TheSpiritFox

This is your build? It looks...really solid tbh. Can you pull up the combat attributes for your protectors and assault bot and show what their defenses are at? Cause this looks like your bots, with the protector bot bubbles up on all of them, should be at or maybe past the softcap. I'm curious to see what numbers you're running with cause this build looks decent. The only immediate change I'd suggest is you can switch the def/end LOTG in protectors to just the LOTG +def.

Simple request, probably easy to execute too. Make repair accept mastermind pet sets. Please. Give bots somewhere to mule a few pet uniques. With bots issues with knockback they already have issues with slotting. If I can fit them into gang war and into friggin hell on earth, there's no reason in the world repair shouldn't be able to be taken and have a few dropped in it to help with bot survivability.

Your powerset and build would help alot. Do you have mids? Masterminds kinda need IO builds to stay competitive, but with the right powerset and build they can be crazy durable. To give you an idea, my thugs/time can solo +4x8, often without using incarnates besides the ones that are always active. My demons/nature has soloed the Master of ITF which includes no temp powers and no dying, though that took all my incarnates to pull off including my lore pet to do it fast enough to survive it.

Beasts/dark would be a solid choice in part because dark is such a badass secondary. It's got an amazing aoe heal, it's got heavy debuffs to help keep any pets alive, its got an aoe stealth that helps you manage aggro. It's got more debuffs coming from a pet stacking massive -tohit and a ton of -damage. Dark, time, and traps are my 3 top teir sets for MMs tbh. Nature is very close but being very healing focused is more support than debuff and dark, traps, and time all focus more on buff/debuff than healing.

It would be pretty solid, the one issue beast/ice is going to have is healing. Aid pool would be necessary and beasts are not the most durable of MM pets to begin with. Without an AOE heal of some kind it'll be hard to keep your pets alive all the time especially in any higher level content, cold has no heal at all. Great buff/debuff, but not a single healing power in the set.

Aww post a thread about that. Kinetics is one of the sets I don't fuck with with MMs because most of what it does doesn't benefit pets. It's a below average MM secondary choice and works better on Corrs and Defenders which get higher buff/debuff numbers. There's no way to get beast/kin to good defense numbers, beasts don't have good innate resistance like demons do, demons/kin would be a better overall choice but even that isn't great. Healing would be ok, melee pets with a melee range heal. I'd have to figure it out from scratch cause I've never fucked with either beasts or kinetics. But I will tell you it will be a bitch of a build to make, because beast NEEDS it's personal attacks to perform fully and there are a limited number of sets which are actually good to take personal attacks with. Beast/traps would be a decent choice, beast/time would probably be your best overall bet.

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lol hold on lemme go log in Alright its like nucleus exposure? Easiest way to find it is in the actual menus. Go to enhancements on the left side, then scroll to special enhancements (4th category). They're for level 50s so before that either put in a cheap set or just like 1 acc 2 damage IOs until then.

For thugs I would recommend the following slotting. T1 Thugs - 5 slot with one pet set and drop a second pet unique into the last slot for 2 defensive uniques Enforcers - 3 slot hamidon acc/damage 1 LOTG +def/Global Recharge or defense IO, 2 defense debuff damage procs (enforcers do nuts proc damage) Bruiser - 5 slot with pet set with pet def unique, soulbound allegiance damage proc Gang war - 3 pet def uniques, 2 50+5 recharge IOs, Overwhelming force KB proc. This fits all the pet uniques into the build. You sacrifice a bit of set bonuses to make your pets pretty tanky. 30% base resistance for all of them, 10% melee/ranged defense and 20% aoe defense, gang war recharges fast, and overwhelming force KD proc makes it useful as something other than an aggro/damage sponge. Enforcers do nuts DPS with procs, 4 of their attacks can proc the 2 damage procs you put in them and each attack has a different proc counter on it so they proc ALOT. With that setup your thugs should be able to do some nuts damage while being strong defensively. Match it with dark or any defense based secondary and you should be able to softcap them all. This is the slotting I have with my thugs/time and they're all softcapped to all positions so long as they're in range of me and the enforcers and pretty damn sturdy, 30% resistance even on your T1s makes them very rarely get one shot and the bruiser has his own resistance so he's actually really goddamn tanky after that.

I want to see a plants based pet set. T1 - 2 bramble bushes and 1 piranha plant like minion. Bramble bushes do slow and -rech and have aoe melee range damage. Piranha plant does high ST damage and once per minute it can eat (with animations!) a minion or below level enemy to provide buffs to the rest of the pets T2 - Seed spitters, ranged ST and AOE attacks that likewise do slow and -rech to enemies, buff resistance of ally pets. T3 - Groot. No like a walking tree that does a bunch of cone aoe damage, pbaoe damage, and debuffs as well as providing a healing aura to pets near to it. Give them all a dirty path aura. Like they're using their roots to move around and leaving dirt behind as they go.

I'll leave it to yall, I don't have enough time to spend beta testing, I just wanna throw my vote in the hat for having the sentinel specifically because I want an extra pet.

Why don't masterminds get the Sentinel? I see it was talked about for player feedback but I was kinda looking forward to a demons/electric and having an extra pet. Make sure to look at the endurance cost, cause having a pet out to cast the power regularly costs MMs alot less endurance and our powers cost alot more, so adding an extra power to the rotation is going to cause more endurance issues for us than other classes.

