Secondary Powers Ranking

[Kendai]

Ok, I've played a few Masterminds and here were my thoughts on the Secondary Powers and how I'd rank them:

DISCLAIMER: This is only an opinion, and you are free to disagree, no hate please. This is for newer players, and since I teamed with someone nice this morning I thought I'd make a guide as he, like many new players were asking for what's effective. I may alter this subject to feedback.

TIER 1  - a mixture of everything, with area heal + defence to help keep your pets alive
Dark Miasma - area heal, area debuffs, area defence & resistance, a mass ressurect power & an extra pet! Skip Black Hole
Time Manipulation - area heal, single target & area debuffs, area defence & resistance, great single target & area buffs which include +recharge. Skip Time's Juncture, you don't want enemy aggro on yourself.

TIER 2 - just missing one ingredient which doesn't put them in Tier 1, but still very effective
Cold Domination - strongest defence and some strong buff & debuff, just be wary there's no healing at all in this set
Storm Summoning - the area debuff of Freezing Rain is great, as well as the area defence & resistance in Steamy Mist. This set is only behind because of its puny single target heal. BUT this set also harder to play well - please don't spam Gale or Hurricane in team play as it will annoy melee. The Overwhelming Force knockback to knockdown enhancement, or the Sudden Acceleration IO enhancement that does the same turns Tornado into being deadly power
Thermal Radiation - wow ok where to begin? Healing, single target damage buff, resurrect power, resistance buffs AND enemy debuffs? The only thing keeping this away from higher tiers is that defence will keep your pets alive more than resistance, but what a great set. I just feel Melt Armor should be more potent for an ultimate power
Traps - Force Field Generator is the best area defence power in the game! The rest is mostly debuff, but that's it. Triage Beacon isn't great, and the lack of a decent heal is what keeps this from being up a tier. Detonator seems fun in theory, but inconvenient to pull off in faster team gameplay, and I prefer to heal my henchmen rather than have to bother with resummoning, so I'd skip Detonator, and Trip Mines. Some people would say that's a good thing that you can just skip these last two powers, personally I just wish they had something better in their place!

TIER 3 - lacking in more than one ingredient but still worthy of attention
Electrical Affinity - following feedback on this thread people seem to like it. The status resistance seems to be the main thing that grabs my attention. Some healing and buffs in this set, but I'm still not that impressed by the numbers, nor by the -endurance to enemies which has hardly any effect as they still can use their powers for some reason :S Cold Domination does more -damage, other debuffs, and gives your pets +defence, so I may be wrong but I can't yet feel I can put Electrical Affinity up a tier next to Cold Domination
Kinetics - weee! Speed Boost your pets! Comes with an area heal, but it's centred around enemies. Insane damage and recharge buffs, but nothing much else to offer like defence, its resistance buff being unconventional and no significant debuff. BUT on a team, especially partnered with other players who buff defence, this becomes Tier 2 as your pets absolutely munch through enemies without taking much damage!
Nature Affinity - you get an area healing cone and some debuff in there. Overgrowth looks like a strong damage buff but Kinetics' Fulcrum Shift is better. The only reason this isn't up a tier is because defense is generally better than resistance - not being hit in the first place is better than resisting all attacks.

TIER 4 - less than average
Empathy - prevention is better than cure, and while Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost are incredible buffs they are only single-target. The auras are not great, and there's no debuffs in the set
Pain Domination - back on live this was the villain version of Empathy, so it's very similar with lots of healing. While Anguishing Cry is a decent debuff, its buffs are not as potent as Empathy's.
Poison - it's only one step up from Trick Arrow, it's all debuffs and weak single target heal

Radiation Emission - again, this is mainly about debuff, with an area heal. The holds are meh, leave it to the controllers or dominators

Sonic Resonance - buffs resistance and the hula-hoop of doom is a great resistance debuff, but no healing is unfortunate. Liquefy is disappointing. Skip Sonic Repulsion unless you want aggro from your teammates

TIER 5 - fun, but sadly not very efficient

Force Field - too many inconvenient and supbar powers here, has good defence, but nothing else notable to offer, unlike Cold Domination
Trick Arrow - it's all debuffs and no heals. Other sets do debuffing better and have other things to offer
 

But remember the most important thing is you have fun! My first MM was Bot / Force Field but remember some of these powers above only came in much later in live, and some didn't even exist in live! Hope this helps!

