TheSpiritFox

My vote goes to demons/nature. You've got debuffs, heals, and buffs that will synergize with the defense from /ff. Between resistance buffs and damage debuffs everything takes less damage when it does get hit. Bots/ff and demons/nature should be able to pretty easily duo most content in the game.

I think that 60 feet is a bit much for aggressive. The rest of the changes sound absolutely stellar, but I think that goto should have a specific leash distance that is the same for both aggressive and defensive. Specifically for the reason of managing pet locations in tight quarters maps or maps with large numbers of elevation changes. I feel like a standardized location lock for goto commands is overall better for pet management than giving pets more freedom to move further in aggressive mode. If a melee pet needs to hit something 60' away I think it's better for MMs to get used to moving the goto pin to a new location. The actual stay command I pretty much never, ever use tbh but that leash would help too.

If you set melee pet behavior to, say, stay within 30-40 feet of the location indicated with the stay command but allow them to approach targets in that area it would work perfectly. It would move all the pets to a location in a bunch but allow pets with melee abilities to then move into melee range, and basically I'm pretty constantly readjusting pet position with goto no matter what. If you want an idea of my setup, I have q bound to goto+aggressive, e bound to goto+defensive, and r bound to follow+defensive, then middle mouse is bound only to attack with no stance change attached. This allows for some pretty effective pet management. I can move them to a location, target them on important things (like say immunes surgeons being annoying) and let them return to stance and command when that dies. Being able to alternate between defensive goto and aggressive goto lets you attack stuff, and then flip back to defensive mode quickly if you need to without screwing up the pets chosen location by returning them to follow. I am at this point in the habit of only hitting follow when moving to the next enemy group. Something to consider about follow. Solo, I covered that if you aren't set up to tankermind it can be very inconvenient to be taking the alphas. CC is the biggest overall concern there. My thugs/time and demons/nature almost never get CCed if the pets lead, but if I lead I almost always get hit by whatever they throw at me and having support secondaries means that this ends up dropping our toggles quite alot. My /time had to constantly reactivate times juncture and my /nature had it worse with 3 separate toggles that can get shut off by mez. In groups it's a different issue. 1) pets move across levels better when directed with goto commands due to the pets almost always moving slower than you and follow has them constantly pathing to you, a moving target vs pathing to a set point which they can determine a set ideal route to and move as fast there as they are capable. 2) In groups having pets moving around chaotically reduces engagement efficiency and allows pets and players to do too much competing for space. If your pets are scrambling through the enemies all the time it turns everything into a mess and with the number of pets who have some kinda cone AOE it helps alot to be able to like pick a side of an enemy group to send your pets to to get best coverage on those directed AOEs. Part of polite pet management is keeping the chaos to a minimum, and follow is just not good for that, pre or post patch. Before the patch I simply mashed goto commands alot to force pets to repath back where I want them. So yeah your suggestion specifically applied to any pet which has melee oriented powers not brawl would probably be a solid fix. If I could have one more wish, maybe take a look at pet pathing when pets are under the influence of speed boost. For whatever reason SB interferes with pet pathing and like makes them overshoot where they are trying to do in a series of awkward overcorrections, as if pets like "take steps" and SB extends those steps past what the pets think they're going to do. I have had pets repeatedly overshoot a goto marker and like bounce rapidly back and forth across the targeted spot until SB wears off or you move the goto ping somewhere they can effectively get to, and small changes in elevation even a few steps can make this problem 50x worse, sending pets careening down stairs or off elevated places in levels with no ability to control or limit them. And like, I like the effects of speed boost on my actual character, I don't know if turning it off at null the gull would be reasonable (does it stop working on pets if you turn it off for masterminds? Haven't tested that) but I would say either giving the ability to turn off the speed boost part just for our pets separately or looking at the pathing ai could fix this either way.

