Maelwys

The idea is pretty straightforward once you break it down. When you hit Power Boost (and/or Clarion Radial) you get a short-duration buff that boosts the secondary effects of your powers. Any power that you activate before that buff which has those secondary effects (ToHit, Defence, etc) expires gets its values massively boosted. "Toggles" and most passive "Auto" powers refresh every few seconds and do a fresh check each time they cycle. So shortly after the Powerboost buff expires... their values will return to normal. However most "Clicky" buffs (perhaps most notably long-duration +Defence-granting abilities like Fortitude, Forcefield Bubbles, Farsight, etc!) only check to see if they're boosted ONCE whenever you first activate them. So if they're boosted when you cast them, then they'll maintain that boost for their entire duration. Which means if you can get Power Boost to recharge again before that power expires, the boost can be effectively "permanent". There are a few exceptions - Cold Domination's Bubbles and Darkness Affinity's Fade are coded with a flag to "ignore external strength boosts" (this is because those powers buff 'damage resistance' as well as 'defence'; and there's a convoluted coding thing in CoH where if you boosted the strength of a character's Damage Resistance then you'd also boost their damage output - so the short version is that Power Boost effects don't work in any powers that grant Damage Resistance)

I posted this yesterday in the Bots/Time thread; but the biggest contribution to pet survivablity on a /Time MM will be combining Farsight with both Power Boost + a Radial Clarion Destiny. With ED-capped +Defense slotting, Farsight grants about ~14.7% Defence to all.Power Boost raises that to ~20.9%Power Boost AND Clarion Radial Epiphany (or Clarion Total Radial Invocation) brings that total up to ~28.4% Throw in another ~4.13% from Maneuvers and +10% from the two +Def IOs and your pets will be just a few percent shy of the regular 45% Def Softcap. If you desperately want to reach the Softcap without other buffs (Support Destiny, Diamagnetic Interface, Lore pet with +Def bubble, etc) you can technically do so via a +Def Alpha like Agility Core Paragon and a little overslotting in Farsight. (Not bad for tapping three buttons every 120 seconds...)

Might be worth pointing out the benefits of Radial Clarion Destiny slot here too. With ED-capped +Defense slotting, Farsight grants about ~14.68% Defence to all. Power Boost raises that to ~20.82% Power Boost AND Clarion Radial Epiphany (or Clarion Total Radial Invocation) brings that total up to ~28.32% Throw in another ~4.13% from Maneuvers and +10% from the two +Def IOs and your pets will be just shy of the regular 45% Def Softcap. Add Protector Bot bubbles (even with just a single LOTG) and you're well into Incarnate Softcap territory; just need to remember to click three buttons every 120s.

Definitely; and that's why I had that "other than specific boss fights" caveat in the parent post. An /Elec MM that is constantly on the move also at least still has healing and other buffs such as Empowering Circuit to fall back on. However it doesn't change the fact that /Elec's performance still suffers a lot whenever a team is highly mobile; which is (for better or worse) the current meta. And as I mentioned in an earlier post, other powersets like /Thermal can provide a very similar benefit to /Elec regardless of how quickly the team is moving. It's a rather powerful powerset; but it unfortunately comes with some annoying limitiations - reduced mobility on teams; and an inability to leverage its capstone (Amp Up) when solo. Still perfectly playable though even if it's not exactly mechanically optimal + a small price to pay if you're in love with the theme/flavour!

Slight caveat here - there are certain situations (which happen only very occasionally in regular content, but extremely regularly on AE farming maps) where you have more than 17 hostile critters nearby. In those cases the aggro of the entire mob cannot be held by one single entity; and whilst it's of great benefit for a player character to have some pets to help "herd them up"... having multiple pets, some of which are WEAK can actually be detrimental because those pets inevitably die and aggro starts to pinball madly all over the place. This is actually why my Bot/Kin needs to worry about resummoning their T1s on AE farming maps - I can easily have 30+ foes madly gyrating directly underneath my hovering mechcluster of doom; but only 17 of them are aggroed onto my Assbot; the others are mostly split across the Drones (with their Full Auto spam) instead of across my MM themselves plus the Protector Bots; who all have considerably higher "effective HP" due to purple patch scaling. In most cases I can reliably pull most of them onto my MM via Bonfire and Fireball spam, but that's still only a maximum of 34 simultaneous foes accounted for; which, yes, seems like a lot, until you actually see two ITF's worth of foes crammed into one tiny asteroid map...

