Verix

A quick note on this point: if you slot 2 powers for an attack as a MM you will lose a lot of tankyness or your pets will. I made a decision with my time build to instead focus heavily on recharge with the main idea being that the Judgement power will always be the best DPS boost available when I want one. And my second big dps boost would be gang war. I will make the suggestion that you should take a very long look at your power lists before taking attacks as a MM because the returns are greatly diminished. Some of the sets definitely have room to take attack powers because they probably need some buffs anyway.

There's a sticky on the MM front page that has a really nice write up of Incarnate choices. Alpha : Musculature. Judgement: Ion - if you want to pull lot of things and don't really care what you hit. Pyro if you have to be bothered to aim. Interface: I went Degen for the debuffs. Lore: I went Longbow for the -regen. Destiny: Clarion. The worst thing that can happen is you can't control your pets. The long acting version is a break free+ long buff to prevent all controls. Hybrid: Support. When playing solo and chain pulling met pets got tired. I took this and now their blue bar stays full. It's another option to buff damage so why would you want anything else? This stacks up to 5 in big raids and I almost never saw it stacked that high. I might consider Assault if it didn't have a broken mechanic that largely invalidates its use as a MM.

Have a peek over at this thread: Force Redux has a really nice breakdown on Time/Thugs. You can murder the hell out of just about anything with Time/Thugs - and he even has a cookie cutter build you can copy if you like. Although you can make some changes and maybe personalize it a bit once you hit 50.

I had room for a slot in my Enforcers to use the debuff. I tried It and found it works really well. I also really enjoy having Overwhelming Force->KD on my Bruiser. When he knocks people back he runs over to someone else and that causes issues and lowers his dps. When he knocks everyone over it lowers the dps of an enemy group. That's a double win.

You really need to use Mids hero designer to look at the diminishing returns. What I meant is that you can have 5 of the same set bonus from IO sets applying five times. You can for example have 5x enhanced recharge for 7.5% each. Many people for example make builds with multiple copies of "luck of the gambler : global recharge". Be careful about overslotting powers. You can take combat jumping and 5 slot it but it won't really give you that much defense no matter what you do. The better defense powers start with like 12% instead of only 3-4% defense.

You can slot however you want... but my time build debuffs enemies for -14.7% to hit with Time's Juncture. My lowest defense is ~25 and most enemies have a 5% chance to hit me or my pets from the combat log. When I turn on the Incarnate support core my highest defense goes up to 40 (without using hover). I don't get to max out defense but I am supremely resistant to damage from the Mu shield. My Smashing/Lethal defense without an incarnate boost is ~59% and my energy resistance is 48% before pet reductions. Most attacks in CoX have multiple energy types and will use your highest resist. So if you resist a Lethal/Fire attack you can use the higher value (If it is fire only you only get the fire value). Scorpion shield is really nice but I think the Mu shield is even better. As for my build exactly - I am using a modified version of Force Redux's Time/thug build. You can use that as a really strong base. Load up his build with mids and look at the set bonuses he uses. He focuses on S/L defense as well as haste.

I would suggest Mu mastery instead. Mace shield gives you defense but the Mu shield gives you resistance. A lot of your offense or defense will come from which powers you have slotted and what you put there. You can stack a set bonus up to 5 times. With effort you can get some set bonuses that give you : resistances/defense from various attacks. Combine something like 30% defense with time's juncture and most enemies are left with a 5% chance to hit you.

I love bots too - but the slotting on thugs >>> bots so I made a thug mm. If you like demons - Force Redux made a nice post about demons/dark (with a mids build). My build is thugs time (work in progress - but will post soon™ when I have everything slotted) so I wanted hasten for gang war - and everything else. The Judgement power is great because you can have it deal like 600 damage (mids value) before reduction for zero slots. But I would go haste even if I had made bots because why not do everything faster? When you get everything working just right haste is there to cast things on your time when you want them. Before you get there however I like haste to : resummon your pets with less delay (things happen while leveling), heal your pets more often, and throw whatever power more often. With haste+chrono shift my haste value is 235% and without those it is 115%. To make a long story short -haste is worth it on a MM because you want to be able to do all the things you 6 slotted way more often. Endurance was only an issue before I slotted stamina with : 1 Endurance modification IO, and then 2 performance shifter (end mod/performance shifter). I could literally walk around with my primary heal on autocast and not feel any End drain (just under 6 seconds without either speed increase active). The support core is to help my pets with stamina - not me.

Question: How does the Assault power from Leadership interact with Musculature/Support Core when considering damage caps? A long time ago the verdict was that assault was a bad idea for the MM AT. Is that still true?

