TheSpiritFox

For end game, the general wisdom is that Resistance matches best with resistance based sets and def with defense based sets. So bots and thugs are defense based, Zombies, mercs, and demons are resistance based, Beasts are a bit of a mix but can softcap themselves with Fortify Pack so they are a bit more open to synergy, and Ninjas pretty much need /time and /mace for power boosted farsight to hit the softcap and be survivable end game. Special cases: Secondaries that deserve some discourse Electric affinity secondary is a special case. It is so defensively strong with it's absorb, heals, and mez protection resistance cage that it goes well with any primary because it's good at keeping literally anything alive. But it does not enhance damage or debuff enemies well at all, so you trade survivability and being an asset to a team as a support character for damage and other utility. It does exactly what it is intended to do for any MM, and does it so well with a good build that you are an asset to a team and can do well solo with any /elec MM. Dark is also a special case. Dark does what it does primarily by debuffing enemies. It is very controllery and you survive by being able to neuter enemies damage and hit chance, which is like buffing both defense and resistance on your pets in a fight. But the enemy focused nature of /dark, it's strong aoe heal (that can unfortunately miss) and it's mixture of CC and even adding an extra pet for you adds well to all mastermind primaries. Storm is a special case. Storm brings damage, CC, and debuffing so like Dark it is a very controllery secondary. Storm is less about pairings and more about just giving you more shit to do. Storm is in my opinion better suited to taking provoke and tanking things yourself than any other secondary, because it only has one fairly weak buff for pets and one single target heal that's meh. It's better than taking aid other, but only just. Storm is one I would say "Take sorcery for rune of protection, travel, and spirit ward, then take presence pool and provoke, then consider tough and weave if you can fit them in" and a storm MM can do a pretty good job of tanking most things. Provoke + hurricane is potent even against AVs and if you build up ranged defense and use hurricane to keep things out of melee you can in a very chaotic way tank things pretty well. The last special case is Kinetics. Kinetics sucks overall for MMs in the end game unless you take Beasts, which can softcap themselves. Fortify pack cuts beasts damage in exchange for protection, and fulcrum shift gives the damage back again in spades, so Beasts/Kin is THE mastermind kinetics build in my opinion. For bots and thugs, I would say that I would rank things traps > time > dark > elec > cold > forcefield > everything else. For Zombies, mercs, and demons I would rank things Nature = Elec = Dark = Thermal > Time w/ power boost > sonic w/ aid pool > everything else For Beasts I would say Traps = Time = Dark = Nature = Elec = Thermal > kin > everything else For ninjas its simple Time w/ Power boost > Elec > all

Thugs/thermal is a decent set combination. It absolutely needs all the pet uniques for the defense and resistance, as you're going to be short of the softcap no matter what you do. It's going to be a pretty active set as well, requiring you to keep up healing to keep your thugs alive. Expect to resummon T1s pretty frequently and to almost never lose your bruiser. It'll do good damage and contribute to the team very well, soloing +4x8 may be a bit difficult or annoying, but likely very possible. Needs alot of recharge so your heals are up constantly and your debuffs are perma. You can build it for tankerminding but I do not recommend that primarily because you cannot affect yourself with most of your buffs. Can't give yourself resistance or defense, can't forge yourself or give yourself status protection, but you can do all of that for your pets. Thermal is a heavy set. It's basically super empathy, the only power I would say you can skip without lowering your offense or defense is the rez. Warmth is a decent aoe heal but it's not fantastic, it'll leave you lacking if you don't also take cauterize in difficult content. All the buffs and debuffs are solid, but your debuffs come late as hell so they'll only be available in later game content, which can suck. Also, despite having mez protect the one it doesn't touch is knockback/down. Knock effects can be the bane of a mastermind, as pets have no native protection and absent certain buffs no way to give it to them, so things like earthquake from CoT can render you unable to do any damage for a bit until it stops or you can get pets out of the area of effect. Incarnate content might end up being a major pain in the ass. To the point that you might need an alpha that enhances defense or resistance, you ABSOLUTELY need barrier if at all possible, and anything that throws out heavy defense debuffs is going to chew up your thugs hard because you don't have the resistance to make them all tanky and you don't have the softcap to try to protect them from getting debuffed in the first place. One of the reasons masterminds tend to work best when you pair def with def and res with res is that without matching primary and secondary you often do not have the defense or resistance to keep pets alive in the hardest content.