I'm rather enjoying my recently-50ed-and-tricked-out Bio/Staff Tanker. Sure, staff tends to stay on Form of the Body 24/7 just like Offensive Adaption... but the +Def from Guarded Spin (~22% with a LoTG or two) covers Bio Armor's defence gaps nicely; and the +Res from Sky Splitter (+13.3% to all) plus a few +6.7% stacks from the SMoT Proc (mine's in Serpent's Reach) helps versus non-S/L damage. Softcapped Defences, Hardcapped Resists and plenty of Absorb. Throw Bio's "Parasitic Aura" on a group of alive foes and "DNA Siphon" on a group of dead ones and your Regen/Recovery rate jumps through the roof and I've noticed it's not uncommon for me to see hardcapped numbers there too. The real kicker is the procability though. Mercurial Blow takes Achilles' Heel -Res and Touch of Lady Grey; Eye of the Storm takes Fury of the Gladiator -Res and Force Feedback chance for +Recharge and Armageddon; Serpent's Reach takes Decimation: Chance for Build Up and Apocalypse; Sky Splitter takes Hecatomb plus any other ATOs you're missing... and then there's all that AoE -Res from Form of the Body + Eye of the Storm and Evolving Armor. You're a proc-laden resistance-debuffing AoE woodchipper. Sure, /Staff isn't as standalone awesome as /SS Ragestomping, but Bio/Staff has got some real synergy going on making the whole genuinely better than the sum of the parts. It's nice for a change to play a toon that just naturally "comes together" so much... EDIT: Some actual numbers and a sample build, since I'm home from work now and can actually check in-game (Mids is pants at getting the stats right with all the stance mechanics) Offensively, with "Offensive Adaption" running: +25% Damage and +7.5 ToHit from Hardened Carapace (Offensive Adaption) plus up to +15% Damage from Form of the Body (3x Stacks). It inflicts a constant PBAoE -10.64% resist to Foes via Evolving Armor, plus another -10% res for 6 seconds via Eye of the Storm with 3x Form of the Body Stacks (in the typical AoE chain this cycles every 9.1 seconds). With my current slotting, Eye of the Storm also has a 41% chance to activate the Annihilation Proc for a further -20% res for 10 seconds, and Mercurial Blow has a 17% of activating the Achilles' Heel Proc for yet another -20% res for 10 seconds. DNA Siphon will deal a constant -100% Regen in Offensive Mode and -133% outside of that mode. Defensively, with "Defensive Adaption" running plus a 3-stacked SMoT proc: (there's a 67% chance of 3 procs being up, and 25% chance of 2) >90% Resistance to S/L/T (even in Offensive Adaption!) ~55% Resistance to F/C/E/N/P with 1 foe in range of Evolving Armor, or ~61.5% with 10 foes in Range. With 10 Foes in Range AND 'Melee Core Embodiment' AND/OR 'Barrier Core Epiphany'; can reliably sit at >80% Res to F/C/E/N/P. 67.4% Melee Defence (2 stacks of Guarded Spin) or 45.35% (1 Stack). Plus 45.21% F/C/E/N Defence. Can activate Stealth for a smidge more. Hardcapped Recovery [9.47 End/Sec] when Parasitic Aura is running (uptime 45s, recharge ~67-86s) otherwise 6.38 End/Sec. ~250 HP/Sec Regen when Parasitic Aura is running, otherwise ~115 HP/Sec. Can hit the +2500% Regeneration hardcap in Efficient Adaption with 'Melee Core Embodiment' running. Constant PBAoE -14% Damage debuff to Foes via Genetic Contamination. Frankly more +Absorb than I know what to do with (can technically hit the 100% Base HP hardcap!) Tanker (Bio Armor - Staff).mbd

Plenty of petless Masterminds exist. It might not be optimal in terms of damage output to skip them; but occasionally constantly babysitting and resummoning pets (or having them stand around blocking narrow corridors - geometry can get wonky in some cave maps since you can only shove them out of the way if there is space behind them) can be detrimental to a team's performance.

