TheSpiritFox

I build and play my MMs as support characters with a directable pocket team. And I really feel like if that's your playstyle, the class like fully shines. Personal attacks are always underwhelming for me. Like I get it, the pets are there we can't give MMs a real attack chain of their own that's silly but at the same time even if the damage added can be somewhat significant if I wanted to play a direct damage character I mean I have a bunch of those too. Playing an MM is the most relaxing thing for me because I just take and maximize my secondary contribution, max out what my pets can do, and build every MM as if I am a blastless defender with a pocket team or something. I give myself two travel powers because why tf not, I take TP friend when I can and take it early along with super speed for stealthing things if need be or just helpfully warping a dead body where it can be rezzed. Making my MMs support focused with their personal power use lets me play MMs that pretty well stay on the strategic board/war game level during engagements I don't have to do damage, my pets do it for me. This also means at this point I honestly do not enjoy playing non demons/thugs mms because those sets have both the defenses and the damage to allow me to build a support focused character with respectable DPS that's tanky as fuck and the other MM sets simply do not add up to the balance of damage and survivability that thugs and demons can field with a remotely good build. I would have 5 bots MMs if they gave Bots a fucking mule power for pet sets. But someone in a group I was in once said everyone else in City of Heroes is a star in an action movie while MMs are more like sitting back in a directors chair watching and i kinda build my MMs towards that concept and it's fun as hell. Chillest MMO playstyle in existence. I actually get to watch what's going on in the game, not just watch my power bars for power recharges. Its like the opposite of scrapperlock. And at the same time, some of the support secondaries are kinda bannanas in what they can be made to do. Dark, Rad, Traps, Time, Thermal, and now Elec are all crazy good support sets in their own ways that can let you pretty effectively neuter enemy spawns. And no group ever complains when they realize that their mastermind qualifies as a support as much as DPS.

I did not save it in mids I just kinda built it as i went. Its not even overly optimized as a build. But with all the pet uniques in place. Bonfire really helps with survivability at higher levels but even so this is a build designed around the pets tanking, all of my MMs I end up enjoying are. I have and will never build an MM around taking provoke. If I wanted to taunt things I'd play an actual tanking class. I send the pets in and follow them into melee and short of losing a pet to the alpha once in a while, once they're all in my -tohit aura with softcap in place stuff is pretty damn hard to kill before the AOE heal that's a really solid heal for MMs with the up front part and the over time part helping prevent overhealing. At the same time I mean I put two slots in vengeance for Christs sake. That's a wasted slot that could have at the very least given gang war another recharge. I'm just too lazy to respec to move a few slots around.

Why are you calling people son when you act like a 12 year old?

"I'm too lazy to think, bye" K.

You say that like a ton of TFs aren't soloable. This isn't WoW, you don't group because you imagine yourself necessary you group to play with people. If the AV dies during the time it takes to summon lol who cares? Obviously you didn't need half the people you brought with you and if anyone was actually concerned about it, they'd have run a 4 man team. You're creating an issue where one does not exist because you play this game to feel useful. Fine for you, don't project it onto others. I play this game to make dumb jokes that 30 year olds get and see fun particle effects and play an RPG with a chat function. Like, I have a PB that can solo Posi 1 and 2. Needs envenomed daggers for the AV, but beyond that it's easy as shit. If I can do that, is everyone else on my team useless? Should I ONLY solo Posi 1 and 2 when I feel like running it? Sure, ITF has that one damn mission where rushing through just does not work for an MM at all. You're pretending that an MM is useless for a speed ITF and the truth is MMs are only really have trouble with the shadow shard mission because of how tight it is and what is required to burn down the shards while ignoring the enemies around you. At the same time, I can keep up with a speed MLTF just fine.

