WumpusRat

I'll have to double check the numbers for the other tier-3s when I get home, but the reason I set them at 20-25 is because the assault bot's missile swarm powers are on 16s cooldowns, and do more damage than the LRM rocket. If you have a way to keep the enemies in the burn patches, they do VASTLY more. The LRM has the advantage of range and 'burst' damage vs damage over time, but otherwise it's nothing special. A 60s cooldown would still be too long, imo. If it were damage + hold, or damage + immobilize or something, then sure I could see it having a fairly lengthy cooldown. But just damage and nothing else? Not really.

Most of your damage in demons will come from the tier-2's. The demon prince has some good attacks, but half of his powers are dedicated to soft crowd control (slow, -recharge, sleep). He's capable of putting out some good damage, but between the hellfire gargoyle and the ember demon, they provide a large chunk of your damage output. The gargoyle in particular is almost exclusively a damage dealer, with very little in the way of support/cc. Most times a lot of what I see people do is franken-slot their various minions, to maximize acc/dmg, while stuffing the aura IOs in where they can. For demons though, they have their 18th level power (hell on earth) which can hold the auras instead, so you're free to slot up your actual demons with whatever you want, full sets or a mix. It depends if you want the set bonuses or not. There are a number of archetype-specific IO sets now, each AT getting two, which provide some very nice bonuses for the "superior" version (which requires getting the basic version for 100 merits per IO and then upgrading them). The auras and your secondary are going to be what determine whether or not your pets get crushed or not. The auras in particular can provide up to 35% to all resists, 10% ranged/melee defense and 25% aoe defense, so those help immensely in keeping your pets alive. Keep in mind however that the bonuses from IO sets don't affect the pets, they affect the mastermind. The only boosts to pet resist/defense comes from either the auras or actual powers. Thermal is generally viewed as superior to sonic when it comes to mastermind secondaries, at least as far as pet survivability goes. Mainly because thermal has an aoe heal that has a relatively low cooldown (especially once slotted up), so you can spam that to keep your pets alive. It offers about the same resistance numbers for defense for the castable buffs, though sonic does have the aura buff which can push the pets up a bit further towards the soft cap. The weakness for sonic is that it lacks a heal, meaning you'll have to invest in the medicine pool, and that requires 2-3 power picks (aid other, another power, and possibly field medic, which removes the interrupt portion of aid other, which is invaluable for a MM trying to heal their pets in combat). Sonic does increase damage quite a bit via the -resist debuffs though, so it depends if you want slightly tankier pets that are harder as a whole to keep alive with sonic, or slightly less tanky pets that are far easier to keep up throughout fights that are with more than 2-3 enemies at once. The castable shield buffs apply to all friendlies in range now instead of having to be done for each individual, so that makes it MUCH easier on us poor masterminds. They don't apply to you however, just to allies.

