Discussion: The Intrepid Informer: Issue #19

Beast Mastery
by Phil "Synapse" Zeleski

Introduction

I'm here to talk to you today about something pretty special: a new Mastermind Primary Power Set! You've been asking for it since time immemorial and now I have the privilege of presenting to you Beast Mastery. Yes, it's finally here. This Mastermind summoning set allows you to call forth a number of beasts to attack your foes such as: Wolves, Lions, Ravens, Hawks and even swarms of stinging insects. We'll talk about how this powerset functions in greater detail, next I'll offer some helpful tips and tricks to get you started and lastly I'll go over some potential character themes for this set.

Powers

Below is a list of the powers found within Beast Mastery along with their short and long descriptions that you'll find in game and some of my comments regarding each power.

Beast Mastery

Command wild animals to aid you in battle. These beastly allies lack ranged attacks, but make up for it with a specialized focus in melee combat. Call forth wolves, lions, dire wolves, hawks and insects to harass your foes. Additionally, you have a chance to gain a stack of Pack Mentality when you and your pets land a hit on an enemy. Each stack of Pack Mentality will boost the damage of all of your nearby beast henchmen. Pack Mentality can stack up to 10 times and will fade after a short time.

Pack Mentality (New Mechanic)

Beast Mastery introduces a new mechanic called Pack Mentality. This buff provides a 2% damage boost to your Beast Mastery pets for each stack. This buff stacks up to 10 times. Each of your Beast Mastery attack powers and the attacks of your beast pets have a chance to grant a stack of this buff. Pack Mentality is also a fuel that is consumed by Fortify Pack, but we'll talk about that a bit more in detail below in Fortify Pack's information.


Call Swarm
Ranged, Light DoT(Lethal), Foe -Defense, -Speed


You summon a swarm of stinging insects to harass your foe causing Light Lethal damage over time and reducing both their movement speed and defense. This power has a moderate chance at granting your pets a stack of Pack Mentality. Damage: Light DoT, Recharge: Very Fast

Designer's Comments: Call Swarm deals a light amount of damage over time and its primary purpose is to weaken the target allowing your pets to more easily hit and catch up to the target.

Summon Wolves
Summon Wolves


Calls forth one to three Wolves to do your bidding. The third one summoned will be an Alpha Wolf, which grants some leadership bonuses to the pack. Wolves have no ranged attacks, but can quickly close in on their prey. You may only have 3 Wolves under your control at any given time. If you attempt to call more Wolves, you can only replace the ones you have lost in battle. If you already have three, the power will fail. Wolf attacks have a chance to build a charge of Pack Mentality. Pack Mentality is a Damage buff aura that radiates from the Mastermind and can stack up to 10 times. Recharge: Very Long

Designer's Comments: Howler Wolves deliver a number of lethal damage attacks and can also have some self buffs that improve their speed and damage. They lack ranged attacks, but they can quickly catch up to their targets to deliver some quick powerful hits. The third Howler Wolf you summon is an Alpha wolf. He has a self heal power and an AoE damage debuff. He serves more of a support role. Like other minion level henchmen, they're vulnerable to most damage. You'll want to support them with buffs, debuffs and heals for the best results.

Call Hawk
Ranged, High DMG (Lethal), Foe -To Hit, Knockdown, -Fly


You call forth a hawk ally to swoop in and viciously peck at your target causing High Lethal damage. The attack often catches foes off their guard and can knock them down as well as reducing their chance to hit. This power has a good chance at granting your pets a stack of Pack Mentality. Damage: High, Recharge: Fast

Designer's Comments: Call Hawk's secondary function is to knock fliers out of the air. This is a vital tool in the Mastermind's arsenal as his pets lack any real ranged attack.

Train Beasts
Ranged, Train Beast Henchmen


Train your Beast Henchmen to more effectively attack your foes. This power permanently bestows new powers and abilities to all of your Beast Henchmen. The powers gained are unique and dependent upon the type of Beast Henchman. This power only works on your Beast Henchmen and you can only Train your Beast Henchmen once with this power. Recharge: Fast

Designer's Comments: This is your first pet buff power. It grants all of your beasts some additional attacks to make them even more effective in melee.

Call Ravens
Ranged (Cone), Moderate DoT(Lethal), Foe -Speed, -Defense, -Fly


You command an unkindness of ravens to quickly assault and harass your foes. Your foes will suffer Moderate Lethal damage over time and have their speed and defense reduced. This power has a high chance at granting your pets a stack of Pack Mentality. Damage: Moderate, Recharge: Slow

Designer's Comments: Much like Call Hawk, this power is intended to not only cause some damage over time, but also reduce the likelihood that your beasts will encounter foes they cannot reach or hit.

