WumpusRat

They definitely struggled a bit early on, since it takes a while for Empathy to really reach the point where you can start juggernaut-ing your way through stuff on the power of fortitude and regen aura. My goal for this particular build was to get as close to the recharge cap as I can, to leverage Regen and Recovery Aura as much as possible. I'd tested the idea out a few times with other pet builds, and it worked pretty well, so I was curious how it'd do with ninjas, since their damage output is so high they can chew through enemies in seconds. Overall, the only time I really struggle is against particular EBs or AVs who can one-shot the pets despite their defense, or ones who spam caltrops or other such things (I'm glaring at YOU, Silver Mantis) since that's always been a huge issue for MM pets in general. A lot of times I don't even bother putting fortitude on all of them since mobs die so fast and their defense without it is enough to that most mobs can't get past my healing. I generally only NEED fortitude against EB/AVs. And yeah, if I want to keep fortitude on all of them it DOES require tossing it out pretty often. Mine's on a 17s recharge, so I've got a bit of leeway in terms of "must cast on cooldown". But if I'm trying to keep it going on all of them I have to pay attention to the cooldown pretty closely. Though the oni can definitely get along fine without it, as he's got 43% m/r def and 68% aoe before fortitude. The damage buff is nice though. It's definitely not my strongest MM build, but it's a lot of fun and Empathy is actually a decent choice for soloing as a MM, as you have a premade team with you to benefit from the buffs.

The ninjas don't have any resists to speak of (other than the oni), but they have high defense and a self-heal once you get their upgrades slotted up. The Train Ninjas power gives the genin around 17% defense, the jounin 23% defense, and the oni 29% defense, and all get about 5-10% more vs aoe, as well. Combine that with the auras, maneuvers, secondary sets' +def powers, etc, and the ninjas can hit the defense cap pretty quickly depending on the secondary you have. My nija/empathy MM's pets are at 49% melee/range and 70% aoe for the genin, 55% m/r and 93% aoe for the jounin, and 61% m/r and 86% aoe for the oni, due to having enough recharge in the build to keep fortitude on all six pets at once.

Hm. Could have sworn the drones triggered procs. I might be thinking of another power though, it's been quite a while since I played any of my /traps builds. Just popped onto my bot/traps to check though, and you're right. And if you're really trying to squeeze a couple extra points of defense out, then sure, though it's not really necessary depending on your build. And with bots/trap not having any extra pet power to stick the auras in, if you want all 6 you're only working with 4 slots per pet. Adding a +def IO into the prot bots means they're going to be at 3 slots, which is going to seriously cut into their damage output, accuracy, and end management. With my build, between the prot bot shields, scorpion shield, FFG, maneuvers, CJ, weave, and various IO/set bonuses my bot/trap MM is sitting at around 55% ranged/melee/aoe def, 75% smash/lethal def, 67% energy def. Toxic/psionic def are her weaknesses, but not many things are PURELY psi/toxic attack without having a ranged/melee/aoe component as well. The bots are at 43% range/melee and 57% aoe def. So not quite soft-capped, but even losing some bots to incarnate stuff I have enough personal def to get them back up and into the fight without getting shredded. I kind of built her to be extremely durable though, so YMMV depending on builds. 🙂

I was trying it out on the test server, and the damage seems ... very awkward. There's no reason to put a damage set into it, considering the damage only procs when a mob actually slips on it, so it's not going to deal any significant damage at all. Which makes the way it's coded seem extremely silly. 151 ticks of X damage over 30 seconds, but really only ends up ticking a couple of times before the mob dies to other stuff.

