TheSpiritFox

Did you submit a support ticket in game about it? It might be a known issue, I know that I submitted one like that about my thugs, just a visual bug but they lose their second upgrade appearances when transitioning between areas and I have to rebuff for them to look right and I'm anal about stuff like that so it bugs me to no end if I don't see fully upgraded thugs.

The problem with /time is that mez filled alphas can and will fuck you up. If you're playing a defense based pet set your pets should have way more defense than you and should survive the alpha way better than you. I send the pets in first aways with my thugs/traps. It is rare that I lose a minion, much less a Lt or bruiser. My bots traps I go in first but that's cause with SS celerity they usually attack the bots before my opening poison trap goes off and then they're throwing up everywhere like it's a high school party.

Yep, this. I have never once in the history of this game had anyone complain about me sending my pets in before the tank attacks, not even the tanks. I don't hold aggro very well, no taunt to anything I do, so I take the alpha and a few provokes and attacks later, everything is on the tank. If there is no tank, by the time DPS opens up the alpha is over and they can only draw individual aggro, and I put out enough support usually to keep even squishies alive through it. My bots/traps puts out 20 defense to the team without incarnates, with support up it goes up to 32, and with barrier lol everyone close enough to get buffed is immortal.

If you aren't feeling useful it's because you're letting the team lead and not commanding your pets right. Now, on a steamroll team, yeah, no one gets off too many attacks tbh. I wouldn't worry about it that much. That said, Masterminds have three jobs in teams, not two. Support, dps, and Tank. Every time a pet gets attacked a player didn't take that damage outside of aoe heavy situations. I would imagine if your pets are arriving after everyone else, you're not playing up to potential, you're acting like you are a defender. Your place is not at the back of the pack. Your place is in front of/next to/second behind the tank. My bots/traps and thugs/time can both solo +4x8 and honestly, pretty quickly. Demons/time? You need to slot all the pet uniques for defense and resistance. All of them. Then you need to be using MM macros to command them to run into groups in defensive mode and stay there, drawing aggro and letting you follow right behind with your PBAOE debuff and time powers. If you aren't feeling useful, you're not playing aggressively enough by half. MMs are leaders, not followers. But again, Radio missions are pretty easy and nuking the shit out of a spawn in an 8 man group is simple as shit. Seriously though, make the following macros. /macro ATK "petcom_all aggressive$$petcom_all goto" /macro DEF "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all goto" /macro GRD "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all follow" /bind mbutton "petcom_all attack" Gives you three tray macros you can click or set hotkeys for your tray slots and order your pets around, and lets you click your middle mouse button to give an attack order. How these work with the AI? Goto commands include a stay component. It's not perfect, but you can command your pets to go to a place and try to stay around there, in whatever stance you want. I use defensive goto CONSTANTLY. Like, it is by far the most clicked button any of my MMs have. It lets you send the pets in before you run in while still in bodyguard mode (taking less damage by splitting it with pets). I usually send pets in in defensive. If the tank gets aggro, the pets might stop attacking, so then I might switch up to aggressive so they blast everything in sight. If they're acting up while i'm moving I hit defensive follow, if I need them anywhere including just rounding them up for buffs, defensive goto all day every day. And the benefit of the attack command up there is you can order them to focus a specific target. You lose bodyguard doing it, but only until the thing is dead, then they return to whatever previous command they've been given, letting you put them somewhere in defensive goto, pick a target to burn down, and return to bodyguard once it's dead.

I honestly don't know, but I'd say it feels like a 2 minute duration.

yeah Demons/nature is absolutely fun, but without defense you're gonna run into alphas that absolutely chew your pets to bits, enough to kill you. You can't outheal some of the shit late game enemies came out very well. It feels tanky and solid damage without excelling anywhere and definitely without being immortal. My bots/traps forgot what debt was a long time ago, my demons/nature fully slotted out eats it when I have bad luck way more easily. Mez fucks it up bad pre clarion. If you ain't healing you won't be alive for long. Absolutely depends on incarnates, feels like it would be a nightmare to try to like do a lambda with.

For /traps mu and pyre I think are the two best. Electric fences is just a stellar aoe immob and Bonfire is quite possibly the single best overall CC in the game.

Thugs cold is a solid set. /Cold is one of the higher tier secondaries for MMs, from what I know (I haven't tried it as of yet) the thing it lack is healing, and you might want the aid pool to help make up that lack.