Generally all of the MM sets are solid, though some are better than others, and much of it will depend on what secondary you take and how you capitalize on it. Robots are pretty low damage until you get your 32nd level upgrade power, which adds pretty much ALL your aoe damage, especially the Missile Swarm and Incendiary Missile Swarm powers to the assault bot, then the set skyrockets in damage. Drop a kb-to-kd proc in the assault bot and just plow through stuff. Your ideal targets with bots at high level are large groups of minions and lieutenants, to capitalize on their aoe damage. They're also decent at taking down AVs due to the assault bot's plasma cannons having -500% regen baked in. Beasts are almost entirely single-target damage until you get the dire wolf fully upgraded, and even then their aoe is lacking. However, they are insanely good at tearing down single hard targets such as bosses, elite bosses, and AVs, as the longer they fight, the more damage they do due to stacking pack mentality, and all the pets can crit. They lack -regen, but their pack mentality damage will let them overcome the regen by just dealing more and more damage. They also have slows and a speed buff for themselves, which lets them chase down runners easily. One of the downsides is that many of them have buff/debuff powers (which you wouldn't think would be a bad thing) which make them stop attacking and howl/roar to use the de/buff, stalling out their damage for a few seconds. They also deal almost exclusively lethal damage (the dire wolf deals cold damage), which is the most resisted damage type in the game, though the pack mentality buff (and crits) can make up or this a bit. Thugs are a mix of a single-target melee pet (the bruiser) and ranged pets (the rest of them, with the exception of the arsonist who has a tendency to run into melee even though he has ranged attacks). Their biggest strength is the enforcers, who provide leadership bonuses to all the pets giving them significant defense and some minor bonuses to damage and to-hit. The bruiser also does a lot of damage and provides some solid cc in the process, having many of the super strength abilities, but it's mostly single target. They also have the advantage of their gang war power being able to hold all the aura abilities, meaning you have more flexibility in slotting the pets themselves. Mercenaries are kind of a middle-of-the-road set, in that they have the advantage of range and decent damage, but it's almost all lethal, which is the most highly-resisted damage type in the game, and they have no way of buffing their own damage to make up for it. Many people slot the Achilles Heel -res proc in the soldiers to compensate. Another major downside is that the commando's best powers are on ridiculously long cooldowns (1m for full auto and FOUR minutes for lrm rocket), meaning after he pops those two abilities he's essentially just a tier-1 soldier with more health. If the commando's abilities had more reasonable cooldowns, the Mercenaries would be a much more viable set. Undead deal lots of rarely-resisted damage (toxic and dark), but when you run into something that resists it, they tend to get resisted a LOT. The backbone of the undead set is the grave knights, which are the majority of your damage output, as the tier-3 lich only has one damaging power (dark blast), the rest being cc. When combined with /Dark, undead can stack some immense -to hit on enemies, as the zombies have life leech, the grave knights have dark blast, gloom and life leech, and the lich has pretty much every /dark control power, plus dark blast. The biggest weakness they have is that the pets are fairly squishy, as they have no lethal resist and are mostly melee. Plus no movement speed bonus, which makes them slog after enemies dealing limited damage a lot. Like thugs, their 18th level power can hold pet auras, making slotting the pets themselves a lot more flexible. Ninjas are often referred to as the weakest set in the game, due to the ninjas themselves having no resist, and almost no defense. Prior to several of the new/ported sets, they were incredibly hard to keep alive unless you went /FF. These days, you can use /Cold, /FF, /Time, or /Dark to provide them with defense and/or -to hit on enemies, though they'll still be somewhat squishy. The pet aura powers can help them out a good bit though. Their biggest weakness is that they're almost exclusively single target damage, with very little in the way of aoe outside of the oni, and they deal lethal/smashing, which are highly resisted. Their advantage is that they deal a LOT of damage, with the genin having 6 attacks (3 martial arts, 3 shuriken), meaning they can churn damage if you can keep them alive. Demons are kind of the outlier set, in that the pets have good resists, the demon prince has a lot of defense on top of good resists, and one of the tier-2 pets (the ember demon) also provides a +resist aura to all the pets as well as the mastermind, making the demons VERY resilient right out of the box. They also deal damage types that aren't resisted nearly as much (cold, fire, toxic), making their damage output quite high. They're also mostly a ranged set, though the demon prince has a few melee powers, and one of your tier-2's (the stone gargoyle) also deals melee damage. Their 18th level power is another pet-aura holding power, so you can slot the demons themselves more easily. As far as secondaries go, there are way too many to go through in any sort of detail without this post being like 10 pages long. :) But for the most part, synergizing your primary/secondary is the best way to go. For robots, thugs, ninjas, and beasts, a secondary that gives them defense can work wonders. For mercenaries, demons and undead, a set that provides resists will probably work well, though overall defense is always good. The pet aura IOs can provide up to 35 resists, 10 melee/ranged defense, and 25 aoe defense, which will make your pets FAR more durable. Other sets, such as /nature, /empathy, or /poison, don't offer any def/res, but have copious amounts of healing, or a debuff toggle that lowers to-hit, which can add some survivability. All in all, pretty much any combo can work, though obviously some are better than others. /Time is generally considered one of the strongest secondaries, as it does just about everything, and with perma Farsight (which gives defense, to hit and perception) being one of the reasons the set is so good for masterminds.

