TheMoncrief

Sadly, it does nothing for Resistance powers, click based or not. My Beasts/Nature Mastermind was quite annoyed that her minions couldn't hit the Resist cap through using Power Boost - although to be fair, her Beasts are quite rugged anyway, in spite of them being purely melee attackers.

There are inherents that define how the AT plays, and inherents that, well, don't. Fury or Domination are AT defining. Opportunity, self evidently, is not. Nobody plays Blasters for Defiance or Masterminds for Supremacy. One of those is actually a really good inherent, but it's entirely in the background. The other is and has always been kind of lackluster. I don't think any realistic change to Opportunity is going to make it an AT-defining inherent. But they might manage to make it a good inherent that just happens to be operate in the background.

Thread title: "Why is it so hard for me to play Red Side?" I think that explains why people are responding with reasons why they don't play Red Side. Possibly. I may be giving basic literacy too much credit though.

I don't think the game structurally fits well with villains. Heroes, sure, they run around, talk to people who they know to be well informed, learn what the bad guys are doing, and stop them. Heroism is fundamentally a reactive endeavor. As a villain, they other folks should be reacting to *ME*. Certainly I shouldn't be taking marching orders from random dudes I'm sent to by a "broker." Some of the villain missions do overcome this structural problem, but in the end, I tend to feel more like a lackey or henchman than a true independent villain. The redside writing, however, is much better than blueside. Few of the blueside contacts feel like anything other than random computer terminals I get in AE. The redside contacts, at least some of them, are written as real characters. Golden Roller, Doc Buzzsaw, the Radio and the Television, all are more memorable as characters than anybody I encountered blueside.

I like that I can get consistent mez protection without having to play yet another melee toon.

I'd like to know this too. I really liked the old rainbow aura for Invulnerability powers, but I significantly prefer Brutes over Tankers or Scrappers for the set on a play style basis.

And that is exactly why you shouldn't do it. There are very few "wrong" ways to play City of Heroes. The pure empath concept is famous because it is one of them. It is a build and play philosophy that absolutely requires a team to support, and provides extremely minimal support to that team in response, because it is based on the unfounded belief that providing healing (and only healing) to your teammates is essential in all circumstances, when it is usually not even helpful. A Mastermind with no personal attacks is usually perfectly self sufficient and contributes well to a team. It is an entirely functional build for any content where a Mastermind is going to be useful. No team will fail to defeat its targets and clear its missions because the Mastermind was not contributing personal damage - in order to come even close to that mark, it has to be playing so close to the edge of viability that failure is an expected outcome whether the Mastermind is attacking or not. Playing a Mastermind without attacks is not a wrong way to play. And leveling personal insults against people who prefer to play that way is not a good way to make your point. Regardless, I'm out. If you think you are engaging in constructive debate and have "won," go for it. You asked why people consider the MM primary attacks pointless, I explained, you insulted me and everybody who has ever reached a similar conclusion, I asked you to tone it down, you doubled down. There is nowhere this conversation has left to go.

Please don't compare a Mastermind who chooses to play to the AT's strengths to a "pure emp" who thinks being a dedicated healer is actually useful in CoX and likely ignores the really great powers in Empathy like Clear Mind and Fortitude because they aren't heals. I have nothing against personal attacks in your Mastermind builds - or even in my own Mastermind builds sometimes - but you don't need to be bringing them to the forums. Not everybody enjoys playing the same way as you. Nor should they. They are not wrong. Neither are you. The case that one way of playing or the other is better in some objective sense can probably be made, but it doesn't need to be. Both ways work fine. I have edited this several times to avoid saying anything truly offensive. I don't object to your arguments supporting the use of Mastermind primary and pool attacks - merely to your dismissive attitude toward those who don't agree with you.

Power picks and enhancement slots are in strictly limited supply. Masterminds have such a low damage scale that spending them on direct attacks is easy to consider a waste of resources, unless you are playing a primary where the attacks have more utility than just doing damage. Most Masterminds have plenty of things to use power picks and enhancement slots on that contribute considerably more to their arsenal than their direct attacks. At least until they need to mule a good set, but by then you're usually done or nearly done leveling, and depending on the secondary they still may not find a chance to use them. Some secondaries are very busy, others are very endurance hungry. Either can interfere with your chances to actually use those attacks even if you take them to hold a nice set.

I am content that my Robots jet feet are now useful for more than hanging out in Pocket D. Having Group Fly actually be a useful group travel power for my pets is intensely satisfying.

Caltrops is amazing on a Mastermind. I can't imagine ever wanting it on a melee class though. Stalker Ninjitsu just does not seem like a well designed set.

Depending on the specific primary, the "extra" power may be skippable too. Serum for Mercenaries or Repair Robot for Robotics are easily skipped. On the other hand, skipping Hell on Earth for Demons or Gang War for Thugs may well earn you a diagnosis for clinical insanity.

Can't you just disable redraw in your power customization? Or are there some weapon sets where redraw cannot be disabled?