Edited July 20, 2020 by Kendai

[kiramon]

I just think the fact that you put FF under fun is just wrong lol

[Coyote]

29 minutes ago, kiramon said:

I just think the fact that you put FF under fun is just wrong lol

 

Hey, some people enjoy napping 😄

[Nyghtmaire]

Fun list! Some thoughts of of the top of my head.

 

1) Electric Affinity has “Faraday Cage” which adds resistance to you and all in the zone. Debuffs are widely present, including -regen which helps with harder targets. Also, I believe (but don’t immediately recall) that “Amp Up” gives a healthy dose of defense to a pet for 90 seconds. I’d rank this higher in tier than Empathy. 
 

2) Radiation is a light version of Dark, like an annoying younger brother stealing it’s makeup and goth records to lock himself in his room and watch anime on subtitles. The debuffs are potent, the -ToHit serves as de facto defense (until it doesn’t by being resisted), and accelerate metabolism can free up endurance slotting in pets (I’m looking at you Demons) while adding +damage. Like /traps, it shines as a soloing set with a similar “plant a flag” style of play (lacking force field generator, instead using Radiation Infection for a similar effect). Also, the toggles are excellent for pulling groups around a corner into your ‘arrest’ zone (similar to Darkest Night in /dark).
 

3) Kinetics is overvalued for masterminds except for limited circumstances and pet groups (e.g. beasts with the ability to self-softcap defense).

 

4) Time - Time’s Juncture is an amazing power! It provides a backdrop protection against cascading defense failure. 
 

Overall, resistance + AOE heals edges out defense sets for long-term longevity in a vacuum. This is dependent on the pet set in question though. The value of any secondary (and its ranking) increases or decreases based on the interaction with the pets and their native resistance/defense, the slot flexibility to place the resistance/defense uniques, and the various secondary effects the pets can maintain (such as -ToHit in Necro).

[tidge]

On a 5-tier system, I wouldn't rank Traps as middle of the pack specifically because it is front-loaded. I would personally prefer to not have to take Web Grenade,  but the next 5 powers Caltrops / Triage Beacon(*1) / Acid Mortar / Force Field Generator / Poison Trap are all quite effective against large numbers of enemies (either when teaming, or when solo). You can have each of these powers by level 20! Don't minimize the debuffs / holds / slows / defense buffs for improving team performance.

 

(*1) Triage Beacon is valuable if your teams' fights are slow moving. In solo +0/x1 content you really won't get much out of it. Of course an on-demand AoE Heal would be better, but it is something else.

 

Because Traps' last two powers are such duds (most play isn't slow enough for Trip Mine to be that useful; Skip Detonator^TM), and a single-target Immobilize (mandatory 1st pick) is so... meh... It isn't going be top tier. I'm not sure how much it would matter to game balance if the T9 Detonator was swapped with the T1 Web Grenade.

 

I haven't mentioned Seeker Drones. I like the little guys, but their debuffs and low Magnitude stuns are not as obviously useful as the earlier powers.

[kiramon]

I love my beast/cold, but probably because it’s very engaged with attacks and the pets are just there lol

[TheSpiritFox]

Traps and nature are T1 fyi. Traps may not have a heal but it has the best debuffs bar none, solid soft control, the best defense power in the game, and it's a light set both because you can completely skip Trip mine and detonator and because several of the powers are effective with light slotting.  

 

Nature is the best healing set in the game, which comes with some solid hard control, a solid toggle debuff, and awesome buffs both for pets (+dam on pets is great, absorb on pets is fucking incredible) and for teammates. 

 

 

[Kendai]

3 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Traps and nature are T1 fyi. Traps may not have a heal but it has the best debuffs bar none, solid soft control, the best defense power in the game, and it's a light set both because you can completely skip Trip mine and detonator and because several of the powers are effective with light slotting.  

 

Nature is the best healing set in the game, which comes with some solid hard control, a solid toggle debuff, and awesome buffs both for pets (+dam on pets is great, absorb on pets is fucking incredible) and for teammates. 

 

 

Everything's an opinion here, but yes, I forgot the insane amount of defence that Force Field Generator gives in Traps. Bumping it up a tier after looking at the numbers again.

I honestly don't know Nature well enough, do you think it's better than Empathy & Pain Domination which are primarily healing sets? I don't get what you mean by "hard control", Entangling Aura is only a chance to hold, and even if it does it's only a mag 1 hold for 4 seconds. It's better taken on a Controller to stack with the primary sets there.

