khy

I'll admit, I'm sure everything's radically different when you hit the Incarnate sections of the game. So looking at it from that aspect is going to definitely be different. But the thing is, getting to that point relies on finding a character you enjoy enough to stick with until the end and that's why I want a build that FITS me so well, that I can enjoy and stick with. If there was more endgame content and less levelling content I'd probably find myself more interested in a less-than-optimal levelling set that outperforms and excels when I get to 50 and invest millions in IOs. And don't get me wrong about storm; I really love the set, but the problem I have is with my pets' survivability. When freezing rain is up the debuff helps a TON, and hurricane's -tohit is amazing but when I use hurricane to try to keep enemies from murdering my pets, it has the nasty side effect of pushing all of the enemies out to the edge and screws up their AoE. My bots/ff can attack a big pack and hit 90% of the enemies in the pack because they're clustered then survive thanks to their bubbles, if I do the same thing with Storm then without the hurricane tohit debuff the enemies have no problems landing hits on my pets and they're dead in a few seconds. Or else I jump in the middle of the pack with Hurricane on, and my pets can hit only a small fraction because now the group's debuffed me and in a big circle around me. I think a big part of the problem is that I don't treat my pets as being expendable enough. With high end costs of rebuffing I always hate when I lose T1 pets and have to resummon, it's super annoying.

Considering there's a 'doppelganger' enemy group in the game which literally does copy you and your powers, I don't see why this couldn't happen. I know one of the more entertaining tips you can do as a villain actually has future versions of yourself that you fight, and when I did it on my bots/FF MM he was summoning bots to fight me with. Given that I can't see why it couldn't be done.

When I got my beast/kin to 38, one thing I immediately noticed (and hated) was that since my Dire Wolf likes to stand back and use all of his ranged attacks first. This means he's usually NOT in range of enemies for Fulcrum. So instead of using attack orders, I have to use goto then attack or just drag his fluffy ass in myself and risk taking an alpha. It's very annoying, especially in groups where I have to get them in quick before one of my teammates decides to use his T9 damage AoE to murder all the minions and deprive the rest of us of our big damage boost. Sure I can work around it, it's just very annoying.

The thing is that no matter what, DR will always be less effective at mitigating damage for pets than +Def will. That's why Def-based sets (Time, FF, Cold) make pets feel much sturdier and less squishy than the Res-based sets. For a long time I went off of 'feeling' and how the Res-based sets felt like my pets were dying so much easier than Def, then when I did the math I found that yes - no matter what, Def beats Res for overall damage reduction in almost every single case. The higher level you get the worse it gets, as more and more mobs get more and more AoE attacks and the attacks get strong enough to hit all your pets for half or more of their health. You can use Warmth once to bring them back up, but they'll likely take another round or two of AoEs before Warmth is ready again and you'll have to pick which one to use Cauterize to save. At least with a Def-based set, it'll likely miss most of your wolves and hopefully only hit one or two of them so you can have a much easier time spot-healing and keeping the whole pack up instead of choosing who gets to get resummoned.

