Am I the world's worst MasterMind player or is it a class design I don't understand?

[DrBasics]

So every MasterMind I build (either on the actual server or on the test server) I abandon because at max level, even running a simple 50+4 council team, my pets get their asses handed to them, especially the lowbie-trio. Am I correct in thinking that the only way to make them more sturdy is by doing things like using super high +defense stuff like Force Field or Time Manipulation?

 

So the question I have is... am I the worst Mastermind player ever and I can't slot IO sets as a MM at all? Or are the lowbie-trio designed to faceplant often?

[Riverdusk]

In my experience MM's do depend on powerset combo and build a lot in order to survive well (if you are going to try and do max difficulty anyway).  You mention /time and I have had a lot of luck with that one with almost any primary, but I also built up a necro/sonic that does well for me albeit it takes some incarnate help (resilient and barrier to get them to or very close to that res cap). People have raved about demon/thermal and that's probably an easier road.   There are other successful builds if you take a look through the forum.

 

Also, one tip anyway is that the level shift you get for incarnate also helps pets which is especially important for tier 1 pets as otherwise those +4 enemies are actually +6's to your tier 1 pets.  It is hard for anyone to do anything fighting +6's as the purple patch is kicking in VERY hard at that point.  Enemies at that point even have a +5 tohit so the soft cap is 50 and not 45 against +6's.  Yes, tier 1's are going to tend to fold against that.

 

Note that solo on my MM's I rarely bother with max difficulty as it is a hassle to me even with a "strong" build, and I honestly don't find it fun or see the point.  I'm not trying to farm with my MM's.  So, blasphemy I know, but the other option is to just lower it to "only" +3.  Combined with level shift now your tier ones are only fighting at +4 instead of +6, HUGE difference.  

 

[Bill Z Bubba]

You just explained why I don't have any masterminds. I've tried. Many times. None of them stick because none of them can pull off the dumb stuff I enjoy doing in game.

[Heraclea]

I have a beasts/mind MM at max level that I rather enjoy, but I consider the character mostly support and do not often solo with that one.  Beasts are one of the least annoying MM pet sets, at least not at demons or robots level, and that helps.  But mostly I bring her out to rim team content where a lot of debuff helps. 

[plainguy]

1 hour ago, Heraclea said:

I have a beasts/mind MM at max level that I rather enjoy, but I consider the character mostly support and do not often solo with that one.  Beasts are one of the least annoying MM pet sets, at least not at demons or robots level, and that helps.  But mostly I bring her out to rim team content where a lot of debuff helps. 

Beast / Mind ?

Did I miss an update for mids ?

[Dakkaface]

4 hours ago, DrBasics said:

So every MasterMind I build (either on the actual server or on the test server) I abandon because at max level, even running a simple 50+4 council team, my pets get their asses handed to them, especially the lowbie-trio. Am I correct in thinking that the only way to make them more sturdy is by doing things like using super high +defense stuff like Force Field or Time Manipulation?

 

So the question I have is... am I the worst Mastermind player ever and I can't slot IO sets as a MM at all? Or are the lowbie-trio designed to faceplant often?

I'm with @Riverduskon this. +4 content is hard on an MM because your primary is three entities that are -2 to you and two that are -1.  The majority of your henches are dealing with enemies that are +6/+5 to them.  Get that T3 Alpha ASAP because it applies the shift to your pets as well.   I'm really not sure MM's are cut out for +4 content because of the very nature of henchman mechanics, but I'm fine with that.

2 hours ago, Heraclea said:

I have a beasts/mind MM at max level that I rather enjoy, but I consider the character mostly support and do not often solo with that one.  Beasts are one of the least annoying MM pet sets, at least not at demons or robots level, and that helps.  But mostly I bring her out to rim team content where a lot of debuff helps. 

*/Mind isn't an MM secondary on Homecoming. The only thing close is Empathy or Pain. Are you remembering something from Thunderspy or another server or just misremembering the secondary?

Edited August 3, 2020 by Dakkaface

[plainguy]

Mastermind are rough if you are not using the keypad to control the pets.

 

Also you are not mentioning what your build is.. What primary and secondary are.. ETC.

 

Elaborate a bit more.  

 

What Primary and Secondary are you looking at. Again enough builds on the forums to help you out.

 

8/3 is my max setting as well for speed and comfort.  8/4 just seems to slow down a bit too much.

 

[TheSpiritFox]

My thugs/time, thugs/traps, and demons nature are my three tankiest mms, all 3 can handle +4x8 solo. Council is easy, something like malta or arachnos is legit harder and can be time consuming. 

[DrBasics]

1 hour ago, TheSpiritFox said:

My thugs/time, thugs/traps, and demons nature are my three tankiest mms, all 3 can handle +4x8 solo. Council is easy, something like malta or arachnos is legit harder and can be time consuming. 