Toggle size and cast times suck. Make the Rad debuffs 25 feet wide, and make the toggles for rad specifically have instant cast times and take 1 second to come into effect after you cast. Boom. Rad is now competitive with other MM secondaries.

This is the only factually correct answer to this post.

I know I'm in a minority but I hate this change. I hate streaming culture, I don't want to invite Twitch streamers in, I just want to play the game. Bad change imo. Also like is there any actual word on "negotiations" cause at this point like after 2 years I would have expected to see more than "we're talking" that doesn't sound legit tbh.

Alright Mastermind Primer People covered supremacy but basics, pets get a buff if they're within 40 feet of you. This is linked to bodyguard. You split damage with living pets in supremacy range if those pets are in defensive stance and under goto, follow, or stay orders. Bodyguard = You get 2 parts damage, each living pet gets 1 part damage. 6 pets, 8 parts, 75% damage reduction for things punching your MM in the face. 1 pet alive, 33% damage reduction. Pet commands! Here's a simple set for you /bind q "petcom_all aggressive$$petcom_all goto" /bind e "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all goto" /bind r "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all follow" /bind mbutton "petcom_all attack" /bind shift+mbutton "petcom_all stay" Those five binds are pretty much all I use for pet control in combat. Aggressive mode they attack everything nearby. Defensive mode, you're in bodyguard if you're within 40 feet of your pets. Goto is great, pets go to that spot and attack stuff within 40 feet of it. Follow has them chase after you to the next spawn. Attack focuses fire on a single target, stay keeps them from running out of enemy damage patches and all over creation. Pet auras. There are 6 enhancement sets with a unique enhancement which gives either defense or resistance to all of your pets in supremacy range. 2 5% defense, 2 10% resistance, 1 10% aoe defense, 1 15% resistance. The mule powers are powers which can allow you to slot these pet uniques without putting them in the pets themselves, leaving room in the pets for procs and enhancement and whatnot. Thugs, zombies, and demons have a mule power. Gang war for thugs, soul extraction for zombies, hell on earth for demons. It is common to slot like 4 of the pet aura ios into gang war an then 2 recharge ios to just be able to drop it regularly. Mercs, ninjas, beasts, and bots unfortunately do not have an extra power to mule these IOs so you have to squash them into your pets, or take /storm and fit some into storm powers. Dark actually might be able to take some in the dark servant when you get there as well. I can't remember what fluffy can take. Procs wise, some pets can fit some and benefit alot from them, others do not. The T1 beasts benefit from procs, T2 enforcers in thugs benefit alot from procs, necro T2 benefit from a few, and Necro T3 has one that's about mandatory (cloud senses). Demons, there's one proc that goes well in the T3, but not much else for them to utilize. The thing about pets and procs is that putting a proc in a pet procs all the attacks that are compatible with the proc, and on separate timers. So the enforcers who have 4 total -def attacks have 4 attacks which can proc a -def proc, 2 of them are big cone aoes and it adds up to a shitload of potential proc opportunities off pretty much all their common attacks. The T1 thugs by comparison don't have anything other than overwhelming force chance for knockdown they can really slot and benefit from, no attacks that enable weird procs from debuff sets and such. I've heard some really good things about the proc rate with beasts and a few procs though.

With the changes they made to goto behavior, all pets do this now. Like, absent damage patches which send pets running and which all pets will stand in and not run if you hit the stay command, demons, thugs, bots, beasts, I have not had any problems with pets running all over creation since they updated how the pet AI works. But I will say that other than occasionally the arsonist who can draw an entire group's alpha with his first attack and go down, thugs feels much tankier. Especially because of how protector bot shield's work, which makes bots much more subject to cascade failure and death if you have to resummon in combat, all of your bots have to get rebuffed and single target casting, that takes a second during which your defenses are super low. Thug's leadership is a much better buff. One of the bots changes I really hope we see is an aoe cast bubble on the protectors.