THIS IS GOING TO BE A TL;DR POST WHERE I JUST GO ON ABOUT EVERYTHING. IT WILL BE LONG. YOU ARE WARNED. So I'm not trying to make a point, or try to get anything changed, or even really looking for advice. I just wanna ramble a bit. Just, y'know, air some thoughts. Typing this stuff out often helps me look at stuff from different angles, or just helps me clarify stuff in my head. I'm ranking the different powersets, but not based on how good or bad they are but on how they fit ME as a player. So I've been on a months-long quest to find the best MM combo for me. Not the best one 'period' because that's so subjective, but the one that fits me and works the best for me personally. Ever since the game became available again I've been experimenting, trying the different various builds, different pets, and so on and so forth. I have made probably 50 MM's, deleted a lot of them when they didn't work or I wanted to remake with various changes, that sort of thing. Different people have different playstyles, right? Well mine is a 100% support playstyle. Not like the joke all-heals Emp, but like the guy who wants to keep the team up and in the fight through any means necessary. Whether that be buffing and healing them, debuffing enemies, or rezzing when things go bad. I like to be the kind of player who the team can rely on to keep an eye on them. MM is the perfect fit for me, because I can do my thing and still be contributing damage and debuffs and whatnot from my pets. So I keep trying various different builds and various different abilities, trying to find what feels 'right' to me and what I can most effectively use to help my team and my summons. So that said, I'm gonna start by just rambling about secondaries. 1) Force Fields - I love FF, probably currently my favorite of the various support sets. Defense is SO much better than resist, simply because 1 missed attack is basically a 100% resist. FF has enough non-mandatory powers (Detention Field, Repulsion Field/Bomb, etc) to make it easy to work in medicine pool to support the bubbles, and with Power Boost you can get AMAZING numbers (Easily into the 40% +def range). Plus, they synergize so well with so many pets! Bots being the obvious one, but bubbles stack well with Thugs Leadership and even Beast. The downside of course is that every hit that DOES land hits HARD, plus the pool powers you use to supplement the bubbles are never as good as baked-in powers. Also it's a very passive set overall. Still it's so effective I find myself drawn to it more than the rest. 2) Thermal - Probably my second favorite set. It has good heals, good buffs, good debuffs, and a great rez. What's not to like? Damage resistance, that's what. DR is so mediocre compared to +def. Stack a ton of it on, and you're super effective - but by myself I can't give out more than 24% or so. And what's worse is that without positional effects you can't even count on it to help against Psi or Toxic, while +def you can. It's so frustrating because when I see people die I feel like my buffs were ineffective. I know I'm not responsible for every death, but at the same time I kind of feel like I am. The rest of the set is so amazing, that it makes the shields feel that much more disappointing, you know? 3) Sonic - I have a love/hate relationship with sonic. As you may realize from what I said about Thermal I don't like Damage Resistance boosts, and that's all Sonic is in terms of survivability. Which means even with everything decked out with IOs and stuff, my pets and teammates die too easily. It doesn't even have the baked in heals and rez that Thermal gets to balance out how mediocre +res feels. But then there's Siphon and Disruption - between them, I can make an enemy take a whopping 45% more damage. That's so good it's almost criminal, and how can I not love Liquefy? It's basically a reskin of Freezing Rain/Sleet, one of my favorite debuffs in the game! So frustrating to love half a set and hate half of it. 4) Storm - Storm's got no real buffs, but damn if the debuffs aren't great. Mostly. Gust is, of course, amazing for a T1 power. HUGE area, fast recast, if you position right you can lock down so many people; unfortunately I see a lot of people use it really, really poorly and end up causing problems scattering mobs and pulling extra when pets run after enemies into other packs. O2 boost has its uses and lets me avoid Medicine, though it feels weak compared to other single-target heals. And Freezing Rain is INCREDIBLE. A huge, incredibly potent debuff on a short-ish cooldown with an effect that looks good and satisfying. But hurricane... the -tohit is so potent yet hard to apply. Getting in the thick of things ends up scattering enemies and making them that much harder to AoE? I WANT to use it all the time but I don't want to scatter enemies and make my team frustrated in doing so. Tornado's a fun gimmick, though if you put in a KB to KD IO it gets real funny real fast, even if it doesn't feel all that effective. And while Lightning storm LOOKS good, every time I use it I feel like it's just... not as good as I wish it could be. I dunno. 