Crysis

I knew if we invoked your name you’d eventually show up here. If anyone has petless masterminds figured it it’s gonna be @plainguy. I remember Back Alley Brawler stating waaaaaay back in Live days that in general endurance to damage ratio for the game was set at about 1:10 ratio….meaning for every 10 points of (base) damage the power should cost around 1 Endurance. I’ve no idea if that number still holds true, and I do seem to recall MM’s had their endurance costs reduced slightly for primary attacks (may be mis-remembering that), but I think MM’s still are closer to +25% more endurance per attack than other AT’s specifically because their pets apply damage without burning any END on the MM’s behalf short of summoning and buffing them. Our lowered damage multiplier for the AT makes this feel like a bunch more though. I don’t think other pet summoners suffer similar endurance penalties for their attacks, but could be wrong.

By your low/mid 40’s, if built properly, a MM can easily solo +3/7 or 8. Somewhat varies based on what you are facing, status effects used against you, etc. I don’t have a single MM that can’t solo +4/x8 by the late 40’s and definitely easily by 50 with some incarnates slotted. Most of my MM’s solo AV’s and GM’s easily, although it’s easier if you can keep them immobilized. There are exceptions. Some MM’s aren’t as tanky as others nor as built around offense. But with the updates to MM’s, Demon/ Necro/ Ninja/ Mercs/ and Bots/ and even the venerable Thugs/ are all very capable, especially when paired with /Marine /Storm /Time /Dark or /Cold. Heck, even the much reviled Ninja/Trick Arrow can easily solo +4/x8 by 50. In fact, that’s generally my benchmark as to whether or not I’ve built my MM to its fullest potential. If I cannot comfortably and speedily solo +4/x8 by 50 (pre-incarnate), then I’ve got a respec or two to do. Yes, if you built your MM primarily for support or “to keep the henchmen from dying” (hint: there’s a reason we are given near-instant resummoning powers…they are expendable to a point), you’ll likely find that you can survive +4/x8 easy enough but killing takes forever. That’s one reason I’ve always been a big fan of /Storm on MM’s because /Storm is basically just “moar damage” and if slotted properly, high recharge. Oh and don’t ignore your primary attacks either, at least on the newer reworked primaries of Necro/ Bots/ Ninja/ and Mercs/. Maybe not so much for straight damage as much as for procc’d damage and/or secondary effects (especially more +Recharge), or in the case of Necro/ for the added pets. TLDR; yes, much better….if properly built/slotted.

Back in the day on Live, Huntsman builds were just becoming "a real thing" and then when Homecoming launched, Redlynne threw up this thread which revitalized the concept at least for me. I don't play near as much as I used to but over the past few weeks I dusted off my Huntsman, who had sat at level 50 without incarnates for years, and leveled up my incarnates and did a couple of respecs. The character backstory is that my character was the "Camera Guy" you see in the Miss Liberty Task Force, the one who filmed that idiot Aeon live giving away the secret to beating his trap and got yelled at for just doing his job. He was drummed out of the Arachnos corps and is now a freelancer as a result. At any rate, I love gun-based heroes in the game, and I'd never been happy with Crabberminds or Bane builds. So this scratched that itch. I've been -very surprised- how effective of a solo'er this build is. I take on everything at +4/x8. Some mobs are a bit more challenging given the nature of my attacks, but after incarnates were leveled up, I could slip in a lot more Procs. Being a very high recharge build they aren't optimized to go off all the time, but they go off enough to be worth the slotting. I'm damn near unkillable as well with positionals and S/L +DEF all being in the 50's or higher. I think I've died once from vet levels 1-22 mostly soloing. At any rate, this is how I ended up. Credit goes to Redlynne for the original build I based this off of. You can get by with cheap damage IO's, I just have so many purples I threw them in once I respecced. Near perma reinforcement pets, or can be perma with slightly modified slotting and if you remember to hit Destiny and Hasten (I don't have Hasten on Auto) whenever they are up. Disgraced_Camera_Guy_SOA_WolfSpider_FINAL.mbd

Welp, TIL….. I’m now a believer!