Someone mathed it out. Guassians adds like 2 dps less than a proc in the same slot in enforcers. Not a massive difference, but that's specifically compared to the lethal proc which fits in enforcers. The neg energy proc adds just a bit more because instead of increasing lethal damage which is highly resisted you're adding negative which is not often resisted and usually only by mobs which are not super resistant to lethal damage, spreading your damage out overall and making you perform better vs everything. If enforcers did not have 4 - def attacks where procs act as if you slotted the proc separately into each attack with no recharge, gaussians would be better, but because of how often enforcers can proc the damage procs the procs really do shine. Also, gaussians has the same level range as the neg energy proc (which you do not want to lose) but the lethal proc has a min level of 10, which means you keep it working down into posi levels when you'd lose gaussians if you replaced the lethal proc with it.

Oh I misread. Yeah recharge enhancement is at this point entirely pointless. Replace it with endmod and give pets an endurance recovery buff instead

Damage procs are better than the build up procs for enforcers. If you're gonna put a soulbound in Thugs, it should either go in the T1 or the T3, and guassians is honestly a waste of a slot compared to damage procs, one of which is negative energy damage. Now like, if we're gonna talk about possible changes, who fuckin knows lmao. I can't wait for MM buffs, I've been sitting here begging for them for ages (since like i12 on live when I came back after quitting due to Enhancement Diversification for a long while, yes I was one of those people =p) and yeah if they like buff bots and change how their DPS works, buff the minions, especially if they actually give us one of the biggest buffs ALL MMs need making the pets all always be the same level as the master except for like gang war and hell on earth stuff which should be a level under, that'll change things. Make the T1 bots the same level as the MM and cut their full auto animation down to 2.5 seconds, and that'll change things, buff bots so you don't have to waste actual bot slots on pet auras the same way, that'll change things. But as things stand currently, the way it maths out, Bots loses out hard to thugs and is on par with or just below demons if you build all three primaries out as best you possibly can. And yeah, the arsonist does die. Almost always right at the start of the fight. When I have to resummon him it's usually JUST him in the first 5 seconds of the fight, which is annoying, but also why I took aid other on my traps builds because having a single target heal makes a massive difference in pet survivability compared to no heal or just triage beacon. But I mean, you're throwing out not just smash and lethal, you're throwing out lethal damage, fire damage, negative energy damage with one of the procs which has a separate proc timer for each enforcer attack meaning that it procs a shitload, plus the large amount of smashing damage from the bruiser. Yeah it does get resisted more, but you're throwing out alot more total aoe damage so even with resists, thugs genuinely come out ahead. Add on a secondary or team which debuffs resistance though...

Yeah I agree. Besides loathing 4chan culture, I don't want to play on a server that's basically rebalanced MMs to be able to destroy all content single player because hey it's a small pop server people expect to spend alot more overall time soloing things so we're gonna make you overpowered for it. Some of the changes I've seen on thunderspy are just like what i would imagine balance would look like if you were making a server just for yourself to fuck around in and be a literal god.

It's insanely good for your secondary though. Lots of support sets benefit from perma hasten levels of recharge quite alot, especially when it lets you perma debuffs, double stack things like acid mortar or tar patch, etc. Like, I split the set that gives 10% with just 2 slots across 2 pets on my builds to get double 10% recharge out of just 4 enhancement slots and it's fucking awesome. If you build around making your secondary powerful for supporting pets and teammates those pet sets are actually truly goddamn awesome, you get more mileage out of recharge on an MM than you think if you pick the right secondary to go with your primary.