My current bot/ff mastermind went with Scirocco's pool for a couple reasons: 1) The Scorpion shield doesn't actually do anything for me. I'm already capped in all positional defense, so just raising a couple of specific typed defenses wouldn't do anything useful, while having capped smash/lethal resist and ~50% energy can help out if something gets past the defense bubbles. 2) I didn't want to have to pull out that clunky mace. While you can (I believe) set it for no redraw, I still don't like the mace weapon. 3) The lightning cage immobilize does damage, while the web grenade doesn't, so I can just slot it for damage + procs. I also have Repulsion Bomb, since I use it for additional cc and a bit of damage. But essentially lead with the lightning cages, sic the pets, toss repulsion bomb. Pack of pinned down mobs melt into nothing. Move on to the next pack, and the cages + bomb are recharged by the time I engage them.

It's generally accepted that the Mercenaries set for Masterminds underperforms a bit, and I think I've found one of the main reasons why. For all other sets, once you hit 32nd your pets' damage tends to spike, because they gain access to more abilities and, in particular, aoe powers. One of the problems with the commando is that several of his powers are simply direct copies of other abilities from various sets, with no changes other than to lower their damage to be at Mastermind levels. Namely: Full Auto and LRM Rocket. Full Auto has a 60s recharge. LRM Rocket has a 240s recharge. Given that Mastermind pets can't slot recharge into any of their powers, having cooldowns that long for simple damage abilities is ridiculous. None of the other Mastermind tier-3 pets have powers that take that long to recharge, unless they're buffs, debuffs, or crowd control (typically holds), and those typically only have 60-90s recharge. My suggestion would be for the commando's Full Auto ability have its recharge reduced to 20s, and LRM Rocket reduced to 25s. It would give the commando some much-needed "oomph", and give the Mercenaries set in general some needed damage output. Especially since the Mastermind has no control over what abilities the pets use, and the LRM Rocket has a 150ft range, the commando will often burn that on lone or fleeing enemies, wasting the 4m recharge. Thoughts?

I was thinking about this again the other day, since I was pondering posting a suggestion about some tinkering to several of the mastermind sets. But after some thought, I started wondering about making Serum operate more like Fortify Pack from the Beast Mastery set. And came up with something like this: Serum Just choosing this power injects all your mercenaries with a low-level, but permanent super-soldier serum, granting them +5% smash/lethal/toxic resist. Activating the power with no target selected charges all your mercenaries, granting them +10% damage, +10 smash/lethal/toxic resist, +5% dodge, +7.16 run speed and 10.0 protection against confuse and terrorize for 20 seconds. Activating this power with a mercenary selected supercharges that mercenary, granting him +30% damage, +40 smash/lethal/toxic resist, +20% dodge, +15 run speed and 10.0 protection against all forms of cc for 20 seconds. Cooldown set to 5m.

I honestly think that the ninjas having no resists and almost no defense was just a typo that the original devs never got around to fixing.

Ah, okay, so you can drop doorways down right next to one another? I'm at work so I can't try it, which is why I asked instead of just experimenting. :)

I never tried back on live, but now since building is free, I'm curious to try it out. Is there a way to make your base just one massive room? I know you can't delete the entry room, but I can get around that with the idea I have. What I'd like is the largest plot, and have it be entirely empty, able to be filled with whatever. Is that possible?

