Coyote

A Tornado inside a Lightning Storm wrapped around a Singularity, of course 🙂 ... that way, Singy is free to hold your beer 😉 . You don't want Tornado holding your beer, trust me on that.

I don't think it has an interrupt period, and the zombies move like they're Speed Boosted. They come in fast, hard, and blow up. The good news is that the explosion isn't as bad as the Embalmed Abominations, but having 5-6 of them come in and go BOOM! was not pleasant for my MM. The main trick is to hammer them with a knockback attack, and try to finish off a couple of them after that before they get up and come to you... you can take a couple of them exploding, you just don't want to get a faceful of them exploding at once. So give up on the idea of avoiding all of the explosions (unless you're a Hover-Blaster, in which case you can just snicker at them), and just focus on lowering the numbers that get to reach you. A large team triggering a large ambush of these could do very well by having enough AoE to blasts them before they get to you... or could get wiped in one cool fireworks display, depending on how ready they are and what AoEs they have ready at that level.

Burnout does recharge pet summons, but it's not a big deal for Beasts... it's only relevant for Thugs to get double Gang War. And maybe for Demons? I assume they can get double Hell on Earth (on different demons), but I don't recall for certain. Beasts, however, should not be resummoning the beasts so often that they would need Burnout, and if you are in a situation where you're summoning that fast, probably Siphon Speed and a fast retrograde tactical maneuver is better than summoning again into a losing fight. Mmmm, Hasten 🥓 .... yummmy

Gratz. Clearly, Regen needs nerfing. 😛

The Fear in Leadership isn't really useful for most builds, but Provoke by itself is not a bad choice for Masterminds. It gives you the option to run a Tankermind build if you want to.. with Beasts I generally wouldn't as they are quite sturdy, but that doesn't mean that having it in the toolbox is a bad thing. Maneuvers/Tactics is always a good choice for Masterminds. Personally, I'd go with Hasten. Because, well, it's Hasten. Kinda like bacon, only better 😄

The funny thing is that you can use Fold Space to bunch mobs up, then the AoE Immob to keep them in place, then Gale to keep knocking them down in place. So the same set of powers that could be used to annoy people could also be used usefully by some user. Also, for maximum annoyance potential, make a Grav/Storm. WAY better than Grav/Nrg, and actually great when soloing. Then when the team starts to complain about the Wormholing, Space Folding, AoE Immobing, Dimention Shifting, Hurricaning, Tornadoing, and of course, the Gale-ing... you say "Hold my beer. Actually, nevermind, Singy can hold it", and destroy the next spawn alone. THEN you go back to Space Trolling 😉

I really like Beasts/Kin if aiming for a perma-Fortify build or close to perma. Soft-capping defenses, backed by resists and heals, while also having the high damage of Fulcrum Shift, makes them very effective at higher levels, where most MMs start to tail off. Tail. Off. Hehe, I kill myself. 😛 One thing to note about problem mobs: the second upgrade gives the Lionesses a PBAoE Stun growl on a 2 minute timer, and the Frost Wolf a PBAoE Fear howl on a one minute timer. Both are Mag 3. So you can expect problem mobs to start most fights Stunned if you tell the beasts to run next to them before starting to attack. That can sometimes stop a big AoE alpha from coming in at the start of a fight and messing up with your plans, and the speed with which they close from "out of aggro" to "facemunching" range usually means they open the action even against ranged attacks.

Thugs and Demons are the two best primaries. /Time is an excellent secondary, stronger on the defensive side. Both primaries have a recharge-based summons that works well with the +Recharge from /Time. Thugs/Time will easily soft-cap Defenses with Farsight. Demons/Time can get good Defense backed up by good Resists and Heals so they're less vulnerable to CDF.

Beasts/Kin is an excellent pairing. However, I don't think that ID is a great benefit to it, because... the status effect protection looks like it's flagged to only affect the primary target. The Smash/Energy resistance goes 30' wide, but the status protection doesn't 😞 City of Data - MM / Kin / Increase Difficulty

Leaping should carry procs over, but the first attack is a single-target attack with a Recharge of 14, and the jumps are treated as 10' AoEs with a Recharge of 10, so the chances for procs to happen on jumps will be a lot lower than on the primary target. Although, slotting Recharge into the power won't lower the proc chances for the jumps. The jumps are supposed to be coming from a summoned entity, not from the mob hit, so I don't think it should be affected by mobs dying... I know my Jolting Chain, which uses a similar mechanism, has gone around and killed 2-3 targets at the end of a fight, so that one at least will continue past a dead mob.