Here. This is my thugs/traps | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1510;666;1332;HEX;| |78DA8D944B6F125114C7EF0C501E52A5055AA93C5B5B5BAAD8B1D59589B10FFBB02| |44D8AAF1599C0941261204013F119BF81D144BF814BD76E8DD1B6267E0175A32E8C| |8BAA0B5D8FC7397F18021B2721BFB9E7DC73CEFFDC7B86F4AD45EF8BE5871784E45| |B28A9F57A36ADD61B5AAD5CD4F39E8C96DBD62BA54AA169134278E62BBA5ED4E217| |F5BC9396C3D6C6ECE64EB95CD15399ED9D423DD8619FDFD9DA4A656A6AB52E3C1B9| |54A29B559D5B47CBFF99AD6F2C55C51D7BCE66A5D53AB45BD105AAA1673A9154D6D| |404733BBD9504B37B59ADFF42C6CABB582D6F28548C614FD5E3B041EC321DDB00BA| |1D8859201776DCC7D700F7CCB6CDADBB1B23442505C4299F847779BB7698F84FCF2| |37C43F274B84F852F05A763047E1FFCC1CA3B3B221BFDD29B3CF05BA996F28945B3| |0445F82F3DDA19A4ED4748591330246C11818070F987729D68D58CF2BAAE127DF19| |D49C05E7C0B3E039E62E09398458EF79825D124A37FB6CDCFB7BC40625931112DCC| |FB1F6C3FFA9F91E693D82F3F1218F12C5F9837BA469009A06BFC85CFB3B2D4F107F| |43C31FDCC33462C1FB94DF8FD8808A3B5B45CC22B8045E025798A3D44F9063A5A1A| |EBCC3E41B86EEA31F10F711FCC4DC27DD2173720CC7C815CCE355F01A781D6CE29E| |1638F601998FA176B8AB768C6A47302FD1E3DCF73BAA15832D8E19F2D3A18DA2F7B| |1D6DCB6EA74CF6D0235BEB29E47E3428C23DFC434EF95878498846D0A5A0648CB34| |CEE164EBFE02A08F39487B52E8E534B42960807C33F0B5E648B9CC5AD3D6B76984A| |D772119F488F51ECB86F59D0AD9B41C78C822C1728A2BFEE8B44DB2EDA76593E435| |89272BC12A7E593E9BFC1837FC047C0A3E63263B35A1C3991E9D4A8F65B6C732D76| |371FBDAFF24C672D23A99958EF7B5647BE28CD564FB4B36FE02A3BEE443| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| And this is my bots/traps | Copy & Paste this data into Mids Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1479;678;1356;HEX;| |78DA6594594F135114C7EFED4CE9422B45284BE90E6DB168A1803E9998C8222A4D9| |012972752DB4127A14B2824E21ABF81D144BF818F3E1B834613357E089F348A3EA0| |26EAF37898F3A753334D26BF7BCF39F77F96DE99C28D59DFB333F74F091998592F3| |59BAB85527353DBA8EAB58AAB58D6B55A595304FD5CF4842CDF6A71AB5AADD772CB| |F5ABF54DBDDC0CB6B94E6FADADE556364A8DA6F02ED5EBEBB96243D32A7E7359D02| |A7A59AF695DE66E512B55B48DE675BDE13BD837F4DAB5D05C432FE7DA140B5B286B| |7B80CA18A5E78553E06738C55BAA30AF0AC73BF03D53FD007EA7B08C2A3A3E39848| |8A8625B6D9D7588903063F2E9FF79936224F4A5C369DA3A9EB3CFBDCBBAEEA7D2D4| |F32679EF4DB0FF169D55705689B3CF170623CC435130C60CEC31772815B7660827F| |48669F62EC9F5BA5C0E8E77330F7B98B729A707393D27E09B64F61E07A7987DD320| |FA7A45E8647D67E715D5B40D5C044F92595544E88051AE291C942623549B9FF3AA7| |EF41A47AF71F49A40AF09F47A87A4BB389FDA059D0474870F789E63B3BF9931CAD3| |CD7964F708C78C837749AF07BDF79CE5DE8667992373E03CB8C04C5739EF8394104| |1CC3B38C67A49CAD5CFF5C97ED8C6C1D734AB41E41A5CE119852F33A397C019CE11| |FDCCFB3866778FB6437C5619FAC677F1D857F00BB8CBECA61A22A8218219A503CC3| |754430C35C7704776684C498E57927F7866E9BFCC4C3FDFD3CC24EF7B483B05ED14| |CE67C0970ABF5FFBFFCDE812F771E402B80C1699D915DC33D21B83DE1874C6C15EF| |2E5506B0E7DF4916D02F113B0E53FB256C17A378DB0B5DEDF1A8658B45996ACF754| |48D3B2E7258B6CB7FCB0597E5A1629CF49F3EB904DF0747E593E453EE1AA8E3E041| |F838F30015B3D13364BDE6699B259A66D164FA0F50D3166B3D64CE6B3ADFB67CCD1| |BA13EB7FAF36E1FA| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| And I gotta say my thugs/traps performs much, much overall better.