I don't know if the stats are listed anywhere online (I haven't been able to find them), but here's a breakdown of the various pets and their resists/defense/etc. All these are at 50th level with zero enhancements, incarnate powers, nothing. Figured I'd post them just so people who don't know them off the top of their head would be able to look up a list without trying to search the internet in vain, and put it in plain text for folks on mobile who can't look at pictures or something. :) Beast Mastery Howlers: 11% AOE/Ranged/Melee Defense 18% Smash/Lethal/Cold Resist -33.33% Confuse Duration +2.0 Confuse Protection +7.16 mph Run Speed +25% Recharge Resist Lions + Dire Wolf 12% AOE/Ranged/Melee Defense 29% Smash/Lethal/Cold Resist -33.33% Confuse Duration +2.0 Confuse Protection +7.16 mph Run Speed +25% Recharge Resist Demon Summoning Demonlings: 25% Smash/Lethal Resist 37% Fire or Toxic or Cold Resist (each demonling gets one based on type) 12% Fire/Toxic/Cold Resist (whichever two they're not strongest against) -33.33% Terrorize Duration +4.0 Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Ember Demon 37% Fire Resist 24% Smash/Lethal/Toxic Resist 12% Cold Resist -33.33% Terrorize Duration +4.0 Terrorize Protection Grants Ember Shield to all summoned demons, including itself (+10% Smash/Lethal/Toxic Resist, +13% Fire Resist, +6% Cold Resist) Hellfire Gargoyle 37% Toxic Resist 31% Smash/Lethal Resist 24% Fire Resist 12% Cold Resist -33.33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Demon Prince: 19% Cold Defense 14% Smash/Lethal Defense 9% Fire Defense 19% Cold/Toxic Resist 17% Smash/Lethal Resist 7% Fire Resist -33.33% Confuse/Terrorize/Sleep Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +2.0 Confuse Protection Mercenaries Soldiers: 25% Smash/Lethal Resist -33.33% Confuse Duration +2.0 Confuse Protection Spec Ops: 26% Smash/Lethal Resist -33.33% Confuse Duration +2.0 Confuse Protection Commando: 26% Smash/Lethal Resist 6% Toxic/Cold/Fire Resist -33.33% Confuse/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Terrorize Protection +2.0 Confuse Protection Necromancy Zombies: 25% Smash/Cold/Negative/Toxic/Psionic Resist 100% Recharge Time Resist -33.33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Grave Knights: 26% Cold/Negative/Toxic 100% Recharge Time Resist -33.33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Lich: 26% Cold/Negative/Toxic +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection Ninjas Genin 6% AOE/Ranged/Melee Defense -33.33% Confuse Duration +2.0 Confuse Protection +7.16 mph Run Speed Jounin 13% AOE/Ranged/Melee Defense -33.33% Confuse Duration +4.0 Confuse Protection +7.16 mph Run Speed Oni 6% AOE/Ranged/Melee Defense 52% Fire Resist 26% Smash/Lethal Resist -33.33% Confuse Duration +4.0 Confuse Protection +7.16 mph Run Speed Robots Battle Drones: 25% Lethal/Cold/Psionic Resist -33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Protector Bots + Assault Bot 26% Lethal/Cold/Psionic Resist -33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection +1.0 Stun Protection Protector Bots will cast Shield on allies, granting +7% AOE/Range/Melee Defense, periodically wears off and must be recast (stacks twice) Thugs Thugs (Arsonist): 25% Fire Resist Enforcers: 26% Lethal Resist Grant Maneuvers to other thugs in range, granting +8% AOE/Range/Melee Defense (two stacks) Grant Tactics to other thugs in range, granting +2% to-hit (two stacks), with Equip Grant Assault to other thugs in range, granting +5% damage (two stacks), with Upgrade Bruiser 26% Smash/Lethal Resist 6% Toxic/Cold/Fire Resist -33.33% Confuse/Terrorize Duration +4.0 Terrorize Protection +2.0 Confuse Protection