Actually, where are the tear gas grenades, flashbang grenades, tasers, etc... I want Gadget Control. And it would go nicely with a Gun Assault set, too.

Is the cake proc'd? Or just processed?

Well, in the end, there are only two baseline topics in CoH: Hamidon, and Nemesis. And since no one is talking about the size of the Nemesis, it must be about Hamidon 😉

Absolutely. Robots have the same duration on their Full Auto Laser, for comparable damage, and can't even slot -Def procs to help out the damage. And I think either the Assault Bot or the Commando, I forget which, might also have like a 6 second animation on their Flamethrower. Some of these ridiculous animation times really need a balance pass desperately. Bots at least are okay because they have some OTHER attacks that are great (Incendiary Swarm Missiles are broken in the other direction), but Mercs really have no exceptionally good attacks to balance out their exceptionally bad ones.

Running it that way, it definitely sounds doable. And if you had reason to run a "all-arcs" character, it wouldn't even be really going out of your way... you're generally using SOs/IOs for a while, and if you slow XP gain to run all arcs, then you should get enough recipes that when you get access to the 30-50 groups you can start slotting your real build pretty early. Not really far behind one that uses the auction house.

The only catch is that you get a lot more levels and power slots early than you get recipe drops and merits, because you don't have to kill as many mobs per level. Until you're solidly into the 30s, you won't be able to set up many sets. Of course, it's not that uncommon to run SOs/IOs into the late 20s or low 30s anyhow, so I guess it wouldn't be such a great difference. Of course, you won't be running in the teens with the uniques from Panacea, Shield Wall, or Gladiator's Armor, though you might manage Steadfast and Kismet. But it wouldn't be that much worse than playing a character without transferring INF to it.

Huh? I agree with most of the rest of the post, but this seems weird. It is less efficient to use converters to switch IOs to ones that are useful for a build. But it's possible, and as long as you're using a lot of converters for multiple characters, so you don't feel like converting out a useful Positron because you're only looking to get a Numina's, you can get a lot of useful IOs from dropped recipes. Sets that you can't convert into, like ATOs, those may be hard. But as long as you're running solo story arcs (and soloing TFs, if other shards let you do that), you can get enough merit rewards to get a lot of converters, and them convert dropped recipes into a lot of useful IOs. Instead of hitting 50 with all of my IOs prepared, I figure it should be possible to hit 50 with at least 50% of my IOs slotted right, and a good start on the rest. That's still way better than live, though.

Gosh, especially for leveling until the 30s, Deceive is your second or third-best power behing PA and maybe behind Blind (or maybe not). Absolutely take it and learn to use it. It only becomes of low value at high level when you're fighting too large spawns to bother mezzing a single target. The Energy Font is the IO that has Recharge/Energy Font... the Font is a summoned pet that lasts for 20 seconds, and does AoE damage with a tick aura that has a chance to Stun. Damage is 66 at level 50, so it's almost as good as a damage proc, but it's AoE so it can get AoE damage out of a single-target power. Alternately, when used with an AoE power, only one target has to trigger the proc in order for the Orb to be summoned, so it gets more reliable than a damage proc when you're hitting a lot of targets. On the downside, it's a 20 second DoT, so you generally won't see all of the damage applied. It does have a Stun effect and does draw aggro, though, so it has uses beyond just more damage. I like it in Spectral Terror, Tornado, and Poison Gas Trap (on a /Poison, I don't know if the Traps version can slot the ATO set in its version of Poison Trap or not).