Of course everything's subjective - "solid soft or hard control" and "solid toggle debuff" can mean different things to different people. For control I'd leave it to the controllers and dominators with better holds, though Thunderclap and Seeker Drones are resepctable with their Mag 2 stuns. With debuffs I mainly look to -res and -def, as that will leave enemies more vulnerable to damage, the quicker they're dead, the less of a threat they are 😛 Spore Cloud is the same as Darkest Night, just with -regen added (and Dark has a -regen power in its mass resurrect power).

 

Also I don't know if swearing is allowed on the forums... >_<

[Hjarki]

You're definitely under-valuing Electric Affinity - it's by far the best support set for keeping your pets alive and active.

 

I'd also argue you're under-valuing Kinetics. While it's common to think of the sets as just Fulcrum Shift, Increase Density is a great buff due to its enormous S/E resists and -kb resist (often absent on pets themselves), Speed Boost ensures your pets can keep up with a fast moving team and the panoply of -damage powers make it one of the best options for keeping pets alive in tough AV/GM fights. There's also a strong argument for the 'best defense is a good offense'.

[Elthenar]

5 hours ago, tidge said:

I haven't mentioned Seeker Drones. I like the little guys, but their debuffs and low Magnitude stuns are not as obviously useful as the earlier powers.

 

Seeker Drones are great. The debuff and stuns are gravy, the best thing about them is summoning them in the middle of enemys and letting them absorb the alpha while you drop mortars, caltrops, pets on their head.

[Nyghtmaire]

2 hours ago, Hjarki said:

I'd also argue you're under-valuing Kinetics. While it's common to think of the sets as just Fulcrum Shift, Increase Density is a great buff due to its enormous S/E resists and -kb resist (often absent on pets themselves), Speed Boost ensures your pets can keep up with a fast moving team and the panoply of -damage powers make it one of the best options for keeping pets alive in tough AV/GM fights. There's also a strong argument for the 'best defense is a good offense'.

I always forget this part about the added resistance. I pretty much exclusively play Necro/ now and my hazy memory was that it wasn’t enough. I can imagine how this would be beneficial to other primaries. 

[kiramon]

47 minutes ago, Nyghtmaire said:

I always forget this part about the added resistance. I pretty much exclusively play Necro/ now and my hazy memory was that it wasn’t enough. I can imagine how this would be beneficial to other primaries. 

I was thinking of it for necro despite their fragility just for the damage and speed 

[Kendai]

11 hours ago, Hjarki said:

You're definitely under-valuing Electric Affinity - it's by far the best support set for keeping your pets alive and active.

 

I'd also argue you're under-valuing Kinetics. While it's common to think of the sets as just Fulcrum Shift, Increase Density is a great buff due to its enormous S/E resists and -kb resist (often absent on pets themselves), Speed Boost ensures your pets can keep up with a fast moving team and the panoply of -damage powers make it one of the best options for keeping pets alive in tough AV/GM fights. There's also a strong argument for the 'best defense is a good offense'.

That's nice you like Electric Affinity, but you've not provided any reasoning why.

I've found the pets on my Kinetic MM to die too easily. The Slashing & Energy Resist is weird - why is Lethal missing? The kb protection... ok fair point, and yes SB deffo helps the pets to keep up with a fast team, but I've not been that impressed by the -damage powers, and not noticed any extra pet survivability because of them... It's a good set in my eyes, definitely, but just works better on a team that can plug the gaps. I did say on a team it gets bumped up a Tier.

[Hjarki]

1 hour ago, Kendai said:

That's nice you like Electric Affinity, but you've not provided any reasoning why.

I've found the pets on my Kinetic MM to die too easily. The Slashing & Energy Resist is weird - why is Lethal missing? The kb protection... ok fair point, and yes SB deffo helps the pets to keep up with a fast team, but I've not been that impressed by the -damage powers, and not noticed any extra pet survivability because of them... It's a good set in my eyes, definitely, but just works better on a team that can plug the gaps. I did say on a team it gets bumped up a Tier.

Electric Affinity is the only way to give across-the-board status protection to your pets (and yourself). It also provides blanket resists backed by strong multi-target heals and absorbs. As I noted, it's the best set for keeping your pets alive and active. Additionally, it solves most of your problems with endurance/recharge (rather than introducing new ones as many other sets do).