Summon Lions
Summon Lions


You can summon one to two mighty lions (depending on your level). Lions are one of the most deadly predators on the planet and possess vicious claw and bite attacks as well as growl and roar buffs and debuffs. Like all Henchmen, Lions can be trained to be even more powerful. You may only have 2 Lions under your control at any given time. If you attempt to summon more Lions, you can only replace the ones you have lost in battle. If you already have two, the power will fail. Lion attacks have a chance to build a charge of Pack Mentality. Pack Mentality is a Damage buff aura that radiates from the Mastermind and can stack up to 10 times. Recharge: Very Long

Designer's Comments: Lions are roughly equal parts support and damage. They provide defense buffs for nearby beast allies with their Lion's Roar power, stun nearby foes with their Ferocious Growl and can deliver a measure of melee area of effect damage with their Claw Swipe power.

Fortify Pack
PBAoE, Pets +Defense, +Regeneration, consumes all charges of Pack Mentality


You command your beasts to fight more defensively. Using Fortify Pack will prevent your pets from benefiting from Pack Mentality for 60 seconds. The number of charges of Pack Mentality you own when activating this power will determine the potency of the Defense and Regeneration buff that will be granted to your pack. Additionally, simply owning this power grants your beast pets attacks a chance to critically hit that scales with the amount of Pack Mentality owned by the Mastermind. Recharge: Very Long

Designer's Comments: After playing with Beast Mastery for a bit you'll quickly realize that the summoned beast henchmen are very offensively focused and if left unprotected and unsupported can be defeated fairly quickly. This is where Fortify Pack comes in. This power consumes all active stacks of Pack Mentality on the user and prevents both the Mastermind and beast henchmen from generating further stacks of Pack Mentality. In exchange, it grants a sizeable defense and regeneration boost for your beast henchmen for 1 minute. This buff scales with the number of stacks of Pack Mentality consumed. So, if at all possible, it's best to use Fortify Pack when you have a full stack of 10 Pack Mentality. Fortify Pack is intended to be a defensive tactical shift and gives your pets some additional staying power in tough situations. Also, as an added bonus, simply purchasing it gives your pets a 2% chance to critically hit per stack of Pack Mentality.

Summon Dire Wolf
Summon Dire Wolf


You call upon the aid of the fabled Dire Wolf. It has powerful bite and breath attacks. Unlike wolves and lions, the Dire Wolf has some limited ranged attacks. The Dire Wolf has good defense to Melee, Ranged and AoE attacks and good resistance to Cold damage. You may only have 1 Dire Wolf under your control at any given time. If you attempt to summon another Dire Wolf the power will fail. Dire Wolf attacks have a chance to build a charge of Pack Mentality. Pack Mentality is a Damage buff aura that radiates from the Mastermind and can stack up to 10 times. Recharge: Very Long

Designer's Comments: The Dire Wolf provides a good amount of area of effect damage with Chilling Howl , Freezing Roar and Terrible Howl as well as having some survivability boosting tools with the slow effect caused by its breath attacks, the terrorize effect from Terrible Howl and Will of the Wild for a sizable boost to hit points and damage resistance. A well supported Dire Wolf will lead the Mastermind to success.

Tame Beasts
Ranged, Upgrade Beast Henchmen


Tame Beasts will permanently teach the most deadly and ferocious powers to all of your Beast Henchmen. The Tamed Beasts will gain new abilities and powers. The powers gained are unique and dependent upon the type of Beast Henchman that is Tamed. Tame Beasts only works on your Beast Henchmen and you can only Tame your Beast Henchmen once with this power. Recharge: Moderate

Designer's Comments: The most powerful Beast Mastery pet powers are granted by Tame Beasts. So, make sure you don't pass up this or Train Beasts.

Tips and Tricks

To help you get started with Beast Mastery I've compiled some useful tips and tricks that may suit your play style or perhaps will help you define your own preferred method for enjoying the set.