I usually try to respond to /tells, since it's only polite. Unless the person was a dink, then I might just pretend I didn't hear it. What the people that bitch about folks not responding have to remember is that not every tab has private messages enabled by default. So the person might have been on a tab that didn't show the /tell to them, so they simply didn't see it. But I guess the sorts that throw a fit about not being responded to would probably throw a fit about "stupid people not bothering to learn how to configure chat tabs" or something too. Ah well. :)

Oh man, I remember Horizons. That game could have been so amazing. I remember a bunch of us rebuilding a little town area, and we'd started repairing a huge broken bridge that crossed the river. The class system was interesting and cool, but suffered from a serious lack of content and like you said, kind of in alpha state.

Gosh, I've played so many freaking MMOs. Lessee... Very first MMO I ever played was Asheron's Call in 1999. It was that or Everquest, and I decided on AC. Really fun game. Played Dark Age of Camelot for several years. Also a super fun game. Everquest for about 6 months. Lineage-2 for about 4 months. Gave up after realizing I'd been grinding for like 4 hours straight and gotten half a level. And I wasn't anywhere NEAR level cap. Still had about 30 levels to go. City of Heroes from 2004 to 2012. Occasionally taking a break for a month or two to try out other MMOs, but always coming back. WoW for about a year and a half, then peeked in again around 2013. Quit shortly afterwards. Guild Wars-2 for a while. SWtOR for about 6 months. Champions Online for...maybe 3 months. Then left because there was no content I hadn't done already. A whole slew of Korean/Japanese MMOs. Rift for about a year and a half. Fun game, but I eventually got tired of it. Elder Scrolls Online for about a year. Dungeons and Dragons Online. Played that for about 3 years. Still my favorite dungeons of all time, though when people got so buff that they could just sprint through traps on elite it got a bit boring, as I loved playing trap-hunters. Various western MMOs that came and went or that I just lost interest in shortly, like Tabula Rasa, EVE Online, Vanguard, Age of Conan, etc. And now I'm back to CoX. :)

There are so many mastermind sets I'd love to see. And a lot of them should be pretty easy to create, as they'd be based on already-existing models. Longbow Would be super easy. Tiers: [*]2 Longbow Guardians (pistols), 1 Longbow Flamethrower [*]2 Longbow Sergeants [*]Longbow Officer or Warden Legacy Chain Also super easy. For the tier-3, could swap it for a different element, depending on which would be easier. Tiers: [*]1 Lambent of Light, 1 Ember of Flame, 1 Kaolin of Earth [*]1 Lucent of Light, 1 Blaze of Flame [*]Tellus of Earth Arachnos Again, really easy. And gotta have an Arachnos set, if we have a Longbow set! Tiers: [*]2 Wolf Spiders, 1 Crab Spider [*]2 Fortunata [*]Tarantula Queen or Mu Guardian Carnival of Shadows/Light A longtime favorite, and would be a lot of fun. Tiers: [*]2 Attendants, 1 Harlequin Juggler [*]1 Seneschal, 1 Illusionist [*]Ring Mistress or Master Illusionist Tons of other possibilities. Coralax, PPD/RIP/Praetorian PD, Crey, Council, Devouring Earth, Outcasts, Trolls, etc etc.

I still keep aid other/self/field medic around for when I'm grouping, and for the odd time that one of my pets takes one of those 5% blows to the face from a boss and manages to survive with a sliver of health. One instant aid other (I love field medic) and they're back in the fray and kicking ass. Right now I'm working on a robots/cold to go along with my ninja/cold. Thinking about trying out a thug/cold and/or beast/cold as well. The beast/cold is a bit more thematic, especially with the dire wolf spewing cold attacks around.

One of mine: Caritas (Charity in latin), Angellic mastermind out to bring demons back to the light I'll see if I can post more when I can get some decent screenshots of them.

