Beasts/Kinetics Questions Questions Questions

[VV]

Heyooo Masters! I have been wanting to make a Kin for a while. I love the team buffs and enemy debuffs, and it just seems like an all-around helpful set to teams. I've been trying to figure out what to pair it with, made a Kin/Nrg Def, an Earth/Kin Troller, and a Something/Kin Corr, left them all at level 1. None of them got me going. Finally, I realized a MM Kin would be great, if it works the way I hope it does. Lots of "teammates" aka pets to buff up. And, I can let the pets do the damaging while I focus on buffing, healing, and debuffing.

 

Looking at the various pet sets, I admit that most of them annoy me. They are too big, or too noisy, or too ugly, or just plain douchebags. But, the Beasts seemed nice. Wolves, Lions, and Wolves, oh my! So, I am thinking Beast/Kin. Beasts are mostly melee, which pairs well with Kin, which likes to be near the action. It also works well with my playstyle because I tend to prefer being in the melee mess. I know beasts are not as popular as some, but honestly that makes me like them even more.

 

But, having never studied MM's, I have a bunch of questions.

 

First of all, do all the Kin buffs affect the MM pets? Siphon Power, Increase Density, Speed Boost, Inertial Reduction, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift? If so, it seems like you can really have some hot stuff pest. Fast moving, high jumping, mezz resisting, damage dealing, and energy efficient. It's not going to change my mind if they don't all work on the pets, but I don't want to be spending my time speed boosting my wolves if it is not doing them any good. So, I just need to know which ones work and which do not.

 

Also, out of those two sets, are there any super skippable powers? Out of Kin, it seems like I can probably skip Repel, although that could come in handy if I get too swarmed. In Beasts, I'm thinking about skipping the three "Call" powers. It just seems like I'll be busy enough managing the pets and buffing my party that I won't really have any time to directly attack. And the damage on those looks pretty lackluster, anyway. And the debuffs on them seem weeeeeak. But, maybe I am misreading them, and some of those might be good.

 

Any recommendations are appreciated!

[Hedgefund]

All the Kinetic buffs will affect pets, with the notable exception that SB won't provide +recharge.  SB will affect their endurance and run speed.  

 

You mentioned Inertial Reduction.  Though it will affect the henchies, that effect will be minimal since they already have a super jump ability.  Take it if you want, but don't take it because you're expecting it to notably make your pets more mobile.

 

I wouldn't dismiss the Beast attacks' utility.  For one thing, they're very proc friendly.  These attacks can be a legit source of your overall DPS.  For another, and this may be more important, 2 of the attacks have -fly.  Beasts chasing flyers... no bueno, this is where the absence of ranged attacks is really felt.

 

Lastly, Repel with the kb-kd proc is actually pretty good, throw in the +recharge proc as well and it's no longer the easy choice to skip out of kin.

Edited December 12, 2019 by Hedgefund

[TheSpiritFox]

3 hours ago, VV said:

Heyooo Masters! I have been wanting to make a Kin for a while. I love the team buffs and enemy debuffs, and it just seems like an all-around helpful set to teams. I've been trying to figure out what to pair it with, made a Kin/Nrg Def, an Earth/Kin Troller, and a Something/Kin Corr, left them all at level 1. None of them got me going. Finally, I realized a MM Kin would be great, if it works the way I hope it does. Lots of "teammates" aka pets to buff up. And, I can let the pets do the damaging while I focus on buffing, healing, and debuffing.

 

Looking at the various pet sets, I admit that most of them annoy me. They are too big, or too noisy, or too ugly, or just plain douchebags. But, the Beasts seemed nice. Wolves, Lions, and Wolves, oh my! So, I am thinking Beast/Kin. Beasts are mostly melee, which pairs well with Kin, which likes to be near the action. It also works well with my playstyle because I tend to prefer being in the melee mess. I know beasts are not as popular as some, but honestly that makes me like them even more.

 

But, having never studied MM's, I have a bunch of questions.

 

First of all, do all the Kin buffs affect the MM pets? Siphon Power, Increase Density, Speed Boost, Inertial Reduction, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift? If so, it seems like you can really have some hot stuff pest. Fast moving, high jumping, mezz resisting, damage dealing, and energy efficient. It's not going to change my mind if they don't all work on the pets, but I don't want to be spending my time speed boosting my wolves if it is not doing them any good. So, I just need to know which ones work and which do not.

 

Also, out of those two sets, are there any super skippable powers? Out of Kin, it seems like I can probably skip Repel, although that could come in handy if I get too swarmed. In Beasts, I'm thinking about skipping the three "Call" powers. It just seems like I'll be busy enough managing the pets and buffing my party that I won't really have any time to directly attack. And the damage on those looks pretty lackluster, anyway. And the debuffs on them seem weeeeeak. But, maybe I am misreading them, and some of those might be good.