Sorry for asking because I am literally ignorant on the class. Does this mean you are surviving but your pets are dying? Do you have to resummon them after every group? Or are you straight up murdering everything in your path like a buzzsaw?

[Force Redux]

My Thugs/Time is my beefiest and tankiest MM combo and like TheSpiritFox, can run +4/x8 S/L farms, although for time's sake, I find it quicker to run +3/x8. Minion death is negligible. Most runs do not see a T1 minion death, even with arsonist's suicidal tendancies. Part of this is due to the new pet AI changes, they stay in range of my buffs/heals/auras. The other is the amazing support that Time brings to the already top tier Thugs. I run them in aggressive, I never tankermind.

 

Where I lose pets is when I'm on a team where the map scatters them (layer cake rooms) and they lose the aura bonus and access to my heals/buffs. I find that Group Fly is a good answer to this, to prvent the pet AI from going berserk with some difficult pathing on anything with a wierd Z axis (such as some of the Orangega cave maps). The rest is all practice, and learning the AI. I do not use a numberpad keybind, The most common commands I use are "GoTo" and "Follow" on all pets on 99% of content. 

 

It may be that MMs just aren't your thing, also. I've always loved pet classes, no matter what the game is.

 

A big difference in later content is getting your Alpha slot to +1 level (T3) so your pets are bumped up as well (this and all six pet IOs). This is the single best thing you can do to help pet survivability. 

Edited August 4, 2020 by Force Redux

[Heraclea]

13 hours ago, plainguy said:

Beast / Mind ?

Did I miss an update for mids ?

Brainfart for Time.

[ajawzero]

I just came back to the game about 2 months ago and ended up with an MM as my first 50. Pets were dying a lot but after getting T3 alpha and reslotting for the pet IO procs, I can do 2x8 pretty easily without the pets dying. Took Agility for my Alpha and Support Core for my Hybrid. Pretty sure I'll be able to handle 4x8 shortly depending on the mob type. I struggle with getting held/mezzed (Carnies/Malta) but I think a lot of classes do as well.

 

Here's my build -

AJ_Tech_-_Mastermind (Pain) - Final.mxd

[Nyghtmaire]

In addition to the above, it can depend on the primary/secondary and strategy. (And so many times yes on 8/3 for speed and pet control).
 

I primarily run Necro/Dark (very old school). Overwhelming force in Tier 1 for knockdowns, Oppressive Gloom stacking stuns with Howling Twilight, pulling with Darkest Night in Tar Patch  (holding pets back until the spawn is grouped), and so on. Target selection. Dual holds (one with the proc for boss holds, the other for problem lieutenants). 
 

Without knowing your build and primary/secondary, hard to say more. And for real, there are some combinations that just lag behind in solo play on higher difficulty (looking at you ninja/TA)...

[kiramon]

On 8/3/2020 at 2:42 PM, Riverdusk said:

In my experience MM's do depend on powerset combo and build a lot in order to survive well (if you are going to try and do max difficulty anyway).  You mention /time and I have had a lot of luck with that one with almost any primary, but I also built up a necro/sonic that does well for me albeit it takes some incarnate help (resilient and barrier to get them to or very close to that res cap). People have raved about demon/thermal and that's probably an easier road.   There are other successful builds if you take a look through the forum.

 

Also, one tip anyway is that the level shift you get for incarnate also helps pets which is especially important for tier 1 pets as otherwise those +4 enemies are actually +6's to your tier 1 pets.  It is hard for anyone to do anything fighting +6's as the purple patch is kicking in VERY hard at that point.  Enemies at that point even have a +5 tohit so the soft cap is 50 and not 45 against +6's.  Yes, tier 1's are going to tend to fold against that.

 

Note that solo on my MM's I rarely bother with max difficulty as it is a hassle to me even with a "strong" build, and I honestly don't find it fun or see the point.  I'm not trying to farm with my MM's.  So, blasphemy I know, but the other option is to just lower it to "only" +3.  Combined with level shift now your tier ones are only fighting at +4 instead of +6, HUGE difference.  

 

Your MM /sonic should already have zombies at 90% without barrier 😛

[Riverdusk]

3 hours ago, kiramon said:

Your MM /sonic should already have zombies at 90% without barrier 😛

Nope, not against smash/lethal, fire, energy, or psi they aren't.

 

Current stats I'm showing right now on combat attributes for S/L for grave knight for instance: Sonic Dispersion 19.75% (75.5% enhanced), Sup Mark IO +15%, Sovereign Right IO +10%, Expedient IO +10%, Sonic Barrier +26.47% (enhanced 76.5%) = 81.22% resistance.  