5) Time - I really ought to do more with this. Wish it had a rez though. Still, good mix of buffs/debuffs. Heals are a bit weak compared to Thermal. I've yet to get a high-level time MM, I think that'll be my next goal. One problem I have with it is I feel like I HAVE to use PB with it to max out defense. All my max-level MM's use Scorpion, so I wanna branch out and use soul storms or sharks more. But not at the expense of losing a ton of defense to keep my pets up. So I want to level a non defense-based pet first so I can bite people's legs off with sharks. 6) Emp/Pain - I'm just not into the more healing-focused sets that much. Without buffs most of my T1 pets will die in 1 hit and that frustrates me, so while they're good options for other people they're just not good for me. 7) Cold - The variety is good and all but it lacks a good heal, and the shields can't get boosted much so they'll feel weak compared to FF or Time. Overall feels like it's not that effective compared to other options. 8 ) Radiation - I had a rad/rad defender back on Live that I enjoyed, and I definitely like being a rad MM. The heal's a bit weak, but it makes up for it in crazy good debuffs. Also has a rez, which is amazing. The last 3 powers in the set, though, kind of feel weak. Fallout sounds good in theory but it always feels like when someone dies it's hardly ever in a good place to use it, so in order to make it worthwhile I feel like TP is a necessity. Also those End costs are painful for an MM. Good set, but unless I'm using it with Bots I feel like the lack of buffs means my pets are way too squishy. 9) Poison - Honestly I feel like it's just Radiation, but with the debuffs being click, stronger, and smaller area. Same issue with pets feeling squishy without buffs. I haven't tried Bots/poison because it feels like a weird theme, but maybe sometime I'll see how well that works for survivability. Noxious Gas seems like it'd be fun, I just never got a /poison up to 38 to try it. 10) Nature - I mean it's a strong healing set, sure; but the buffs feel a bit lackluster to me. The big ground patch of healing/recovery is nice but needs to be moved way too often. If it were a PBAoE toggle that'd be quite a bit nicer, since you could move it around to where you need to. Honestly it feels like something that fits more in WoW or other MMOs, CoH is too active for it to be really nice. 11) Kinetics - I love /kin when I'm on a team, and I'm disappointed by it when I'm out solo. Honestly I'm not convinced it should be a MM set because it does very, very little for your pets survivability even if it's amazing for the rest of your team. I figured Beast would pair well with it, but the pet you WANT to have all the good buffs, your dire wolf, like to stand out of range for FS and howl for a while before getting in close. Yeah there's other secondaries I don't mention. I'm just not into them, for whatever reasons - Dark has the utility and support but, eh, somehow it just looks really dumb to me. Nothing against it if you like it, but somehow it doesn't quite click right. Traps annoys me a bit because I feel like why would I want to constantly be killing off a pet, even to do a lot of damage? And Trick arrow.... no. No buffs, no heals, no rez, the debuff numbers don't really amaze me. It's just not for me, not even a tiny tiny tiny bit. So I'm gonna ramble about pets now. 1) Bots - I wish I didn't love bots so much. Energy damage means I can fight CoT without being annoyed (CoT ghosts take much less Lethal/smashing damage), they have good AoE, they like to sit their asses down and fight from ranged more than other sets, and the protectors are amazing for survivability. The downside is they're LOUD, and some of the Assault Bot's attacks feel lackluster. Overall though I can't help but love these guys for being so good and versatile in so many ways. Repair's pretty awful though. 2) Mercs - I love and hate these idiots. They do good damage and do it from safe ranges, the medic can actually heal the MM as well as the other pets (Though it's rare I ever really need it), and the Spec Ops feel stronger than a lot of other Tier 2 pets, with good snipes and good debuffs. The commando's good, but like the assault bot I sorta feel he's a bit lacking towards the end, but that's probably because nobody likes Flamethrower. If only the Tier 1 pets wouldn't just run into melee for NO REASON AT ALL! Also serum, the WORST MM unique. The damage buff it gives is pathetic (7.5%), the cooldown is ridiculous, and while the resists are high I can use the power so infrequently that they can't be counted on really. 3) Thugs - The Tier 1 pets are so disappointing, because they're so weak and fragile. Then the Tier 2 pets come out and boost the Tier 1, and the Tier 3 pet is exactly what I want. Big, strong, dishes out damage and does a wonderful job doing what he does. Plus, gang war. Who doesn't like gang war? If the Tier 1 pets were a bit better I'd easily use these guys over Mercs. 