Thoughts on beasts & pet attack chains in general

Its hardly like AVs are any more difficult, at least the ones I've found. Outside of Trials, of course, I've never gathered a group up so i could enter one solo. Every AV I've encountered solo has dropped like a rock.

And no, no daggers. Just kicking, slicing, and burning.

Sorry about getting annoyed last night, I always forget how obnoxious you [Reppu] are. The style attached to your forum persona is always jarring to me, especially after so many years of relative calm here. Dragged me right down with it. Alright, thicker skin and more sleep and moving on...

My last comment was primarily about attack chain gaps, not the nerfing bit which you grabbed onto. People are obviously going to disagree with game balancing mechanics - my take on it is that if you have one set that is generally overperforming, and would be just fine with a nerf, and a handful of sets that are OK (even if some are slightly under) - you nerf that single power or powerset. Yes, some of the other sets could use boosts - but in general they are OK. OK in the grander scheme of the game, even if they are "weak for an mm".

We're obviously not going to agree there, so fine.
(If the devs want to spend the time buffing every other MM set, and their fine with that level of power great, more power to them.)

Attack chains: Are people seeing *attack chain* issues with beasts with the 32 buffs that are worse than other sets? I'm not in the 20s, my experiences seem to match the numbers above. Definitely less standing around than zombies. Ninja are the outlier here due to their large number of low recharge attacks. Maybe a little more so than demons, but I think we agree that demons are a little on the strong side?

If beast damage is low, I would rather see the base damage on attacks buffed instead of say, recharge lowered or another attack added. I think this would work better due to the way pets run around a lot in general play (unless you have an immobilize or, at high levels, take a patron immob - but one might use caltrops and like the enemy running around). Plus, people like big numbers, especially with crits.

Just to throw my two cents in... it would be criminal to nerf Bots/Thugs/Demons down to the levels of the other MM primaries, and would probably cause me to quit the game.

The very, very best Mastermind combos are still behind the other ATs that don't rely on pets for bleeding edge content/solo challenges/et cetera, and there is no justification for doing it based on their normal gameplay performance.

Yes, my level shifted Bot/Force and Bot/Traps can solo on +4x8, for example.

My Dark/Dark Corruptor can do it at least twice as fast. My SS/Fire Brute can do it several times faster than her. I have seen Fire/Kin (Controllers and Corruptors) outpace me handily before as well.

The aforementioned Illusion/Cold is better at the Mastermind's own game than they are and I don't feel even those sets need to be nerfed.

Mercs, Ninja, Necro to a lesser extent, and probably Beast Mastery, need to be improved to par with the rest of the primaries, not the other way around.

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.

I am going to give Reppu a chance - we'll see how it goes.

Are there any plans now to improve beast mastery cause honestly the set..

Stinks like rotten foot cheese..

those fixes dont seem like they are going to do alot to change the fact that thugs/Demon outdo it in both single and aoe damage.

I'll reserve my opinion after I am lvl 35. I need more pets to stack more PMs and I need to see how Dire Wolf performs.

So far at lvl 23 Beast/Time, I feel their own survival is kind of low because I still constantly need to heal. It will get better once I have Power Boost + Farsighted.

Yes, Beast pets have more S/L resistance but in reality, they get hit even more because they always run in. An enemy only shoots you at range but once you get close, he also punches or kicks you! Those melee attacks usually do a lot more damage than their range attacks. At the end of the day, melee pets need to survive a lot better to get the better Risk VS Reward balance.



I am more impressed by /Time than Beast atm but I love pets so I love the set.

Time is a power-creep set that needs the nerf bat, much like Titan Weapons. At the very LEAST Farsight needs to not work with it and give such ludicrous Defensive levels. It makes Force Fields lose even more appeal.

Beast Mastery is not that bad, in its current state I would put it just above Nin and Merc, due purely to how survivable it is. The ONLY problems are slightly less DPS and very few AoEs. Defensively they are perfectly fine, offensive is the issue.

As for the others, no, no nerf there. As stated, there are existing sets that are just as good or better than /Time.

Found a bug, Synapse told me to send in a report:

not sure if it is enhancing damage correctly or just incorrectly showing it in the management screen - only does this on the Dire Wolf, the others are fine

Oh, which reminds me that if you put +defense in Lion, it shows that its base defense has increased but in reality, it hasn't. The +defense, I believe, only enhances Roar.

I already checked in-game value to see if +defense improves Lion's innate defense from 11.50% but it does not. It is a display value.

I need to check to see if +defense improves Roar though.

No no no, I did NOT say it had better damage than Nin, I did not say that at all. I said it was overall slightly stronger due to being much more survivable. And when I say much, I mean MUCH. 25% res to s/l/c, 10% def to all positions, and a level 18 power that can increase their def 15% and regen 400%. As well, all but two (the normal howlers) get a self heal. The Lions get a good def buff.

So yes, offensively they need work, defensively they are perfectly fine.

And whoever said "it makes StJ look good" made me discount everything they said previously even more. Street Justice is an awesome set.

So it has the least damage but is one of the more survivable.