 

Any recommendations are appreciated!

Kin is a limited set for masterminds. Team benefits are full steam ahead. 

 

Transfusion and siphon power work as expected and so does fulcrum shift. 

 

Speed boost has a negative impact on pets. They do not benefit from recharge, and they also do not meaningfully benefit from recovery. Pet skills cost x mana but only require 1 mana to activate. So if the bar is full, the entire cost is subtracted. If 1 mana remains, 1 mana is subtracted, the skill casts anyway, and 1 mana regen by the time the next attack goes off. From what I understand everything that isn't a player that uses powers works this way, which is why every class that has an elec attack set is pissed, endurance drain doesn't do shit. The negative side of speed boost is on pet movement. Increasing their speed increases the distance they  move with like 1 "action" and pet pathing AI is based around base movement speed, so the extra movement they get causes them to have all kinds of problems moving. On an outdoor map it can be dealable, on a like office map or CoT cave it's a fucking nightmare. Anything with varied elevation is a nightmare. 

Transferrence is useless except for your personal stuff and Kin is an endurance light set to begin with. Pets don't care about endurance. 

Increase density is useful. Mez protection for pets helps, particularly knockback/knock down protection which is often hard to come by for them. 

Inertial reduction is useless. 

 

Fulcrum shift is fulcrum shift. 

 

Your pets will do tons of damage, but will have issues staying alive in high level content. Incarnates can patch a good bit of this hole, support hybrid and barrier destiny will do a ton for you, but there aren't that many beast MMs doing incarnate stuff because along with mercs and zombies they're just harder to keep alive. You get no real buffs that affect your pets besides mez, damage, and a little bit of resistance. Kinetics is not a debuff heavy set or defensive set or damage set, it's almost pure team buffs and designed around a player team not a team of 6 npcs. 

 

So how do you manage this? 

 

You need leadership pool. Your epic is kinda a choice between Mace for the defense shield, mu for electric fences and the resist shield, or heat mastery for bonfire. Bonfire honestly gets the nod here, you can give it a sudden accelleration and maybe an immob proc and slot your build out for heavy recharge (which you want for stacking fulcrum if possible anyway)  you don't want to put any recharge into bonfire so you have max proc rate. It gets kinda nuts sometimes like bonfire and procs can be a significant damage source, but if you need the slots literally a base slot with a sudden acceleration gets you the primary reason you take bonfire: knocking everything the fuck down all the time so your stuff stays alive. 

 

I use bonfire to open on mob groups with my thugs time. Cast bonfire, defensive goto the thugs into the mob, and follow, and generally there's not much of an alpha to take. It's not hard to get bonfire down to a like 30 second recharge with a high global recharge build, and that's easy to get with kinetics both cause it's a light secondary and you can skip several powers if you want (inertial reduction, transference) which also helps with beast because that's the one set that taking the attacks is actually kinda needed and helps both your damage and survivability. 

 

Oh, repel, I forgot. With a sudden acceleration it's as good as bonfire is at dropping things on their backs. Endurance hog power, lots of corruptors and defenders build around using this power to survive. With bonfire as an epic choice and with pets that are most likely going to tank over you tanking because neither your pets nor your secondary boost your defenses in any way lol, I would not recommend repel. If you were playing a bots/kinetic specifically I might re-evaluate that statement because it's possible you could get yourself tanky enough with set bonuses to justify taking provoke and actually tanking shit from within a repel bubble. That bot bubble on the MM REALLY helps. Repel is skippable for a beast MM unless you want to build entirely around tankerminding with provoke, which I honestly don't recommend with /kin. /Cold, /Traps, maybe /dark, solo /rad. Building around actually justifying the use of repel would involve neglecting your beast attack power attack chain. Using them builds the pack buffs that help keep your pets alive. 

 

Any other misc tips? Slot all 6 pet uniques if you can. Pretty sure beasts can manage it. I think that's the best advice I can give you. 

[VV]

Awesome, thanks for the tips!

[TheSpiritFox]

8 hours ago, VV said:

Awesome, thanks for the tips!

Oh and bonfire does not stack, making a new one gets rid of the old one. So you really don't need it to get down below a 30-45 second recharge, it has a 45 second duration I think, but at 30 seconds it's up every mob group solo and up often in a steamroll. 

[plainguy]

I'm honestly surprised your other kins are at level 1. 

 

I could have advertised Kin / bubblegum chewer and gotten teams. No one really, really cares what you are after you say the word kin.

 

Personally I would try to go for some sort of defense cap. 

Range cap plus scorpion shield for smash /lethal defense cap. 

 

Because you will be in the mix and up close and personal. You will drop real quick if your not capped out somehow. 