Nah you're just salty that people are ignoring your "Don't take an MM on speed TFs" nonsense. He responded thankfully to everyone else, you were just the one reply that wasn't really helpful. ATT up once a half hour is not any kind of solution, "Don't go on Speed TFs" is not a useful answer, and you got the resultant dismissal of your response because you're kinda a turd telling other people how they SHOULD play the game rather than how they CAN play the game like everyone else, and even had to go so far to express your salt to bitch about it and quote him as "Blah blah blah" You want someone to be grateful for your advice say something worth listening to dude. Learn to answer questions, not use questions as a jumping off point for your opinions. OP They already gave my answers. I use SS+celerity IO to make myself invisible and then use a jetpack or super jump if that character took it to handle elevations and then I just run my ass off. Pets die, I resummon when we get where we're going. Sure, it costs me a few seconds. If the boss goes down in the time it takes me to resummon, half the team was actually not necessary to run the TF and who cares, I still get my merits. If the boss doesn't, then I basically lose a few cast times to resummoning if my pets got unlucky and am back in business. Honestly, the biggest issue I have with pets is not them dying during speed TFs, its them getting stuck on other floors such that if I dismiss them, suddenly the pets don't come back and I have no idea why, often have to relog or exit a mission in order to get them to come back. Honestly? I would love homecoming to implement a "TP pets to my side" button in the pet command window that has like a 30 second cooldown.

Bonfire is the single best patron power masterminds have access to. Fire is the DEFAULT epic power pool for masterminds if you do not need either a shield, power boost, or have a character concept in mind that removes fire as an option. Edit: Apparently I posted this twice in one thread

It is functionally impossible to survive with all your minions aggro capped solo. There is no way to mitigate the amount of incoming damage that would result. If you're just doing like the outdoor farm with normal spawns, you can farm up to +4x8 with the right build, but you'll be at best like half as slow as a brute doing it, maybe less. A mastermind stepping foot onto the rainbow comicon at +4x8 dies in seconds.

Buzz saw. My pets are softcapped defensively with 35% resist to all. And that's without incarnates running. Resummoning a pet is kinda rare.

My thugs/time, thugs/traps, and demons nature are my three tankiest mms, all 3 can handle +4x8 solo. Council is easy, something like malta or arachnos is legit harder and can be time consuming.

Aid pool is better than repair.

Now I have a fantasy of gang war summoning 10 upgradeable arsonists lol

Good information, I've never used keybind files like that before.

Thugs upgrades you leave at base slot and throw an endurance reduction IO in it. Gang war and all of your thugs you 6 slot. Gang war is where you stick pet uniques, a series of IOs that give you defense auras that make your pets significantly tougher and help build them towards softcap. Upgrade powers work in an AOE. I think its 20 or 25 feet, everything in the radius of the pet you cast it on gets upgraded too. Thugs have a bug, you have to throw the second upgrade on things again after you enter or exit a mission. Pets still in the middle of a summon animation, like climbing out of the sewer or upgrading when the first thug appears and before the third thug does, usually miss the upgrade.

Time is just a solid basic set. It does a number of things related to keeping you alive and keeping enemies in aoes pretty well, but you'll need knockback mitigation with bots. Traps, well you'll need the same knockback mitigation. Both sets can softcap bots, but times heal and tohit debuffs make it more survivable than traps by a hair, but traps debuffs will mean your bots do significantly more damage. Time can get by on basic enhancements and still be pretty solidly effective. Traps absolutely needs a high end IO build to really shine, but once it gets there it feels alot less stationary when your poison trap comes back in under 30 seconds, acid mortar around 25, seekers around 25. Traps needs a ridiculous amount of global recharge to reach it's potential, but once it gets there your bots will basically never miss anything they aim at and will do significantly higher damage with the -resistance traps can do between powers and procs. And traps also laughs at AVs. Time on the other and is just going to be safer and smoother, but a good bit slower in a solo situation. I like traps more overall long term. I enjoy playing my traps masterminds, at least trap placement is something to think about. Time is about as mindless as it gets. Cast your like 3 buffs two of which are on long timers, run PBAOE, hit heal, hit debuffs once in a while, one of which sucks and the other is hard to get under 20 seconds recharge. Time is active in a boring way to me. Traps you still have to think about. And take aid pool.

Fire is my most taken epic pool specifically because of bonfire. I make MMs that aren't that active, I support the pets and take support powers and go tanky, do not take many personal attacks at all, if any. But bonfire's CC is amazing for pet survivability.