I'm going to add to this, the issue is not supremacy range right now. I get the changes to stay, but they are bad overall changes when you take into account that 3 of the 5 pet sets include pets which are directly intended to end up in melee using melee powers that aren't brawl. It's terrible for ninjas and not good for thugs and demons. You asked if we're micromanaging because we're used to having to, this is not an ai issue this is a pet control issue. Goto is how we move our pets into melee range, making goto lock melee pets to one spot makes goto useless for them. I am having on my thugs to use goto to move the ranged pets in and then hitting aggressive follow for my bruiser, and often that still leaves the bruiser lagging behind the other pets or not engaging at all even when I am in melee with my pets. Same for my demon prince. We aren't just using goto to keep things in one spot or in supremacy range. We're using it to allow the pets to take the alpha, something that your response here indicates is not considered in the changes at all. Using it to avoid things like CC which hit us first if we jump in with pets on follow. This is making active pet control more difficult and it's not just about what we need to do, it's about the feel of the class. If I wanted to play something that just had pets following on their own AI only I would be playing a controller with their dumb pets. We are masterminds. We should have solid control over our pets. This change has made melee pet control more difficult to do, require more steps, and less effective when it comes to pet tanking. I would say that at this point the changes to the goto command should absolutely be reverted to prepatch even if you have to dump all the MM changes with it until it is fixed, it is seriously cramping my style and I feel like I am being forced to depend on follow when I have not up until this point depended on follow much at all. Ai changes are awesome, changes to ranged pets are awesome, but this broke melee pet control pretty bad in some very annoying ways. Like badly enough that I would seriously ask you guys to not take a month to fix this, I primarily play masterminds and this is making them unfun to play and manage. I honestly preferred hitting goto 5 times to bring pets back close by to what is going on with them now.

I am testing this out with a thugs/traps and you're right so far, they're doing a much better overall job of staying in supremacy range, staying within the ffgen bubble on the other hand is a very different story. Supremacy range is wider than alot of the buff ranges MMs have for our defensive powers, so while pets absolutely do follow better, sometimes that follow isn't good enough to match our secondary choice.

That's what aggressive mode is for. When attacking as ordered or on aggressive you lose bodyguard, which is designed. I quite like this specific functionality. Like, it lets me kill an immunes surgeon and have my bots return to bodyguard mode after, which is honestly handy.

Given that bots are the lowest ST dps primary overall and takes the longest to chew down bosses and the like, I feel like it would be fair to make bots the tankiest set. Make repair into an AOE heal that heals 50% of a bot's health and gives 10s of +10% resistance or something. Put it on a 30 second cooldown and make it accept pet sets so it can mule uniques. Suddenly it's worth taking.

So, Repair is the single most useless Mastermind Primary power. There's no reason to take it at all, aid other is a genuinely better skill to use. If repair were changed to a PBAOE heal + buff, it would be worth taking. If repair took pet sets and could be used to mule defense uniques the same way that other primary powers like hell on earth do, it would be more worth taking. Just opening it up to allow pet sets alone would at least give bots a mule power to match several other sets. It would help with pet slotting quite a bit.

I posted about this too and I agree with it

In a farming with MMs environment cold is going to handicap you quite a bit because it has no healing at all. Your pets are going to take damage, and you have no way to handle that with /cold other than taking aid pool. Thugs/time has space for all the pet uniques and easily softcaps your pets. Demons aren't gonna get you to the defense softcap either. Bots/time could potentially get there but the lack of a pet unique mule like gang war hurts bots pretty badly. Traps is about the only other set you could build to farm as well as /time but it's a tighter build and a riskier playstyle thanks to the healing differences between /time and /traps. The AoE heal really makes the difference in keeping all your pets up.