So, umm, why the heck does the Command of the Mastermind ATO set have so much Recharge enhancement? Don't Mastermind pets specifically ignore any kind of Recharge buff or enhancement? I suppose for sets like Thugs it helps things like Gang War, but it seems kind of weird considering that many Mastermind primaries have no pet powers except the major three that can take the ATO's. I suppose it helped a little back when MM pet summon powers had long recharge times, but it seems painfully obsolete now. I don't really expect it to change, I'm just sharing my head-scratching confusion here.

Personally I'd settle for keeping all the pets at the MM's level. It's already happening in Incarnate content, and MM's still aren't ruling the roost there. The level reduction for low tier pets is super painful when going against content that is common at high levels - ie, +4/x8. Or +4/xanything.

Can anybody with a Robotics MM on the test server say whether Full Auto Laser was included in the list of changes to all versions of Full Auto for a shortened activation time? It won't do anything about Flamethrower on the Assault Bot, but it'd be nice to have it not root my other bots for so long.

I'd prefer it if pet upgrades were never downgrades to pet firepower, personally. The fact that my Assault Bot does more damage if I skip the first upgrade on it is awful design. Fixing Flamethrower's animation time would be a huge help here, but I don't know what other pets from different sets might be better off without.

Because powers whose use should be timed and which cannot be made permanent by any means are totally comparable to powers that are permanently active without any form of enhancement and which are intended to be used once and then forgotten indefinitely? Making Aim and Build Up auto would utterly change their nature, and dramatically increase their power unless other changes were made. Making MM pet upgrades auto would be a significant convenience with at most a trivial increase to their power. They aren't even really comparable to toggles, since at least some toggles can be forcibly disabled without actually having to kill anything - but that would still be a better comparison than Aim and Build Up. MM pet upgrades are essentially part of summoning the pets and getting them ready for combat. You can argue that this is an intended and important balancing mechanic and making them auto would remove one of the intended balancing mechanic keeping Masterminds from being utterly OP. I don't personally agree, but at least it's a rational argument that can be made. You can argue that Masterminds are fine, possibly even before considering the upcoming changes to MM pet summoning powers, and it is therefore pointless to ask for more. You cannot - or at least have not so far - argue rationally that Aim and Build Up are even remotely comparable to MM pet upgrade powers. The differences in use case render the comparison about as valid as comparing Unyielding from Invulnerability to Elude from Super Reflexes. I'm agnostic about the discussion of making MM pet upgrade powers auto powers. If it happens, sweet. I suspect there are mechanical reasons it's not happening beyond just "We don't want to do that," but still, it'd be sweet and allow my Masterminds to actually contribute useful damage to fast moving teams at least some of the time. If it doesn't happen, that's fine. I mostly play Masterminds solo anyway, or else in dedicated Mastermind-only groups, where everybody naturally understands the joy of herding cats. But I'd like the debate on the subject to be carried out on a basis that cannot just as reasonably be used to argue that Unyielding should be given a 10 minute cooldown because that works fine for Elude.

That people treat the comparison as even remotely valid is bizarre. Build Up and Aim are short duration buffs intended to allow a brief burst of higher damage and accuracy. The Mastermind pet upgrades are permanent buffs intended to increase the baseline effectiveness of the pets. I'm not sure it's a good reason to just make the pet upgrades auto powers, but the comparison to Build Up and Aim is spurious and deserves to be called out as such.

Just when I thought it was safe to respec out of Group Fly. Not actually complaining, though. I'd rather it be a useful power pick instead of having to respec out of it.

In my experience - which is far from comprehensive - once you have the Assault Bot fully upgraded and slotted, the damage and accuracy slotting in your other pets is kind of meaningless. Battle Drones are the lowest level pets and get hit by the purple patch super hard, plus their damage output isn't that amazing even if slotted ideally. Protector Bots are useful for healing and bubbling, even if slotted for damage they aren't big contributors. So you can use Battle Drones and Protector Bots as aura and set mules and not actually lose all that much. I don't *LIKE* that the Assault Bot is the only really combat effective pet in the set, but at least it gives some freedom to slot stuff I want elsewhere without hindering my damage too badly.

Also, you can order your minions by type. For example, with Robotics something like 90% of the damage potential is in your Assault Bot. So tell it to attack high priority targets, leave your Battle Drones and Protector Bots in BG mode. Other sets may be less lopsided or just favor different pets, but the point still stands - you don't need to remove all your pets from BG mode to send some of them out to attack something that needs attacked.

What level are you reaching when you decide against a set combo? Beasts deal some of the best single target damage of any MM Primary. You may have better luck with Thugs or Demons if you don't like the single target focus, but it will come fairly late. Robotics will be even more AoE focused than Thugs or Demons, at the expense of fairly wretched single target damage - but again, it comes fairly late. Masterminds are a late blooming AT - I don't know of any primary that really feels strong before level 32 when you get the second pet upgrade. And regardless of primary, your personal damage output as a Mastermind will be lackluster at best.

Thank you all for the input. I'm currently thinking Dark/Dark, as I have played neither primary nor secondary before while most of the other recommended options I have played before on another AT. There's something to be said for trying something new. I may try some of the others when I'm in the mood for another Defender or a Corrupter, though.

It was highly useful for Hamidon raids in those early days. Lets the melee folks stay in the cluster when attacking the mitos. No idea if that's still how things are done, my last Hamidon raid was back in issue 3 or 4 I think.