Frankenslot pet uniques to fit as many of them as you can and take mu so you can use electric fences to keep things in burn patches, put a soulbound allegience proc in the Assault Bot probably

Nail meet head. Thugs/time for me feels like a more survivable with less damage version of thugs/traps. The "it's basically an armor set" is precisely on point. Thugs/time is my only time mastermind so I will say that that biases me, Thugs with Time can be min maxed pretty well, easy to softcap while still fitting 2 procs into enforcers, easy to fit every MM unique for defenses into the build without compromising pet enhancement values. At the same time, /Time is in fact one of the most proccable secondaries. It helps alot, you can double stack the bubble and proc it out with a good recharge build. You can fit a slotted bonfire into the build for CC and -res and damage procs, you can fit procs into a number of the powers without compromising anything about the core build and get high proc rates out of it, And with the slows Time brings to enemies, they aren't running out of your thugs massive AOE damage or your proc fields easily at all, allow you to maximize your actual thugs DPS with pet positioning, keeping things grouped up for enforcer cones and such.

Time is T1. The debuffs are weak but farsight is the best overall defensive buff specifically for masterminds. Once cast it lasts 2 minutes, you can easily get the recharge down to a minute for reapplying to any pets who die, and it has no range limitation. Once cast your pets just have farsight on them, like cold's buffs, which elevates Time combined with it's heal, it's extra -tohit, it's slows, and it's procability. Time brings not only overall utility that is specifically good for masterminds, but it brings build utility with how much fun you can have with procs with it, how many slows you can stack on things, and well, if you take bonfire as your epic pick things just get nuts. It synergizes too well with pets to not be T1 even if the numbers don't quite stack up against like /traps.

If you want the ultimate force multiplier MM duo I would say that it would be Beast/kin alongside thugs/time. Between farsight, two maneuvers, thugs leadership, all the pets will be softcapped. And then at the same time, the kin will damage cap all the pets, resulting in a massive boost to damage. With thugs/time you can double gang war and things will really get ridiculous, with a total of 32 fulcrum shifted pets on the field that are all protected by farsight and leadership.

I gotta be honest, while EA may edge nature out on pure math grounds with absorb, natures absorb shield very often results in little to no health damage before the next application barring the highest end content, and the larger absorb shield gives your minions time to heal health damage under the absorb if they have taken damage. It also applies a heal over time and stacks of bloom which enhance other nature heals applied to the target. It's not JUST absorb, it also heals and enhances future heals on the target, which makes the power have multiple functions and EA's absorb is a one trick pony, only additionally granting stacks of static to increase the number of allies that it chains to, not increasing it's effectiveness on any one thing it hits. Then going further, EA only offers resistance and absorb to prevent damage, while nature has a toggle aura which does -tohit AND -damage and -damage is not resistable, so anything that is debuffed is essentially stacking both defense and resistance on top of your defense and resistance. My demons with the pet defense auras and maneuvers hit like 14% defense, With the -17% tohit applied by nature that's effectively 30% defense on top of high resistances plus the -damage. Before heals, which nature clearly does wayyyyyyyy better than EA could dream of doing. While EA is absolutely solid as shit, if you take everything that each set has to offer (/nature also does -damage to single targets with corrosive spores, hell) nature absolutely does not lose in tankiness to EA and honestly probably outstrips it by a solid margin. EA has 4 powers that affect pet survivability directly by somehow mitigating incoming damage - A single target damage debuff for enemies - A chain heal that just heals your pets - A chain absorb that just puts a small absorb shield on your pets - A location based aoe resistance and mez protection I don't count endurance drain because EA doesn't drain endurance from foes effectively enough to be like considered endurance drain crowd control, you can't walk into a crowd and sap them all and laugh at their inability to attack. Nature has 7, 8 if you count the T9 because it adds 5 stacks of bloom to enhance future heals. - A single target debuff that lowers enemy damage - An aoe heal cone heal - An aoe buff that increases resistance, regeneration, and adds a heal enhancement - A targeted aoe debuff which reduces both enemy accuracy and damage - A location based heal patch - An absorb shield that also adds a solid heal over time on application and a heal enhancement for future heals - An AOE hold power which is easily enhanceable to the point it stacks on itself and holds minions and lts permanently - A T9 which in addition to being one of the best team buffs in the game adds 5 bloom for even more heal enhancement The entire point of wild bastion is that the big absorb shield doesn't HAVE to be up constantly. It's more of an "oh shit" button than it is something you depend on to keep your pets alive. It doesn't have to be on a short cooldown because in general /nature can straight up outheal incoming damage alot of the time without even using your absorb shield, or your toggle debuff, or your single target damage/resistance debuff, or your hold power. EA cannot do that. Electric Affinity is a solidly balanced buff/debuff/healing hybrid set that is awesome for team content and solidly good for mastermind pets as a secondary. Nature Affinity is an overpowered healing set which was also given extremely synergistic buffs and debuffs which is awesome for team content and better for mastermind pets as a secondary. Mathematically speaking, nature is just far tankier than EA is. It brings too much to the table besides absorb and too many of it's powers do more than one thing well.