• Know your weaknesses
  • For the most part, your Beast Mastery pets lack any reliable ranged attacks. Flying enemies or very quick enemies can be troublesome.
  • Beast Mastery's 3 blast powers are intended to help deal with this weakness. These powers can slow enemies down, lower their defense and knock them out of the air. Use these powers to take the advantage away from a mobile foe.
  • Your pets have tools to deal with these weaknesses too. All Beast Mastery pets have a power called Wild Charge. This power boosts both the damage and movement speed of your pets for a brief period. This allows them to quickly catch up to their foes and deal considerable damage. Additionally, the Dire Wolf's ranged powers have the ability to knock fliers out of the air.
• Defensive or Offensive?
  • By default your pets are considered to be in an offensive state. Their attacks can build Pack Mentality which further builds their damage for each stack. Additionally, simply owning Fortify Pack gives them a passive critical hit chance that grows with each stack of Pack Mentality. You'll want to remain in this state if your pets are in good health and in no immediate danger.
  • You can shift to a defensive state by activating Fortify Pack. This will remove any stacks of Pack Mentality and prevent additional Pack Mentality from being built. In exchange for this loss of damage your pets will gain a defense and regeneration buff that scales with the number of stacks of Pack Mentality the caster had when the power is activated. In short: the more Pack Mentality you have when you use Fortify Pack, the greater the regeneration and defense buff your pets will have.
  • Remain in your offensive state when your pets are healthy and use Fortify Pack to boost their survivability.
• Caring for your beasts
  • This goes without saying, but your summoned henchmen are by no means invincible. They require your support.
  • How you provide support will vary based greatly upon your secondary powerset choice.
  • Sets like Pain Domination, Dark Miasma and Thermal Radiation are great to provide healing to pets.
  • Force Field and Sonic Resonance provide excellent buffs for your beasts.
  • Poison, Storm Summoning and Trick Arrow are great for weakening foes so they're less likely to defeat your beast pets.
• Lastly, supplement your existing support tools with power pool choices like Aid Other and the Leadership powers to provide an additional measure of survivability for your beast allies!

Themes

Natural, Mutation and Magic origins more easily fit the idea of a master of beasts. Although one could easily imagine a Science origin character being infused with pheromones (or something along those lines) to grant a measure of animal affinity. Technology origin characters might be a bit trickier, but devices might be built to allow the Mastermind to communicate with beasts. However, I am sure you all can come up with much more creative character origins than I can. As always I look forward to seeing the crazy, stunning and otherwise creative characters you all create! Beast Mastery will be available as a purchasable powerset in the Paragon Market.

Synapse: does this mean those pets' attacks are not immune to recharge buffs? Is that unique to the Howlers?

Huh. I didn't even think of that. I just read that statement as movement speed instead of recharge speed.

It is their movement speed. The howlers have a self buff that makes them move pretty quick, probably to help chase down runners.

I've been asking this for a while, because many of the powers also seem to provide Recharge Slow resistance, yet it didn't seem to get addressed with any of the changes or fixes that went through.

I can't even find anything saying if it's a bug or not.

Nope, the AI has basically no situational awareness. What I wish they'd do is code the +def AoE buff the wolves fire to think that it's a heal, to fire whenever they're below (say) half health, because that's when they desperately need the extra survivability, to buy time for the MM to heal or buff them.

Synapse, thanks for reminding people that with this set, no, really, you DO need to take the primary attack powers for their debuffs, even more so than with demon summoning. But I'd also add a line to the section about weaknesses: "As the only NPCs in the whole game that have no ranged attacks at all, they tend to cluster around a single target if left alone, which will leave them even more vulnerable than usual to area-effect attacks." Given that this is a store-bought powerset, extra disclosure is probably prudent, so people don't end up paying their $10 and then finding out, too late, that they just can't handle it.

P.S. Late in beta, you buffed the heck out of their +def and gave them a bit of +res(smash,lethal). Any chance of back-porting those same upgrades to Genin and Jounin, which have the same weakness that Wolves and Lions started out with?

Yep, an "unkindness" is the group noun for a group of ravens. Compare this to "murder of crows," "pride of lions," and "exaltation of larks." Such terms are sometimes called "nouns of venery" because of their origins among medieval and Renaissance (and later) hunters (venery=pursuing). As those examples show, they often have a sort of moralistic or emotional sound to them.

Personally, this power description makes me want a ranged attack that summons a smack of jellyfish.

You are right to be incredulous. The list of collective nouns for things which are real words in real dictionaries is rather short and dependent upon actual usage. It became something of a game to invent a collective noun for each grouping of animals or even inanimate objects rather than live with just the ones that organically came into being because of necessity.

But no one uses them in real life except to play the "name the esoteric collective noun" game. To do so is to decimate the English language.

I see what you did there.

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

It's been on Beta for a few weeks now.

Melee characters have gotten Street Justice and Titan Weapons fairly recently. Ranged ATs have gotten Beam Rifle, and Control ATs have just gotten Dark Control. I think it's safe to say that they pushed Beast Mastery ahead because MMs have been kind of left out lately.

@SpaceNut - My 50s, AE arcs and current projects at ParagonWiki

...I forgot what experience means.

I concur!

Feels like months to me.