Mastermind Incarnates questions

[Slithershot]

So, I decided to put my mercenaries MM six feet under. I just couldn't get into it. 

 

And.... I joined the cool kids club and made a thugs/time MM. I'm already kicking it at 50 with near capped defenses and I'm now face to face with the question.... what incarnates should I take? Hold up, how do these even WORK on MMs? Do they buff pets too? I KNOW NOTHING JOHN SNOW! 

 

I don't have endurance issues, so I'm not real worried about that. My defenses are damn near soft capped and my pets seem pretty sturdy in group play (which is all I'll be doing. I'm not looking to break the world soloing AV's, though I've no doubt that I probably could). 

 

ALPHA:  Will musculature actually buff my pets damage, or is it just sitting there making me slightly more threatening than a pool noodle as I hover there and toss debuffs, buffs, and heals with no attacks? Musculature seems like a no brainer if it does, in fact, buff my pets too.  If not... should I just go spiritual and call it a day so I can throw gang war at everything under sun? My recharge bonus is at 161% atm with hasten and chrono shift.

 

 

Destiny: Barrier looks really nice for destiny, but at the same time, ageless is always great for recharge... but how much recharge can I / should I stack? (Keep in mind I do not have any of my luck of the gambler recharge bonuses slotted yet, and I have a few "Fancy" sets that will give me a little more recharge, so I'm leaning towards barrier?)

 

Interface: I've got absolutely no idea what to pick here. Gravitic, and stack recharge debuffs on the enemy? Reactive, for more shredding power?

 

Hybrid: Again, does assault affect pets? If so, is it any good?  Are either of the support cores worth it? For control core embodiment.... does that include knockdown? Like, will I have a chance to proc psionic damage every time my bonfire makes someone flop about? If so, that sounds interesting but not sure if it's viable over the other two

[BGSacho]

The standard picks for MMs would be:

Musculature Alpha, since it affects pets and is a decent damage increase.
Clarion Destiny, because mezzes are your worst nightmare, and MMs have no real mez protection. You can also further cheese Farsight with Clarion Radial.
Any Radial Interface, but the best ones are probably Reactive and Degenerative. This is just as big of a damage increase as the Alpha.
Hybrid support is OK, Hybrid Assault Radial is insane damage but takes some effort to use properly(you could search the forums for details).

[nzer]

21 minutes ago, BGSacho said:

Hybrid support is OK, Hybrid Assault Radial is insane damage but takes some effort to use properly(you could search the forums for details).

To elaborate, if you summon your pets while hybrid assault is active they'll get the buff. If you summon them while it's not active then activate it, they won't get the buff. So if you can live with only ever summoning pets while hybrid is up (which should be fine with thugs/time, since your pets will be very durable), hybrid assault is great.

 

22 minutes ago, BGSacho said:

You can also further cheese Farsight with Clarion Radial.

Can, but note that clarion radial only provides mez protection for 90 seconds out of every 120, while clarion core provides perma mez protection. As thugs/time neither you nor your pets should need the extra defense, so you'll want to go with core.

 

For interface, degenerative is better than reactive, though not by much. -maxhp is numerically equivalent to -res before regen is considered, but it stacks with -res multiplicatively and indirectly reduces regen as well, which thugs/time gets a lot of benefit from since it doesn't have a strong source of -regen.

[Slithershot]

Awesome. Thanks guys! 

 

I hadn't really considered mez protection since I usually play scrappers. That gives me something to think about. 

 

The assault thing sounds.... mm. Yeah I don't know. I might just end up going support for that one then. 

[StrikerFox]

On 2/26/2020 at 12:28 AM, nzer said:

To elaborate, if you summon your pets while hybrid assault is active they'll get the buff. If you summon them while it's not active then activate it, they won't get the buff. So if you can live with only ever summoning pets while hybrid is up (which should be fine with thugs/time, since your pets will be very durable), hybrid assault is great.

I got into the habit of summoning pets then toggling Hybrid Assault on before entering a mission/TF/trial. When entering, Assault is still running and pets come in after (Which acts like a resummon I think). Assault will work like normal while in the one map, repeat when entering the next map (Without the summoning part). It would probably screw up if the pets die.