 

I suspect part of the problem rests with the statement: "defence will keep your pets alive more than resistance". Which really isn't the case. Defense tends to mean you don't need to heal all that much when you're fighting enemies that aren't particularly challenging. But it tends to fail catastrophically when you ramp up the difficulty because you go from situations where you have to keep busy with healing to ones where no amount of healing is possible because your pets are getting one-shot. Moreover, Defense is worthless for bodyguard mode. There are just too many situations where it's helpful to back off some of your pets to outlast an enemy.

 

In terms of Kinetics, it's defensively stronger than two of your other choices (Dark and Storm) just based on Increase Density. On a single target, the stacking -damage debuffs can potentially cut down damage almost as much as capping resists would and you can basically full-heal all of your pets every few seconds.

[Hopestar]

Electrical Affinity and Nature Affinity as, their naming convention suggests, are pretty similar and would go in the same tier along with Cold and Radiation. Electrical Affinity has -damage in 2 powers, 1 of which is AoE, stacking up to -33.75% damage (-damage being unresistable mind you), a revive, and it's buffs (+endurance, +damage, +absorb, +rech) and heals have no target cap, entirely dependent on how many stacks you have (~20 without substantial +recharge from teammates). Nature is similar with it's heal and absorb, -res with it's ST -damage, similar PBAoE resist + regen, +endurance over time, and massive +50%, -75% endurance cost AoE buff.

 

Sonic and Empathy belong with Force Field in their effectiveness. Like FF, they excel at only one thing which isn't worth not having/having 1 debuff along side them.

If I were to rank them in order of effectiveness (I rewrote some that I thought needed more clarification sorry):

 

TIER 1  - a mixture of everything, with area heal + defence to help keep your pets alive
Dark Miasma - While the initial area heal is the longest cast of all heals and requires a target, this belongs here because of: -30% res AND -fly -jump slow in Tar Patch, a -500% regen that also revives teammates, the largest -Damage AoE included with -tohit, +defense +res (E/N/P), a very long range cone with even more -tohit (22.5 combined unenhanced), AND a pet with those same -tohit powers for up to -45%. Skip Black Hole.
Time Manipulation - AoE +Recharge, AoE -damage -tohit, AoE unresistable heal, AoE (you see the theme here) -recharge -speed mag 3(!) Hold, AoE +defense +tohit, and another AoE -damage with -res. This set has it all, so the only skippables would be Time Stop or Temporal Selection since it's a great teammate buff, but does nothing for your henchmen.

TIER 2 - just missing one ingredient which doesn't put them in Tier 1, but still very effective

Electrical Affinity - The fact that Faraday Cage gives you mag 10 protections from practically everything AND +resist to all but Toxic makes this set. The -damage in 2 powers, 1 of which is AoE, stacking up to -33.75% damage (-damage being unresistable mind you), a revive, and it's buffs (+endurance, +damage, +absorb, +rech) and heals have no target cap, entirely dependent on how many stacks you have (~20 without substantial +recharge from teammates) and ability to keep yourself, henchmen and team full on endurance is just a bonus. The numbers being too low just hold it back from being up there with Time and Dark.

Nature Affinity - With +regen and healing over time strewn about everywhere in the set, the AoE: heals, +res, +50% damage, +tohit, +75% endurance cost reduction, absorb, -tohit, -damage, -res, this set has everything you want. Like Electrical Affinity, if the numbers in +res and -damage were higher, this set would be #1. I just wish the revive was AoE. Oh and skip Entangling, it's awful.

Traps - Poison Trap's -1000% regen combined with mag 3 hold and special vomit debuff makes you an absolute nightmare to enemies. Caltrops is super strong with procs, Acid Mortar's -def -res and FFG's +def, and with Seeker and Trip being respectable damage, something most sets don't have, it's a decent jack of all trades. It has a heal, but it's long recharge and stationary meaning in a team you'll always outrun it. Skip Detonator.
Cold Domination - While the fact the +Defense shields are only for allies hurts, they're still high amounts of defense and Benumb's gigantic -37.5% damage and -500% regen makes up for it, the +Max HP is nice for Absorb and Regen users like Bio and Radiation, but for you its only worth using on your T3 henchman. Heat Loss -res and -end are great, providing tons of END to keep you and your team going is just a bonus. Henchmen not running out of endurance is a buff in itself.