It's the (now downright ancient) case of Flat damage mitigation versus Scaling damage mitigation. Regeneration and Healing are "Flat" damage mitigation. You heal or regenerate a certain amount of hit points over time. It doesn't matter if you take 10 or 100 or 1000 damage, you still always recover X hitpoints in Y seconds. Defence and Damage Resistance are "Scaling" damage mitigation. They allow you to avoid different amounts of damage, based on what attacks are currently being inflicted upon you. For Defence, you either take 0% damage or 100%. For Damage Resistance, you always take X% less damage. Regeneration therefore tends to be either completely immortal or dead. The old adage goes that /Regen Scrappers are basically immortal providing that (i) they never take more damage than X over time Y and (ii) they never take a single huge spike of damage that is greater than their maximum HP. Moment of Glory (after the rework in 2008 which removed the stupid health crash) became a very useful Emergency Button for /regen - in cases where you start taking more damage than your flat mitigation can cope with, it gives you some valuable breathing room. It's not supposed to be a "always wait for this to recharge before jumping in" power or a "save this for the end boss" power but somewhere in the middle. - - - - - - - - - - Personally, on my own /Regens I always liked layering mitigation further, so taking primary sets with buffs like Divine Avalanche (melee softcap before IO came out? Yes please!) and even Tough and Resilience. I didn't always run those constantly; but popping MoG gave me a chance to "turtle up" and get a double-stacked DA going, for example. Although admittedly it's been a looooooong journey from this: to this:

That melee_speedjumping modifier is just another method of saying "don't scale this value based on the entity's rank" The older non-revamped henchmen (like this) all use that modifier for their resistance figures, which is why I leapt to the initial conclusion that Robotics was "incorrectly" using a different one.

Ohh, I must have missed that one. Have you a link perchance? (Closest I could find was this one from the Open Beta forum in 2022)

Definitely, the T1s currently have the biggest survivability problem due to them being -2 in most content and Purple Patch shenanighans. (Although it's a bit worse for Ninjas than the rest since they key off Defence and anything over +5 starts getting ToHit buffs...) So if it comes to a choice; personally I'd also much rather see all three pet tiers standardised. That said, dropping the T1 survivability would be particularly concerning for a set like Mercs where so much of the sustainability of the set comes from the T1 Medic; so perhaps they really did leave it different for a reason... who knows? 🙃

That.... seems a bit odd given the way other buff powers function and the original "static" resistances of the pets; however if that's the new design intent then fair enough! (I was on a break from the game during the page 5 revamp; but just noticed the discrepancy between Bots and Mercs during some recent testing...) 🙂 And indeed, it appears that you're right - on Brainstorm at least the other two "revamped" powersets (Ninjas and Necro) are similarly keying off the pet scalars. Definitely looks like there's something out of whack here + a standardisation pass needs done. E.g. either Mercs needs brought into line with the other three "revamped" primaries; or they need brought into line with Mercs (and the non-revamped legacy powersets).

There was a post earlier this week about that very power combination - see here. The Page 5 Patch changed a lot of stuff in Robotics and most of the builds/guides you'll see out there such as this one predate it. To rehash my views on /Elec MMs from this thread: It plays very similar to Thermal, but your damage resistance buffs and mez protection are tied to a set location (making you slower to move from place to place - on an AT that is already renowned for its slowness on team content!) and your "chain" abilities are only sometimes AoE. Perhaps most notably however, its capstone ability 'Amp Up' is practically worthless on pets (aside from perhaps the Necromancy's Lich ) because pets are unaffected by recharge time changes and unlike most 'Power Boosting' effects it only increases Defence/ToHit DEBUFFS not BUFFS. Although it's probably still better than /Sonic.

[EDIT: It has been pointed out below that the Robotics Equip power may in fact be "correct" here, since the same behaviour is currently present in the other 'revamped' powersets Ninjas and Necro... however if this is true then the Mercs Equip power must be using the incorrect scalar...] As per post title, the "Equip" upgrade ability in Robotics was reworked to grant the henchmen some enhanceable damage resistance... however it appears that this is currently using the scalar of the individual pet to determine the actual amount of damage resistance granted, rather than the scalar of the Mastermind themselves. Each of the resistance figures is listed as +25% Damage Resistance (Lethal, Cold, Psionic) (self only) for 10.25s ... but the numbers you actually get in the game are different than expected (see example screenshot below) and only match up if it's actually using the "Minion Henchman/Lt Henchman/Boss Henchman" scalars for Resistance Buff rather than the "Mastermind" scalar. https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.droid_2.resistance&at=minion_henchman https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.protector_2.resistance&at=lt_henchman https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.assault_2.resistance&at=boss_henchman The upshot of this is that the Assbot is significantly tougher than it should be and the Drones significantly weaker versus vs Lethal/Cold/Psi damage. The Protector Bot is "correct" since the Lt Henchman scalars match that of the Mastermind. Compare this with the same "Equip" ability from Mercs... which is using the Mastermind scalar and so each of the pets resistances only end up differing *very slightly* due to their level differences: https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.soldier_2.equip&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.medic_2.equip&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.spec_ops_2.equip&at=mastermind https://cod.uberguy.net./html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.commando_2.equip&at=mastermind