The full auto laser cones are a 6 second cast, making them lower overall DPS from the small bots. The protector bots add very little damage overall including their photon grenade. Like, bots are pretty much all about the assault bot and his AOE. And while that's great, there's zero proc potential from it really. Like I'm not saying the bots are bad at aoe, I'm saying that like when I look at Tidge's comment above where he took a bots/traps and a thugs/therma and is trying to compare primary aoe when one of them is a traps? Nah the difference maker there is traps is far and away a massively offensive primary and thermal is not. Like, yes, bots lower pets add some aoe. Thugs lower pets add a shitload of aoe. The arsonist does more aoe damage than all 3 of the T1 bots combined. A single enforcer does more aoe damage than both protectors combined. Thugs/traps vs bots/traps my thugs traps is better both offensively and defensively to the point that bots/traps is harder to play because it is slower to kill things and more likely to lose pets than my thugs/traps. It's not so much that I "Like" thugs more than bots. I really WISH bots performed as well as thugs, I want a big single target damage buff for bots as well as something done about the whole "proc mule for pet auras" issue which makes slotting bots harder. But like no gang war, 2 -def cones and 2 -def single target attacks which help a good bit with level differences and can take damage procs on each enforcer, constant aoe from the arsonist, as well as the easy survivability of thugs over bots once you have them fully IOed out? Bots might well be better overall aoe without secondary powers taken into effect and with generics, but once you build it out and pick a secondary that enhances aoe damage, thugs have edged out bots in performance with like spare no expense purple builds pretty hard in my experience. I can't remember the exact numbers but someone tested it. Each proc in each enforcer adds like 8-14 DPS single target to the MM. That's a shitload of extra damage and bots do not have procability like that. And again, this is also considering that bots kinda need a tightly packed mob group to really go to town, and thugs overall perform much better in all situations especially not ideal aoe stituations where bots efficiency falls off the second that you're not target saturated on burn patch missles. The ONLY reason bots are not down at mercs level is 1) far better defensively thanks to protector bots and 2) burn patch missles change the entire dynamic of what bots are capable of in ideal conditions. Both thugs and bots are capable of melting a tightly packed group including bosses in literal seconds. But bots, if the burn patch missles get wasted to spread and you get like 4 burn patches and have to wait for the cooldown, your aoe dps just tanked into the floor for the time it takes for burn patch to come up and you spend the whole time trying to make sure they don't scatter before it comes up again. Thugs? No worries. Stuff will come back and then single target thugs will annihilate whatever very quickly.

For pet customization I would honestly just be happy with like, 3-4 different visual options for each primary. Like, you could do Beasts but like, it can be wolves and lions, or it can be bugs, or it can be dinosaurs, or it can be idk what else. Robots just have like 4 different theme appearances, thugs they let you color customize so you can like pick your gang colors (and maybe even arsonist fire colors) and just like give us a few options for demon appearances. Also Ninjas are ugly as shit. I agree with this. I would rather things stay as they are than give up my costume slots for pet costumes. I generally have a minimum of 3 alternate costumes per character and its just like this. Costume, casual clothes, alternate costume, fancy look, robot look. With pallate swaps for powers like my fire blaster has a red fire costume, a white fire costume, a golden "holy" fire costume, a purple fire costume, a green fire costume, and a black fire costume.