TIER 3 - lacking in more than one ingredient but still worthy of attention

Storm Summoning - the area debuff of Freezing Rain is great, as well as the area defence & resistance in Steamy Mist. This set is only behind because of its puny single target heal. BUT this set also harder to play well - please don't spam Gale or Hurricane in team play as it will annoy melee. The Overwhelming Force knockback to knockdown enhancement, or the Sudden Acceleration IO enhancement that does the same turns Tornado into being deadly power

Kinetics - weee! Speed Boost your pets! Comes with an area heal, but it's centred around enemies. Insane damage and recharge buffs, but nothing much else to offer like defence, its resistance buff being unconventional and no significant debuff. BUT on a team, especially partnered with other players who buff defence, this becomes Tier 2 as your pets absolutely munch through enemies without taking much damage!

Poison - It's better than Traps in the debuff department, but like Storm and Kinetics, it lacks survivability and it's buff and heal are both single target which is very bad for MM henchmen.

Radiation Emission - again, this is mainly about debuff, with an area heal. The holds are meh, leave it to the controllers or dominators and AM is overvalued.

Thermal Radiation - wow ok where to begin? Healing, single target damage buff, ressurect power, resistance buffs AND enemy debuffs? I just feel Melt Armor should be more potent for an ultimate power. The 2+ second cast times of most of the powers and low +damage for a single target Forge keep this from being up with Electric and Nature.

TIER 4 - less than average

Pain Domination - back on live this was the villain version of Empathy, so it's very similar with lots of healing. While Anguishing Cry is a decent debuff, its buffs are not as potent as Empathy's.

Sonic Resonance - buffs resistance and the hula-hoop of doom is a great resistance debuff, but no healing is unfortunate. Liquefy is disappointing. Skip Sonic Repulsion unless you want aggro from your teammates

 Force Field - Unless you like to AFK, Cold is just this, but better. 😂

Empathy - prevention is better than cure, and while Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost are incredible buffs they are only single-target. The auras are not great, and there's no debuffs in the set

TIER 5 - fun, but sadly not very efficient

Trick Arrow - it's all debuffs and no heals. Other sets do debuffing better and have other things to offer

 

Final thoughts: 2 common misconceptions that started in Live:

• that resistance isn't good for pets because bodyguard mode deals damage before resistances, but this is false (see Supremacy). Defense trumps Resist in that it stops potential debuffs and crowd control, but without resist your henchmen still take massive damage when they do get hit and some enemies even have autohit powers that ignore defense.
• that -end is useless because enemies with no endurance can still fire off attacks. Absolutely not true for almost all enemies except some AVs, but they will definitely tend to run away across the map if not taunted.

[Coyote]

Mostly agree with Hopestar's assessment.

 

Dark is very strong IF you manage location successfully. Works better with ranged pets so you can pull spawns into fights rather than following crazy Ninjas into fights with mobs who aren't debuffed. Time is almost as strong, but a lot easier to manage. Both suffer against some mob types that bring a lot of +Def, but Dark does have a lot of -Damage and a bit more control than Time, which is what you need against Rularuu eyeballs rather than just +Def or -ToHit.

 

Kinetics so far is working reasonably well as long as I can use Tankermind to pull attacks through the MM's defense and resists and have Bodyguard mode spread the damage around so that Ninjas aren't getting one-shotted by focusing damage on a single one. The ones who die are always the ones who run off solo to kill a single mob away from me. But while it's solid if HEAVILY micromanaged to keep the fight near the MM and the aggro on you, if you're not going to use Tankerminding strategies with it, I would put it a lot lower... dead Fulcrum Shifted pets do no damage.

 

Storm is similar to Kinetics: It depends on Tankerminding and Hurricane to minimize incoming damage to pets, and if you can have that working well you can leverage its high damage. If not, then you may lose more damage to pets dying than you gain from Storm's powers. Due to pulling far more aggro, Tankerminding is a lot easier than with Kinetics, but on the other hand it has a bit of Resist and Defense rather than a very strong heal, so the aggro part is easier but the surviving aggro part isn't as easy. And unlike Kinetics, you can't split damage to pets and then heal everyone with an AoE.