Play all of them! You can never have enough masterminds. As for the various setups: End will always be a problem with /storm if you run hurricane. On the couple /storm MMs I have, I toggle it on and off a lot just to use it as kind of a "get out of my face" power, and once they're pushed back enough, I let the pets go to work on them and turn it off. If I really need the -to hit, I'll leave it on and try to converse end as best I can. Though once you get fully slotted up, your end problems can be mitigated a lot depending on build. Necro/Dark is a classic. Generally you want to build for a lot of +recharge so that you can leverage Soul Extraction as often as possible. One way you can really get a lot of mileage out of it is to get the full set of Mark of Supremacy, and at 50th make it Superior. Split it into three 2-piece bits for each of your pets, and you'll end up with 30% global recharge just from that. I don't often use Hasten in builds, but if you like that power you can probably get SE close to perma. Bots/Traps is another classic. Bots can sometimes feel like they don't do damage-churn as well as some other sets, but a lot of it depends on how the assault bot chooses to use its swarm missiles and incendiary patches. Against groups of mobs, they'll melt targets very quickly. One thing to note is that the protector bots USED to do so-so damage, but were good for support, so a lot of people (myself included) would spec them up to add a bit more defense. These days, they're one of the highest damage outputs of the set, so setting them up for max damage is essential for maximum damage output. But they SHRED their end bar. Even with 95% end reduction they'll drop themselves to low end in under 30 seconds. You'll want to leverage Acid Mortar for the debuff, and you can slot Seeker Drones with several procs to turn it into a mini-nuke, too (Positron's Blast, Javelin Volley, Bombardment, and Cloud Senses procs for damage, as well as Annihilation's -resist proc). You can get a mod that will keep them from making so much noise. It's a great help. And Fulcrum Shifted beasts deal ENORMOUS damage. My Beast/Kin goes hunting giant monsters, and kills them with pure damage output, no -regen beyond Transfusion required. She can solo Jack in Irons and Eochai together at the same time. Ninjas are one of the highest damage minion sets in the game. They have a lot of fast-animating attacks with fairly low cooldowns, so they can do some serious damage churn. With /TA you can debuff the hell out of enemies to let the ninjas really go to town. The downside is that you have no healing for them or for yourself, without investing in the Medicine pool. Generally what I do is set up several minion-specific attack commands for my /TA MMs, to keep some pets in bodyguard mode while directing others to attack. You can mitigate a lot of the incoming damage that way. Plus leveraging Oil Slick and EMP Arrow for a lot of extra damage mitigation. Especially if you take a resist armor from one of the epic/patron pools. Once you get rolling with this, they'll churn through just about anything you throw them at. My Merc/FF has incarnate softcapped def for all the mercs, as well as Serum boosting their smash/lethal resist to softcap for a bit as well as boosting their damage output. I picked up the attacks as well just so that I could contribute a bit of damage, as /FF is a pretty passive set overall. And with Repulsion Field you can generally keep stuff out of melee, letting your mercs just dakadaka stuff to death.

Yeah, it's not the same though. The old port was fairly quick, and would make you vanish just as the animation for the costume change was about to end and shift the costume, so it made it look like you "beamed out". Summoning a base portal isn't the effect I'm after, and the long-range teleporter has a really long animation time, so you'd have to wait and trigger the macro right at the proper moment. It's not a big deal, it was just a cute setup that allowed to look like the characters were being beamed up by the ship.

I was kind of sad to see it go, since several of my characters operated out of a starship, and I had a whole macro set up for doing an emote, saying "Ship, one to transport" and then doing a costume change with a special effect right as they'd teleport to the base.

Oh nice. Maybe I'll try to reprise my starship build high up above the base level, then. I'd scrapped it several times due to constant drifting.

I've played dozens of MMOs over the years. There are a few I still play from time to time, or that I'll drift off of one game and start playing again as my "main" MMO. Currently I'm playing EQ2 again, and still log in to DDO and LotRO now and then when they come out with new content.

I would argue that this isn't really true. On my beast/TA mastermind, EMP Arrow was a very important part of my arsenal against EBs and AVs. Without it, I have zero status protection (other than immobilize, thanks to CJ), and my pets' resists are fairly low, even with all the auras. With it, my pets' damage resistance would get pushed up to the point that it took a couple of hits to drop the tier-1's, giving me time to save them. And since my only healing was a single-target Aid Other, that extra time makes all the difference. Additionally, the status protection means that I can keep using powers without fear of being locked down and having to pop breakfrees (assuming I still have some left) to try and avoid a wipe of my pets and myself. It's not something that you need in every fight, but when you do need it, it's definitely a "thank god I have this" power.

A lot of my current characters are magic origin, as they're D&D characters that were forcibly ported into Paragon and are living here now. Even the classes that aren't inherently magical, like rogue or fighter have the magic origin, because of how they got here, and that they use magical items, etc.