Wow. Absolutely nothing personal but this build is a mess. Lets start with the fact that you took primary powers late. Protectors at 30? Assault bot at 32? Upgrade robot at 38? The most important powers an MM has are the primary powers. You take pets and pet upgrades the level they become available and not a moment later. A word on tankerminding. It sucks. The ONLY personal aggro tool you have is provoke. And keeping aggro off your bots and on you to use bodyguard for damage mitigation is going to require that you constantly spam provoke. This build is less durable than a build where the pets tank for you. You need the two 5% defense uniques in your pets. You need to put maneuvers in the back of your build, you won't need it's defense until higher difficulties. You need to highly prioritize recharge. Perma or close to perma hasten. You need to consider that triage beacon alone won't keep you or your pets alive in high difficulties, on teams or otherwise, especially if you don't have it up, which you often won't with this low recharge build. Caltrops should be 5-6 slot with procs and web grenade should have a default slot with 1 accuracy. Triage beacon should have the healing set that gives +recharge at 5 slots. Trip mine is a genuine waste of a power in a non tankermind build, much less in a build designed to use provoke alot. Hasten should have at least two slots for 50+5 recharge enhancements. You don't have sudden accelerations in your bots at all, so knockback is a problem and the only way you really have to deal with that is electric fences from mu, plus mu would give you a shield for S/L resistance. You built your build to hit the defense cap and according to mids you're wayyyyy over that cap. The biggest problem with your build is that to be effective you have to have set up time before every group. You've got to be able to drop your traps before hand because you have to spam provoke during the fight. In groups you are going to feel useless and solo you are going to be slow. Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.5 https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer Click this DataLink to open the build! Level 50 Science Mastermind Primary Power Set: Robotics Secondary Power Set: Traps Power Pool: Leaping Power Pool: Medicine Power Pool: Speed Power Pool: Leadership Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery Villain Profile: Level 1: Battle Drones -- CaltoArm-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), CaltoArm-Dmg/EndRdx(3), CaltoArm-Acc/Dmg(3), CaltoArm-EndRdx/Dmg/Rchg(5), CaltoArm-+Def(Pets)(5), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(7) Level 1: Web Grenade -- Acc-I(A) Level 2: Caltrops -- ImpSwf-Dam%(A), Ann-ResDeb%(7), PstBls-Dam%(9), JvlVll-Acc/Dmg/End/Rech(9), Rgn-Knock%(11), Slow-I(11) Level 4: Triage Beacon -- Prv-Absorb%(A), Prv-Heal(13), Prv-Heal/EndRdx(13), Prv-EndRdx/Rchg(15), Prv-Heal/Rchg(15), Prv-Heal/Rchg/EndRdx(17) Level 6: Equip Robot -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 8: Super Jump -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A), BlsoftheZ-Travel(17) Level 10: Acid Mortar -- TchofLadG-%Dam(A), TchofLadG-DefDeb(19), TchofLadG-DefDeb/Rchg(19), TchofLadG-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(21), TchofLadG-Rchg/EndRdx(21), TchofLadG-DefDeb/EndRdx(23) Level 12: Protector Bots -- SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(A), SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg(23), SprCmmoft-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(25), SprCmmoft-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(25), DefBuff-I(27), DefBuff-I(27) Level 14: Aid Other -- Pnc-Heal(A), Pnc-Heal/+End(34), Pnc-Heal/EndRedux/Rchg(50), Pnc-Heal/Rchg(50), Pnc-EndRdx/Rchg(50) Level 16: Force Field Generator -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), DefBuff-I(29), DefBuff-I(29), ShlWal-ResDam/Re TP(31) Level 18: Aid Self -- Heal-I(A) Level 20: Field Medic -- RechRdx-I(A) Level 22: Poison Trap -- UnbCns-Dam%(A), UnbCns-Hold(31), UnbCns-Hold/Rchg(31), UnbCns-Acc/Hold/Rchg(33), UnbCns-Acc/Rchg(33), UnbCns-EndRdx/Hold(33) Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(34), RechRdx-I(40) Level 26: Assault Bot -- SprMarofS-EndRdx/+Resist/+Regen(A), SprMarofS-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), SprMarofS-Dmg(42), SprMarofS-Acc/Dmg(42), SprMarofS-Acc/EndRdx(43), SuddAcc--KB/+KD(43) Level 28: Seeker Drones -- CldSns-%Dam(A), CldSns-ToHitDeb(43), CldSns-Acc/ToHitDeb(46), CldSns-Acc/Rchg(48), CldSns-ToHitDeb/EndRdx/Rchg(48), CldSns-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(48) Level 30: Maneuvers -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(37), LucoftheG-Def(37) Level 32: Upgrade Robot -- EndRdx-I(A) Level 35: Charged Armor -- Ags-Psi/Status(A), Ags-ResDam/EndRdx(37), Ags-ResDam/Rchg(39), Ags-ResDam(39), Ags-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(39) Level 38: Tactics -- AdjTrg-ToHit/EndRdx(A), AdjTrg-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(40) Level 41: Super Speed -- Clr-Stlth(A), Clr-RunSpd(42) Level 44: Electrifying Fences -- GrvAnc-Hold%(A), GrvAnc-Immob(45), GrvAnc-Immob/Rchg(45), GrvAnc-Acc/Immob/Rchg(45), GrvAnc-Acc/Rchg(46), GrvAnc-Immob/EndRdx(46) Level 47: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 49: Vengeance -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A) Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(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 1: Supremacy Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A) Level 4: Ninja Run Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A) Level 2: Health -- Mrc-Rcvry+(A), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(36) Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A) Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-End%(A), PrfShf-EndMod(34), PrfShf-EndMod/Acc(36), PrfShf-EndMod/Rchg(36) ------------ This is my bots/traps. I built it to be as tanky as possible, and it does a solid job. Aid pool is to help the anemic healing of /traps. It is the difference often between a resummon cycle and not. Resummoning in combat is the overall bane of an MM's existence. Your build will cascade fail quickly as you lose bots, have to choose between resummoning and provoking, and don't even get to use things like your epic power choices. Provoke's 10 target cap is going to mean that your bots will take some attacks and having your own defenses high while the bots defenses are lower than they should be is going to hurt. With my build? Stealth into a group with the bots on defensive follow or drop seekers on the group, then drop a poison trap in the midst of them. Most of the group is held, drop acid mortar and triage becon and start alternating web grenade and electric fences on bosses to hold them in burn patches. Caltrops with procs knocks stuff down, adds damage with procs, and helps lower incoming damage by busying enemies with fear. Sudden acceleration kb->kd in your assault bot and drones keeps them from knocking stuff out of your burn patches, but if you have electric fences it's not critical.