Edited February 28, 2020 by StrikerFox

[tremor3258]

Hybrid support also boosts defense which is useful on some set combinations (I'm honestly happy to trade out the timing trouble with assault and the extra damage for the tier 1 pets (especially) to be sturdier)

[Kommon]

On 2/27/2020 at 9:29 PM, StrikerFox said:

I got into the habit of summoning pets then toggling Hybrid Assault on before entering a mission/TF/trial. When entering, Assault is still running and pets come in after (Which acts like a resummon I think). Assault will work like normal while in the one map, repeat when entering the next map (Without the summoning part). It would probably screw up if the pets die.

I have adopted a habit of releasing and resummoning my pets when I enter a new instance.  My interface procs do not work on the pets that are auto-summoned upon mission entry (someone else please verify this, as I want to know if I am doing something wrong).

 

So what I do now is: 

• Before zoning, toggle hybrid assault
• In the new zone, release all pets if not done so before zoning
• Summon all pets again

These steps usually allows interface to work properly on my pets and allows the summoned pets to utilize Assault Radial (unless they die and I resummon while assault radial is not activated).

[StrikerFox]

8 hours ago, Kommon said:

My interface procs do not work on the pets that are auto-summoned upon mission entry.

Made a vid. Summoned pets, upgraded, activated T4 Assault Radial and then entered mish. Attacked with pet damage window up. Near the end, I scroll through and highlight a couple lines with the word "doublehit" which is Assault Radial damage.

 

https://youtu.be/nctuDdLXcWU

[Kommon]

4 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

Made a vid. Summoned pets, upgraded, activated T4 Assault Radial and then entered mish. Attacked with pet damage window up. Near the end, I scroll through and highlight a couple lines with the word "doublehit" which is Assault Radial damage.

 

https://youtu.be/nctuDdLXcWU

Thank you for the video!

 

This is very weird.... I follow the same steps as you did in your video on my Thugs/Time, and I didn't see a single doublehit nor degen proc in the pet damage combat logs.  Well, actually I saw a few doublehits, but only from the Burn pet that the Arsonist summoned.  I restarted a few times to try again, but I never saw procs from my henchmen unless I resummoned while already in the mission.  I'll hop on the test server to test some other stuff tomorrow, probably with the same mastermind you had in the video.

[StrikerFox]

1 hour ago, Kommon said:

This is very weird.... I follow the same steps as you did in your video on my Thugs/Time, and I didn't see a single doublehit nor degen proc in the pet damage combat logs.  

Just tested my Thugs/Time, same steps as Mercs/Storm, and you're right. It didn't work. That's kind of messed up, no idea what the problem might be.

 

Got a purple drop during the test. Nice bonus.

 

https://youtu.be/f6-Zs1atbiw

 

Actually the only difference between the two videos, besides the primary/secondary selection, is my Mercs/Storm uses a personal attack, Gale. I wonder if Assault Radial on an MM is somehow similar to Beasts' Pack Mentality coding. Where an MM's personal attacks is needed to build stacks of PM.

Edited March 1, 2020 by StrikerFox

[Kommon]

6 hours ago, StrikerFox said:

Just tested my Thugs/Time, same steps as Mercs/Storm, and you're right. It didn't work. That's kind of messed up, no idea what the problem might be.

 

Got a purple drop during the test. Nice bonus.

 

https://youtu.be/f6-Zs1atbiw

 

Actually the only difference between the two videos, besides the primary/secondary selection, is my Mercs/Storm uses a personal attack, Gale. I wonder if Assault Radial on an MM is somehow similar to Beasts' Pack Mentality coding. Where an MM's personal attacks is needed to build stacks of PM.

I tested my Bots/Traps just now using the same steps, and I get the same behavior as my with Thugs/Time.  None of the auto-summoned henchmen seem to inherit the interface nor hybrid assault procs on zoning, only freshly summon pets get procs from them, such as acid mortar and incendiary swam missiles burn patches.  Both masterminds don't have personal attacks, but hybrid assault and degenerative radial works fantastically on these two masterminds, as long as I freshly summon them on a mission map while its active.  I am leveling up a couple of demon masterminds, so I'll keep this in mind when it's incarnate time for them.

 

On another note, with the interface proc fixes from last patch, the radial branch seems like the way to go for most masterminds.

 

Edit: I tried a few more times with my Bots/Traps, and both interface and hybrid assault worked right after after I zoned in a new mission... I don't know anymore! 

Edited March 1, 2020 by Kommon