[TheSpiritFox]

2 hours ago, Hopestar said:

Electrical Affinity and Nature Affinity as, their naming convention suggests, are pretty similar and would go in the same tier along with Cold and Radiation. Electrical Affinity has -damage in 2 powers, 1 of which is AoE, stacking up to -33.75% damage (-damage being unresistable mind you), a revive, and it's buffs (+endurance, +damage, +absorb, +rech) and heals have no target cap, entirely dependent on how many stacks you have (~20 without substantial +recharge from teammates). Nature is similar with it's heal and absorb, -res with it's ST -damage, similar PBAoE resist + regen, +endurance over time, and massive +50%, -75% endurance cost AoE buff.

 

Sonic and Empathy belong with Force Field in their effectiveness. Like FF, they excel at only one thing which isn't worth not having/having 1 debuff along side them.

If I were to rank them in order of effectiveness (I rewrote some that I thought needed more clarification sorry):

 

TIER 1  - a mixture of everything, with area heal + defence to help keep your pets alive
Dark Miasma - While the initial area heal is the longest cast of all heals and requires a target, this belongs here because of: -30% res AND -fly -jump slow in Tar Patch, a -500% regen that also revives teammates, the largest -Damage AoE included with -tohit, +defense +res (E/N/P), a very long range cone with even more -tohit (22.5 combined unenhanced), AND a pet with those same -tohit powers for up to -45%. Skip Black Hole.
Time Manipulation - AoE +Recharge, AoE -damage -tohit, AoE unresistable heal, AoE (you see the theme here) -recharge -speed mag 3(!) Hold, AoE +defense +tohit, and another AoE -damage with -res. This set has it all, so the only skippables would be Time Stop or Temporal Selection since it's a great teammate buff, but does nothing for your henchmen.

TIER 2 - just missing one ingredient which doesn't put them in Tier 1, but still very effective

Electrical Affinity - The fact that Faraday Cage gives you mag 10 protections from practically everything AND +resist to all but Toxic makes this set. The -damage in 2 powers, 1 of which is AoE, stacking up to -33.75% damage (-damage being unresistable mind you), a revive, and it's buffs (+endurance, +damage, +absorb, +rech) and heals have no target cap, entirely dependent on how many stacks you have (~20 without substantial +recharge from teammates) and ability to keep yourself, henchmen and team full on endurance is just a bonus. The numbers being too low just hold it back from being up there with Time and Dark.

Nature Affinity - With +regen and healing over time strewn about everywhere in the set, the AoE: heals, +res, +50% damage, +tohit, +75% endurance cost reduction, absorb, -tohit, -damage, -res, this set has everything you want. Like Electrical Affinity, if the numbers in +res and -damage were higher, this set would be #1. I just wish the revive was AoE. Oh and skip Entangling, it's awful.

Traps - Poison Trap's -1000% regen combined with mag 3 hold and special vomit debuff makes you an absolute nightmare to enemies. Caltrops is super strong with procs, Acid Mortar's -def -res and FFG's +def, and with Seeker and Trip being respectable damage, something most sets don't have, it's a decent jack of all trades. It has a heal, but it's long recharge and stationary meaning in a team you'll always outrun it. Skip Detonator.
Cold Domination - While the fact the +Defense shields are only for allies hurts, they're still high amounts of defense and Benumb's gigantic -37.5% damage and -500% regen makes up for it, the +Max HP is nice for Absorb and Regen users like Bio and Radiation, but for you its only worth using on your T3 henchman. Heat Loss -res and -end are great, providing tons of END to keep you and your team going is just a bonus. Henchmen not running out of endurance is a buff in itself.

TIER 3 - lacking in more than one ingredient but still worthy of attention

Storm Summoning - the area debuff of Freezing Rain is great, as well as the area defence & resistance in Steamy Mist. This set is only behind because of its puny single target heal. BUT this set also harder to play well - please don't spam Gale or Hurricane in team play as it will annoy melee. The Overwhelming Force knockback to knockdown enhancement, or the Sudden Acceleration IO enhancement that does the same turns Tornado into being deadly power

Kinetics - weee! Speed Boost your pets! Comes with an area heal, but it's centred around enemies. Insane damage and recharge buffs, but nothing much else to offer like defence, its resistance buff being unconventional and no significant debuff. BUT on a team, especially partnered with other players who buff defence, this becomes Tier 2 as your pets absolutely munch through enemies without taking much damage!

Poison - It's better than Traps in the debuff department, but like Storm and Kinetics, it lacks survivability and it's buff and heal are both single target which is very bad for MM henchmen.

Radiation Emission - again, this is mainly about debuff, with an area heal. The holds are meh, leave it to the controllers or dominators and AM is overvalued.