You skip them. Detonator is genuine shit. My thing about it is that you figure out it's damage per activation, then divide it by 4 because you have to resummon and rebuff something after. Factoring in the cast time and endurance cost of resummoning and rebuffing a minion into the cost of using detonator, it's like possibly the worst T9 masterminds have access to. True hot garbage, and more labor and resource intensive a nuke to use than any single other power in the entire game. Trip mine is a better power, but it is far from spammable, the interrupt time will fuck you over alot (and waste endurance) in heavy crowds with aoes flying, and it does factually throw dudes everywhere some of the time which can just be inconvenient in an otherwise neat double caltrops, mortar, and P.Trap killzone.

Traps is a late bloomer. It's at its best by far late game when you can stack recharage and get most of your traps down to like 30 second or lower recharges. The debuffs on /traps are heavy enough that with propper slotting you can solo incarnate groups with bots or thugs. And the mez help on your minions from /traps is a godsend.

First, pet upgrades only activate an animation on the pet you use them on, but the buff is indeed AOE so long as your other pets are in a certain range from the one you equipped. Upgrades persist through level loads until the pets death or dismissal. Second, upgrades stack. A little lesson on pets. Every pet has a set of powers and the upgrades enable different additional powers each. So like, if you don't use the first upgrade and only use the second, your pets will not have access to the attacks enabled by the first upgrade and vice versa. Third, Macros.

Assault bot fires a missile at an enemy, and up to 16 targets within 20 feet get hit with a burn patch, each burn patch being able to hit up to 5 targets. So yeah, in packed mobs things just absolutely melt, and the fact that the attack comes from the assault bot and not like your arsonist with thugs means that the attack is made at the same level you are, including incarnate shifts and such. Assault bot burn patches are less subject to level differences and do way more damage. The end result is against a single hard target bots do low DPS and only the -regen makes up for it, but in a target rich environment with burn patches cycling every cooldown the AOE damage potential of bots is absolutely nuts and you can melt entire packs including bosses in seconds solo. If you can keep stuff mobbed in burn patches, everything dies. And I feel like the AI is halfway decent about it. I use goto commands alot which resets their attack chain and I see the assault bot pretty reliably open up with burn patch missles quick. The biggest pain with bots is killing bosses after everything else has melted, it can take a minute.

Ive sent a message to the board mods asking them if they'd sticky it, no response though. I'm around though so I'll be active with the thread if it does get used.

Alright...lets see. First, slotting considerations. You took thugs. 6 slot gang war and put 3 of the pet uniques in it. Maybe all three resist auras, you really need them as thugs. Put two defense IOs in your enforcers. You need your pets softcapped, just do it. You do not need that much accuracy. Double tactics from enforcers plus acid mortar for -defense. Your thugs will hit shit. You can afford to not chase sets too hard with your pet slotting and like put 4 pieces of a set in enforcers, 5 pieces of another set in call thugs plus the pet unique from the enforrcers 4 set, and a full set in your bruiser plus gang war and have all 6 uniques and excellent pet enhancement values. Damage damage damage. Cap damage, get like 30% accuracy, and you'll hit shit. Traps. Caltrops is a wonderful proc mule. Build for /recharge whenever possible and 6 slot caltrops with -resistance proc, knockdown proc, and 3-4 damage procs, maybe a slow enhancement. It'll add pretty significantly to your damage over time and with enough recharge it's pretty easy to end up with 2 of them down at once. Also, caltrops fucks up enemy ai with slowly running out and enemies get off fewer attacks while they're exiting patches. Helps with incoming damage a decent bit as a soft control, good for stacking enemies up on doorways to really let you aoe them down, etc. Triage beacon is a great set mule it provides enough healing fully enhanced to be worth 6 slotting and thugs/traps kinda has the room for it. You can also not slot it and manage your build without it or skip it. Useful, but not crucial. I feel like especially on longer fights though, it helps alot. AOE healing over time is pretty nice. But a power you can cannibalize to put slots elsewhere. Acid mortar is flexible, it needs no accuracy, it does solid debuffs out the box. You can enhance the defense debuff, you can just drop two recharge IOs in it and have a great power that uses up like no slotting. Depends on your build but I would put this power in a "flexible and powerful enough to go light on slotting in favor of other sets" power. Forcefield gen I generally give 4 pieces of LOTG and leave it at that, including the recharge one. Seekers are a good 5 or 6 slot for sets Poison trap, 5 or 6 slot with a hold set. And, trip mine is meh. If you really wanna take it, do so. But with the long setup and recharge, setting up a field of them is pretty impractical, and there are better overall ways to spend your time (and more entertaining) than trying to drop trip mines in battle. We aren't blaster devices, the interrupt kills it. Detonator is hot garbage. Put an accuracy IO in web grenade and with recharge you can use it to stack on bosses and hold even AVs sometimes. Rotate web grenade with a patron immob and shit stops going places fast, especially with caltrops in the mix. I take hasten, super speed, super jump, tactics and maneuvers, vengence if I can fit it, combat jumping after that for more LOTG mules, and I would say with a thugs traps you have three awesome epic options. /mace will give you a defensive shield to cap yourself with and an aoe immob. /Mu will give you resistance and an AoE immob. And pyre mastery will give you bonfire, which with one sudden acceleration kb->kd is one of the best CCs in the game. Bonfire you can proc out or put a set in. Mu and Mace will give you two potential options for up to 6 slotting for set bonuses. Recharge recharge recharge. Put a stealth IO in SS, drop poison trap on groups, drop your traps, watch thugs melt shit. Move on. You can take your heals, but with /traps your first goal is to boost recharge and your second is to softcap yourself to ranged and AOE. After your pets are softcapped, because that's your number one character priority anyway and you can do it pretty easy with thugs/traps.