 

This is a petless mastermind build I have. 

But it is Typed defense capped.

 

I would remove some of the powers and replace them with the pets and upgrades. 

Try to use set bonuses from pets to get the defenses you might loose after making changes.

 

Villain Plan by Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer 2.6.0.7
https://github.com/ImaginaryDevelopment/imaginary-hero-designer

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Level 50 Natural Mastermind
Primary Power Set: Demon Summoning
Secondary Power Set: Kinetics
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Leadership
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Mu Mastery

Villain Profile:
Level 1: Corruption -- SprWntBit-Dmg/Rchg(A), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg(13), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(27), SprWntBit-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(29), SprWntBit-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(31), SprWntBit-Rchg/SlowProc(7)
Level 1: Transfusion -- NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx(A), NmnCnv-EndRdx/Rchg(3), NmnCnv-Heal/Rchg(3), NmnCnv-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(5), NmnCnv-Heal(5), NmnCnv-Regen/Rcvry+(7)
Level 2: Siphon Power -- Acc-I(A)
Level 4: Repel -- SuddAcc--KB/+KD(A), Empty(50)
Level 6: Kick -- KntCmb-Acc/Dmg(A), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx(33), KntCmb-Dmg/Rchg(33), KntCmb-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(29)
Level 8: Maneuvers -- RedFrt-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFrt-Def/Rchg(9), RedFrt-EndRdx/Rchg(9), RedFrt-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(11), RedFrt-Def(11), RedFrt-EndRdx(13)
Level 10: Siphon Speed -- Acc-I(A)
Level 12: Combat Jumping -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(31)
Level 14: Tough -- GldArm-3defTpProc(A), RctArm-ResDam/EndRdx(15), RctArm-ResDam/Rchg(15), RctArm-EndRdx/Rchg(17), RctArm-ResDam(17)
Level 16: Increase Density -- RctArm-ResDam/EndRdx(A), RctArm-ResDam/Rchg(19), RctArm-EndRdx/Rchg(21), RctArm-ResDam/EndRdx/Rchg(21)
Level 18: Weave -- LucoftheG-Def/Rchg+(A), LucoftheG-Def(19), LucoftheG-Def/EndRdx(34)
Level 20: Speed Boost -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A)
Level 22: Tactics -- GssSynFr--ToHit(A), GssSynFr--ToHit/Rchg(23), GssSynFr--ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(23), GssSynFr--Rchg/EndRdx(25), GssSynFr--ToHit/EndRdx(27), GssSynFr--Build%(25)
Level 24: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A)
Level 26: Lash -- SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg(A), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx(37), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(37), SprBlsCol-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(39), SprBlsCol-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(39), SprBlsCol-Rchg/HoldProc(39)
Level 28: Inertial Reduction -- BlsoftheZ-ResKB(A)
Level 30: Crack Whip -- SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg(A), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx(40), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(40), SprFrzBls-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(42), SprFrzBls-Dmg/EndRdx/Acc/Rchg(31), SprFrzBls-Rchg/ImmobProc(34)
Level 32: Cross Punch -- Erd-Dmg(A), Erd-Acc/Rchg(34), Erd-Dmg/Rchg(36), ClvBlo-Acc/Dmg(36), ClvBlo-Dmg/EndRdx(36), ClvBlo-Dmg/Rchg(33)
Level 35: Charged Armor -- StdPrt-ResDam/Def+(A), RctArm-ResDam/EndRdx(43), RctArm-ResDam/Rchg(43), RctArm-ResDam(40)
Level 38: Transference -- Acc-I(A)
Level 41: Electrifying Fences -- EnfOpr-Acc/Rchg(A), EnfOpr-Acc/Immob(42), EnfOpr-Acc/Immob/Rchg(42), EnfOpr-EndRdx/Immob(45), EnfOpr-Acc/EndRdx(45), EnfOpr-Immob/Rng(43)
Level 44: Thunder Strike -- SprAvl-Rchg/KDProc(A), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg(46), SprAvl-Dmg/EndRdx(48), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(46), SprAvl-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(46)
Level 47: Static Discharge -- OvrFrc-Acc/Dmg(A), OvrFrc-End/Rech(48), OvrFrc-Acc/Dmg/End(48), OvrFrc-Dmg/End/Rech(50), OvrFrc-Acc/Dmg/End/Rech(50)
Level 49: Fulcrum Shift -- Acc-I(A)
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Dash -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Slide -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Quick -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Rush -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Prestige Power Surge -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Supremacy 
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run 
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- Prv-Absorb%(A)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- PrfShf-EndMod(A), PrfShf-End%(37)
Level 50: Agility Partial Core Revamp 
Level 50: Support Core Genome 
------------

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[VV]

Great, this is super helpful!