TheSpiritFox

No I was saying that if you don't take provoke, scorpion shield is basically useless as a power pick and web envelope is not worth taking on it's own when you can take electric fences instead and for a mastermind if you're going to take a shield especially on a /traps you'd do better with the mu resistance shield to help lower incoming damage to smaller numbers to get further broken up by bodyguard. I was saying that if you are NOT tankerminding, you should also not be trying to build to the personal softcap anywhere when you have bodyguard.

I would highly, highly suggest you switch maneuvers and super speed first off. You do not need maneuvers early game like you really honestly do not need that until past 32 at the earliest and super speed is useful in exemplar content. Second, softcapping yourself to smashing and lethal when you don't take provoke is kinda useless. Exchange scorpion shield and web envelope for a 6 slotted bonfire with procs and 1 endurance IO + sudden accel kb->kd, and burnout for double gang war. It's a solid build, honestly besides the two above changes I would personally just move some slots around a little bit but it's mostly about personal preference. I can't stand travel powers that don't have maxed move speed and 3 slot both SJ and SS on my thugs/traps. I took aid pool up to field medic because losing the interrupt on your aid other is fucking useful and the extra heal when you click field medic helps too in a pinch. Your build will do more damage than my build will by a bit, my build is more survivable than your build by a bit. Seriously though, take bonfire. The amount of incoming damage mitigation that provides FAR outstrips what scorpion shield provides not just you but your pets and it does damage on top of it. Take burnout, double gangwar is hilarious and burnout is also useful for double trapping right from the start of an AV encounter.

Take super speed on MMs. Do it. Take it, put celerity stealth in it, use it. If you move fast enough you outpace your pets significantly and if you outpace your pets significantly they warp closer to you. The key to being an MM on speed runs it to go faster, not slower, so that pets have an illogically easier time catching up with you. That said, expect to be useless on a speed lambda and expect to be annoyed as fuck on TPN campus as an MM.

This is much closer to reality imo One note. Temporal selection increases healing done by time's heals on a specific pet, it is a long lasting buff that increases damage a decent bit which you don't have a ton of ways to do with pets, it also increases regeneration which is meh but hey it helps. Temporal selection is a good power and worth taking esp on a demons or thugs or bots mm. With a high recharge build you can keep it perma on 4 targets. So like, your assault bot and all three drones. Or your bruiser and arsonist and 2 team mates. Or your T2 and T3 demons. You can drop it on a pet that is almost dead and heal that pet more than the rest, saving you healing casts potentially in keeping pets alive. Temporal selection is a good power.

Traps and nature are T1 fyi. Traps may not have a heal but it has the best debuffs bar none, solid soft control, the best defense power in the game, and it's a light set both because you can completely skip Trip mine and detonator and because several of the powers are effective with light slotting. Nature is the best healing set in the game, which comes with some solid hard control, a solid toggle debuff, and awesome buffs both for pets (+dam on pets is great, absorb on pets is fucking incredible) and for teammates.

With demons? /Nature, /Thermal, and /EA are tanky as fuck. /Dark is less tanky but that's because it depends alot on debuffs and like if your debuff anchor gets hit it hurts. Demons/time is not a bad set though not as good as resistance based sets, but mixing def and resistance is still pretty solidly effective. Demons/storm is one of the hardest hitting powersets in the game, but more fragile overall than other sets as storm is not heavy on defenses and heals.

The heals on PB are great imo. I only gave essence boost the default slot, but I 5 slot the dwarf and human regular heals with panacea. PBs benefit from insane recharge builds. Your powers will alone get you past the resistance cap, with light form up you're almost capped on resists in human and nova and in dwarf you're all but immune to resistance debuffs because you're so far over cap with light form up its insane. You aren't THE tankiest thing in the world, but you're pretty goddamn close. A well built PB in dwarf can pull like nightstar and siege in incarnate content with no incarnates slotted and survive it with the heals. I posted a build, expensive af but very worth it for me. In groups that buff my attack power at all I can often hit and stay at the damage cap. To the point that I now think PBs need their damage cap raised by about 200%.