 

I am only tier 3 so far on alpha resilient, but going to tier 4 should only end up giving me about another 1.5% net at most.

 

Should get them to about 82.5% or so.  With barrier at min of 5% ends up around 87.5%.  Half the time they'll be capped though as for 1 min out of every 2 of barrier gives you at least 7.5%.

 

I also haven't boosted my IO's, so might be able to squeeze a tiny bit more out that way as well, but no where near enough to make up a 7.5% gap that barrier fills in nicely.

 

If you know of any way I'm overlooking to boost them more, I'm happy to listen.

[Neiska]

@DrBasics I have two MMs that can do 4/8 fairly well with bosses.

 

The first is demons/electrical affinity. The general consensus about EA is its a sub optiomal set, but with it you can make your demons "quite" tanky. So if you like having immortal-ish pets, its pretty solid. EA has its own problems as most of the buffs only work on other players, not pets/lore, and nor do they benifit from the +recharge buff the set has either. It doesnt make them attack any faster and so on. But, it is a top teir set for sheer immortality. You have bodyguard mode, then Farday Cage which boosts everythings resists as well as makes your pets immine to most CC, knockback and so on. Then you can give everything an absorb shield for extra cushion. You also have a heal on top of that, as well as two -damage debuffs - one single target for -20%, and one AOE for -10%. and yes, they stack. so you can give one enemy -30% damage done, on top of you and your pets capped resists/absorbs/bodyguard mode/heals. But the +damage and T9 "knock up" power doesnt work on pets. Which means this combo while extremely durable, is also dead last for damage. Hell on Earth from Demons certainly helps, but overall it's sub par damage. But its also funny that this combo also keeps every little cinder alive VERY well, because they are also affected by the absorb shield/heal/farday cage, which means you will have lots, and lots, of little burning imps in your wake. They arent much but every bit helps.

 

Also as a personal preferance, it isnt very enjoyable to actually play. It has its moments certainly, but it is "very" click-spammy. EA is by far the most spamy MM set I have tried so far, and I generally dislike that playstyle. But if that isnt an issue, and you dont mind having low damage, then go for it.

 

The other MM I have that does 4/8 very well is Robo/Time. Where demons is resistance focused, this one is defense focused. Time has a bit of everything - heals, CC, slows, debuffs, +defense. Plus there is a trick with Power Up from Mace Mastery and Farsight - popping power up and then Farsight actually gives a big boost to its values. (i think 16% if i recall correctly?), so it is fairly simple to make quite durable pets with /time. Also as a cherry on top, with Mace you can immobilize with Web Envelope, and drop Distortion Field on the group, so even after the web wears off, you have plenty of time to lock them back down again. All this means you can hang way back and just out gun your enemies with your ranged robots, fairly easially. Which is especially good with assualt bots missles/fire patches.

 

The caviat to Robo/Time though, is the majority of your damage comes form your assualt bot. And where its normal to have them attack your targets, i have actually had far better results by just letting the assualt robot do its thing, and i focused on webbing/distortion field the groups he was engaging, leaving things dieing quite quickly to his fire patches. This one i find enjoyable to play, but always felt rather lackluster anytime I was on a team. Because my buffs didnt overly matter much, and my dps wasnt the best, so mostly i was on CC and spot heal duty.

 

One neat thing I did find out though, is both of these MMs were actually faster at clearing the moon map than my brute was. Not because of damage, the brute obviously outdamages them, but how the threat mechanic works. Normally, you can only hold aggro and fight 16 mobs at a time. However, for pets they also get 16 mobs of their own. 

 

So 1 (you) + 3 (t1 pets) + 2 (t2 pets) + 1 (big pet) = 7 threat tables. 7x16 = 112. More if you include lore pets. So while my damage was no where NEAR my brutes per foe, the fact i could ingage almost 10 times as many at once made her improved damage less of a factor. When farming with my MM, I usually engage half the map on the inital pull, fight nonstop for awhile, an then go round up the 2 or 3 groups that hid in the corners.

 

The problem with farming that way is its high risk/high reward. both of my MMs can do it, but its easier with the demons/EA. But you have to go in ready to go, and expect a nonstop fight. If 1 or 2 pets die, you can recover from that. but if you start loosing 3 or 4 you will get cascading bodyguard failure and you will die rather quickly.

 

Anyway, if you are determined to play on +4/8 with bosses solo, I recommend either Demons/EA if you want to bet on all out defenses, or Robo/time if you want more combat engagement options.

 

Hope this helps!

Edited August 5, 2020 by Neiska

[TheSpiritFox]

On 8/4/2020 at 12:06 AM, DrBasics said:

Sorry for asking because I am literally ignorant on the class. Does this mean you are surviving but your pets are dying? Do you have to resummon them after every group? Or are you straight up murdering everything in your path like a buzzsaw?