After all these years, I still don’t quite believe it procs in Triage Beacon. That power in Traps is often skipped anyways, but I’ve taken it on all my /Traps players and procc’d it with Panacea in several. The +150% regen is hard enough to ‘see’ in most cases, and the radius of the Triage Beacon I think diminishes the ability for it to proc at all, but I haven’t ever seen it replenish any END whatsoever. Could just be lack of logging on my part.

Dammit we didn’t stake him properly…..

necro this because you just inspired me to create a new SG: The Island of Misfit Toys! Already working on costumes to fit each character!

i love my newest Mercs/Marine but gotta admit my Mercs/Cold is just as effective. I have a Bots/everything -but- cold as I felt the additional defenses from cold shields would be superfluous with Bots native bubbles but I may just have to roll up a Bots/Cold now.

Pretty much all of my /Marine MM’s open with Whitecap. Doesn’t take much to be tanky with anything/Marine.

We will have to agree to disagree. It’s trivially easy to softcap any AT for defense -and- maximize DPS at the same time. Anyone arguing otherwise just frankly doesn’t know how to min/max a build. And that’s the beauty of this 20 year old game. You can be as “useless” a petless Mastermind and still play on teams that max your damage and your defense for you. Self sufficiency should be every players target but the power sets are meant to cover the holes who just flat out don’t get it.

I think you are being overly broad in your recommendations here. Case in point: Defenders built for OFFENSE. Poison/anything is a great example. You really only need 4 powers from your primary for an offensive build. And even those need minimal slotting, some only the native first slot. My Poison/Fire Defender still manages to eek out softcapped DEF for both melee and ranged. And she solo's +4/x8 perfectly safe and fine, and is equally effective on a team because -damage output is the best 'debuff' in the game.- Same for my Marine/DP Defender. Just because you play a defender AT doesn't mean you have play support roles. I've seen Brutes play better Support roles than many Defenders just by holding aggro. My point still stands, and you've somewhat made the same here. It's always best to be as "self sufficient" as possible, unless you are rolling an AT to play a certain role on a specific team makeup 24/7. And in this game, self-sufficiency means "I don't need anyone to heal me," "I don't need status protection from outside," and most definitely "I can fend for myself with enough DPS to bring down my foes before they can hurt me." That means almost universally build for softcapped DEF and max DPS. Regardless of AT. Some builds will certainly find this more challenging to do than others, and I've always felt that's the real "difficulty slider" in this game. But if you can achieve softcapped DEF and max DPS, you are highly self sufficient. Not invulnerable, but quite competent by yourself, on a dedicated team or on a PUG. Remember: DEF softcaps are fixed in this game regardless of class. RES softcaps vary by AT. Some AT's are easier to softcap DEF or RES but you avoid 100% of damage, debuffs, etc that whiff you because of +DEF. And damage is damage, whether its 100 points coming from a proc, a Controller or a Blaster. Doesn't matter how you apply damage...it's all the same.

I always build anything I keep on the T4 Incarnate path to a) some level of softcapped +DEF…this can be positional (usually ranged) or S/L and often several and b) enough damage to reliably solo +4/x8 non-Incarnate mobs. If I can solo it on max difficulty, there’s really no reason for me to worry about doing anything other than the above. This isn’t a game about max defense/resistance. It’s a game of -enough- defense/resistance and -enough- DPS to take out the enemy before they take out you. Every once in awhile I find a toon that is highly proccable. I have a Marine/DP Defender like that. She doesn’t have max Defense natively as I’ve procc’d out all her attacks and sacrificed all IO bonuses for +DEF as a result. But even in such an edge case, I still end up T4’ing out Hybrid>Melee and Destiny>Barrier so I still end up with softcapped +DEF and +RES pretty much all the time. Worked well for me across dunno….60-80 level 50’s across all classes. I see no reason to change it now.