It's definitely noticeable if you slot it out and especially if you have the superior mark of supremacy regen aura stacked on top of it. While lower pets regen less, a higher regen rate speeds up ticks, doesn't just increase the size of them. Adding triage beacon to any fight means you can straight up ignore damage done to your pets unless it drops them below half health, they'll be back up to full before the next attack gets through the softcap. Keep in mind, that while pets with lower HP regen lower health numbers, all pets under regen go from x percent damage to full in the same time. Triage beacon decreases that time significantly, double stacked my bruiser hits like 33 hp/sec regen which is not at all insignificant. The fact that that's permanent, always on regen not like a heal I have to fire, spend further cast time and endurance on, makes it valuable. But like, I've watched my pets regen during fights and watched triage beacon be the difference between spamming heals from aid pool, and spamming powers with the occasional aid pool heal when someone takes a big hit. It supports your build from the bottom up, making you baseline more survivable and keeping your pets healthier. Saying that it's trash is looking for instant return on your investment like you get with time's heal instead of looking at it mathematically and seeing what it actually provides to your pets and how it stacks up, and the way I tend to play the game, it's useful often. Is it the best power in traps? Of course not. It's competing against the best defense power in the game, the best defense and resist debuffing power in the game, and the best AV killing power in the game, plus caltrops. But is it a solid power that benefits both teams and pets and while it does not make traps a healing set, it is absolutely good enough to be worth taking and slotting in your average MM build. It is absolutely something that, depending on how you play, can end up seeing heavy use and being very useful. It is adding a new layer of damage mitigation to your pets who already lack lots of damage mitigation.

Yeah. Detonator was come up with before anyone really got an understanding of how fucking painful mastermind summoning can be. Traps was one of the first MM sets and like it came out before Bodyguard existed to say nothing of like AOE upgrades. The reason traps has stood the test of time is 1) most of it's powers do more than one thing well and 2) most of it's powers can be stacked double with an IO build which makes the debuffs traps can bring truly absurd. And like, -1000% regen on poison trap means that the DPS required to eventually annihilate anything is very, very low.

You don't have to respec. Switch to your second build on one of your traps characters. It'll start you at level 1 and you can just level up that spec however you want it. Since you're unlikely to actually have any reason to ever dual spec a mastermind, you can just level that spec up to 50 at liberty, summon your pets, and try out detonator on them. Also detonator damage is not really that great. Someone tested it out, there's a thread about it somewhere in this forums I think. Detonator does a bit more damage than trip mine slotted out with a way longer recharge plus the expense of losing a pet to it. It's the worst power Traps has by a mile.

I literally ran Posi 1 and 2 last night at +2, I was not the lead who set the difficulty. Triage beacon in Posi 2 is fucking great, considering how bad circle mage bubbles can be for dragging out fights due to accuracy issues at low levels. Like ok, It is absolutely useless on a steamroll team. That's fair. I genuinely do not have a power that would be more actually useful to put in it's place in that situation. Also, the dude above said traps has only two useless powers. If triage beacon is one, and detonater is undoubtedly the other, that means this dude actually thinks MM trip mine is a good power outside of entertaining yourself nuking half an AV's health in a pull because you can.

lol the personal insults. "Do not listen to this man" is a personal insult. I'm not the one concerned about the size of my e-peen here I was just making a dramatic statement. Triage beacon is awesome and the fact that you relegated it to a few circumstances that you personally find useful because you spend your entire time at 50 and use rebirth instead doesn't change that. What kind of crazy person would exemplar into something pets can't survive easily? You do realize that people DO turn up exemp content plenty, right? Like I go on +1 to +3 non 50 TFs all the time. You're talking about personal insults while talking about situations that triage beacon is useful in like those situations do not exist and you'd have to be "crazy" to get yourself into a situation like that. But let me tell you, when you're the only support on a SBB? Triage beacon can make alot of difference and lets not forget that it lasts two goddamn minutes. Yes, it has specific uses, it's not the just like default "heal things now!" of time's heal, traps is not a set with a heal, but that doesn't mean triage beacon is a waste or useless. There are plenty of circumstances where Triage is useful, especially solo in any kind of higher level content, and pretending otherwise is not about the power itself but at this point about the fact that you just don't like it and build around it, and that's fine. You however are taking it personally that I disagree with you and acting like *I'm* uninformed because I find uses for a power you don't like. I'll repeat, I'm not the one here thinking about e-peens. You're the one talking about how people never do the things that make triage beacon useful. Meanwhile, it's helped me carry ITFs set to +4 with multiple SKs on the team. Not everything in this game is a steamroll, you just choose to only play it as a steamroll. That's fine. That's your playstyle. Do you not see the arrogance of assuming that your playstyle is the only one that exists, especially when we're talking about like... did you REALLY say no one turns up non ae content? That one statement invalidated your entire opinion on the subject. Oh and I said it CAN fire absorb procs on anyone who's taken damage in it's radius not that it fires on all targets. At the same time, I see absorb procs up very regularly on pets who have taken damage on my thugs/traps, enough to say that if you've got the slot to spare, it's useful and I've seen that proc save pets who otherwise would have gone down, saving me resummon time, plenty.