The only thing I really know about it is that it's 3rd or 4th best in the fire farming brute ratings. So it's got high sustained AOE damage and probably at least decent single target.

Personal opinion, tankerminding is sub par MM play. The simple reason is Mez. If you want to tankermind, you have to build your entire build around it. Around holding aggro, surviving damage, that's two of your pool choices gone right there with fighting and presence. And alot of extra toggles on a character not designed around running tanker level toggles. You give up more than you get. And presence is the only aggro management tool you have. Once the fight gets going or is big enough that you can't taunt all of the stuff around you, suddenly your pets defenses matter more than yours do. You can't keep aoe aggro as a mastermind on you long term. It just doesn't work. It is far easier to get your pets defense capped and some extra resistance and let them lead. Pets make better overall tanks than you do and once a fight gets going and damage starts rolling out your pets will tear aggro away from you anyway. Having to spam taunt means that you're neglecting the other half of your powerset a good bit: The support. With the right build most MMs can be set up to allow your pets to fully take the alpha and survive it and go from there. And when you get there, you're far better off playing support using heals, buffs, debuffs, and CC. Bonfire from heat mastery is with just one slot one of the best CCs in the game, and it does amazing things for pet survivability. Rather than throwing provoke left and right, everyone from you and your team are better off if your pets are taking the aggro and you're keeping them alive while they do it. I have a bots/traps and if there is any build made for tankerminding it's that one. Both bots and traps boost my personal defenses and /traps includes mez protection in that. With incarnates my pets and I are all past softcap on defenses without scorpion shield and I could reasonably spam provoke in between traps to hold aggro. It's beyond unncessary. I took aid pool instead and let my bots tank and keep them healed up. Who even needs a tank when you can throw out enough defense to softcap your entire team and CC+aoe entire mob groups into oblivion? I have a 50 bots/traps, a 50 thugs/time and a 50 demons/nature and in the end each of them is most effective if the pets take aggro over you. Build your pets defenses up as high as you can get them. When that's done, stack recharge on yourself and shore up your defenses to ranged and AOE where you can. But plan around the pets tanking for you. That's literally what they're there for. You're not limited to summoning out of combat or anything like that for a reason.

My demons/nature 6 slotted it, 3 pet uniques and 3 recharge. Along with hasten it's got a 90 second duration and about double that in cooldown. Enough to use a ton.

Oh so I have to hit corpses with it to get endurance? Another thing that I didn't know about it... I need to go reread all the power descriptions.

Use the first six letters of the power name only and it'll work fine. Same with pet names.

Remove the quotes from the macro and it'll work. Ran into the same problem in another thread. Idk why this specific macro doesn't allow quotes, but that error you're getting is because it thinks that youre trying to type like /"bind

I made a thread about this, it just didn't get stickied.