4) Beast - I love them doggies, so cute. And the lions are fantastic. But even though they're visually the best, and thematically great, somehow I always do poorly with them. They die easily, they're harder to control than other pets, they don't have good heals and their defenses feel low. I like how they can crit, but even with lots of stacks of Pack Mentality it feels like their crit rate is super low. I feel like I must not be using them well, and I wish I could get better at using them because I really love the set. I'm also not good at knowing when to use Fortify, since by the time one of my pets is in danger it's usually too late to save 'em. 5) Demons - They're like Thermal with the whole 'little of everything' they have. Lots of different abilities and powers, different damage types. The unique is weird, sort of half serum and half gang war, but still useful. I definitely like them, but when I finally got one to 26 and got the prince... I dunno. He underwhelmed me a bit. I think it's because I like the Tier 3 pet to be a damage badass, and half his set is control. Zombies and Ninjas aren't really my thing. I'm trying out Ninjas right now, but ehhhhh. I dunno, they just don't work that well for me? It's hard to put into words exactly why I don't enjoy 'em. Part of it is theme, I'm not good at making ninja-themed stuff. And for me theming is super important, if i have a stupid character with no theme I have no motivation to play 'em. There's no set that is 100% my thing, but that's probably because if there WAS a set that fit me perfectly it'd probably be ridiculously overpowered. Every set has its weaknesses, and wanting a set without any weaknesses is a bit greedy of me. Doesn't stop me from wishing that there was a set that fit me a bit better. If there was a Thermal set with Defense boosts instead of Resist, it'd fit me like a glove, but c'est la vie. Right now the MM's I have that I main are a Bots/FF to 50 (My main, Doctor Neurotic), a level 40 Beast/Kin, a Level 40 Mercs/Thermal, a level 38 Mercs/Storm (To blow all the shells around with the physics), and a whole huge mess of level 20-30ish MM's of varying powers. Every set usually has 1-2 things that really makes me annoyed or unhappy with the set, so I move on to a different one and try another one but am not entirely happy with it either, and the cycle continues and repeats... Last thing I wanna mention is the power pools. Honestly, I kind of find the patron pools so much more interesting than the Ancillaries. They have better themes, better powers, and are just more interesting overall. I know people get annoyed by having to do the whole unlocking stuff, but really you can pick any of the four Mace - PB is AMAZING when boosting certain things like FF bubbles or Farsight, and with a couple recharge IOs you can use it a LOT. I imagine it's great with other time effects, and I eventually wanna try out that combo. Also Scorpion's shield is definitely the best defensive power out of the 4 PPPs. The beam volley's lackluster though, but I usually don't focus on the damaging powers. I have my bots and teammates for damage, I'm here for support! When I want to pick a set more for effects, Mace is really almost always my go-to. It's just SO GOOD. Soul - I gotta admit I like Soul mainly because of the visual effects. Soul Storm and the white tentacles LOOK really great to me. I'm probably stupid and hypocritical to be sitting here saying how much I want to use powers that I know are less effective based on their appearance, after having just typed out this huge-ass post complaining about the effectiveness of other powers, but honestly the PPP I feel like I can be less picky about simply because it's more supplemental, you know? Leviathan - Like Soul, I enjoy it mainly because of the visuals. The sharks circling around their prey, the huge shark bite... I pick this pool when it works thematically with my character, like beast/ stuff. I do like bile spray, but I do NOT like Knockout Blow. Even if the damage is great, I'm not a brute or stalker, I'm a Mastermind - doing a silly wind-up punch just seems dumb to me! Mu - My least favorite of the four, although I have no complaints about its effectiveness it just seems like it should look more interesting. Functionally it's not that much different than the other sets, but I'd like it to at least have a special look to the powers to make it more interesting to use, and not just an elec control recolor. Even then, I'd go for it if it had powers that were above and beyond like PB, but it's just... not as good as the rest. This ended up being longer than I intended but whatever, it killed some dead time at work and lets me vocalize some of my thoughts about the class and its abilities. If anyone else here wants to just talk about MMs in general and how they feel about stuff, I'm always interested in reading about my favorite AT!