Triage beacon is awesome and putting an absorb proc in it means it can proc on anything that's taken damage in the radius up to 255 targets. Slotted out in a high recharge build you can stack 2 of them on top of each other which is a metric ton of regeneration in an AOE. Triage beacon is awesome and absolutely worth taking and 6 slotting, any sane Traps MM has the room and slots to do it and like what else are you gonna take? Trip mines take forever to set up and are interruptable, detonator is hot dogshit. Do not listen to this man. I love Triage beacon, especially in a solo or duo where you're not going to be like, steamrolling through content for a long while and if you turn it up enough in difficulty, at all. In a duo where you're not like basically waiting to drop triage beacon during big fights but can set up your traps base and pull mobs into it from range, triage beacon more than pulls it's weight. It is not as effective as a direct heal cast for cast, but stacking two of these things during an AV fight can easily be the difference between dead pets and not dead pets.

Yeah they can do it pretty well. Tanking is about taking damage and managing aggro. Taking damage isn't hard, MMs do that really well overall. Holding aggro is harder, a blaster will pretty easily be able to pull aggro off of you and onto themselves for instance. But you have OTHER aggro management tools besides taunting things to work with. - Bonfire: Probably my favorite patron power. It procs out well with a high recharge build, or with just one slot and a sudden acceleration or like three slots for a sudden acceleration kb->kd and two recharge IOs is an amazing aggro management tool. Even bosses get flipped onto their backs frequently. - Buffs and Debuffs: Lots of MM secondaries have ways to reduce incoming damage to anyone via -dam, , -tohit, +def, +res, heals, etc. - Control options: Besides bonfire, a bunch of the secondaries we have also have soft and hard controls which also reduce incoming damage An MM makes one of the best duo partners, but certain ATs will be...safer...than others around them. Basically anything with it's own defenses will be buffed and helped by sticking by you, anything without has to watch for pulling aggro off you or your pets, but even so benefits from your defenses. Bots or thugs with traps, time, cold, or dark. Demons with dark, EA, nature, or thermal, are all builds that don't require much investment to be awesome and with a good bit of investment become demi-god-like. Pairs really well with other MMs, VEATS, scrappers, brutes, controllers, and corruptors, pairs well with everything else.

