak the pulses without much trouble at all.

Just like all those other things that have been changed and fixed over the years very fa-

Oh, wait.
Not like it only took them...nigh on seven years to remove the pointless -ToHit penalty from group fly?

The reason can be as horribly simple as 'that and a million and one other things to do.'
Again, I'm not complaining, although I do find my pets derping along behind rather annoying at times. I simply think calling it a 'balance issue' is incorrect and daft.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

Fine by me. YMMV. It still won't dissuade me from my opinion that, were it an actual 'balance point' rather than an oversight that has, like many things, been on the uber-massive To Do list for years, then it's a pretty stupid one. Again, in my opinion.

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Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

I love MM's, I like the ideas presented in the original post. Very cool!

Like to have the old response time for MM pets like back in issue 6/7. Now a days it takes over 30 seconds for your commands to go thru to the pets.

I don't like the idea of a power pool that is only useful to 4 ATs. As stupid and useless as some of the other pools are, they can still be taken and have a purpose for any AT.