Dixa

the only way to 'accentuate the strengths of the primary' with ninjas is to avoid fighting villain groups that can floor your defenses as you have almost no resistances to defense debuffs as you have no resistances to fall back on, and that's simply not a gameplay style i have ever been ok with in this game. i really have never cared about themes or concepts if it means you have to avoid 30% or more of the villain endgame groups because they just destroy you. and no, i don't consider dropping down to -1/0 an acceptable option at 50, either. outside of themes the only reason why people are playing these weaker sets endgame is because incarnates are hard carrying you, and that's also piss-poor design. always has been. the sets either stand on their own or they do not.

defense alone is never enough, as you will not be able to get a meaningful amount of resistances to def debuffs. mm's need both defense and resistances.

there are server transfers? i'm on indom and it's a ghost town now.

damn wish i had tested this myself before deleting my bots mm's, i was going by forum posts about all of the changes.

would be helpful if the actual builds were posted in the same posts with the times and/or videos.

for those that play it today: is this still as easy as it was when i tested this 5 years ago? it's also been a long time since i played, nearly 5 years and it's not like there is a tl:dr of all changes available. Titan Weapons/Bio Scrapper vs. +3 Black Swan - Twitch

mm /dark is probably the 2nd best support set in the game, with defender version being the overall best. /ff and /thermal are pretty common among mm users, but those are also well regarded in group content. why /dark? because everyone and their mother 50+ probably has and uses on CD t4 barrier. twilight grasp is also one of the two largest aoe heals available to masterminds: TG at 50 unenhanced: 188.65 (also has stacking -50% regen, -3.75% tohit and can take theft of essence which makes it practically free) Rejuvenating circuit: 165.99 healing aura: 107.09 (???) Transfusion: 188.65, same -50% regen but the heal radiates around the target and not you. can take theft of essence like TG regrowth: 160.62, 10s cd?? Nullify pain: 94.24 radiant aura: 107.09 warmth; 94.24 temporal mending: 187.42 (base+hot target not affected by temporal selection), 18s!!! cooldown all of these heals have 8s cooldown unless otherwise noted. As it should be, the two heals that require a to-hit check should do the most healing however overall aura heals on MM are not balanced properly. some are holdover from when the sets were nerfed for controllers and defenders in early COH but these ALL need a balance pass. The ability for twilight grasp and transfusion to take theft of essence and having stacking -regen puts them over the top, and you really really feel this early level. dark also brings auto hit howling grasp which at end game is up every pack no matter how fast your team is moving. tar patch. fearsome stare, a hold you can stack with a pp hold and hold proc io's to lock down nasty bosses or multiple sappers, and another pet which can do all that plus the soul tentacles bag of chips. primary wise, demons and thugs have a leg up because they have a level 18 click pet power that can hold most if not all of the mm pet aura uniques. literal ron popeil powers - slot 'em and forget 'em. this allows you to slot even MORE damage procs in your henchmen while still maxing out their damage, acc and endreduction. i will say though as much as i love this class and consider it one of the better iterations of a pet class to ever hit mmorpgs - city of heroes really screws the at over in end game content. there is a metric ton of villain groups that will wipe out all but your t3 with a single auto-hit aoe that you can't do shit about. Not a single MM secondary can build enough def debuff resist to not get floored on some of the most common villain groups meaning you can't JUST build for the def cap - you need def cap, and resists cap and a heal if you don't want to lose a single pet because you - like me - find that extremely annoying busywork that should not exist. demons/thermal (or now mercs/thermal, using sorc spirit ward on your medic) will be the absolute toughest pairing possible pre incarnates. back when they opened the justin test server i took multiple mm combinations through the hero side maria jenkins arc. it has multiple AV's from nearly every villain group. every combination there were moments when my pets - and of cousre me right after - would just get destroyed in a single aoe. and not from the av's, but from a boss or lieutenant that had those shitty non-positional autohit aoe's. Demons/thermal was the only combo to handle the entire arc on 3/8 without losing a single henchmen without incarnates. 4/8 needed the full suite of incarnates. the drawback? better get and love team teleport because only about half of their attacks are ranged and you need to keep them all together for warmth spam. (with theft of essence and +absorb procs). I'm pretty sure the new mercs paired with thermal would do just as well. probably better as the medic is a far better healer than the random tiny aoe's the demon lt's occaisonally spit out. I will say this though and i know it's taboo but the best overall iteration of masterminds is not on homecoming unfortunately. Although still susceptible to being one shot by non-typed aoe's the mm design decisions there have made even the horrible 1-22 mm experience a breeze. I have been playing exclusively MM's since CoV came out, but have decided it's time to move on. Every AT has a glaring hole in their powersets defenses pre incarnates, but none are as punished by the copious amounts of non-positional (F U PSYCHIC TORNADO) aoe's at end game as the mastermind. however as is my line anytime i respond to these threads - if you have a THEME, you will likely have to sacrifice some POWER for that THEME before you get incarnates. I see you may have been talked into /ea which is a fine set, but it's an extremely busy set that makes it that much harder to manage your pets when stuff goes pearshaped. if you want POWER: thugs/traps, thugs/time, thugs/cold, thugs/thermal, merc/cold, merc/ff, merc/traps, merc/time, merc/thermal, demons/time, demons/cold, demons/traps, demons/thermal. I no longer list bots as they lost a step with the removal of the heal from probots. the new maintenance drone is kinda eh and it can't even park the pet uniques it only takes +healing sets. note that thugs are pretty squishy overall, and i generally recommend taking team teleport with any mm build so you stop waiting for them to catch up and can position their conal aoe's on packs to do the most murder. you can also traverse the entirety of steel canyon without breaking a sweat with all of your pets with you far faster than group fly.