I made a build! Critiques and feedback welcome, but also just putting it up for people who might like the play style. This is a PB designed to spend 90% of it's time in forms. This is about the tankiest I think I can make a PB while still doing solid damage. Light form is perma, inner light is perma, 4 FF procs means that AOEs recharge faster in forms and means that your heals which usually take quite a while to recharge are suddenly sub 20 second recharges. I pulled siege and nightstar in BAF as a fresh 50 with this build and did not die to the towers, I'll put it that way. Build is intended for all non purples to be attuned. It exemplars EXTREMELY well in fact I would say that because of the nature of forms this is the strongest single exemplar character I have at this point. It has a bit of a psi hole, though one thing about this build, if you wanted to you could cannibalize the human form heal for 4 slots, you can honestly totally afford to take a slot out of stamina maybe two, could afford to take the celerity endurance IO out of super speed, could change white dwarf to 2 Resistance 50+5 IOs and a performance shifter, hell even the scaling resistance which is more a stopgap against resistance debuffs than anything else, this build actually does have some room for modification if anyone wanted to use it as a base because it's built around my personal philosophy of "I'd rather laugh off damage than be a glass cannon" Oh and utility. Lots of utility. A minor heal for just contributing to keeping someone alive or getting the dead back on their feet, your own self rez on a 2 min timer, an aoe CC, a decent nuke, tp friend and early SS/celerity means I can stealth teams past whatever, whenever. Fast flight and teleportation for travel on top of super speed making you one of the most mobile things in the game. Also just a personal note but the degree to which this character plays like an action RPG character rather than a wow character is hilarious. I have found myself with more complex keybinds on this character than I have on my masterminds and that's saying something. But damn if it isn't fun to hit middle mouse to go human, then again to turn on super speed, e to hit inner light, mouse thumb 1 to nova, blow aoes, mouse thumb 2 for dwarf, heal, back to nova, etc. Binds are cool, but with Khledians it's like, it changes the entire feel of the class it's so actiony! Hero Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.1.25 https://github.com/Crytilis/mids-reborn-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Natural Peacebringer Primary Power Set: Luminous Blast Secondary Power Set: Luminous Aura Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Teleportation Power Pool: Concealment Power Pool: Leadership Hero Profile: Level 1: Glinting Eye -- Thn-Acc/Dmg(A), Thn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(3), Thn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48) Level 1: Incandescence -- UnbGrd-Max HP%(A), GldArm-3defTpProc(40), StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(42), Ags-Psi/Status(42) Level 2: Gleaming Blast -- Empty(A) Level 4: Essence Boost -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 6: Bright Nova -- PrfShf-End%(A) Level 8: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(9) Level 10: Super Speed -- Clr-EndRdx(A), Clr-RunSpd(11), Clr-Stlth(11) Level 12: Inner Light -- GssSynFr--Build%(A) Level 14: Recall Friend -- Range-I(A) Level 16: Grant Invisibility -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 18: Pulsar -- Acc-I(A) Level 20: White Dwarf -- PrfShf-End%(A), UnbGrd-ResDam(42), UnbGrd-ResDam/EndRdx(43), UnbGrd-Rchg/ResDam(43) Level 22: Reform Essence -- Pnc-Heal(A), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(45), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(45), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(45), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(46) Level 24: Quantum Acceleration -- Flight-I(A) Level 26: Stealth -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 28: Conserve Energy -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 30: Glowing Touch -- Heal-I(A) Level 32: Photon Seekers -- Acc-I(A) Level 35: Restore Essence -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 38: Light Form -- ImpArm-ResPsi(A), ImpArm-ResDam/Rchg(39), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(40), ImpArm-ResDam(40) Level 41: Dawn Strike -- SprEssTrn-Rchg/Global Heal(A), SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg(46), SprEssTrn-Dmg/Rchg(46), SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(48), SprEssTrn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(48), SprEssTrn-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 44: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 47: Tactics -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 49: Vengeance -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A) Level 1: Cosmic Balance Level 1: Energy Flight -- Flight-I(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A) Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A) Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A) Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 10: Combat Flight -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(43), Rct-ResDam%(50) Level 2: Swift -- Flight-I(A) Level 2: Health -- Pnc-Heal/+End(A), Mrc-Rcvry+(5) Level 2: Hurdle -- Jump-I(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(5), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(7), PrfShf-EndMod/Acc(7) Level 6: Bright Nova Blast -- FrcFdb-Rechg%(A), Apc-Dam%(15), Apc-Dmg/EndRdx(17), Apc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(17), Apc-Acc/Rchg(19), Apc-Dmg(19) Level 6: Bright Nova Bolt -- SprKhlGrc-Rchg/FormBuff(A), SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg(9), SprKhlGrc-Dmg/Rchg(13), SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(13), SprKhlGrc-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(15), SprKhlGrc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29) Level 6: Bright Nova Detonation -- PstBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), PstBls-Acc/Dmg(25), PstBls-Dmg/EndRdx(25), PstBls-Dmg/Rng(27), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(27), FrcFdb-Rechg%(29) Level 6: Bright Nova Scatter -- Rgn-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Rgn-Dmg(21), Rgn-Dmg/Rchg(21), Rgn-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(23), Rgn-Acc/Rchg(23), AchHee-ResDeb%(33) Level 20: White Dwarf Antagonize -- Empty(A) Level 20: White Dwarf Flare -- SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(34), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(36), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(36), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(36), FrcFdb-Rechg%(37) Level 20: White Dwarf Smite -- Hct-Dam%(A), Hct-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Hct-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(33), Hct-Acc/Rchg(34), Hct-Dmg(34) Level 20: White Dwarf Step -- Empty(A) Level 20: White Dwarf Strike -- SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(A), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(31), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(31), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(31), FrcFdb-Rechg%(50) Level 20: White Dwarf Sublimation -- Pnc-Heal(A), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux(37), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(37), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(39), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(39) ------------ ------------