I think Seeker Drones are a good power for many powersets, not so much for Illusion. They go great with primaries that say "you can attack me, but not very effectively", like Dark, Earth, or Ice. Adding more -ToHit and -Damage to attacks that are coming your way, but slowed down due to knockdowns and less accurate due to -ToHit debuffs, is useful. But debuffing attacks going into PA is irrelevant, so you only debuff a portion of the attacks that come at you. That said, it's not too bad. It does lower damage, it has a decent -ToHit (10% with both, slottable to around 15%), so you stack that with Spectral Terror, and add it to the normal Defense from FFG, and reduce the damage that does hit, and it makes you a lot less worried if the spawn is scattered and not controlled, or too many mobs for PA to maintain aggro, etc. It can allow you to play a lot more aggressively, and not wait for PA to recharge since you can open fights with the Drones plus Spectral Terror, etc.

Nah, why would we give Defense-based sets resistance to Defense debuffs? ... Oh. Wait.

Mercs take a pretty long time to attack... 4+ seconds on Full Auto is okay when it's a Tier-9 attack with 90 second Recharge and does pretty good damage. Even then, it's not a great attack due to that animation time. The Mercs version has a 16 second recharge time... and 6+ seconds of animation time. That's just really, really bad. And with its cone width, it's practically a single-target attack, too. Fix the animation times on these (and some of the Robots cones, too), and the set would be a lot better.

I meant the personal MM attacks in the Robots powerset. The actual Robots attacks themselves pretty much bracket the scale: I think the Incendiary Swarm Missiles are the best attack available to MM henchmen... and Full Laser Auto (and its 6+ second animation time) is the worst. But overall, they're not terrible. Just the personal attacks.

Regen would be fine if it had DDR, but there's no rationale to giving DDR to a non-defense set. It might also do well if MoG had its stats cut to 1/3 of what they are now... and it's uptime increased to 3x. A 45 second MoG... or better yet, one with 1/3 the Recharge so that it can reliably soak up the alpha strike on every spawn, would generally be fine. As it is, it's really vulnerable to stacking -Def debuffs ramping up enemy damage, since its mitigation doesn't ramp up. So you have to worry about the alpha strike AND about the backloaded damage against enemy groups that stack -Def.

Exactly. It's most effective to use SOs at least until 22 or so (when you start considering level 25 IOs so you don't have to worry about levels anymore). Use unique IOs as soon as they become slottable. Otherwise, go for set bonuses only where you can get useful ones in 2-3 slots (Steadfast, Thunderstrike).

It depends on the set. Robots attacks are terrible, Mercs are poor, Beasts are very good, Demons are great. Beasts/Kin: with relatively minor +Damage boost (+100%, so not a full Fulcrum Shift), the damages are: 3 second recharge (Swarm): 102 and Achilles Heel IO 6 second recharge (Hawk): 226 and Force Feedback IO 14 second cone (Ravens): 204 and Achilles Heel IO. Also of note is that Beasts AoE is really poor, so this is actually the character's main AoE damage even after the level 32 upgrade. These attacks also generate Pack Mentality, to boost the critical chances of the beasts. Demons are also good with damage, but more importantly, add -Res and places to slot Force Feedback. Endurance is really the issue... MMs can run hot due to increased End costs, so it depends on how well the secondary supports Recovery or +Endurance. But if you can support it, there are some sets where I feel the attacks are worth it: Demons and Beasts definitely have good attacks. I would take 2-3 from these for sure. Necro has decent attacks, and can help with Endurance burn since you can put Theft of Essence in Life Drain. I would take 2-3 here also. Thugs attacks aren't too good, but can slot FF and Thugs like more Recharge. I would probably take the two Knockback attacks and see how the Endurance plays out. Mercs, similar to Thugs but don't benefit so much from Recharge, so I would take the knockback attacks if the secondary is one that really benefits from Recharge. Burst can slot AH, however, so if there is room to spare I might take that... but not on most builds. Ninja and Robot attacks, ugh. For Ninjas it's both more effective and thematic to take the Fighting pool. For Robots, I could see taking the AoE and using procs to get AoE damage before 32... after that, I'm not sure it's worthwhile. The single-target attacks are crap in any case. Also, if you're going to run in Bodyguard mode, losing some personal defense is rarely a major issue. The only time I feel personal defenses are important are on a MM who is micromanaging the pets for efficient attacking, in which case I'm probably not taking the attacks more because I'm too busy controlling them. It will be a rare build where I'm attacking AND I'm controlling the pets as they attack, so in most cases I'll be attacking/Bodyguard, or controlling/Personal Defense, but in the latter case, I'm not taking attacks anyhow.