Issue : Caltrops makes MM pets just FLIP THE FUCK OUT and scatter like leaves on the wind. It acts like an uber-fear to them, and they become uncontrollable when fleeing. I was doing the Mako Patron arc, which has a ton of Knives of Artemis, as a Beast/Kin. What an awful, awful mistake. Every time the knives would drop Caltrops, my speed-boosted pets would just tear off in random directions, pulling more and more and more enemies. I stopped speed boosting them after I realized what was going on, and used Increase Density to slow my pets down, but every time they'd get scared of the caltrops they'd ignore any and all orders until they reached the point they were fleeing to. They wouldn't follow, go to, anything. It was the most obnoxious and annoying time and I was sick and tired of it by the middle of the 'bomb the ship' mission. Only to find that, joy of joys, I had ANOTHER KoA mission immediately afterwards.

Really? I don't see why that would be, since FF bubbles do. Pine's assumes it works, which is why I assumed it would... I'm not doubting you, I just think that it's just strange that the power that explicitly states it boosts defense buffs wouldn't boost those two defense buffs.

I asked this over on the Help forum but got no answers, and let's face it - Masterminds are big brain know-it-alls so this is the next best place to ask ;D (Also my main is a MM so I like coming here where people give me build advice) Just wondering about this. Let's say I put Preventative Medicine : Chance for +Absorb into Suppress Pain, Pain Dom's PBAoE Healing Toggle power. Does this mean every tick of the power has a chance to grant +absorb? What would happen if I put that same IO into Health, instead? Or if I put Performance Shifter : Chance for +End into Stamina, does this grant a permanent +End boost or does it mean that whenever the recovery ticks happen I get a chance to get +End for however long?

Theme is important, no argument here, but there's times where I find myself stuck between two choices that both work well for my theme and as such the powers they have may help me lean one way or another. For example, going with theme I thought the Warworks bot would be ideal since I thought that the Lore Pet was going to be either a BCU or a War Walker. When I found out it was a Victoria Mk-VI I realized it doesn't quite fit my theme as much as I initially thought. With my main being Bots/, I wanted the bigger, blockier look of the War Walker over the more human and smaller Victoria. Now I'm leaning towards Clockwork Dismantler/Mender duo as one option, or the Longbow Cataphract as another. The Dismantler is closer to my villains' theme but still looks a lot more anthropomorphic than my other bots, but the Cataphract which is blocky and huge and fits in terms of shape has a color scheme I'm not heavily into. The whole 'longbow working for me against their will' would be entertaining to my villain, but it's still a somewhat tough choice between those two. Knowing what the other pet would do would be helpful in making a choice; Mender seems like it has heals or at least buffs, but the Warden's a complete mystery since they could be anything. Or if I dislike all options maybe I'd look at going another way, such as the Warworks ACU/Victoria. I just would like to know so I can make an educated choice, rather than guessing.

I have some questions about lore pets. Specifically, I'm trying to pick which pets I want to use, but I don't know powers. Is there a list of lore pet support powers out there? Initially I was going to go with Warworks but that Longbow Cataphract looks so good I'm so tempted... I'm not really into min/maxing, but appearance and powers are both important to me in making a choice. I want a choice that'll fit the theme of my character AND I want a choice that'll be useful to me. I already have a gallery of the different bots, I just don't know the powers to base my choices on.

PB is so broken it's ridiculous. It boosts FF bubbles and Cold Shields up to 25% defense, boosts Farsight up to 20% defense, boosts heals and tohit and defense debuffs. Anguishing Cry (Pain Dom) becomes a -50% defense PBAoE. Freezing Rain (Storm) becomes -68% targeted AoE. Hurricane's -tohit becomes an incredible -50% while it's active. The only reason it isn't the best power for every single set available to MMs is because it doesn't enhance damage resist powers, damage boosts, or End recovery. So Sonic, Thermal, and Kinetics don't get much out of it.

That's quite disappointing. Most of my Masterminds barely do any damage as-is, since I skip the personal attacks more often than not (They're almost all crap anyway, Demons being the exception). I would definitely support a change to the power that gave MM pets the +damage, and happily sacrifice the +recharge for it - but that's just me.

