MM's and incarnates content, lack of ballace in MM's, huge differences between old and new sets...

I'm mad.

I logged in my Mercs/Traps MM last night lamenting the fact that he is useless now days. I retired him when the BAF/LAM came out because he just couldn't keep up. He wasn't soft caped and his low health meant he would die every other spawn. I just stopped playing him because I knew that no matter what I did he was useless in the new endgame. Every time I played him I just got so angry that one of my favorite characters was pointless in the Devs vision of the game. Why do you care about this?

I asked when MM's would be getting a balance pass about 2/3 weeks ago on the Coffey Talk. Synapse said something like "I know this sounds like a copout but MM's are relatively "new" in the grand scheme of things." (@37min) At the time I was like ok I can live that that excuse for now. Well no longer. MM's are just as "new" as Dominators and Stalkers, both of which have had a balance pass that made them more competitive with the other AT's. Blasters are getting their balance pass in I24. AFAIK Controllers are fine as they are and even the Kelds are doing much better nowadays with the mez protection when shape shifting.
In short, it's time to buff the MM's.

I know people take issue with that because MMs are powerful with just SO's but what people don't realize is that even if you IO an MM to the gills the effect is nowhere near as profound as it is on a soft caped Scraper or perma-domination Dom. In my opinion to make an MM effective in the iTrials you have to soft cap yourself and the pets. Its pointless otherwise. If your pets are not softcaped then your secondary (whatever it is) may as well not even be their because you will spend all your time resummoning and rebuffing your pets.

So playerbase in your opinion is there any other AT that needs help as much as MM's post I24?

Can you say that after I24 there will be any power that is truly worse than serum?

Do you think that the cottage rule should be thrown aside when you compare some of the older MM primary set powers with the new MM sets? Daemons/Beast Mastery as compared to Mercs/Robots?

On a team what do you expect the mastermind to do? / What role do you expect him to fill on a team?

Do you think the MM's role on a team changes depending on the content? (I.E. Does the MM do the same job on a paper mish team as he does in the iTrials?)

Do you consider MM's to be tanks?

Do you think it's fair that some MM's can slot the unique recharge intensive pet IO's and more easily soft cap their pets giving those sets an inherent advantage over sets that don't offer that?

For that matter do you think it's fair that MM's are "required"(need) to slot 5/7 unique IO's in their primary powers just to bring them up to the point where they last long enough to do anything in the high level content?

guess it all depends on your secondary powerset. Forcefield ftw. My pets running around at 66%+. Teammates die more often then my pets in itrials.

I must admit that my MM is not that impressive in itrials, but the same can be said for my AR/Dev blaster, my db/wp scrapper and my dp/en blaster. Could be ne of course, but I always have the feeling that my contribution to the team is not up to what others do.

Must say that I consider the mercenaries to be a rubbish set. And some of the secondaries do not seem up to par with some others. The mm's could use some love imo as I still love them.

First thing I would like to change is the AI, I am tired of watching them dfo absolutely nothing unless I point them at each and evdery opponent.

MMs, as an AT, are fine in the vast majority of the game.

Why? Because despite what people like to believe, this game is still balance around SOs and non-incarnate content. But when you put down IOs, there is one insufferable drawback. Set bonuses don't affect pets. That would be the one change I'd make to the AT as a whole.

Now specific sets is another matter. Ninjas and Mercs do need work (but saying they can only handle 0x2 is quite frankly stupid), maybe Necro and Beast.

Ninjas need more survivability. As well, they need something along the lines of Conservation of Ninjitsu. In any martial arts fight, each side has only a finite amount of ninjitsu in a given encounter. Therefore, one ninja is death incarnate, while an army is nothing but cannon fodder. So give all the ninjas a weakened Vengeance ability that goes off when they die, much like Nemesis lieutenants. The fewer the ninjas remaining, the harder they are to kill and the harder they hit. This effectively turns their squishiness into a weapon.

Also, turn Smoke Flash into an AoE.

As for the soldiers, they oftentimes ruin their own damage. Also, most of it comes in cones and the spec ops sucks. So:

Make the Soldier's Full Auto a wider cone. Shorten the recharge on all of Spec Ops' support abilities by a ton. Take Flash Bang down to 35 seconds and increase the stun. Change Rifle Butt to the ranged stun in Assault Rifle so they run in less. Tear Gas should have a recharge of ~60 seconds and the damage debuff should last the same. Increase the damage on SCAR Snipe. Increase the Immob on Web Grenade so it can be perma without enhancements. If these guys are supposed to be the support then make them actually be support! Also, you should probably change all of the knockback to knockdown, the scatter really hurts damage. Most of their AoE is cones.

Beasts are plenty suivivable, about up there with demons when you properly leverage their T7. Their only shortcoming is AoE damage. You could probably get away with just making the Dire Wolf's PBAoE do more damage and recharge in 10-20 seconds. It really is their only good AoE so make it count.

Necro... you could just shorten the recharge and increase the duration of Soul Extraction so you could have it perma on SOs. This would effectively give you another pet, full of controls and damage.

Robots, Demons, and Thugs are all fine the way they are.

I hear ya, OP, but I can't say I'm in total lock step agreement with you.

I personally feel MMs overperform at times in trials. The pets are even con with you and aren't subjected to cheaty patches of doom. I don't know about all of them, but there are patches that insta kill Stone tankers that also leave pets unharmed. Once I get a MM to +3 in a trial, I personally feel the character is making a very strong contribution.

On the other hand, trials that require speedy tactics leave the MM running around out of BG mode and with some variable number of pets that eventually make it to your destination. May be 1, may be 6, may be 0. This isn't an iTrial issue either, this is a speedy issue that applies to STFs, LGFT, et al. Not that high level tfs require speed, but except for an ITF periodically, most players are going for speed. In your case specifically, as a trapper, speedy tfs/trials leave you without FFG as well. Outside of TPN and Lamda lab/warehouse, I can't think of any trials that are purely about running around.

On to your questions:

Well that's one school of thought. It's not mine. Keep in mind the only buffs that require you to choose between a teammate or your minions are Forge, Painbringer and Temporal Selection. I'm really not interested in defending my position, but there are very strong arguments that a team is better off with those buffs on high damage ATs rather than pets. Play how you want though, don't matter to me.

Oh one thing I forgot to mention- I would like to see Radiation Emission and Cold Domination ported over to Masterminds, as well as possibly Kinetics.

Question:

How can you say MMs are 'useless on iTrials' when you've only ever run the first two?

That's a good point Agent White, he probably retired his MM before the recent pet buffs I mentioned above. Bronze, I would suggest giving trials another shot, especially BAF or Keyes. I actually feel BAF is very MM friendly.

I don't think it'd be weak. Only one power in Kinetics has to do with giving allies more recharge. You'd have an AoE heal, a way to buff all of your pets damage to the roof, a nice s/l resistance buff that also makes them nearly immune to mez... and even Speed Boost to buff their endurance recovery so you could get away without slotting endurance reduction in them.

MMs need buffing like tankers need more hit points.

I mean, seriously, I read something like"

See my Guides and Tutorials

If MMs as a whole are under-performing for you, then its safe to say that the problem is not with the AT.