Are masterminds useful in teams?

[nzer]

Title, basically. I've been soloing +0x4 on my level 34 Demons/Time mastermind no sweat, but I took her into a radio mission team the other day and felt pretty useless compared to all the AoE the rest of team was doing. By the time my demons reached the enemies and got a few hits in everything was dead, so all I was really providing to the team was the stuff in /Time, which would have been better coming from a defender or corruptor.

 

Is this normal? Will I eventually reach content where I'm useful to a team beyond whatever buffs/debuffs my secondary provides, or are masterminds more of a solo archetype?

[TheSpiritFox]

If you aren't feeling useful it's because you're letting the team lead and not commanding your pets right. Now, on a steamroll team, yeah, no one gets off too many attacks tbh. I wouldn't worry about it that much. That said, Masterminds have three jobs in teams, not two. Support, dps, and Tank.

 

Every time a pet gets attacked a player didn't take that damage outside of aoe heavy situations. I would imagine if your pets are arriving after everyone else, you're not playing up to potential, you're acting like you are a defender. Your place is not at the back of the pack. Your place is in front of/next to/second behind the tank. My bots/traps and thugs/time can both solo +4x8 and honestly, pretty quickly. Demons/time? You need to slot all the pet uniques for defense and resistance. All of them. Then you need to be using MM macros to command them to run into groups in defensive mode and stay there, drawing aggro and letting you follow right behind with your PBAOE debuff and time powers. 

 

If you aren't feeling useful, you're not playing aggressively enough by half. MMs are leaders, not followers. But again, Radio missions are pretty easy and nuking the shit out of a spawn in an 8 man group is simple as shit. 

 

Seriously though, make the following macros. 

 

/macro ATK "petcom_all aggressive$$petcom_all goto"

/macro DEF "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all goto"

/macro GRD "petcom_all defensive$$petcom_all follow"

/bind mbutton "petcom_all attack"

 

Gives you three tray macros you can click or set hotkeys for your tray slots and order your pets around, and lets you click your middle mouse button to give an attack order. 

How these work with the AI? Goto commands include a stay component. It's not perfect, but you can command your pets to go to a place and try to stay around there, in whatever stance you want. I use defensive goto CONSTANTLY. Like, it is by far the most clicked button any of my MMs have. It lets you send the pets in before you run in while still in bodyguard mode (taking less damage by splitting it with pets). 

 

I usually send pets in in defensive. If the tank gets aggro, the pets might stop attacking, so then I might switch up to aggressive so they blast everything in sight. If they're acting up while i'm moving I hit defensive follow, if I need them anywhere including just rounding them up for buffs, defensive goto all day every day. 

 

And the benefit of the attack command up there is you can order them to focus a specific target. You lose bodyguard doing it, but only until the thing is dead, then they return to whatever previous command they've been given, letting you put them somewhere in defensive goto, pick a target to burn down, and return to bodyguard once it's dead. 

Edited November 19, 2019 by TheSpiritFox

[Erydanus]

Possibly a better question is "Are teams useful to Masterminds?" and I'd say the answer is, 'sometimes.' 😉

[DougGraves]

I do not play a MM.  I do play with MMs.  And when I am on a team with a MM what I want from them is to tank - in particular to take the alpha.  I do not expect them to herd, but I want to see their pets rush in and take the attacks so the rest of the team can follow up.

 

And their secondary is not trivial.  Many teams have few support characters, so a MM can add a lot to the team with some buffs and debuffs.

[TheSpiritFox]

1 hour ago, DougGraves said:

I do not play a MM.  I do play with MMs.  And when I am on a team with a MM what I want from them is to tank - in particular to take the alpha.  I do not expect them to herd, but I want to see their pets rush in and take the attacks so the rest of the team can follow up.

 

And their secondary is not trivial.  Many teams have few support characters, so a MM can add a lot to the team with some buffs and debuffs.

Yep, this. I have never once in the history of this game had anyone complain about me sending my pets in before the tank attacks, not even the tanks. I don't hold aggro very well, no taunt to anything I do, so I take the alpha and a few provokes and attacks later, everything is on the tank. If there is no tank, by the time DPS opens up the alpha is over and they can only draw individual aggro, and I put out enough support usually to keep even squishies alive through it. My bots/traps puts out 20 defense to the team without incarnates, with support up it goes up to 32, and with barrier lol everyone close enough to get buffed is immortal. 

[Mercurias]

I often team with Masterminds who just out their pets on auto and focus on their support. That’s fine and dandy if their support is strong, but always like it whenever I see the demons, Bruiser, bots, or other melee minions rushing in headlong. I’m often playing a controller, so that level of attention grabbing is usually enough for me to get off an AoE Control without suddenly getting aggro from every un-messed boss.

[Riverdusk]

As a /time, once you do get enough defense that you can survive anyway, jump in yourself is another way to go.  Time's Juncture debuffs them and annoys them, they attack you (while you are in bodyguard), and all your pets retaliate. 