IMO half of Serum's effects - the resist and status protection - are fine but lackluster on their own. The parts that need to be adjusted are the tohit, the damage, and the crash. 7.5% damage and tohit were 'OK' back in Issue 5 when the set came out but with the amount of power creep in the game it's fallen far, far behind. And the crash is just kicking us when we're down. I'd like to see one of two things happen : Either Option 1 : Increase the ToHit bonus to 20%, increase the damage bonus to 50%, and reduce the cooldown to 360s. Eliminate the crash, but still only affects 1 pet. Or Option 2 : Increase the ToHit bonus to 15%, Increase the damage bonus to 25%, reduce the cooldown to 360s, reduce the duration to 30s, and reduce the Resists from 52% to 35%. Keep all status protection as is. Then eliminate the crash and apply to all pets. That seems like it'd put the serum in line with other powers in terms of usefulness, and definitely wouldn't violate the cottage rule.

It's just a relic from the olden days of 2004, and such a low priority that nobody wants to spend the time to replace it. When CoH came out, the Hazard Zones were deliberately placed behind a 'click' barrier because they were dangerous. Travel powers were gated behind level 14 instead of level 4, which meant you couldn't speed around and avoid packs. The packs were huge and dangerous, and the newbies who wandered in would all too easily become smears on the ground. Forcing players to actually acknowledge that they wanted in by clicking was meant to be a sort of 'Are you sure?' check. These days we get travel powers early on, we know how to navigate zones, and we're all quite knowledgeable about the game so the Hazard Zones are just not hazardous like they used to be. But even with that being the case, why ask the team to spend time and effort in fixing such a tiny, minor non-issue?

Just to clarify, does the Frenzy buff's 60% bonus damage not affect MM minions?

Thugs win out over Mercs in a ton of ways. Yes, the Mercs do have 25% smashing and lethal resist but their HP pools are still so small that they'll still get 1-shotted by AoE effects all the time. At least the Enforcer's Leadership Auras make Thugs 20% harder to hit, and boost Damage/Accuracy. Gang War might not feel like a super strong power, but it's really VERY good. Especially compared to Serum which is lackluster, has a ridiculous cooldown, and the bonuses really aren't that great. And while the Bruiser and Commando are relatively close to each other in terms of tankiness, the Commando's always at range which means he never draws aggro to put that tankiness to use - your other pets will die first. The bruiser does a great job of getting up in enemy's faces and tanks really well. Healing is not really as necessary in CoH as it is in other games. Most melee ATs get self heals to survive in melee, healing insps drop like candy on Halloween, and pets low HP pools mean that oftentimes if they're taking hits they're dead before you can get a heal off. If you want a good support set with lots of utility, I suggest you try FF/Mace. IMO it's the best support set I've played, and I definitely feel it's better than Empathy/Pain in terms of survivability for teammates and pets alike. Don't take Detention Cell, Repulsion Field, or Repulsion Bomb and instead take all 3 leadership AoEs, Medicine AO/AS/FM/Res, and Teleport Friend. You can port dead players out of a group and rez them, AO is a great single target heal once enhanced, and if you pop Power Boost right before you buff your team with FF's bubbles then each bubble can easily give them 25% or higher defense. Add in your big bubble (+12% defense) and Maneuvers (3% defense) and you alone are making your teammates 40% harder to hit. If someone DOES get hit, Aid Other can heal up a hefty chunk of their HP. If you get hit yourself you've got a good self-heal that also restores end (Thanks to FM). Do this with Thugs, and your Enforcers will be giving an extra 20% leadership to the whole pack, putting their avoidance at a whopping 60%. IMO preventing damage by giving teammates avoidance is better than trying to catch up with healing, but YMMV. I mean, no amount of healing is going to help your Thugs or Soldiers survive a 1-shot AoE, but giving them 40-60% avoidance gives them a MUCH, MUCH better chance of not instantly falling over in combat.

Just wondering about this. Let's say I put Preventative Medicine : Chance for +Absorb into Suppress Pain, a PBAoE Healing Toggle power. Does this mean every tick of the power has a chance to grant +absorb? What would happen if I put that same IO into Health, instead? Or if I put Performance Shifter : Chance for +End into Stamina, does this grant a permanent +End boost or does it mean that whenever the recovery ticks happen I get a chance to get +End for however long?