Logged in to double check but my incarnates look like this: Alpha : Musculature Core - Why? More damage for pets mids values show: Thugs go from 89.93 to 126.16 Enforcers go from 97.94 to 130.19 Bruiser goes from 96.92 to 129.17 Judgment : ion Core - Why? Fire and forget more damage on more targets Interface : Degen Radial - Why? Plenty of pets to proc the -hp debuff with 25% chance. Destiny : Clarion Core - Why? Free on demand break free (and the lasting buff prevents it from happening again) Hybrid: Support Core - Why? I took this to give the pets more stamina (as well as for all the other buffs) and it makes a world of difference. In mids Support Core shows a 12% boost in damage. It also gives a defense boost

Here's a couple of scattered thoughts: Bots were my first love as MM - but they are at a disadvantage to demon/thugs (maybe others) due to the ability of those primary sets to be able to slot 6 more 'things' into the pets. For example with thugs and gang war you can use that power to hold some of the resistance buffs for pets. Accuracy bonuses from set bonuses do not apply to pets - you might feel some pain with the accuracy levels on your lowest level bots in +4/8 missions. You can for sure take the damage but can you dish it out? It seems to me you kinda wasted some of your slots with your healing powers (and your endurance). Take a look at what you get for spending 9 slots : I think you could do a lot better (being speculative about what you want in the build overall). You could have 192% recovery instead of 188 by slotting an endurance recovery instead of the third performance shifter: accuracy/endurance. That lowers your hp by 15 (but you will never notice with those thick defenses you have). You do not need to three slot hasten with time secondary. Why? Without them you have 85% haste (which you could improve if you wanted with some cleaner slotting in your heal set bonuses). This may seem like a random question but : what personal attack are you planning on boosting with assault core? It's not very much fun to try and use with pets. Also you don't need rebirth with time secondary as you have 2 heals that will affect you and a single target regen for one of your bots (not you). I think you want to read this link that Force Redux posted for MM about incarnate choices (about 3 posts down): I also have to emphasize these two points. Once upon a time with live you had to upgrade every pet with both upgrades - it was the main reason a MM needed hasten. Now the upgrades are universal. Go with reduce endurance on ugprade powers. Afterburner lets you slot another luck of the gambler but group fly does not. If this game were fair- it would give Mastermind pets a 'copy' of the power their master used with a 25% speed boost so they would always be right behind you.

I'm really not seeing why Leviathan is getting so much hate when it has a nice ranged hold (that turns off flying) and a resist shield. Cold is very close but has a 'sleep' with its hold which is much worse. You don't need the heal with most MM sets as they include a very strong heal (if you are playing MM and can't heal yourself/pets...... I dunno what to say). Levi is also really fun thematically. That being said charge is the big loser as its 'shield' is really not useful except for pvp. Cold too has a near copy of that power - which makes me question why more people don't hate it.

I searched for S/L and found a nice cave farm as the second entry - not sure if it was the one you meant. It has lots of ambushes- which really just means more mobs to farm.

You can also update mids directly within the program. Also, is there a reason I don't see many Radiation primary blasters?

I have always loved CoV (sorry, not sorry - villain at heart) but one of the things that turns me off from the game a bit is that there are a number of powers that kinda scream : If you picked this power set you should probably make a new character. On that note to anyone reading from the homecoming team : can poison get a consideration for a rework? Nature is a good basis for comparison that seems to just be way better. From what I've read and experienced it seems like poison is really good for : AV/PVP debuffing and not much else. Didn't the ranged single target heal ability (that can't heal yourself) have a travel time? /Yikes. All that part aside, I still want to make a poison-ish themed character that doesn't suck and is actually fun to play. Do you love theory crafting on builds? Then maybe this is just the topic you've been waiting for! I would like to re-create the very first villain I ever made that incorporates elements of poison into the build in a meaningful way. For a Mastermind Poison is a secondary - and I would never take it again for that AT because other massively better choices exist (everything besides trick arrow). Poison is available to a defender as a primary - but I don't think I want to poison on a defender so I eliminate that choice too. Using the Poison therefore would limit builds to either Controller or Corruptor - but I am open to other ideas. I would have no objection for example to a blaster, dominator, mastermind or sentinel (non melee character) that makes good use of the Experimentation Pool and/or the Mace Mastery epic pool (that has poisonous ray/summon tarantula/scorpion shield). I would love to hear your thoughts on good working aspects for a poison theme!