Hmm. I'm honestly not sure. Your multibox thing changes the dynamic alot, and target saturation via multiple spawns being pulled at once changes things. Bots are going to be solid aoe in a target rich environment like that because every single time it fires burn patch missiles it spawns 16 burn patches due to saturating multiple aggro caps and making a giant swimming pool of enemies to wade around in basically. Thugs are great in normal content, but a multibox farm with multiple MMs and 40+ targets aggroed simultaneously is it's entire own gameplay scenario I have no experience with to give you a nuanced comparison between thugs with it's more distributed aoe and bots with its "Assault bot melts everything" aoe.

Thugs. Definitely thugs. Like, Ok, the assault bot with perfect setup has amazing aoe. Without perfect setup, bot aoe hurts badly. Mobs scatter? You're fucked, bots have the lowest single target damage (needs a big ass buff in the ST area TBH). My experience with playing a bots/traps/mu which is about as solid a bots AOE monster as you can create, it's still difficult. If a boss gets out of your burn patches they take forever to kill compared to other sets and stuff, it gets really tedious if your immobilize doesn't hit a boss in time to keep it in burn patches or if the mobs aren't already tightly grouped up to begin with. Thugs by comparison, has 4 pets that throw out significant aoe damage, not one. They take procs better than bots do, gang war contributes even more damage from the primary, and empty clips is a better primary attack than photon grenade both for damage and procability. 2 damage procs in enforcers, arsonist throwing fire everywhere, and the bruiser foot stomping things makes thugs competitive in ideal settings with bots in aoe, but makes thugs FAR outstrip bots as soon as a fight is not ideal aoe conditions. Demons I would rank equal to bots and below thugs. Better single target than thugs, but the aoe damage comes in a bit lower in my experience over average fights. Debuffs also make a massive difference here, as a thugs will benefit much more from -resistance than a demons will, given that thugs damage is alot of lethal which gets resisted by alot of things, compared to demons thugs gain alot more damage from -resistance than demons do on average when their mix of damage types is already often not super resisted. TLDR: Bots will occasionally perform brilliantly and often perform sub par in aoe stituations. Thugs will always perform great in aoe stituations but will also perform great as soon as things switch to single target. And if you want to do aoe damage? I think the best single MM spec for that is Thugs/Traps. No MM I have made melts groups faster on average. Bots will melt a single group fast and then miss an electric fences on a boss and have to spend an extra minute chewing a boss down. Just like in teams, the upper limit on your speed is boss and above killing, and bots are just not good enough at chewing down bosses unless those bosses are caught perfectly in the middle of a packed mob and 16 burn patches.

I was going to say farming with a mastermind is sub optimal but then you fucked the whole thing up being an insane fucker triple boxing masterminds. Hats off to you dude, this is ambitious as fuck.

I support my kinetic melee buddies. Drop the change until KM gets a rework to make it a better set.

The only really truly useful use for provoke is to allow sets with weaker defenses to tank hard targets like bosses on up when solo. In groups anything with a taunt overrides it, with stronger pets a significant portion of the time your pets can tank it with a good secondary. Lord recluse is about the only boss I can think of that MMs generally cannot tank without provoke. Serafina is difficult due to hurricane if you're not /elec. Its just too weak a power. If it lasted 15 seconds and hit 10 targets and such...

There isn't one cause none of the set bonuses besides the unique auras effect your pet. You can slot procs in a pet, but other than that all set bonuses go to you and not your pets.

There is actually an MM build thread somewhere, but its not stickied. I'm not sure who has the power to sticky stuff but nothing really gets stickied, I don't think we have a moderator who like does that kinda community management.

From the patch notes, this is only a first pass.

I would agree with this except honestly I am not used to long resummon times, I build all my MMs purpled out with recharge bonuses everywhere, and like I was already down to like 15 seconds on minions, 30 on lts and 45 on boss pets, which honestly I almost never like had to wait to summon pets absent the damn level shift killing them when I wasn't expecting it. So that for me was never much of a limitation, but I can understand if you build an MM for anything other than perma hasten, like softcapping ranged/melee defense or something, suddenly that changes quite alot.