Honestly I find that Red-Side content is more engaging, entertaining, and enjoyable than blue-side stuff as it is. Because of that I already play a ton of red side, and so I don't need to be incentivized. That said, I think that what would really be great would be to make villain side more villainous. Make more hero groups to fight against (I have some great ideas here, I want to experiment with AE and see if I can put some of those into play), especially for high-level villains. Way too much of the time villains are fighting other villains and feel like there's no real difference between them and the heroes. Grant more rewards after missions. When pulling off big arcs and doing crazy plots, have them pay off with temp powers. Mayhem, vaults, and stuff like that should reward a 'briefcase' temp power that grants some bonus infamy. Have steal-tech missions grant a few charges of a raygun that does bonus damage, or summon a clone to fight alongside you for a few minutes, or things like that. Grant small bonuses (5% recharge for 2 hours or so) from various missions. Villains are in it for the rewards, unlike heroes who do it for the good of the city. So for Villains, giving them the tangible rewards makes a lot more sense. If I'm assaulting a Circle Hideout to steal their powerful artifacts, showing that as a 5% bonus damage for 60 minutes in-game is going to make me feel like I accomplished something. I'd also like to see Mayhem missions become more chaotic for large teams, with reasons for teams to want to destroy everything on the map. As it is with the amount of stuff you have to destroy scaling up way too much, there's no point in blowing up cars or parking meters or crates or whatever; an 8-person team will almost never get any of the time bonuses because you have to destroy too many. So instead have repeatable smaller time bonuses, or maybe an 'insurance adjuster' granting you bonuses after the mission the more you destroy (As thanks for letting them boost premiums) or other things like that. Something to encourage Villains to go nuts on the town instead of just rushing the bank and ending it there. Just a few thoughts I had is all.

I've seen so many posts about comparing the different primaries/secondaries for the low game, but I'm curious - How useful are Masterminds with Incarnate content? I heard that the pets were nigh useless so they received a buff that levels them up to the same level as the MM, but is that enough to really put them on at least the same stage as most other ATs? What are the pros and cons of the different primaries for incarnate content? Also i've heard that some secondaries (such as FF) severely suffer in endgame because everyone ends up with capped out def/res. Which Secondaries drop to the bottom of the barrel when you hit 50? I imagine that enemy debuffs tend to retain their usefulness when buffs fall down in theirs?

Back on live, my main MM was a Bots/FF from CoV release till the day the servers went down. Unfortunately towards the end I had moved on to other games, so I had never really done much with the Incarnate system - until now. Now I've got my level 40 Bots/FF back and I'm thinking of how I want to spec him out. In the past I always took the personal attacks and Repair, which now feels like a mistake. Instead I drop those attacks for Medicine, and skip Repair because the cooldown is crap. I take AO, AS, FM, and Rez from Medicine - FM mainly to make AO less obnoxious to use, and Rez to be more useful in my teams. With my current build, I still end up with 4 slots at the end of the build I'm not sure what to do with. In the past, I went with Mace Mastery since the +def from the shield synergizes well with the rest of the build, and it feels like it fits more thematically. Also I could use Power Boost to make my bubbles that much better, and my bots that much sturdier against tougher enemies with more +tohit. The downside of course is that of all the abilities in the Mace set, only 1 does damage and it's pretty mediocre. While the hold is a strong slow as well, it just feels lacking for a villain to be using so many non-lethal attacks. On the flip side there's the Leviathan mastery which has tons of very, very villainously lethal attacks with great damage. The tradeoff of course is the armor is much less impressive, and sharks don't really fit with the rest of the character's theme. For a technology Bots/FF Villain, which do you guys think you'd go with and why?

It's quite easy to get to Pocket D from Mercy at level 1. Skip the tutorial, go to the P2W vendor and buy Ninja Run (I swear it jumps higher than Beast). Run/Jump to the Ferry to Port Oakes. There are a few mob packs in between, but between your speed and jumping most won't aggro. Go to Port Oakes EAST and run up the stairs. Pocket D is the building right at the top of the stairs, zero mobs between the ferry and Pocket D. I have literally NEVER died doing this run, even at fresh level 1. Honestly Kings Row is more dangerous - it's a very short run between Pocket D and the Tram, but there tends to be groups of clockwork and Skulls that could possibly kill you in a single alpha. I've died 2 or 3 times when I was just in a rush and not avoiding packs; then there's the obnoxiousness of having to run from the hospital to the tram. Still very, very doable but a longer run.

