looking for some clarification

Okay - here goes. I have heard that an MMs pets have no damage cap, from two players that up until this point have not been known to joke about such things.

And then, that got me thinking. I asked someone in game and was told that, of course they did, if they didn't that would be horribly OP.

So, having only played one MM to level 26 - and that largely solo due to the whimsical nature of the beasts, despite directions to do other things, I find myself wondering what the actual truth is.

What is the damage cap for MM pets? Different for different pets?

I looked for it at paragon wiki under "Limits" and found a collection of wondrous detail - but not the answer to my question.

Unless it lists a separate critters entry, all "all others" include NPCs.

MM Pets do have a damage cap. I don't know what it is off the top of my head, but they do have one.

I fed my Assault Bot reds until this happened. You could have tried the same thing if you were really interested.





Damage cap is 300%.

Note that the Combat Attributes window shows the "bonus cap". Your total damage would be 100% plus that number, so when at the cap, MM pets are doing four times their base damage (100% + 300% = 400%).

Critters have ATs too. As far as I know, all entities that do anything in CoH have the same list of stats, whether we see those stats come into play. Tar Patch has hit points, mez thresholds and mods for +defense. Damage cap is one of those stats. No entity will ever have an infinite damage cap, out side of some fairly spectacular bugs.

There may be exceptions, but I believe the damage cap shown here is typical of all pet entities, even ones that deal damage for ATs with higher damage caps. That means that Burn patches from Brutes/Scrappers and Rain of Fire from Blasters may not be able to benefit from as much +damage as the ATs that cast them can. (This is known to be the case for some of those examples - I say "may" because I'm unsure if any exceptions exist.)

Yep. That's correct. I thought about that too when I was writing my previous post, but lost it somewhere between being undecided on how important it was to add and plain forgetting to add it.

Fair enough. A lot of folks do forget that they can view their MM pet combat attributes, and they don't need another player to buff their pets. It's worth poking people a bit so they do remember. But I appreciate the thanks, and you are welcome.

Yep, I missed that part of the quote.

The attribute monitor turns the number blue and caps it at 300% when your global bonus reaches the buff cap, but the truth is that individual powers may have reached the buff cap well before then, because of enhancements. For folks that slot pets for ED "max" damage, you've only got around 200% headroom for buffs on them.

It should be easy enough to test. I'll try to do one later today.

I was also thinking that the damage buffs, being "additive," should also benefit from Incarnate buffs which are not subject to ED. So the Enhancement part of that equation is now capped at about 135%, where 105% is what you can get with ED by massively over-slotting, and the 30% is the part of an Alpha Slot that isn't subject to ED.

The total boost should be around 435% now, or 535% times your base damage.

Enhancements are counted as part of the cap. Mids will show this on, say, a Defender with Fulcrum Shift, but that's not quite proof since Mids isn't the game, so here are some numbers from in-game:

Scrapper, Crushing Blow, base damage: 112.86 (before averaging in crits). Scrappers have a cap of +400% (5x base damage), so if enhancements are included in that cap, it should max out at 112.86*(1+4)=564.3 against an even-con enemy with 0% smashing resist, and I'll need ~270% of damage buffs to get there.
My Crushing Blow has 128.8% total damage enhancement (thanks to Musculature Core Paragon). If enhancements are not part of that cap, it should max out at 112.86*(1+4+1.288)=709.66 against an even-con enemy with 0% smashing resist, and I'll need 400% of damage buffs to get there.
If ED-bypassing enhancement is outside the cap but regular enhancements aren't, it should cap out at 112.86*(1+4+.3)=598.16, and I'll need ~300% of damage buffs to get there.

I set my mission difficulty to +1 (so enemies would be even-con despite the alpha shift), hopped into a Nemesis tip mission, and hit a Dragoon with a Power Analyzer Mk III (to make sure Dragoons have 0% resist; they do).
I popped 4 large reds (+210%) and Build Momentum (+62.5%), plus set bonuses (4%), bringing me to 276.5% total damage buff. Walk up, bonk a Dragoon with Crushing Blow. Combat log says 564.29 damage.
Build Momentum wore off, I popped another two large reds, bringing my damage bonus to 319%. Hit another Dragoon. 564.29 damage.
Used two more large reds, damage bonus reaches 400% and turns blue. Hit another Dragoon. 564.29 damage.
Okay, so it's .01 points off the calculated value, but that's easily within the realm of a rounding error. The important part here is that the damage was the same in all three cases.

The power's damage stopped increasing a good ~130% before my damage bonus stat turned blue, which only makes sense if the full enhancement value counts against the cap.

Also jeez, yeah, this is on the wiki, common knowledge, and exceptionally easy to test. If you're not sure, take fifteen seconds to buy a bunch of reds and hit something, rather than spend two hours waiting for someone to provide evidence for you.

Technically a damage enhancement is implemented exactly the same as a red inspiration. The only difference is that the damage buff from it only applies to a specific power.

Or rather, you could think of it as a temporary global damage buff that you get the instant you activate the power, and that goes away the instant after the game calculates the damage, so it's never around long enough to show up in your combat attributes window.

I don't know if it's actually implemented that way, but based on how procs work there are some hints that it may not be too far off the mark. Either way, the entity class damage cap definitely applies to them. Feel free to test and verify, though.

That's one of the reasons that AE farming brutes often didn't bother to slot damage in their powers, because between Fury, stacked Rage, and inspiration combine macros to make reds, they would hit the damage cap quickly anyway.