Thermal Radiation - wow ok where to begin? Healing, single target damage buff, ressurect power, resistance buffs AND enemy debuffs? I just feel Melt Armor should be more potent for an ultimate power. The 2+ second cast times of most of the powers and low +damage for a single target Forge keep this from being up with Electric and Nature.

TIER 4 - less than average

Pain Domination - back on live this was the villain version of Empathy, so it's very similar with lots of healing. While Anguishing Cry is a decent debuff, its buffs are not as potent as Empathy's.

Sonic Resonance - buffs resistance and the hula-hoop of doom is a great resistance debuff, but no healing is unfortunate. Liquefy is disappointing. Skip Sonic Repulsion unless you want aggro from your teammates

 Force Field - Unless you like to AFK, Cold is just this, but better. 😂

Empathy - prevention is better than cure, and while Fortitude and Adrenaline Boost are incredible buffs they are only single-target. The auras are not great, and there's no debuffs in the set

TIER 5 - fun, but sadly not very efficient

Trick Arrow - it's all debuffs and no heals. Other sets do debuffing better and have other things to offer

 

Final thoughts: 2 common misconceptions that started in Live:

• that resistance isn't good for pets because bodyguard mode deals damage before resistances, but this is false (see Supremacy). Defense trumps Resist in that it stops potential debuffs and crowd control, but without resist your henchmen still take massive damage when they do get hit and some enemies even have autohit powers that ignore defense.
• that -end is useless because enemies with no endurance can still fire off attacks. Absolutely not true for almost all enemies except some AVs, but they will definitely tend to run away across the map if not taunted.

This is much closer to reality imo

 

One note. Temporal selection increases healing done by time's heals on a specific pet, it is a long lasting buff that increases damage a decent bit which you don't have a ton of ways to do with pets, it also increases regeneration which is meh but hey it helps. Temporal selection is a good power and worth taking esp on a demons or thugs or bots mm. With a high recharge build you can keep it perma on 4 targets. So like, your assault bot and all three drones. Or your bruiser and arsonist and 2 team mates. Or your T2 and T3 demons. You can drop it on a pet that is almost dead and heal that pet more than the rest, saving you healing casts potentially in keeping pets alive. Temporal selection is a good power. 

Edited June 12, 2020 by TheSpiritFox

[Redlynne]

39 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

This set has it all, so the only skippables would be Time Stop or Temporal Selection since it's a great teammate buff, but does nothing for your henchmen.

*ahem*

Neither of these powers should be skipped.  Time Crawl combined with Time Stop will neutralize Bosses in short order (mag 3 without Time Crawl, mag 4 with Time Crawl debuff).

Temporal Selection adds multiple buffs that apply to a single Pet (+Damage, +Regeneration and increased Healing effect when healed).

44 minutes ago, TheSpiritFox said:

Oh and skip Entangling, it's awful.

I disagree.

Entangling Aura is a power that needs enhancement to be very powerful (surprise, I know).  The activation period is 5s and the Hold duration is 4s (and does not stack from same caster) ... so at a bare minimum you want to have +25% Hold duration (to increase 4s to 5s for possible perma overlap) with the goal being to have as much Hold duration enhancement as you can usefully fit into the power so as to make the Hold effect as extended as possible.  With an 8s or more duration, the Hold duration is long enough to severely imbalance combat in your favor (and thus in favor of the survival of your Pets).

[Hopestar]

Skippable things are powers that you can ditch if you need the slot for something more important, not necessarily bad powers. Personally I skipped Time Stop because Spirit Shark Jaws is an overall better hold with less cast time, more duration, and high damage with better proc ability.

I have to disagree with that, Entangling is a mag 1 hold that can only stack to a mag 2, and so will only hold Minions which generally aren't a threat anyway, it's really not worth the gigantic endurance cost or slots. The set doesn't have any other hold to stack with it so it's awful. You could argue that it pushes an EPP or PPP pick from 3 to 4/5 but it's also only a 15' PBAoE you have to camp next to the enemy to use increasing the threat to you.

 

@TheSpiritFox Yeah you're right it does deserve more credit with the increased healing, with time being a defense set, healing the larger damage you take more and faster is welcome.

[Redlynne]

2 minutes ago, Hopestar said:

@TheSpiritFox Yeah you're right it does deserve more credit with the increased healing, with time being a defense set, healing the larger damage you take more and faster is welcome.