Thugs/time. A farming build needs to be a mixture of high damage and pretty safe with lots of incoming damage. Thugs/time is about the only build I can think of that can potentially manage to handle the incoming damage that fire farms create. It's buffs, debuffs, and heals combine to make a pretty solidly tough set and with bonfire for CC help and incarnates you should be able to farm +3 to +4 at x8 pretty effectively. The entire key is to keep your pets alive and that's difficult to do in a farming situation. As long as the pets are alive you're doing damage, and of all the possible builds you could make for farming I think that one has the best chance of keeping your pets alive without resummoning much.

So, because Goto includes a stay command, the goto command is now functionally useless for melee pets. I think that for like bruiser, zombies, beasts, the pet ai actually worked better before patch than after. My thugs/time's bruiser now stands and chucks rocks endlessly unless on follow. I think that it would be a good idea for stay commands on melee centric pets to allow the pet to move within a certain range, maybe supremacy range, from the point where they are put to stay. Bruiser, zombies, grave knights, ninjas, and demon prince at the minimum need this treatment.

Notes on Pet movement. Melee pets actually benefitted from the previous AI compared to ranged pets. Like, my bruiser now stands and hurls rocks only with a goto macro. It would actually be to the benefit of melee pets that they be allowed to hover around a space without staying in one spot for petcom macros. If possible, give melee pets a range that they can go from a goto command to allow them to close into melee and attack. Even like a 20-30' range would be enough. Yeah, testing, my only issue with the new pet changes is that melee pets cannot functionally use the goto or stay commands at all now, they must remain in follow in order to fight. That's not functional. Give any pet that has more than brawl melee attacks the ability to reposition somewhat. I'll be honest after testing this out, I prefer the previous AI for goto, stay, follow compared to the new changes. This is gonna be a pain in the ass to manage until it's changed.

Bumping for visibility

Please leave IOs alone. The entire reason I play this game is to create Demi-gods. Rebalance IOs and I lose most of the reason I play. I am either on a toon I fully kitted out with an ideal build, or leveling a toon to fully kit out. I made a farmer to be able to IO out every single fucking thing I get past 22. Please whatever you do leave IOs alone. Like, I watch my roommate playing WoW Classic and I'm like FUUUUUCK THAT I want to be able to wade into armies and lay waste to them alone.