This is my favorite description of Bots/Traps I have ever seen

Masterminds built right are actually pretty easy to play. Pets are not complicated to manage overall once you figure out macros. Think of it like playing a support character with a pocket team to support. It is both alot of fun and pretty laid back imo. Managing pets is alot easier than like being a defender or corruptor going back and forth between attacking constantly and spamming support constantly, you don't need to take any personal attacks at all to be effective and they can be built to be dps, tank, and support all at once. Demons are an excellent primary to start with. Secondaries? Dark is a solid secondary. Tons of heals and debuffs that will help keep you, pets, and your team alive. Nature is one of the best. Build it for recharge and endurance recovery and you can perma some great buffs and debuffs and it is bar none the best healing set in the game. Time is a solid set, mobile and good buff/debuff with a decent heal attached. Thermal is a good set to pair with demons. Demons have resistance based defenses and thermal enhances it along wtih dark and nature doing the same. Sonic is ok, resistance based but not as great a set. For other sets? Thugs/Time, Thugs/Cold, Thugs/Traps, Bots with all three of the above sets, are all great sets to start out with. For ease of play? I would say that time, dark, nature are all good starter secondaries.

My thugs/time is actually built specifically for pet tanking. It's one of the best sets to do it, you can fit all the defense and resistance uniques in between pets and gang war, you can with farsight (without power boost) softcap your pets to all positions. You have a solid heal, a ton of debuffs except for -regen, good recharge. I send the pets in first and then jump into melee with times juncture going. Distortion field is not that long a cast time at all, but the thing about it is that with a high recharge build you can proc it out and if enemies stay in it through the duration there are high proc chances if you don't put much recharge in the power itself. It's already got a low enough recharge and long enough duration (45 seconds) that double stacking it is pretty damn easy. Being honest, if you build around your pets tanking with maneuvers, farsight, and enforcers and send them in first, you can sacrifice some of your own defenses. Instead of building yourself up to the softcap, build for recharge, recovery, and THEN your defenses. With bonfire, you suddenly can drop incoming damage down a ton. I made my build to drop bonfire to immobilize stuff with knockdown, then distortion field, then I jump in, drop slowed response on things, and between the CC lowering damage, distortion field and bonfire being procced out for damage, and the thugs and the debuffs, shit melts pretty damn fast. I play my masterminds like support characters. I do not take personal attacks that are not for crowd control on any of them (I haven't made a beasts which really needs you to take them) and I focus my build on having the recharge and recovery to let my pets tank and support them as my pocket team. I use a stealth IO in super speed to keep aggro off me as much as possible, but I spend all my time debuffing, healing, buffing, etc. Time is an active enough set that you can spend all your time doing this. At the same time, sometimes I literally just sit there after casting shit and watch everything melt. I remember someone saying once that while everyone else is playing the main character in their own story, masterminds are directing their own little movie and watching it unfold. I really love that playstyle and build my masterminds around that concept.

This is not an overall terrible build. But like, you have WAYYYYY too much defense first off. You have literally no use for scorpion shield and power boost. They're entirely unncessary. Replace scorpion shield and power boost with bonfire with a sudden accceleration and then tactics. Move the pet defense unique out of bruiser to give him more damage and take musculature for max damage instead of agility. Your bruiser is alot of your DPS you want his damage way above 66%. You didn't take temporal selection and distortion field, both of which are great powers. Distortion field can be double stacked and procced out very easily. Temporal selection is a solid buff that you can drop on allies or your bruiser and you can get the recharge down low enough that you can keep it up if you want on like your bruiser and a DPS ally. I don't take the personal attacks on MMs. Personal preference, they kinda suck overall. Not enough DPS out of them to justify a power pick. Enforcers need at least 1 defense IO in them. It really helps your pets, I ended up slotting mine with 3 hami acc/damage 2 procs and one def +5 io. It's not a terrible build, but there's definitely a little room for improvement.

Aggressive mode is useful in groups. You don't have to use bodyguard when you've got a tank and aggressive keeps them attacking other stuff when there's aggro on someone else without having to micromanage.

I think the actual goal is to prevent you from abusing bodyguard kinda, but that's a guess.

I've read that it's intended behavior. That there's like a 5 second pause after a change in commands before they start executing commands, though that if you issue a goto command, the 5 seconds starts when the command is issued, not when they get where they're going, causing goto to seem more immediate than it is because there's travel time involved.

From what I understand the AI is just designed that way. Switching them stances, specifically, is what causes them to pause before attacking if I understand it right. Feel free to post in suggestions that that be removed. Keeping them in defensive follow and using defensive goto seems to work pretty well. And using offensive goto seems to work pretty well for getting them attacking things if it takes a second for them to get where they're going.

Devs are modifying goto commands to make them work kinda like they used to, allowing melee pets to be effective again with goto commands, while still not having pets running all the fuck over everywhere all the time! Today is a good day!

That's fine by me

YAAAAAASSSSSSSSS I LOVE YOU

Also thugs can easily fit all the defensive uniques while robots fundamentally cannot without sacrificing damage/accuracy slotting.

Because most tankermind builds need mace to reach the softcap.