Crysis

This is the definitive method for using FS when you -have- a tank. I play a great many PUG’s where we have no tank and the ground patches that the players drop (notably of the knockdown variety) -ARE- the “tank” or at least the target for Fold Space. What gets me with the power is the haphazard nature of sometimes dropping the targets BEHIND my summoner and then sometimes dropping it in FRONT of me. So regardless, I’m generally trying to stand in the middle of the patch of (/insertpowernamehere) so as to try and get as many inside of its AoE as possible.

Morality dictates that you be as conscientious of others limited play time as you expect them to be of yours, independent of knowledge of game mechanics. Players shouldn’t volunteer to join a team in Cim for example when a) they don’t know how to get there, b) they have to obtain the ability to get there and c) they make everyone else wait 15 minutes so that they can actually get there. They are imposing their lack of knowledge and infringing on my limited playtime. It’s not much different than using Group Fly and ‘forcing’ it on everyone else for the next 30mins to 1.5 hours of a TF because once you start using it, if they then choose to turn it off, it’s too late short of forcing everyone to wait outside a mission while they run off to go to Null the Gull to make the necessary changes. Oh and that’s not even possible if running a TF….they are locked in with you using your “crutch” until the end. Look, I play Bots MM’s too, and I have Group Fly on many of them. But I always ask if anyone has an issue with me using it before using it exactly for this reason. I’ve gotten kicked off of teams/TF’s before for using it and some of the players being unable to activate their own powers. If I’m being totally honest, I’m with @Bionic_Flea’s assessment. It’s a great power with poor implementation. Should have never been coded to affect anyone outside of the player themselves without an in-game prompt asking if you’d like to allow PlayerX to affect you with their Group Fly. Because the “morality” of any power that can adversely impact another’s ability to play the game using the full range of their powers is “bad” outside of PvP. By way of challenge, I do want you to rethink Group Fly as a “crutch.” If you know how to properly stance and control your pets, outside of maybe Shadow Shard/dimension missions, I can’t think of a single tactical reason why I need to use Group Fly. Absolute worst case for me is to dismiss and resummon, which I have on macro’s for all MM alts. Group Fly is less to do with utility and more about the vanity of the rocket boots on bots.

Couple of builds posted here…

I have both Bots/ and Demon/EA’s, and now both Bots/ and Demon/Marine. They are both great secondaries for harmonizing with MM’s pets. I will say that although it’s a bit FOTM, I find /Marine to be especially tuned towards benefitting MM’s. At first, I felt it favored melee-centric MM’s more than ranged pets, but since building and leveling Bots/ Mercs/ Demon/ and Ninja/ (still have a Thugs/Marine out there I’m not sure I’ll finish) I find it plays exceedingly well with both types of pets, you just have slightly different playstyles. Not sure it fits your Brainiac theme though…..but then again, Aquaman had telepathic comms with undersea life, so hey…maybe? Also a big shout out to /Time. My first MM was a Bots/Time back on Live, and I remade her on Homecoming as well. Bio was that she was a help desk engineer, and she’d use time travel as a means of moving forward in the timestream to figure out how to solve problems, then travel back to fix them in the present. But a glitch happened and she and her repair bots were now trapped in our timeline. So with a little imagination, you can make pretty much any powerset fit your theme. Here’s a 1023-character approved bio for a Bots/Time mastermind: ”Dr. Victor Hart was a brilliant scientist whose quest for ultimate knowledge led him to create the NeuroSync System, a groundbreaking cybernetic link that connected him with six advanced robots. Each robot, uniquely designed, amplified his cognitive abilities, allowing him to control complex systems and manipulate technology with ease. Victor’s experiments with temporal physics granted him the power to control time, enabling him to foresee crimes, reverse disastrous events, and outmaneuver any adversary. Now, as the enigmatic hero ChronoMind, he uses his combined mental prowess and time-bending abilities to protect humanity from threats, unraveling the darkest of crimes with precision and intellect.” ChatGPT can be super fun for trying to create themed backstories.

