Tigress

I can't wait for some Beast Mastery changes. As of right now, they got it pretty bad, both offensive and defensive-wise plus the fact they are the only Mastermind pets without any kind of ranged or area attacks (except for the Dire Wolf) plus the terrible damage type. While this makes them a bit more predictable than most other pets, they still tend to dash away and aggro the next two or three groups before finally keeling over at your feet when you call them back.

I personally went with Musculature Alpha and Clarion Destiny. Clarion, Power Up and Farsight provide over 30% Defense for the two minutes that Farsight lasts, easily enought to max out your Ninjas (and likely teammates as well), even for Incarnate content. I also went with Support Hybrid, for an extra edge when needed.

IMO Support is pretty bollocks anyways and is rather deserving of some kind of rework. The endurance discount passive is a nice thing to have, but to my knowledge the pet bonuses only count for mastermind henchmen. No Controller/Dominator pets, no Crab Spider pets (even though they can also get a full stack of 6) or Lore pets.

I tried the above mission a few times witha group and solo, I was never able to finish it. after defeating all enemies and destroying all weapons caches, nothing happens. GM Cyclone was nice enough to end the mission for me after confirming that I had no unresolved objectives, but this may have to get looked at.

Domination power description: "Nothing delights a Dominator more than inflicting pain. Each time a Dominator attacks, their sadistic nature grows. When your Domination bar is over 90%, you can activate this power to unleash their true potential. Your control powers will typically last 50 percent longer and will more easily Dominate stronger opponents. Additionally, you will fully recharge your Endurance and gain resistance to status protection. Recharge: Long" Should probably be "gain status protection", or "gain resistance to status effects"...

I believe they classify as "Universal Damage" and can only be slotted into powers that would accept those, which is almost all powers that actually deal damage.

Question is: What kind of defensive toggle is it? If it also gives you some kind of damage resistance (Psionic for instance), the power will not be affected.

I'm pretty sure, he scored me some points with my bosses at Longbow today!

As I also do a lot of shard-hopping with at least one of my characters: It helps immensely to have one permanent character (a placeholder basically) in a SG with invite rights, so you can log onto this character and re-invite yourself. I am not aware of any cross-shard SG's but I would be interested as well.

Really hope we created some useable data. Let us know what you find, alright? 🙂

In my personal experience, Fortunata are not really for those that are looking for a powerful character while leveling, unless you heavily invest in sets right from the get go. You will probably think of yourself as relatively frail, not having enough endurance for almost anything and not doing a significant amount of damage. I for one was very underwhelmed when leveling my Fortunata with just IO slotting, though your mileage may vary. However, that changed dramatically (for me like almost no other character, with the notable exception of Dominators) with sets and IO's. You will easily be able to reach defense cap, get okayish resistances in addition, practically never run out of endurance, buff your friends, help with crowd control and deal a rather significant amount of damage, be it ranged-psionic or melee-lethal/toxic (or as I prefer, a wicked combo of the two). However, that requires a certain investment, I'd say at the very least around 50-100 million inf that you may not have available if thats how you want to play. My personal pick for this concept would probably be Blaster. With some support and a good tank, they practically don't need sets at all to rock. My other ideas include Defender and Tanker, but from my point of view, Fortunatas tend to shine proportionally to the inf you invest in them.

I have seen a few, though I never played it myself. With Dominators there isn't all that much difference in the secondaries and a lot of players like to take whatever fits best into their concept. Thorns naturally harmonizes well with Plant Control but the lackluster damage type and the rather dull specials indeed don't make it very attractive to more min-max-minded players. The differences in DPS to other sets are not really dramatic, but definitely present.

I believe beasts would be getting a huge upgrade if their buffs were not 2 second cast times but constant auras. They should be the single target damage kings for their lack of ranged attacks, but even in this regard, they get outdamaged by pretty much all the other pets on a regular basis.