What if you incorporated modifiers in the existing systmem for : 1. Always include an AV in the mission (might only apply to radio/paper missions) 2. Allow AV/Hero to be in random enemy groups (and of course the option to have them in every enemy group) 3. Half team size for missions/SF (but increase quality/quantity of infamy/recipe rewards)

Once upon a time I played CoV and I had a very nice level 50 MM with everything I ever could have possibly wanted for that character. Later I made other MM characters too so that I could test out other flavors. But Before that happened I had a mediocre Mastermind that took ages to level (abandoned around level 40) and was completely terrible. To make a long story short I have already had the "Mastermind Leveling Experience". I know how they work and I could probably play anyone else's MM character just fine after reading power variations I have never used before - if I can understand what they did for their slotting (all bets are off if I went and tried to play something like a scrapper however). For me the fun part is at the end game. This is my dessert; I already earned it. This is where the combat can be challenging and this is where the game gets rewarding. As soon as I had an "empty" level 50 character (that I leveled up more than half way myself) I was raking in the cash compared to what I had been getting previously. The first few days I didn't even know there was an XP boost for free. I will kindly ask you not to judge me for what part of the game I like. You are free to enjoy the parts of the game that I want so skip. To me the middle of the game is very grindy (because it was meant to be a pay per month MMO afterall). And the early game is very slow running with no travel power(you can even "forget" to take a movement power until 14 if you like). I get the impression that most people like to play multiple characters of many different types. I suspect most people don't want to spend weeks getting a character to 50 only to realize they made a garbage character that should have been better researched in the first place. Imagine for example you just clicked some buttons and made a Ninja/Poison Mastermind with no real thought put into it. Would you rather have wasted 5 hours getting power leveled or 5 hours a day for 2-3 weeks (if not longer)?

@TheSpiritFox Thank you for posting; I really appreciate that! Your Haste total is really impressive! And I really prefer what you have in Maneuvers : 57.53% defense debuff! This is a nice configuration with Super Speed. As much as I am enjoying Flight right now I had kind of intended on playing this character with super speed (since I always seemed to go with flight before - and it fits in more with the Time Theme). At some point I may branch out and go for a more Offensive MM setup with fire - but for right now I think I want to focus on Defense (using the Mu Epic Pool). I'm working on a blend of ideas from what you two have posted. One question : Do my pets benefit if I have a high overall Accuracy boost from set bonuses (say for example the 3 piece set bonus from Superior Mark of Supremacy)? It looks like the answer is no - according to this source. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Attack_Mechanics So for players, AccMods is calculated using: AccMods = the power's inherent Accuracy × (1.0 + the power's Accuracy Enhancements + all global Set Accuracy bonuses) So for critters, we have a slightly longer formula for figuring AccMods: AccMods = the power's inherent Accuracy × the Accuracy of the enemy's Rank × Accuracy factor due to level difference I was considering Dropping Tactics but then I read a little bit and found that might not be a good idea.

@Force Redux Looking closely at the build you had posted before you have both Mark of supremacy and Superior mark of supremacy : Accuracy/Damage. I have been told that is not allowed as they are unique. And that also means the build I posted above is nonvalid.

I'm guessing in conjunction with Time Crawl that would be a huge help! Thank you for that write up. I guess I will have to steal some Longbow bots.

Well this is really more of me trying to figure out how to fish for myself. I was also looking into replacing one of the nucleolus exposures for the bruiser with a superior mark of supremacy from the enforcer. With the other change I mentioned that would make for a +21% permanent accuracy boost, no? -Another swapping question : On the Call Thugs power if I swap out Nucleolus Exposure for Sovereign Right : Accuracy/Damage there is a minimal loss (both are still in the red) and I can gain regeneration. Now my question is would the Thugs gain regeneration since I have a 2 piece set bonus slotted there too? Or would that only affect me.

Oh no sorry, I was asking Force Redux about the build he posted the other day for Mids.

Another question about the build you posted for me - (btw Im not even fully slotted for all the things and it works great with what I have). What makes Analyze weakness so much better than going for the 11% accuracy from slotting : shield breaker defense buff?

I have my incarnate slots for everything except Hybrid unlocked - I have about 280 threads. I got the first level of Musculature made (only from shards). Which do you think would be better : Radial or Core? I assume Core is the better option if End is not a problem. So that means I could use my threads to go after the Destiny power next? I think Clarion might be the thing I need most right now. From your write up it sounded like the 120 second option was better. For Interface : Degenerative Radial seemed to be the best option. ( I went ahead and crafted the first one with threads as it was an immediate passive gain). For Hybrid : Support Core is the clear choice because of the double effectiveness for pets (I've often seen my pets go low on End) For Judgement : I had planned on going with Ion as it seemed the simplest choice. For Lore: I have no idea what pets might work best. Could one of the Giant Melee things be a good choice?

So tomorrow I will hit 50 and then I can in theory start making money with Thugs/Time. But I really don't know where would be a good place to start. My build is definitely not ready for difficult content although I was doing mostly fine on +0/3x. Does anyone know a good AE mission that might work? I know I should be going for TF missions and the like but this is more of a : what if it is another quiet night sort of question.