Yeah, I don't use hover for general movement anyway. I just use flight. If I want precise control (like flying around indoors or something) I'll kick hover on as well, so I get all the speed of flight and the control of hover. Costs a bit more end, but I'm generally not doing that for more than a few seconds in combat anyway. Generally hover and EM are just LotG mule slots for me.

Funny, I don't think I've EVER put slots into Evasive Maneuvers. It's always and forever a LotG +rech mule slot, and nothing more. Personally, I like flight because it's the most freeform way to travel. I can operate in 360 degrees and move around as I see fit. Want to go to the top of a building? Just fly up. Want to get those badges high up on ledges and things? Fly up and grab them. With superspeed? Yeah, still need to find a way to walk up there, and trying to move at high velocity on a small ledge 200 feet up is going to end up with me falling off. And superleap doesn't cut it for a lot of places, so you have to jump up to ledge #1, then ledge #2, then to the point you're aiming for. Flight is just more convenient.

Actually this would create MORE abuse, for one simple reason: A couple people could click on doors while your ToT league is parked in an area and anything that comes out you and your league get no inf/exp/badges for. This would end up with people screaming at one another about "this is our camping spot, go find your own", etc. Just like back in the day when you'd get a group and just camp in front of a spawn of mobs for hours on end grinding exp. Personally, I don't really care if someone "leeches" off stuff I'm already fighting, since I only ToT for the badges, and stuff dying faster = faster badges. Sometimes I just want to do my own thing and not worry about being in a group/league, so I can go afk at a moment's notice, look stuff up on the other monitor, or whatever else and not have people getting irate that I'm "leeching while afk". Which is why I almost exclusively ToT solo in Kallisti.

Well of course the doorways are taller, they have to be to account for the fact that there are 8-foot people walking around. Can't make Captain Meltdown, The Easily Annoyed Walking Nuclear Pile have to constantly duck under doorframes, after all. Otherwise he'd eventually bump his head and you'd lose a city block.

My characters are based on a concept I have for them, and that includes how they look, how tall they are, etc. All my D&D/Pathfinder immigrants are based on their game races, so their heights are pretty defined from the get-go. The tallest one is the giantkin barbarian. The shortest are the two halflings, and a gnome who's a couple inches taller than them. The two dwarves are built with the "huge" male body, cranked to minimum height and large physique, since I can't make a proper female dwarf using the female body -- the legs end up looking too long, even with minimum leg length. So I just go with the "small-huge" male body, put them in full armor, and they end up looking like proper female dwarves. Besides, nobody but other dwarves can tell male from female anyway, so it's all good! I have a couple of very tall other characters, and a lot of short characters. But none of them really follow any sort of role/AT pattern with their heights. Just whatever I feel like for the character.

It would certainly be nice to see a new mastermind primary, considering the last new one was at the tail end of live, with beast mastery. Other ATs have had primaries ported over to them, or created entirely, but MMs still languish with only 7 primaries to choose from, by far the lowest number of any AT in the game (other than kheldians and veats, but they don't really count). Going purely by damage types, the ones that we already have are: Lethal -- mercenaries, necro (the grave knights' sword attacks), thugs (all the guns), ninjas shuriken/swords, beast mastery animal claws/bites Smashing -- thugs Bruiser, necro zombie punches, ninjas kicking Fire -- thugs arsonist, ninjas oni, robotics assault bot flamethrower, demons tier-1 fire demon Cold - demons demon prince attacks, beast mastery dire wolf attacks, demons tier-1 cold demon Energy -- robotics all the lasers Negative -- necro all the undead pewpew Toxic -- necro zombie barf, demons tier-1 toxic demon Psionic -- ...nothing? So a set that focuses on psionic stuff could be interesting, just to fill the niche that has nothing in it. Another energy-focused set could also be good, to have something other than robotics. Same with negative, as only necromancy deals with that -- though to be honest there isn't much in CoH that uses negative energy that ISN'T undead/necromancy. Or maybe a set that focuses on cold, or fire. The simplest (in terms of models and such) would be picking from existing groups and summoning up versions of them. Though the MM stuff is all "generic" rather than specific, so that might be stepping into an area the devs just don't want to deal with. After all, the moment you add ONE existing group as a MM set, people are going to be demanding the others that they want to play, and arguing that "if you did it with that one, these ten can't be that much harder, right?"