team teleport solves the catch up problem. as it's the fastest travel power i've always used teleport on all of my characters since the original game launched. this AT however is the most punished for all of the non-positional, auto hit aoe's at endgame though.

I would say the opposite. If you are really chasing top damage on your pets then cycling all three attacks is worthwhile due to the fact that it affects the base, unenhanced damage of your henchmen and is then modified by any damage multipliers per a recent dev post. however as has always been the problem with masterminds, taking the personal attacks can hamstring your build. i have always been a big fan of team teleport on masterminds for moving me and all of my idiots around zones and what not, but i find it hard to build many powerset combos taking all three or even 2 personal attacks with team teleport that doesn't give up something else somewhere like tough and weave, or hover for airborne av's/encounters, or whatever.

there is zero reason to nerf anything in the mastermind toolkits. it's the most punished AT in end game content with all of the auto hit aoe's out there.

if we are ignoring secondaries here, mercs are as tough as demons when serum is rolling. including secondaries, mercs are i believe the only primary that can softcap def all and hardcap resists without incarnates.

there are not many people uploading CoH content and those that do mostly have potato computers. This was the only one i could find (JupiterMoon is me i was logged in on the wrong account) radiation is not exactly the meta combo for mercs, he likely would have had the same results with just about any secondary on this guy. the fact that mercs stay at range and have very long range is what made this work (and the fact that the GM doesn't fly or have many ranged abilities).

demons/thermal - with no incarnates - was the only mm powerset combo i was able to do the maria jenkins av arc at +3/4 without losing a single henchmen. note that +3 still gets you level 54 AV's. You would need incarnates to deal with 4/8. it's probably possible to re-create this with mercs using any secondary that has both heals and +defense and enough recharge to keep serum downtime to a minimum. Like thugs, demons has a recharge pet that can be used to just park all of the pet def/resist aura uniques opening up slotting opportunities for the henchmen.

so when completed with io sets, thugs for raw clear times, demons for survivability, bots are not actually as good as the old forums would anecdotally suggest? sounds about right and what some of us have been saying for a bit now. thanks for your hard work and time invested in this.

but not defense and crits at the same time. i would love to see a softcaped beasts/time that never uses fortify.