Interesting, I had not really accounted for damage, but that makes sense! Archery however has quite a fast snipe, as I use it in my usual archers attack rotation.

Perhaps you need some help? A tanker that draws the attention away? I would gladly volunteer but am available only during central European hours (UTC+1).

They also avoid having to redraw you gun every now and again, but all in all it doesn't really make much of a difference. Suppression is a beast though. Pure energy damage and a cone that is so freaking wide, its hard not to get an entire spawn into the area. Unfortunately only 10 targets max. I don't really care much for the melee attacks or the Omega Maneuver though, so I usually skip these. The good things however come in the secondary pool. Armor upgrade, Fortification, Serum, Spiderlings, all excellent powers!

And fun! 😉

I would agree with Thugs being ideal, or (if you are so inclined) Beastmastery, while often laughed about as the black sheep of mastermind sets, might honestly not be a bad choice either. Both of these sets have the advantage of having some defense in addition to their inborn damage resistance and you would get some pretty survivable pets. Your lack of healing however will become apparent sooner than later, thats why a lot of potential Sonic Masterminds opt for Thermal instead. Their resistance buffs are lower, but they bring an array of healing powers to a team that is only dwarfed by Empathy, Pain, or (arguably) Nature.

That is probably the most effective way to play a mastermind, though in my book its also the most boring. I try and get the defence and resistances of the pets as high as possible, while not neglecting my own, and just fight along with them with attack powers and pools. I know its less effective, but IMHO not by a lot, and I don't feel like I am wasting my time.

That is wrong. Soul extraction will not benefit from Enchant or Empower, nor will the pet be any stronger or different if raised from an enchanted and/or empowered henchman. It does however get significantly stronger, when raised from a higher tier henchman (i.e. Lich being the strongest), however even then, the powers it has access to remain the same. I am using the power to haul around the resistance and defence enhancers of the various pet damage and recharge intensive pet categories, so the Soul Extraction is not well slotted. For this reason, I personally never bother with raising one from a Zombie, but might raise one from a fallen Death Knight and most definitely from a Lich (though that guy tends to be damn survivable). Right now, I am not 100% sure about the time it stays, but I would guess its 4 minutes (since I don't really use it that often), like most (all?) other pets that need to be recast.

Definitely kind-of-weird (to me), though not ineffective. Targeting drone remains awesome and the recent damage buffs make it stand out as one of the best powers of any Blaster secondary pool. Caltrops is a mixed blessing however, as it disperses groups as they pace off away from the damage source. Smoke grenade is a helpful debuff, however for a few seconds you can barely see your enemies yourself, so best use well before combat. Taser is quite okay, the bombs are not really my playstyle, but I hear they can be effective if slotted correctly and the gun drone apparently has a few taunting issues.

At the moment I can't recommend Devices at all, simply because the endurance regain power comes with practical invisibility, meaning unless you turn off your essential endurance recovery power, nobody will see you costume. To some that may be okay. For me it was a reason to remake the character. /Temporal is pretty nifty and I hear good things about /Atomic but I am a huge fan of /Tactical Arrow. the area slow is amazing, the status protection is incredible, it comes with an accuracy buff and has a superb area hold that even does good damage against robots. Definitely something to consider if you can fit it in!

Also depends on what enemies you are fighting. For instance Circle of Thorns have a habit of debuffing your accuracy to almost nonexistant and can be extremely frustrating to fight. Spectral Demon Lords are the worst in that regard, and Behemoths have a good chunk of defense to boot. From lvl 12 onward it makes sense to slot some DO enhancers, especially for accuracy. Also the Accuracy buff from DfB (and to a lesser part DiB) helps a good deal to bridge to lvl 22 when you can slot those sweet lvl 25 IO's. Not quite cheap, but they keep their effectiveness till you hit lvl 50!

Its most definitely longer on my Assault Rifle Blaster than on my Fire Blaster. Feels almost like normal snipe to me, but not quite.