She hit 50 and is working incarnates now. Thus far I'd place her kill speeds just about on Par with Ninjas and a little faster than Necro. Mercs, as noted elsewhere, seem to have the fastest kill rates.

I routinely powerfarm an alt up to level 35 or so, generic name/costume, based on a fun thematic powered that i read about here on forums or just had as an inspiration at some point, often after watching someone else use one or both powersets in game. They sit there at 35, unleveled, until I have a bio, name, costume and build ready for them. Then I pull them out, clothe and level and slot them up, and solo Black Scorps arc to get a feel for the build and unlock the Patron Pools. Then as long as it plays well I'll dedicate all my playtime on that one character until I unlock T3 for Alpha, Destiny and Lore. If the character feels "powerful" to me I'll take them to T4 all incarnates, achieve several accolades and then park them in the Hive (for Hami raids) or other zones where I think they may still be fun to play. Otherwise at T3 or T4 status achieved....they are stripped of all slotted IOs and deleted. As a result, I've no "main" but rather several old alts I'm fond of playing now and then and a constant stream of noobs.

I have Combat TP on this and my Mercs/Marine so lining up the cone isnt so much an issue, but I hear your point on the puny heal Soothing provides. I spam it frequently for the debuff, but still lose a guy now and then. Do you dedicate many slots to Maintenance drone? I’ve seen builds with just a 50+5 Heal IO in there and then others with 5-6 slotted Preventative or Panacea slotting. I already have Depths slotted with one of those two full sets. And your comment about dropping Brine is interesting. I have a Priority Target macro I use to apply Brine and focus all fire on same after Ive applied Brine. I sort of hoped the -Regen from the MM personal attacks would complement the -MaxHP debuff of Brine. I already see up to Lieuts one shotted after Brine, and Boss/EB/AV it clearly makes a difference. Its not the same as Benumb from /Cold but its effective. No synergy between those two stacked on same target?

Since the updates to MM’s slotting the bots themselves is pretty straightforward. But with Marine I have a decent heal with Soothing Wave, and thus maintenance drone seems rather superfluous. And since they’ve moved the -regen to MM’s attacks I’d like to fit in at least two, understanding of course that they are end hogs and do almost dismissive damage unless procc’d out (which they won’t be as I’ll be using them mainly for set mules and for the -regen). Otherwise I’m slotting /Marine pretty much the same as I did for my Mercs/Marine and playing it mostly the same way. Eg; Whitecap in, drop Tide Pool on spawn, leap back out (or Combat TP out if I’m in a Tar Patch), drop Brine on the Boss, toss out Shoal here and there, buff/heal henchmen as needed. Am I missing anything by skipping maintenance drone?

Sorry, one more question. Does the Double XP apply to Incarnate XP towards earning the slots or not? Was all this covered somewhere in release notes because I can't seem to locate those if so.

If I am multitasking, which I often am, playing the game solo on indoor missions while sitting in a boring conference call, I almost always turn off my chat box. Entirely. If I think about it, I sometimes even use the ghide function to just isolate myself fully from invites, chats, general chat, whatever. And increasingly, I'm playing on a handheld PC. Chatting is awkward and takes some effort on those devices. It's hard enough to play this game via keyboard+mouse on a smaller device (I bought a folding keyboard and small mouse for travel) but that screen size is so small I really need the screen real estate back that the chat box takes up otherwise. And lets be honest, many of us who play regularly are here from the Live days, and that was 20+ years ago. My eyes aren't what they were 20 years ago, and the chat box needs a higher font size for me to use effectively, and that just takes up even more real estate. I will open up the Team chat box if I'm teaming, but habits being what they are, I sometimes am guilty of not reading it regularly as I should. I'm sure my SG mates think I'm being a snob or rude, but I don't mean to be. I'm just more focused on gaming than I am on chatting. I'd also say some of the BEST times I've had playing COH or any other multiplayer game is via voice chat, not typed chat. But there's precious few people who want to play that way, either due to shyness, language barriers, 'immersion' concerns or even technical limitations of their hardware. I just type all of this first to address your concerns that individual preferences and playstyle may just make the chat box less than useful to some players. PS-I have more than 30 people in my global ignore, but none of them for failure to respond to me. All because they were, IMHO, jerks and people I don't wish to ever play with again, let alone talk to in game. PPS-To the idea of allowing a team leader to override my screen with their forced comments dialog or whatever.....that is going to open up an outrageous form of in-game chat spamming. I already have people who ask me to read their blog or website or whatever showing up in broadcast. Imagine if I could simply interrupt your play session at will? As with all things, you do you, let others do likewise.