Well it's like Fedifensor said, you should always be doing SOMETHING. Either debuffing enemies, buffing allies, healing, or attacking. With many of my builds I find that early on I don't have enough to do, so I spec into some attacks to fill in the empty time during fights. Later on that becomes less of an issue as I get powers in my second set. I've tried a couple times taking personal attacks early on, and respeccing out of them at 25 to 30ish and it felt like it did make some of the fights quicker. What I did with my latest couple characters is avoid the Leadership pools until 25ish because earlier on they're less important and vital. Lower level enemies go down quickly and you won't see as much of an effect from your auras earlier on. Then when I hit 25, I respec and drop my direct attacks and put leadership back in, and I have enough to keep myself busy and active during fights.

My mastermind wishlist is mainly about pet AI, and the ways I'd like the Pet AI to be updated. So here's what I would like pet AI to be more like : 1) When pets are set to Defensive, they won't chase enemies unless you use the 'attack' command. When they do attack, they should always stick within a small area around you - say, they'd always stay within Supremacy range. 2) When pets are set to aggressive, they'll chase freely like they do now. 3) When pets are set to defensive, they should ONLY attack an enemy which has attacked you or them. All too often I've seen only 1 enemy actually attack, but my robots will retaliate against 3 different enemies (Sometimes they'd even be in different groups). 4) An update to pathing. There are some areas in certain maps that CONSISTENTLY get my pets stuck. Warehouse maps often have a corner with a ramp heading up to a sort of J-shaped catwalk that ALWAYS gets my pets stuck. 5) Pets 'teleporting' to you should occur at slightly shorter ranges for when you're travelling through a zone. Oftentimes I'll head to a specific spot and find that 2-3 of my pets will 'teleport' to me but the other 3 will be running slowly over to me, pulling shit as they go. I'd like to see them all just pop in when I get to my destination. Alternatively, if when I dismissed pets if I could resummon them already buffed with the Level 6/32 buffs that'd be nice.

With a couple newer characters I have I started using personal attacks early on while levelling, and specced out of them later when I can pick up APP/PPP powers instead.

So I'm just kind of curious, when I got my MMs to 50 back during live I did so before the IO system was really in full swing. These days I've been having problems sticking to one character, so I haven't yet gotten a MM past 40. Still looking for that perfect build that fits me, you know? That said, some of the various sets are a bit confusing to me - mainly in that Pine's doesn't really go into details about the effects of set IOs. So I figured I would ask here! 1) Soulbound Allegiance : The 6th IO in the set is a Chance for Build Up. Is that a chance for each of your pets to get it, or for the MM to get build-up? The latter would be rather useless for my particular playstyle. If it's for the pets, do they all get it at once or is it a chance for individual pets to get it? 2) Command of the Mastermind ATO : The 6th IO in the set is a Pet +AoE Defense aura. How much defense does it grant? Is the aura granted around the MM, or around the pets it's slotted in? If it's slotted in Tier 2 pets does this mean each pet gets the aura and if so does it stack? 3) Is there a general recommendation about always putting a specific set in a specific pet tier? Like, does one particular set produce better bonuses when granted to the tier 3 pet versus others? In terms of raw numbers, Level 50 Soulbound Allegiance Accuracy/Damage is the same 26.5/26.5% bonus as Sovereign Right's Accuracy/damage, but I don't know if any of the set effect apply specifically to the pet they're slotted in or not. 4) Which pets would work best with non-set IOs? I imagine that Protector Bots would work well with +Defense IOs considering they grant such huge defense bonuses to bots, but I'm not sure if there's others I should keep an eye out for. Healing on Merc Soldiers maybe? Def/Tohit on Thug Enforcers? How much should I focus on secondary effects versus accuracy/damage? I have a LOT of MMs as they're my favorite class, and while most of them probably won't end up reaching 50 the more I know the happier I am.