[Hedgefund]

1 minute ago, Riverdusk said:

As a /time, once you do get enough defense that you can survive anyway, jump in yourself is another way to go.  Time's Juncture debuffs them and annoys them, they attack you (while you are in bodyguard), and all your pets retaliate. 

I'm glad to see this finally mentioned.  I would never send in low HP pets to just be some alpha soaking sacrifice.  I'll take alphas all day long on any MM but to just discard my means of BG for skittish teammates?  Nope.

[TheSpiritFox]

57 minutes ago, Riverdusk said:

As a /time, once you do get enough defense that you can survive anyway, jump in yourself is another way to go.  Time's Juncture debuffs them and annoys them, they attack you (while you are in bodyguard), and all your pets retaliate. 

The problem with /time is that mez filled alphas can and will fuck you up. If you're playing a defense based pet set your pets should have way more defense than you and should survive the alpha way better than you. I send the pets in first aways with my thugs/traps. It is rare that I lose a minion, much less a Lt or bruiser. My bots traps I go in first but that's cause with SS celerity they usually attack the bots before my opening poison trap goes off and then they're throwing up everywhere like it's a high school party. 

[Nyghtmaire]

19 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

[And] then they're throwing up everywhere like it's a high school party. 

That’s frickin’ poetry right there...

[Riverdusk]

40 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

The problem with /time is that mez filled alphas can and will fuck you up. If you're playing a defense based pet set your pets should have way more defense than you and should survive the alpha way better than you. I send the pets in first aways with my thugs/traps. It is rare that I lose a minion, much less a Lt or bruiser. My bots traps I go in first but that's cause with SS celerity they usually attack the bots before my opening poison trap goes off and then they're throwing up everywhere like it's a high school party. 

By that time your pets are killing things and still protecting you and pulling aggro, your teammates are (hopefully) doing the same.  Sitting there mezzed for a bit usually isn't going to ruin your day.  Farsight doesn't drop during mez since it isn't a toggle, so you should still have good defense (along with set bonuses).  Eventually of course there is also Clarion which makes it all moot.

 

As usual it all depends on the situation.  In some cases it works fine, other times it doesn't.  Just giving it as another option.

[nzer]

Well I guess I'll try playing more aggressively next time. Thanks for the feedback everyone!

[Erydanus]

I will say that I don't think you have to usurp taking the alpha and trying to tank to do a lot of good on a team. If you think about it, just having your (disposable) swarm out, they're going to be picking up stragglers that maybe the tank doesn't. At least on the teams I've been on lately the tank is not actually working to keep mobs off the damage and support. They're rushing into a pack and taking alphas and holding attention long enough for some big AoEs to drop and then (and I'm not liking this but it's what I'm seeing) they just rush to the next big mob leaving a lot behind. And when you're say a controller or defender trying to finish off this guy or that guy, often he's got 2 friends who start to draw a bead on you. I saw this happen on some +4 ITFs and really those Cimmerorans hit like Mack trucks. Who came up the rear, picked up the leftovers, and helped us finish off the ACTUAL mission targets of the Nictus crystals? The mastermind. 

[MTeague]

"A man's got to know his limitations.", however.

 

I do remmber, in early City of Villians, lvl 12-15 or so, groups wanting my Ninjas/Poison MM to send in his Ninjas to soak every alpha.  For an 8 man group, with no one healing anyone, just blasting away, vs +4 mobs.  All that accomplished to give me massive debt badges.  Damn near every other pull I ended up using a wakie.  Maybe other people got good exp from it?  I sure as heck didn't.

 

This was before IO's existed however.  And back then, /Poison was single-target-only for it's early debuffs.  At that point, with those tools, against those enemies?  What the group wanted was simply unreasonable, and I should have quit out long before I did.  I had an iffy combo to begin with, and paper thin pets with not NEARLY enough defense who were going to crumple like tissue paper against a crowd.

 

However, today?  A reborn Ninja / Cold mastermind, using 3 Pet Aura IO's and encasing my pets in Ice Shields?  That's a very very very different story, and I'd have no hesitation sending my pets in now.

Edited November 23, 2019 by MTeague

[Maxzero]

 

 

Honestly nothing is realyl useful in teams except MAYBE a tank (usually to help gather mobs). Players are so strong now that everything is almost completely a zerg fest to kill as many mobs as possible.

 

Just keep two things in mind:

 

1. Have decent AoE and/or a good AoE debuff (-resist or immobilize to increase kill speed) and pretty much any endgame group will be happy with you.

 

2. Keep your pets from doing stupid stuff like aggroing extra mobs or blocking doors and caves. Sometimes you need to unsummon them. Hence why I like /Storm since I can kill stuff without needing pets.

 

Edited November 23, 2019 by Maxzero