Amplifiers are really good if you exemp down and aren’t sporting an optimized leveling build (many of mine are end game builds). They effectively equate to an “exemp level shift” or two at lower levels. Critters at lower levels have a hard time punching through the buffs they offer. Heck, just the mez protection from the amplifiers is worth it. Also always take the temp attacks, at least the freebies. Sometimes you need a ranged weapon like the Blackwand to do a pull. Or just because it looks cool just equipping it for magic themed characters. And I rarely take full travel powers these days as between Athletic/Ninja/beast run and sprint plus a flight pack you’ve got that covered. Between those and built in health/stamina these days those really free up some other useful power picks.

So its both double XP -and- influence rewards vs using a double xp booster where you get no rewards. Then yes def the new way to PL.

2.5 years away? A lot? A whole lot. I suggest you go spend some time in the Patch notes and perhaps read through them. Too many changes to even begin to outline them all here. But do know these three things..... 1) Sentinels got some love and are actually half decent now. 2) Several MM primary sets were reworked and turned from meh to OMGWTFBBQ (Ninjas, Necro and Mercs in particular), and one of the newest sets (Marine Affinity) appear to be almost tailor made to benefit MM's. 3) There's little reason to roll a Brute these days vs a Tank....although I put this last one on the list purely to pick fights. Seriously, go read the patch notes since you've been gone! Patch Notes - Homecoming (homecomingservers.com)

Yeah good callout. Although does that work in AE also?

Yup, used my secondary account S/L blaster (if you can believe it lol) to PL a new AFK tanker on my farming account. Works well in new AE environment but again....rewards are very much less what they once were.

All you need to about current state of AE farming, maps and builds included: I still get sub 5-min clear times on my old school Spines/Fire farmer running AA’s revised meteor map doing -active- farming. But as the thread demonstrates, tankers and S/L farms now hold top spots for passive farming. You can easily respec and reuse your old farmer for effective active farming, although the reward nerfs likely wont net you anywhere near the same gains. These days i just use my farmer for powerleveling new alts to 32-35 to blow by the monotony of lower levels.

Wondering if it’s as effective as it is with /Time? I took it on one character and it seems to only boost +Def/+Res/+Regen for 5-7 seconds maybe?

At 42, she'd doing fine, about the same as my Ninja/Marine did at similar level. Can solo AV's, some take a little longer but thanks to all the exotic damage types produced by Demons most go down faster versus Thugs/ or Ninja/'s. Only issue I have is with Lash. It's supposed to do KnockDOWN but given the KD already in play with Tide Pool, it's doing KnockBACK even on bosses. Just have to slot it with a KD proc to deal with that until I get Fold Space into the build later.

Yours works, but I get a "PetCommandFailNoMatch" error the first two button presses...then it renames the thing. It takes a few seconds to spawn Barrier Reef, so it makes sense it cannot rename it until it's spawned. Of course, Devs being Devs, the damn thing resets its name every time I go through a door, use an elevator, etc. So I'll just be pressing the button a few times to get it right. EDIT: Spoke to soon, since you can resummon Barrier Reef and it just kills the old one and resummons the new, I have to be careful to only press this macro button when I have no Barrier Reef spawned, or it kills the renamed one and replaces it with....wait for it.....Barrier Reef again. Still beats doing it manually, so thank you!