Even better yet, you can enhance Temporal Selection (I like using the full 6 slots of Preventative Medicine) so as to have it simulcast on more than one Ally/Pet.  With enough global recharge in the build (for Farsight and Chrono Shift mainly) you can get Temporal Selection down to ~40s recharge time on a 120s duration, which can mean up to 3 Temporal Selection effects running concurrently on multiple Allies/Pets ... so definitely not useless.

[Nyghtmaire]

5 hours ago, Hopestar said:

that resistance isn't good for pets because bodyguard mode deals damage before resistances, but this is false (see Supremacy). Defense trumps Resist in that it stops potential debuffs and crowd control, but without resist your henchmen still take massive damage when they do get hit and some enemies even have autohit powers that ignore defense

My understanding (albeit from Live) was that damage shared to pets via bodyguard was unresistable to the pets but reduced first by the player’s resistance. Meaning the player’s resistance reduced damage, which is then divided to the number of pets on bodyguard mode, bypassing the pets’ inate or increased resistance (by unique, shield, etc.). The link isn’t clear about that. However, a pet’s resistance would still reduce damage directly received. It’s why AOE attacks can be so devastating while in BG mode: the pet takes direct damage AND its BG share.

 

Edit: tested on my Necro/Sonic. One tier 1 Zombie with shields, one without. Both take same damage shared from BG.

Edited June 12, 2020 by Nyghtmaire
Follow-up

[Kendai]

13 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

This is much closer to reality imo

 

One note. Temporal selection increases healing done by time's heals on a specific pet, it is a long lasting buff that increases damage a decent bit which you don't have a ton of ways to do with pets, it also increases regeneration which is meh but hey it helps. Temporal selection is a good power and worth taking esp on a demons or thugs or bots mm. With a high recharge build you can keep it perma on 4 targets. So like, your assault bot and all three drones. Or your bruiser and arsonist and 2 team mates. Or your T2 and T3 demons. You can drop it on a pet that is almost dead and heal that pet more than the rest, saving you healing casts potentially in keeping pets alive. Temporal selection is a good power. 

Nice edit of my post, which I do keep updating depending on feedback. However, you don't provide any reasoning for moving some sets down tiers, like Thermal or Storm - how are those sets lacking in an ingredient?
You have an interesting way of declaring what you deem to be reality 🙂

[Kendai]

@Hopestar I do keep updating my OG post, depending on feedback and will consider your comment.

 

However, you don't provide any reasoning for moving some sets down tiers, like Thermal or Storm - how are those sets lacking in an ingredient?

I'm astonished you would consider skipping Temporal Selection, it gives +damage, recharge and +heal from your aoe heal. If not used on your pets use it on other teammates because they will much appreciate it!

[Hopestar]

For Thermal I added it at the end: "The 2+ second cast times of most of the powers and low +damage for a single target Forge keep this from being up with Electric and Nature."
Storm and Kinetic both suffer from having no real ability to keep you and your henchmen alive aside from -damage or "put them down before they put us down" mentality. While Storm has a decent 15% resist, it's only for Energy, Fire, and Cold, Energy being the only one you encounter often and it's defense is quite small, the same as a Defender's Maneuvers iirc.
Pain would go in T3 if it wasn't so self-detrimental.
Radiation probably should be alongside Traps now that I look back, with lots of -res, -dam, -500% regen, and ability to heal make it better than the others in it's Tier. Choking Cloud (same as Entangling), Fallout, and Mutation kind of keep it from being the best with their downsides and Fallout being not useable on Henchmen.

As for Temporal Selection, as I said,

Quote

Skippable things are powers that you can ditch if you need the slot for something more important, not necessarily bad powers. Personally I skipped Time Stop because Spirit Shark Jaws is an overall better hold with less cast time, more duration, and high damage with better proc ability.

While it's helpful for healing henchmen as Spirit Fox pointed out, it's definitely worth skipping if you solo and a power that would take it's place would do something better, like increase your survivability like Tough or Weave.

[Redlynne]

1 hour ago, Hopestar said:

While it's helpful for healing henchmen as Spirit Fox pointed out, it's definitely worth skipping if you solo and a power that would take it's place would do something better, like increase your survivability like Tough or Weave.

Tough is a minimum 2 power picks due to pre-reqs and Weave is a minimum of 3.  Temporal Mending is a single power pick with no pre-reqs.  The comparison you are making is not symmetrical in opportunity costs.