AFAIK pet abilities are completely immune to Recharge rate modifications of any kind. Was made that way years ago in response to people slotting stuff like Force Feedback recharge procs in them (which drastically overpowered certain pets and also had a bad habit of breaking the pet AI!) Ths actually makes MMs one of the few ATs that are really good at fighting large groups of foes that inflict recharge debuffs.

Just swap the Flight Pool with the Teleport Pool? The LOTG in Hover isn't vitally important since the only thing it does is get Hasten and Amp Up a smidge closer to perma. Also if you really want your MM Softcapped (rather than half a percent under it) then you could also rejig the two Defence IO slots in Hover and/or swap one of the heals to a six-set of Numina... Ideally you'll want positional defences over 19.65% (since you'll get +20.35% from the Protector Bot and +5% from Barrier). So something like the below? zMastermind - Robots - Elec (TP).mbd (Ignore the late placement of Combat Teleport - can be swapped out or moved to wherever and the KB Protection IO in it isn't hugely important either) Also... getting IO'ed out is probably fastest if you've a toon or two that can farm, or like playing the market... but there are other options like spamming TFs or specific Ouroboros Arcs for merits etc.

Oh sure rechargewise it's possible to spam Faraday Cage fairly quickly, and you can work around the endurance drain. But I meant the "EVERYBODY GATHER UP AND STAND HERE... HELLO? WHY ARE YOU ALL THREE ROOMS AWAY ALREADY?" aspect. IO'ed-up teams tend to move fast, and other than specific boss fights generally sprint from one spawn to the next, AoEing as they go... henchmen are one thing, but good luck convincing an average PUG to do anything other than ninja run right through your protective bubble and out the other side; if they even read the chat and/or notice you casting it in the first place.

There are a few others too. The various "Clarion" Destiny Incarnate slot abilities. And Increase Density from Kinetics - it's very common to see a Kin on the team; although I can count on one hand the number of times I've ever had one that bothered taking/slotting ID and keeping it up on everyone, even after it was changed to AoE. Also whilst not useful for the OP, Peacebringer Light Form definitely has it too - I remember exploiting that a few times back on live. Glorious little practically-indestructible explodey screwball.

I'd a Bots/Traps on live for years (it was my second MM to reach 50, after Bots/Dark). Admittedly I've not really played it much since circa issue 13 or so (the PVP revamp - I primarilly levelled it as a PVP toon whenever Teleport-Foe into a deathzone of Caltrops/PoisonTrap/TripMine was a thing) but I can at least comment a bit from what it felt like in PVE. Back then you could certainly get by with just the Force Field Generator, Poison Trap, Acid Mortar and Caltrops - the FFG was rather squishy and tended to lag behind a bit if you moved too quickly, but it could be resummoned very quickly. Trip Mine was useful for something to do whilst the Bots pew-pew-pewed - being able to attain total Stealth (via a +Stealth IO in sprint and the Stealth Power) also let you sneak to a new group to toebomb them. "Pulling" foes to a sea of tripmines got old very quickly; but setting up killzones in things like the Terra Volta respec trial (where you knew in advance where an ambush would spawn) was fun. Web Grenade was useful at keeping the occasional difficult boss at range (and in pvp) Triage Beacon was completely skippable, as was Timebomb/Detonator (although it's since been reworked and may be more useful these days?) The Seeker Drones were occasionally useful for extra Crowd Control and -damage debuff; but I can't picture them being needed in the current meta. Honestly I imagine it's still one of those secondaries which is fine for soloing, but doesn't really lend itself much to endgame teaming. Most of its powers are slow to set up and kick in and these days teams tend to barrel as fast as possible from one spawn to the next.