I am not going near that goddamn TF for quite a while after this. Jesus Christ the last fight was a nightmare. 5 resummons. Like fly away and resummon safely resummons. Came within a half inch (of healthbar) of dying. If not for lore pets this would have taken at least half an hour more. Set to x1+0

Hmm. Basics. Demons? 6 slot hell on earth, 3 pet defense procs and 3 recharge. That will let you 6 slot your pets with the other 3 sets for set bonuses, even fit a damage proc in or two if you want to. And then storm... build for recharge as much as you can, throw force feedbacks into things with knockback to add even more recharge, get hasten perma and consider taking burnout which would allow you hellfire two demons at once, drop up to 4 tornados and 4 storms if I've heard correctly. Burnout is your "the team is going down and I need to melt everything alive right tf now" button. Slotting for recharge you can learn, if you have mids then just click on powers and go look at set bonuses. If you don't, then look at the power info panel to find out what set types the power takes and then go to the AH and look at the enhancements in those set categories to see what bonuses exist and which ones you want. Storm is an endurance hog. Recharge first, endurance recovery second, defenses third would be my recommendation for prioritizing things. Don't forget sudden accelerations in knockback powers too. Stacking recharge won't be super easy but you get it as high as you can. Ageless will help at 50 with endurance and recharge a good bit. Your heals are weak, consider taking aid pool.

Besides which they're often not brawling in melee but using melee powers. No it's my fucking arsonist, my battle drones, and my assault bot that are like WOOOOO WE SMART NOW! :Edit: sorry excited doublepost :Edit2: If possible please fix demons getting stuck in teh floor and having to be dismissed when knocked back! Like just fought dominatrix and like she took all of my pets but the T1s out of comission forcing me to resummon and return to the fight. Couldn't kill her because demons bug out when knocked back

My masterminds are like FUUUUUUCK YESSSSSSSSS

HOLY SHIT PET AI UPDATES I FUCKING LOVE IT!

Is this tested true? I would expect the corr to do alot more damage because of lower attack modifiers for defender attack powers. I think those modifiers are to the class, not just the powerset. Defenders get better buff and debuff numbers absolutely, the buffs and debuffs from storm will be better, the healing on O2 boost will be higher, but I would expect corruptor storm to do way more damage between scourge and a higher damage modifier.

Stealth is useful in combat to keep aggro off of you. And to my knowledge no emotes were programmed into the game for beasts beyond like their animations for moving and idle and such. Demons can use alot of human emotes but not all.

It depends on what you want to min max tbh because Masterminds can take on so many different roles. Blasters, you want to min max there's exactly one goal. Damage. Damage damage and more damage. If you're a tank? It's pure survivability and after that it's being able to generate aggro. Masterminds can be one of the top DPS on the team. They can be one of the strongest in tanking and aggro management. They can play multiple team support roles, healing, buffs, debuffs, lots of soft control and occasional hard control. No mastermind can top every one of those categories at once. So then the question becomes, what roles do you want your MM to play and how well do you want them to do each? If you want to tank, Demons/nature is genuinely hard to beat. Demons are tough as shit before incarnates and nigh unkillable after incarnates with the healing that a demons/nature can throw out, plus it's a solid debuff set with buffs that are as useful to your pets as they are to your team. But Thugs/time, Beast/Nature, and Bots/traps will still give it a run for it's money tanking if properly outfitted. And this is just tanking damage, not like holding aggro specifically. If you want to do the most damage in the game of anything that walks, Beast, Thugs or Demons with storm is frightening. If you want the supportiest builds, Pair anything with Cold, Dark, Traps, Time, or Nature and build for recharge. My thugs/time has all his buffs close to perma. 8 seconds off on Chrono shift, farsight is a 2 minute duration and 1:12 recharge lol. It doesn't stack, but that becomes useful when you need to drop a gang war and then buff them a little so they don't die immediately. Aggro management? Pick Thugs or demons and pair with a debuff/soft control set and toss bonfire into the build. You'll neuter entire spawns and thugs especially, double gang war saves lives. I never tankermind. Who needs it. Spamming provoke sucks and you have to do it constantly to keep the aggro on you. Let your pets take the alpha and open up with some debuffs and controls and keep your team buffed and healed lol and you manage aggro by taking enough of it that what's left doesn't murder your team and they can pick targets and kill stuff. I've tanked an ITF as the only non squishy and had only a few individual deaths before. MMs can manage aggro pretty well if we're allowed to lead as the tank.