I -always- T3 Alpha, Destiny and Lore to get the +3 Level Shift. Then I'll T3 Hybrid and then work on T4'ing Alpha, Destiny and Hybrid. Then a full respec into my final build for the toon. Those three incarnate powers do more for your build than any others and depending on choices can allow you to do crazy things like ignore set bonuses and go proc crazy with your powers. Can be jarring how much they allow you to frankenslot and gain massive returns. I've had Defender characters go from OK to some of the most damaging toons in my library after this part of the game. Only then will I go back and T3/4 Judgement, Interface and Lore in that order. I've done this since Live. Just faster and easier now.

It's been WAY TOO LONG since I've seen Masterminds make the top of ANY list. I gotta admit, as much as I always liked the AT as-was, the buffs and changes and the new Marine Affinity powerset has made 2024 the best year for MM's yet. I T4'd out no less than an even dozen MM's, some of which had been abandoned in their early 40's for over a year. Lots of respecs used to account for the changes but boy oh boy were they worth it!

-Navy SEALS but with advanced robotic commando's from DARPA, and outfitted with oceanic control gloves (tech, not magic) -Go watch The Abyss.....alien tech takes over advanced undersea exploration drones. Lots of undersea alien tech angles you could take. -Little Mermaid but with Robots.....think "Ariels Avengers" Hell, I saw a guy dressed like Moses the other night, big staff (I'm assuming it was Blackwand) who was a Robotics/Marine player. He had these macros where he'd lift his staff and fire off Tide Pool and shout out "DO NOT BE AFRAID FOR TODAY YOU WILL SEE DELIVERANCE MY PEOPLE!" and other quasi-biblical quotes. His name was "AQUAMOSE" or similar. Let your imagination run wild!!!

I max out active farming on PVE maps at around 280K XP per minute. Most missions take time to travel to the next one in the arc, travel up/down elevators, occasionally find glowies that are hidden, you’ll get that infernal layer-cake cave map, whatever. I can match that pretty easily in a custom-built AE map packed with all the EB’s I’m allowed to spawn and barely moving at all. The spawns just converge onto me. So while the rewards are now better in PVE, if you are just after herd-and-burn mechanics, AE still offers the most efficient XP per minute. It’s just convenient. If I’m in it purely for rewards, however, I find PVE is better because I can (depending on content) get AV’s, different salvage types, merits, aethers, etc.

Defense Amplifier is about the best mez protection you can get in the game, available from the P2W vendor from level 1. Yes, it’s not cheap, but you really only need it while leveling and then mostly only when solo’ing. It amps up your defenses, your resistances and also gives you mag 4 protection against most holds. That plus building for softcapped positional defense of some kind will literally almost guarantee you limited deaths from mezz until you can get your Incarnates. Many will you tell you its “cheating” but if you got the influence to spare, use of any power available to anyone that wants it is no more cheating than a rocket pack.

I went Musc Radial, Destiny Barrier and Hybrid Support. For builds, start with the thread titled “It’s a BOW Time”. Ninjas got buffed a little with the upgrade powers so my advice is to 2-3 slot each of them now but otherwise the classic build in @Redlynne‘s OP is a good starting point.

FTFY

Have a tech based Beam/TA alt who has an origin backstory based on Wentworth monopoly forcing all the SO/DO stores out of business. Because that's effectively what happened in Homecoming. That said I'm amazed when I still run across players new to the game who don't realize IO's exist and/or don't understand them. So they get well into their builds just using SO's. They are easy to obtain and use, just like Geranimals of yesteryear. Sometimes I'll duck into one of the stores for nostalgia. Talos used to be where'd I do most of my mid level enhancement commerce.

Ok I understand your POV. I played Marine for so long on MM's that I became accustomed to anchoring on Barrier vs my pets because it was always near me whereas pets can wander out of Tide Pool (kinda like players do). Also Shifting Tides drops the toggle entirely if the anchor gets too far out of range....hung up on geometry or whatever.

I'm confused. It's effectiveness doesn't change regardless of how you use it as long as it's used on an anchor within Tide Pool. So how is it less effective on Barrier? And using END when not in fights...END isn't an issue with Marine.

Just confirming this happens to me also. I think we should bring a Class-Action against ICON!