I main bots/traps. I think that it's the strongest actual MM combo in the game. It's a roomy built, the last two powers are utterly skippable, caltrops is one of the best proc mules in the game, with poison trap and acid mortar following very close behind. FFgen is the best single defensive power in the game. A ton of defense and mez protection in a huge area that you have to summon once every like 5 minutes that almost never dies that recharges fast if it actually does die. The only time I generally lose a FF gen is if I super speed stealth into a group and the FFgen ends up being what takes the alpha lol. Web grenade with one accuracy IO and a high recharge build will let you web bosses, and taking Mu will give you both extra resistance in a shield and the best AOE immob for bots in the game, electric fences. It has -kb. Mine is fully incarnated out with T4 barrier core both I and my bots are permanently soft capped and at the start of barrier, functionally immortal. With support core rotating in and a good T4 damage pet there's nothing in the game outside of iTrials I've found that I can't solo at +4x8. I have a thugs time and time is great, but it's super active. It's such a high recharge build that /time tops out when you're just throwing time powers left and right until everything dies pretty much. /Traps is a much more mellow pace and is designed around it, and when you're trying to solo infernal at +4 to see if you can that mellow pace gives you time to think, plan, resummon dead bots, take and use the aid pool for extra healing, etc. I love hte moment after I drop all of my traps in an ITF and have a moment to like stop, look around, see what's happening in the battle. Someone once said that everyone else is like playing an Action RPG while masterminds are over here directing their own personal movie. That's what Bots/traps feels like to me, and I love it. Favorite toon in the game. 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), LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(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) 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(40), 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: Burnout -- RechRdx-I(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) ------------ My current build. It cost a bit, but well worth the expense. Though /traps is one of the more forgiving sets with just common IOs, especially with bots that give you an extra defensive shield. Thinking about replacing burnout with vengence as another LOTG mule and for the buffs in teams, cause who doesn't like taking advantage of blaster deaths. I don't actually use it much. Once in a blue moon to drop two triage becons on top of each other and caltrop a large area. You should open that build and go take a look at the status protection. Anything that does get through (not much will, you'll never get immmobilized inside your bubble, ever) gets shortened to almost nothing. At high levels, that's alot of what separates /traps from /time. Besides the debuffs, the personal buffs to the mastermind from /traps far, far exceed what /time offers. In higher level content, mezzes are one of the things that can cascade fail a /time. Mezzed when farsight is up, pets lose defense, you can't control them so they scatter a bit and die, you die. Bots/traps, you die when enemies manage to chew enough of your pets down to actually do any damage to you at all, and if you can keep your pets up in bodyguard you straight up will not die, ever. My assault bot with no incarnates running has like 50 defense. Support core adds 24% defense to pets. Barrier core starts out at like 60% and drops to 5% defense at the end of it's duration. Even my protector bots are way over softcap when I start hitting buttons.

Nice, thanks, I've been googling trying to find out how much regen AVs have and google has failed me multiple times.

Wholly? no. Different AVs have different regen rates, I'm pretty sure. I just googled to find out and didn't see anything anywhere listing how much regen AVs have on average or anything, it's likely a very individual number. But you can see how much the debuff works on AVs. Assault bot, if I remember correctly, does -500% regen. Purple patch cuts that in half. -250% regen. Then AV resistance of up to .87 applies at 54, lower for lower levels. But at 54, you multiply that 250 by .13 So to an AV, your assault bot does an absolute minimum of -32% regen after everything is taken into account, increasing as you decrease in level. Depending on how much regen an AV has this can be a little or decent, but it'll likely never eliminate it completely. How much regen do AVs have? No fucking clue, I can't find it. But tanks commonly have 200% regen or more. So if an AV is anywhere near those numbers, you can imagine what subtracting 32% from it does. Not a ton. Even my bots/traps which has poison trap to stack an addition -1000% regen before resistances isn't going to floor an AV's regen alone, but it will drop it considerably enough that the difference in regen could be considered a decently significant extra bit of DPS against AVs in their un-debuffed state. But then again, AVs have MASSIVE health pools. They might require a lower scale overall regen simply due to how massively much even a small percentage can heal over time, and I could be wrong about that side of the math and maybe like Assault bot plus poison trap does like floor regen. If you can find me actual AV regen numbers (I seriously can't) that'll finish my answer.

I think Rad/ works better on Brutes. It throws out alot of aoe attacks on a pretty constant basis, all of them both building fury and taunting things onto you. A rad that's surrounded is a rad doing it's best damage, and brutes are designed to get into, stay in, and often create that ball of enemies. The Rad heal is more attractive on a brute with higher HP and better defenses, the heal goes further on a brute than a scrapper, especially on resistance sets which never softcap everything. I'm sure rad is great on scrappers, but I feel like compared to how well it synergizes with brute mechanics and brute survivability, that playing a rad scrapper would feel less fun than playing my rad brute, and probably a good bit squishier.