Alt-itis isn't something to be ashamed of. Embrace it. My current project that I've been working on for the last 6 months or so has been my group of D&D/Pathfinder characters who were punted into Paragon. It's been a lot of fun coming up with builds for each class, and making sure I don't repeat any powersets, unless it's a slightly altered version of one of them (Sentinel Regen vs Scrapper regen, for instance). I was GOING to just make the "standard" 12 classes (barbarian, bard, cleric, druid, fighter, monk, paladin, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, warlock, wizard), but along the way I kept finding more concepts and classes that would be a lot of fun to build in CoH. So now I've got a dozen more that I've leveled up. My rule I made for myself was that I had to get a character to 50, fully unlock all their incarnate abilities (just at tier-1, didn't need to get them all to tier-4) and fully kitted out before I'd let myself work on another character. Helped me figure out if I really wanted to stick with them, too. A bunch ended up getting abandoned in the 30's and 40's because the build just didn't feel right for that class, or it wasn't as much fun as I'd hoped. But it's definitely been fun. Especially coming up with their little quirks in the bio. I have a fairly standardized "here's how they got to Paragon" that is in every bio for them, and then their stat block. Alignment, stats (str, dex, con, int, wis, cha), race, class, etc. It's fun coming up with them all. Once I'm done with the latest few I think I'll be "done" with the adventurers. Then I might start working on the group of elementals idea I had. All four main elements (air, earth, fire, water) and the quasi-elements (smoke, mire, lightning, ice).

And stuff like this is exactly why I stock every type of salvage in my base. "But why keep common salvage? Just buy it on the AH if you need some." Yeah, no thanks. I'd rather be able to just step into my base, step over to the crafting building, and make anything I need without having to go in and out of the base to buy salvage. I've got about 20 of every type of common, 10 of every uncommon, and 6-8 of every rare. I can make anything I need. If I DO manage to run out of rare salvage, I've got a couple dozen characters with 9000 AE tickets who can just hop up and buy a bunch and restock.

I haven't quite been "one-shot" by any of the mobs (though I've mostly done my ToTing on characters who are 30+), but I HAVE been two-shot a couple times. Mostly by the Arisen Mummies, who do HUGE amounts of toxic damage. I was door-knocking with my fire/fire sentinel, who was breezing through it for the most part, and out comes a mummy. "Okay, let's see how this goes" I thought to myself. He punched me in the face and took about 70% of my health. I used my heal, and got back up to about 90%. Then he used KOBlow and insta-killed me. I couldn't even be mad. My toxic resist is like 10% or so. He hit me for somewhere around 1600 damage. Got my revenge, though. I sent my necro/pain MM out to knock on doors until I got another mummy (and I'm going to pretend it's the same one, out of spite), and curbstomped him. 🙂

I have a macro on one of my alternate hotbars on all my MM's that I just label "GO". It's petcom_all dismiss, which makes all my pets stop what they're doing and immediately leave. I use this all the time to just abandon my pets out when I need to do something like sneak around, or don't want them trudging along aggroing everything behind as they try to catch up to me.

Yeah, all my D&D/Pathfinder characters that wound up in Paragon don't have powers granted to them by "the well of furies" or anything like that. They're just gaining epic levels. 🙂

Which ones in particular? Most of the merit rewards seem pretty average. The only one I can think of as "a lot" is the mothership raid, but I don't tend to do those. Though there are a couple of story arcs that I think don't reward enough. One that springs to mind is Mr. Bocor in Port Oakes, who gives you a 4-mission arc (3 kill-alls and a hunt) and gives you a paltry 2 merits for it.

She is. When you 'defeat' her, she doesn't crumple or pass out, she just ducks back underwater. Everyone just keeps interrupting her peaceful swim.

Well, I've never used two 3-part sets that both have procs in them, so it hasn't come up. But if it did, it would end up being like AAA-procBBB-proc Having the three set pieces together overrules the procs always being in the rightmost slots. However, they'll still be in the right slots of that series of enhancements.