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

Yeah, but you are saying the MMs do not always underform. You mentioned about half the Incarnate Trials. I know MMs are solid in regular play, I have seen friends run them. So really we are talking about a few trials in the entire game. My Invulnerability Brutes can have Endurance issues, and have a weakness to Psi damage (count the missions and Trials that can give you fits on!) other than that they are really solid performers. Should I be asking the Devs to either patch my armors or stop writing missions that have those challenges in them?

Compare this to the change being made to Blasters. Blasters suffered from 1) Being written as Blappers 2) Having no ability to deal with Agro they call down 3) Having no "target range" that the character is supposed to try to maintain 4) Having almost every set a mix of cones/balls/beams/melee PB 5) crashes. They were a mulitool that everyone else had the same tool gotten a different way without paying a huge price. Everyone else was focused, Blasters were Jack of all ranges and master at nothing. The changes to Blasters have started to address some of these issues. IMO Blasters still need a better Mez Protect option and a slightly higher overall damage mod, but give it a year of playtesting I guess.

You suggest a major change to MMs even though MMs are performing wonderfully in most all of the game, and struggling in a few Incarnate trials. I am almost always for buffing characters. I am a min/maxer from way back with pencil/dice games. But you need to argue a little cleverer for your point here, I am not seeing it.

I think manually giving your pets inspirations already cuts them by half of what they would affect you.

Yea, and Masterminds as an AT don't really have problems. The only place they start to lag behind is the extreme high end, because IOs don't benefit Masterminds as much as other ATs. Which is why my suggested solution is something that only affects Masterminds with IOs.

It isn't the AT itself that is under-performing, it is a few sets in particular that are lagging behind the other sets.

Mercenaries is often considered the least powerful Mastermind set, which is why you may think they're under-performing.

Honestly the only trial that's a pain with my MM is LAM (damn near impossible actually so I usually just unsummon my Bots until the end or avoid the trial altogether) a TPN requires some fast commands (numpad bind helps a lot here) to switch them to passive for outdoors but other than that I really don't see the problem...in fact on a Baf/UG/DD/MoM & Magi I watch mobs melt in front of my firepower

I have wondered sometimes... What would happen if Mastermind Henchmen stopped level-scaling and all showed up matching the level of the Mastermind? What would need to change about them and would that help more than it'd hurt?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, that already happens in all incarnate content, even the solo ones. And really... there isn't much of a difference.

I "feel" a better kill speed with Thugs. The kamikaze is a pretty high damage minion, but at -2 he always gets diluted. At even level his mortality rate goes down (some) and his damage goes up. I'm going to guess that other primaries that depend on lieut and minion pets (ninja, necro) for damage see a noticable improvement. The minions are going to do 25% more damage (.8 to 1.0) after all.

I will only address questions I feel able to answer.

I had kinda figured the whole even level incarnate thing was testing the waters for making them just always even level. Almost like they started something and then quit.

There is a pretty damn huge difference in survivability there, because the pets take less damage from enemies that don't con as high against them.

Unsolicited comment from peanut gallery: Part of the trouble with Kinetics is it gets better the further away you get from taking it on a Defender. But I see this as a "Defender" problem primarily and not entirely a fault of the set.

Sadly your favorite MM (Mercs) has always been considered the weakest link among the others.. Personally I dislike Ninjas more but that's because they seem the hardest to actually control (picture 6 pets that all tend to act just like the combat medic and want to run up into mobs and die). LOL

I have a Merc/Dev that has managed to have some limited success on Incarnate trials but it is much more difficult than with my other MMs.... My Thugs/DM rules BAFs and Gang War has helped leagues I was on Polish off Mother Mayhem in under 2 minutes duringa MOM. I never had a problem with my Bots/DM either but Bots was always one of the stronger original sets. I'm not saying I don't EVER have to resummon but I have taken Thugs and Bot on UG, TPN, BAF, and even DDs and been a useful member of the league.. Any squishy has problems on Lambda and an MM is probably the worst At to send into a warehouse after anything.. They usually just wind up dead.. of course if the 50 +3 level tanks and Brutes didnt run off to show how cool it is they can solo in there and stucjk with the team an MM might last a bit longer but you can't ask for miracles

Now my new BM/Thermal MM does quite well on any trial . She can heal and buff not only the team but her pets so they tend to last a lot longer.

Do I think MMs need/deserve a buff? YES .. they have the lowest hit point total of any AT mainly because the devs assumed the pets would pull aggro off the MM and keep them alive. Well I have seen plenty of cases where my pets were almost completely ignored and the mob came straight for ME! Plus as we all know at the higher levels the mobs all catch up and then pass the pets and they start dying like flies. Once they are gone I am left standing there with 3 attacks, no defense and LOW hit points .. may as well paint the target on my chest and point the enemy in my direction. Better control of pets would be a real treat.. can we please PLEAS PLEASE .. stop the crap where my arsonist, my combat medi, ect, ect etc.. feel the need to rush forward after one attack and DIE? Every single minon I own is capable of long ranged attacked.. why do they all act like Skulls? fire off one shot and then run up and try to club the enemy to dealth with a completely loaded gun? and finally either allow the pets to keep that almost dominance they have over enemy mobs at low levels when they get to the high level content or give ME some inherent defenses or MORE health.

Of course no one will ever be 100% satisfied with any AT and we all want more out of each and every one but yes I do think the Masterminds deserve their turn on the table and hopefully they come out better than before. Oh I almost forgot to add.. either stop counting them as attackers or make dang sure any league wide BUFF you create buffs enough attackers so I don't have to dismiss my pets like we did for a while during the MAGI. yeah who though up THAT bright idea? lol