People do not sing the praises of demons nature enough. It is tankier than any other MM save probably /EA. It brings better overall buffs and debuffs to the table than /ea does. Nature is a much better overall set than EA for most conent. The other recommendation is thugs/time, which gets my vote for the strongest overall mastermind in any content. Pets can hit beyond softcap easily beyond incarnate softcap with power boost. Has a -tohit aura to add insult to serious inaccuracy, has a bunch of slows which keep stuff nearby, is one of the best secondaries for damage procs, and by default gives you some extra recharge to make things just that much more ridiculous. My thugs/time recharges burnout in like 6-7 minutes and gang war's recharge is 30 second longer than it's duration I think meaning that I can basically run around with 16 pets close to permanently and hit 26 if and when shit hits the fan. Throw on destiny barrier and support core hybrid and even your gang war is tanky, throw an opposing force knockdown proc in gang war and every attack every single one of them does has a 20% chance to knock down whatever it aims at. It's fucking hilarious and chaotic and an EXCELLENT duo choice with literally any class or spec thanks to the +def, +tohit, and +recharge that time puts out, plus a nice damage buff on single targets that lasts a long while and you can get the recharge low enough to keep up on multiple pets/allies.

Softcapping yourself as a traps is pointless though. First off, traps are long enough recharge that getting mezzed is overall not a big deal and debuffs that aren't mez are even less of a deal, nothing should be spending much time attacking you UNLESS you take provoke and standing mezzed for a few seconds doesnt hurt much with a traps build, especially if it happens after your traps are down. The bodyguard argument is great because traps is the least busy secondary MMs have by far. If you were talking about time? Different story. Dark? Wayyyyyyy different story. But Traps? Softcapping yourself is about pointless unless you are tanking with your MM. And add to that, while your argument is about debuffs, scorpion shield is typed defense not positional, so you only avoid debuffs or mez that come with smashing/lethal attacks, literally everything else (most debuffs and mez do not have smashing or lethal damage attached to them) gets through. There are no debuffs to eat, the resistance is specifically to like allow you to target fire your thugs and drop bodyguard then pull it back up in defensive if you get aggro, and allows you to take less damage from Aoe attacks which in turn offloads less damage to your pets, since if you're going to softcap to a positional it is usually not AOE that you choose and it is absolutely going to gimp the rest of your build to forgo enough recharge with /traps to attempt to softcap both ranged and aoe.

I wanted to comment. Nature is the ultimate opposite of the tankermind. Demons/nature is a pet tanking set combo all the way and does it insanely well. You can cast the ground based aoe heal patch from stealth without breaking it or drawing aggro, so I usually fire that up while I send in the pets. As soon as the pets have aggro, a boss gets the toggle debuff. I flit around with stealthy super speed on and shit kinda just ignores me 99% of the time unless I start losing pets, which does not happen often as demons/nature is tanky as fuuuuuuuck. If you let your pets tank and stay in position to actually use your cone heal on all your pets at once, you never get attacked much less mezzed. My demons/nature is vet level 42 and does not have the first mez badge for time being held or whatever yet. My bots and thugs /traps mms by comparison are working their way up that ladder as stealthing in and using poison trap and such puts me in mez range, especially like aoe sleeps and shit that some enemies have which ffgen does not guard against.

Make a demons storm and put some FF+rech procs in your storm powers and you can get it really, really, really low.