It plays very similar to Thermal, but your damage resistance buffs and mez protection are tied to a set location (making you slower to move from place to place - on an AT that is already renowned for its slowness on team content!) and your "chain" abilities are only sometimes AoE. Perhaps most notably however, its capstone ability 'Amp Up' is practically worthless on pets (aside from perhaps the Necromancy's Lich ) because pets are unaffected by recharge time changes and unlike most 'Power Boosting' effects it only increases Defence/ToHit DEBUFFS not BUFFS. Although it's probably still better than /Sonic.

Don't forget you can always copy a toon onto Brainstorm to try new stuff out before you go saving up or respeccing 🙂 (you can craft Incarnates for free and claim free 'beta testing' stuff at the Merit Terminals and also give yourself all the set IOs there with /boostset commands) 💻 🐛 ⚡ 😎

Clarion Core Epiphany is a click power that applies AoE mez protection (on YOU as well as on any teammates/pets within 60 feet). The mez protection starts out very high and drops over time but a substantial amount of it lasts for the entire 120 second duration of the power. The power also recharges in 120 seconds; so (aside from the animation time) it's effectively perma as long as you cast it as soon as it expires, or leave it on autofire. I'll generally take either Clarion Core Epiphany or Barrier Core Epiphany on my Masterminds; and some of them (like my Bot/Kin) have both and slot whichever one works better for the situation.

No worries. To be fair, endurance usage isn't really a factor after you get IOed out; and any MM can get "Permanent mez protection" for them and their pets at Lv50 via a Clarion Core Epiphany Destiny slot. However theme 100% matters! Always play a toon you enjoy over one that might technically perform a bit better!! 🙂 (far too many mechanically superior toons end up as a glowy noisy mess that has to pause every few seconds to pull out some kind of quantum elephantgun...) 🙈

The Soulbound Allegiance Proc has 5.25 seconds duration, which kicks in after the activating power's [Animation Time Before Effect + 0.5 seconds] If you look at the various pet damaging powers, you'll notice that some of them have rather short ATBEs, others have quite long ones. So "how many attacks will get affected by the Build Up buff" will differ drastically depending on what attack the proc decides to kick in on and what powers are queued up next. (e.g. If it's in Drones and it fires off in "Full Auto Laser" then 1.144 seconds of that [5.25 + 0.5] buff period will get wasted waiting for the activating power to finish animating... but if it fires off in "Overcharged Burst" or "Heavy Laser Burst" then only 0.209 seconds gets wasted...) The Drones get 4 abilities that are usable at range, 3 of which have arcanatime >2 seconds. So it's more likely to only get 1-2 abilities firing off in the Buff Window. The AssBot gets 7 abilities that are usable at range, only 1 of which has an arcanatime >2 seconds. So it's more likely to only get 2-3 abilities firing off in the Buff Window. However you get THREE drones to ONE AssBot; and 3-6 abilities is better than 2-3. The biggest source of AssBot damage also comes fromthe Burn Missiles, which best case will only inherit the buff for a tick or two; not the entire duration. So in a vacuum (and in Incarnate Content where all pets are the same level) Drones are better. However in regular content the Drones spawn at -2 to you. The AssBot spawns at +0. And you deal substantially lower damage than normal whenever you're fighting higher level enemies. e.g. versus +3 foes in regular (non incarnate) content, your AssBot will deal 65% of their regular damage but the Drones only 30%; making the question "Which is better: (30% of 3-6 abilities) or (65% of 2-3 abilities)?" Personal Experience? It's pretty much a wash; with the AssBot being a smidge better at higher difficulties and the Drones a smidge better at lower ones.

Sure, here's one. zMastermind - Robots - Elec.mbd Two personal attacks, optimised henchmen slotting, S/L/E hardcapped and nearly Perma-Hasten. Will need to keep both Hover and Barrier Destiny up to reach the Defence Softcap; but otherwise should be decent. (I skipped the rez, but you could swap SuperSpeed out for either it or Group Fly etc. if you rate either of them over Stealthing missions) Elec is fine as a secondary. It's not quite top-tier (unlike /Time, for example) due to no +Defence plus the fact that some of the powers simply don't apply to pets and/or can require more micromanagement to affect multiple allied targets... but it's still perfectly usable. Unfortunately you're slower than most MMs (and that's saying something!) to move from place to place and fully "set yourself up", which can prove annoying on fast-moving teams. And yes, you can take down most AVs (MM personal attacks plus Shock and/or Discharge will still drastically affect AV regeneration rate) although it can help to have specific Lore Pets; and certain foes inflict lots of patch damage and/or refuse to stay still.