Buzz saw. My pets are softcapped defensively with 35% resist to all. And that's without incarnates running. Resummoning a pet is kinda rare. 

[Dixa]

This is the most punished at in the game when it comes to over-level content. softcapped pets - which is honestly a meme at this point - is not enough given how many enemy groups have tohit buffs endgame. those that claim they are not resummoning pets at a regular rate are picking and choosing what they fight and not attempting to do all of the content as it comes at them. 

 

or my favorite is when they pop lore pets, the ultimate band aid.

 

the only combination that i have ever made that had the highest survivability against ALL ENEMY TYPES in the game was a demons/thermal, but it's still a bigger pain to play than most of the other AT's.

[Nyghtmaire]

On 8/3/2020 at 1:16 PM, DrBasics said:

I abandon because at max level, even running a simple 50+4 council team, my pets get their asses handed to them

 

1 hour ago, Dixa said:

those that claim they are not resummoning pets at a regular rate are picking and choosing what they fight and not attempting to do all of the content as it comes at them. 

Um... different discussion? 

 

1 hour ago, Dixa said:

meme

[Onemantankwall]

My demon/dark solos anything i put in front of it x4 +8 with a perma spammable heal and bonfire kd spam combined with tar patch. Tankiest and hardest hitting toon (for all content) ive ever played no other AT compares tankier than tanks with no res or def holes, op controls for mob subdueing and dmg with debuffs scrappers wished they had. my bots/traps isnt as fast at killing things but having an entire corner of the screen covered in pet names is an awesome sight, triage needs a buff tho imo

Edited August 7, 2020 by Onemantankwall

[KC4800]

I have a Beast/Nature lvl 50 and a Bots/Elec at lvl 35. Both require an occasional resummon. I consider that normal. To claim otherwise is probably --well--I wont say it. 

[Dixa]

On 8/6/2020 at 5:42 PM, Nyghtmaire said:

 

Um... different discussion? 

 

 

Not a different discussion. If you are purposefully ignoring half the enemy groups at end game because your build can't actually take it, then coming to the forums saying defense based MM's are the best way to play you are doing the entire community a disservice. 

 

My goal posts as you put it have always been the same. look at my posting history. lore pets are a crutch that players use to band-aid poorly designed or poorly chosen powers and power sets and i refuse to use them. demons/thermal or demons/ea is the single toughest mm combo you can make for all content, and the only one that did the maria jenkins arc without losing a single pet on +3. given the power variety in that arc, that is quite the accomplishment. 

Edited August 11, 2020 by Dixa

[Dixa]

On 8/7/2020 at 6:39 AM, Onemantankwall said:

My demon/dark solos anything i put in front of it x4 +8 with a perma spammable heal and bonfire kd spam combined with tar patch. Tankiest and hardest hitting toon (for all content) ive ever played no other AT compares tankier than tanks with no res or def holes, op controls for mob subdueing and dmg with debuffs scrappers wished they had. my bots/traps isnt as fast at killing things but having an entire corner of the screen covered in pet names is an awesome sight, triage needs a buff tho imo

triage was buffed on thunderspy to be a pulsing heal every few seconds and with only a 10s cooldown so you can easily move it. it's really good, but not enough to help you when sisters of artemis ignore your defenses. at least on thunderspy they gave MM's a 'hold' command that roots them in place. no more running out of caltrops or fire. then again, no more running out of fire has it's own drawbacks, and the hold command applies to all so a thugs mm can't keep their ranged in check and manually control the bruiser while using it. not perfect, but for the pure ranged sets like mercs (buffed there btw) and bots it's quite amazing to have. 

[Onemantankwall]

Traps is just a uglier cousin of dark without the op heal and half the debuffs/debuff area its functional if you plan to resummon alot otherwise its eh compared to the beast dark is. With a complete useless t9 and t10 its still themeatic and is fun to fill ur screen in pet names even tho most are ehh. Only thing that can even compare to dark is time but you lose that huge spammable heal that also has a -acc that sorbs 95%+ of any alpha dmg you take

 

Edit: kin would be interesting if the +rech effected pets and natures alright but you're not gonna throw huge bursty heals from it and your debuffs weaker than darks ele is alright but once again you lack that massive heal to sponge the alpha burst

 

I dont understand how i can throw a spammable 400hp grp heal that also debuffs but triage and spirit tree has ridicules cds compared to their lackluster regen and they dont even move

Edited August 11, 2020 by Onemantankwall

[kiramon]

On 8/5/2020 at 1:39 PM, Neiska said:

cascading bodyguard failure 

Lol. 

Did we just try to make fetch happen?