Huh now it's working plz delete this

Test

Because of the way warshades depend upon enemies, warshade is a much more active playstyle and also much overall weaker solo than the PB. In groups, both can shine very well. Solo, PB clearly wins having self contained buffs and debuffs that depend on no interaction with the outside world to work. I started up a warshade and a PB and the PB is now 50+3 and the warshade is still 32 so that gives you an idea of my personal preferences. A res that depends on enemies nearby? Damage and resistance buffs that entirely depend on enemies nearby? I totally understand the playstyle, it's just not for me, I muuuuuch prefer the PB's self contained buffs.

Thanks for the comments everyone, processing it and looking over the builds.

Alright. So I have never made an undead MM and I'm gonna give it a try. And hearing that the zombies are rather more fragile than like bots, thugs, and demons, and hearing EA's absorb made it possibly the most survivable secondary, and you know resistance and zombies, I found my next MM. I'm a "purple out every 50" kinda player and so I'm wondering what I need to know about Zombies/EA leveling and like I'm looking for maybe a top end build suggestion for it or discussion about how to slot out zombies and EA. I am not a fan of tankerminding, but I am open to the idea for this build. At the same time I generally build towards the pets tanking for me directly and with thugs, demons, and bots you can actually do that and have it work. I don't tend to take personal attacks at all unless it's like electric fences, bonfire, etc. I do tend to build MMs for perma hasten. How would you build a zombies/ea? How do you slot your zombies? Umm does soul extraction mule? I don't actually know that yet. Insights, suggestions, information about how zombies play, information about how EA plays. I kinda just want to like have a plan before I even make it because I'm undecided on whether or not I'm gonna power level it.

How do you think /ea stacks up against /nature for survivability? Between the constant aoe tick heals that really benefit MMpets keeping healing going, the extra resistance, and the absorb armor, plus some halfway decent debuffs and control, I would guess nature is tankier, but I haven't played EA and don't know it's numbers yet.

Huh I was told that the floor was 25% of whatever their regeneration was starting from 100%.

Thugs/Time, Thugs/Traps, and Demons/Nature are my three favorites. All three have their own way of handling +4x8 but all three can do it pre-incarnates and once incarnates get involved, well like my demons/nature soloed the ITF without dying once. Thugs/Traps might be my favorite. It does absolutely ludicrous amounts of damage once all the debuffs get rolling, is a roomy build with room for aid pool to make up for triage beacon not being awesome or always up. Room for the pet uniques so the pets are actually pretty damn tanky. Across the board 35% resistance on top of overcap defenses... It's not going to steamroll, but you can set up a little base somewhere and pull 2 groups at a time into it and watch them melt. Laughs at AVs, poison trap is -1000% regen which means even a lvl 54 AV goes from 100% regen to 33% regen with the floor being 25% with one poison trap. Oh and force field generator protects pets (and you) from a bunch of crowd control.

I don't use the shit primary attacks MMs get (they really are garbage) but without those MMs in my experience are pretty end light generally. Depends on the secondary, storm fucks us like it fucks everyone else who tries it with high recharge, /time by comparison it can be hard to run yourself out of endurance with even a moderate IO build.

I just want robots 1) To be able to mule pet auras and 2) for the protector bot bubble to be an aoe cast with a 25 foot radius so that protector bots don't spend like 30 seconds out of every minute bubbling your pets, and so that resummoned bots get up to speed faster.