Mine's very similar. 1) Flip through various archetypes/powersets to find one I haven't done yet. 2) Spend 30m tinkering around with costumes to come up with something I like. 3) Spend another 5m coming up with a good name. 4) Log in, visit the p2w vendor, get some starting stuff. 5) Kill things to level up to 6-10 or so to try out the new character. 6) Suddenly think of a new combo I want to try! 7) Return to step 1.

I think one of the problems with most "modern" MMOs is also that too many of them fall into the trap of "quest hub syndrome". In CoX, you don't have quest hubs. You have individual contacts, that give you missions to go on, and most of them have at least one story arc, if not two, rather than just a bunch of "busy work" missions. In most MMOs, you go to a new town/village/roadside flophouse, grab the 4-5 quests that are there, usually not bothering to really read the quest dialogue (because most of it is incredibly trite and pointless anyway), then go out and do the quest, usually to "kill 5 X" or "retrieve my lucky chicken from bandits" or something similar. You come back, you get your reward, and you move on. Nothing changes. Hell, most of the time the NPCs don't even recognize you if you come back later. Just "Hi there traveler, I don't have any quests for you" if they say anything at all. I like the contacts in CoX because they all have their own story. A doctor trying to find out where an illness is coming from, and it turns out it's a curse caused by a bunch of Circle mages. A cop trying to put an end to Superadine. A newbie hero group that you join up, have a couple of missions with, and then things fall apart and they go their own way. That sort of thing. It makes going on missions interesting. Which is much more fun.

The moment I booted up CoH and saw the splash page, the login screen, and then character creation, I was home again. City of Heroes was my all-time favorite MMO. Nothing else rivaled it. After it shut down, I've tried out dozens of MMOs, but none of them recaptured the same feeling that CoH had. The same "magic". And now it's back. I get to run, jump, and fly around Paragon City and the Rogue Isles again. And maybe Praetoria, once I get done running all the CoH/CoV arcs a second or third time. Who knows! But for me, it's still enough to captivate me and make me play for hours every day.

The for it was pretty cool, at least.

Serum is a garbage power. It really is. The buff is good, but the recharge on it is ridiculous. I believe it has the longest recharge of any powerset ability in the game. What I'd much prefer to replace it with would be something like one of the following: 1) Air strike. Select a ground target location, and the MM takes out their walkie (same animation as summoning a pet) and after a second or two there's a large explosion in that area. 2) Deployable machine gun turret. Something like the gun drone from /devices, but stationary. A 4th pet for the merc set, and provides some extra firepower. Optionally, could be a flame-thrower turret, to give a damage type other than lethal. 3) "MEDIC!" Summons a second, temporary medic who starts spamming heals on you and your minions. +regen, heals, and ablative shield, then runs off. 4) Rocket launcher. Just replace it with the Munitions LRM missile power. 5) Squad tactics. A short-term buff that grants the entire squad maneuvers, tactics, and assault. 6) Reinforcements. Summons all the mercenary pets at once. Probably put this on a lengthy cooldown, like 15m or so.

Definitely signed for this. I used to love using all the costume stuff to play around. And yeah, I had a shapeshifter character back on live too, and used them a lot to adopt alternate looks. More costume options is never a bad thing!

I'm going to give this a thumbs down, myself. I was planning on writing a long-winded response, but I'm going to keep is short and sweet. It's not misogynistic. It's about a guy's obsession and his overreaction to rejection. Stop using the term "misogynistic" any time something negative happens to women. Keep the mission as-is. No need to change it simply because you're offended.

What do you mean, "bodyguard mode" ...? Bodyguard mode is when your pets are in defensive stance, but haven't been told to specifically attack something. Any damage that strikes the mastermind is split between the MM and the pets, so if you have your full group out, the MM takes 1/7th of the damage, and the other 6/7ths is split among the pets. It's what can make masterminds incredibly tanky. The downside is that when you (or they) are attacked the pets will just randomly start fighting, instead of focusing down one enemy at a time to be more efficient.

(Mongolian heavy metal, really cool)