Speaking of Pets and Macros..... Is there a way to summon a psuedopet and rename it at the same time? For example, you can rename Barrier Reef but it reverts to plain old "Barrier Reef" each time you resummon it. Would be nice to resummon it and rename it all at the same time.

For most MM’s today, KB protection Mag 12 is almost required against Council and other mobs. I generally can easily get 9-12 with procs without sacrificing much elsewhere, especially w/Marine typical builds and slotting.

Looking forward to playing this one, hope she does ok. Right at 50% S/L personal Defense, which should help when leveling before Destiny>Barrier. All pet uniques included. Learned some pretty good slotting for the Marine powers that have served me well. KB resistance of 12 points to keep on my feet while keeping everything else off of theirs. I'm kinda addicted to Fold Space with Marine as it really helps to make the most of your Tide Pool by lumping and dropping all the critters right there for you to burn. Fun bio/backstory as well: Angry Ariel Demon Marine MM.mbd

At lvl 50, zero incarnates, no temps and without any level shifts, I'm getting 82 seconds (average across 6 tests) Pylon times. This is slightly better than my Necro/Marine, and quite a bit better than Thugs even with double gang war. Smoke Flash is a must I found to max out Ninja DPS. With fast recharge, it's up pretty often and it's almost guaranteed to deliver two-three crits -per ninja- when it's activated. Coupled with Shifting Tides, it's noticeable, especially with Brine'd targets. To fit in Smoke Flash, I dropped Web Nade and stuck those slots into Tide Pool and Soothing. I also dropped the second slots for the two travel powers (SS and Teleport) as there wasn't enough +Ranged DEF bonus there to get me much out of those, although I kept both with the -KB procs. I also swapped Teleport for Combat Teleport, which when pinned to a bind (I use Lshift+LClick) is very handy for repositioning myself in tight quarters and/or to line up Soothing Wave. It always seems I'm missing one of the Ninja's with Soothing when they need it most. Besides, CT is just too fun, especially when you use the smoke bomb animation. Whitecapping is your own personal damage dealer with the one arrow attack doing pathetic levels of damage...pretty much limited to picking off runners. As stated by Mek above though, being Def based, higher level content takes out the Ninja's quite quickly. Maybe level shifts will help with that some, as well as Destiny>Barrier, but I suspect anything +RES will survive better than anything +DEF in hard mode missions. Modified @Meknomancer build attached, all credit to them. You can sub in a few things for the purples and Hami's on a budget and they don't make a huge difference in effectiveness. Namely: -Explosive Strike proc for Soulbound Allegiance -Devastation w/Proc for Apocalypse (although that Hold proc won't go off that often) -Scirocco proc for the Armageddon proc -Positron Blast w/Proc for the Ragnarok's -Acc/Dam Edict of the Master for the Nucl Hami-O -Any To-Hit/End for the Cyto Hami-0 (although Gaussian Buildup proc is a waste given your attacks, it doesn't hurt) Yes, you won't be min-maxxed but you can't slot these until 50 anyways, so may as well use the subs I listed above to "be all you can be" until/unless you decide to make the investments. Otherwise, build is as attached. You can also Boost all the defensive pieces etc to really eek out a little more. But if going for Barrier, kinda wasteful IMO. YMMV. Tidal Temptress - Mastermind (Ninjas - Marine Affinity).mbd

On Live I had a few friends and we’d play permadeath rules. If defeated, you had to scrap the alt and roll again. Only a few of us made it to 30, and only one made it to 50 (a Defender no less). This was pre IO’s. These days I have to really try to die during normal PVE missions. Its just not much of a risk outside of * TF’s.

I didnt realize people read the stuff in these boxes. These interruptions really kill the DPS.