Robotics/Thermal and dual-mode shielding

[cohRock]

I've started a Robotics/Thermal mastermind.  My theory is that they get defensive shielding from their Lts, so I'd complement that with resistive shields.  And unlike Sonic, Thermal offers healing (in exchange for no native shielding of yourself, which is offered by both FF and Sonic).  Also, Thermal seems to offer a nice set of both buffs and debuffs.  I don't plan on soloing missions at +4 difficulty, so hopefully they will prove to be pretty robust.  I'll be augmenting the Lt's defensive shielding with Maneuvers.  I know it is not a lot of defense, but it's something.  What do you-all think of my reasoning and bots/Thermal in general?

 

I am tentatively planning on slotting the Protector Bots with accuracy, heal, defense, and 3 damage.  Would you reduce the damage and add more buff-type enhancements?

[Nyghtmaire]

The road less traveled! With this approach, you’ll have a medium level baseline for resists, assuming you can squeeze in all 3 resist uniques (35% at level 50) and the thermal shields (~22%), or a total of ~57%, and ~82% for lethal/cold/psi. 
 

For defense, you cans stack 10% from uniques, and ~10% enhanced shields from each protector bot. Add maneuvers, that’s another ~4% enhanced. Other than your protector bots, who don’t self-cast their shields (at least, last time I checked), you’re pushing ~24%, 39% for AoEs with the unique. 
 

This looks fun at your identified difficulty level. When you get to your choice of patron powers, you’ll want to consider a way to keep enemies at range. Mu’s immobilize has a -kB compliant and is targeted (rather than a cone). Bonfire from the fire APP is also a fun choice. 

If you decide to incarnate this character, Diagmagnetic’s -ToHit debuff will substitute for defense, pushing your pets (except for the Protector Bots) to functional softcap for non-incarnate content. You can also alternate Barrier and Support Core for more layers of defense (and resistance from Barrier). 

Here are the innate defense and resistance scores for Bots:

 

Robots

Battle Drones:

• 25% Lethal/Cold/Psionic Resist
• -33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration
• +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection
• +1.0 Stun Protection

 

Protector Bots + Assault Bot

• 26% Lethal/Cold/Psionic Resist
• -33% Sleep/Terrorize Duration
• +4.0 Sleep/Terrorize Protection
• +1.0 Stun Protection
• Protector Bots will cast Shield on allies, granting +7% AOE/Range/Melee Defense, periodically wears off and must be recast (stacks twice)

 

7 hours ago, cohRock said:

I am tentatively planning on slotting the Protector Bots with accuracy, heal, defense, and 3 damage.  Would you reduce the damage and add more buff-type enhancements?

Even if only using SOs, it’s worth finding slots for all 6 pet uniques. That’s a big challenge for Bots generally. Frankenslotting is definitely the way to go. And with Thermal’s healing, no need to slot the protector bots for healing. If you run Tactics, that plus Supremacy will give you some flexibility in slotting less accuracy. 
 

Overall, sounds like a fun pairing!

Edited August 16, 2020 by Nyghtmaire
Some spelling issues, probably more here since posting on my phone...

[Coyote]

I like adding Resists to Bots... I know that Defense is considered better, but in general I think it works better in most cases, but folds harder when facing mobs with -Def (or +ToHit buffs) than backing them up with Resists/Heals. My Bots/EA feels quite sturdy despite being far from softcap.

[TheSpiritFox]

If bots had a mule power for the pet sets, like if repair could take pet sets just to let bots have that I'd take repair and probably 4 slot it with pet uniques and if you could do that bots/thermal would be a solid contender. The biggest issue with the build is that it has a particular weakness to mez, not just the bots but you as well. It's far, far less tanky than bots/ea. 

 

Pros

- AOE heal and single target heal are good for helping keep bots alive

- Shields are fire and forget even if it takes two powers to cover all the resists

- Forge + assault bot is a very good combo. Most of your damage as bots comes from burn patch missiles

- Melt armor is a solid debuff

- Heat exhaustion plus bots is alot of -regen on an AV

 

Cons

- The rez is the only actually at all skippable power in thermal

- Defensively weak overall requiring active healing to compensate kinda like how bio has layered defenses. It's not necessarily worse, but if you want your bots alive you have to watch damage more carefully, be ready to target and heal or hit your aoe heal. 

- Not being at the softcap means getting hit more often by everything including mez

- Mez buff is single target, applying it to all your bots will suck if needed, and it doesn't cover knockback which is one of the things that fucks pets up the most. To be fair, lots of sets do not protect pets from knockback, but bots/ea has that covered. 

- Mastermind itself is weak. Build absolutely needs a decent recharge build with hasten to be effective at higher levels of play. +4 content will see pets dying whether grouped or solo often probably, incarnate content you will have to stay with a group, speed running will be an absolute pain to impossible between bots set up time with protector bot bubble casts (esp in combat lol) so resummoned bots will have like no defenses. 

- Bots cannot fit all the pet uniques which is really needed when blending a resistance set with a defense set either way with MMs. 

- Tankermiding not an option as you have zero mez protection and building around being able to tank and take mez will eliminate alot of recharge options needed to actually get the most out of your secondary. 

- Zero control soft or hard of any kind to help mitigate damage

- Kinda requires electric fences for the above reason to at least keep things in burn patches and grouped for melt armor when it's up, but might also need bonfire to help it survive at higher levels. 

 

Overall it's a really active set, and like seeing if your pets are like held and clearing them actively is alot of potential micromanagement, you only have shields and heals to keep things alive. Shields are two powers instead of one which is really just old powerset bloat and power inefficiency which sucks I'd like to see them combined and a new power given that does something else like some kinda soft control but hey lots of powersets need some kinda work done on them. Kinetics is an objectively terrible powerset overall it just does a few tricks that no one else does and one in particular that is like sure yeah we'll include you in everything purely for fulcrum shift everyone loves being damage capped why not. 

 

If I was going to pair something with thermal it would be beasts, which can at need softcap themselves, demons or zombies, because both are resistance based, or thugs, because leadership is just ON and the set can fit all of the pet uniques very easily while still like putting procs in the pets and shit and compared to bots will do muuuuuch better as a hybrid MM. Bots? EA is great. Nature is good. Sonic is horrible. FF is boring which to me is beyond horrible. Thermal is between nature and sonic. If you want to throw dark in, Dark is between EA and Nature. Time is above EA and so are traps and cold. 

 

Will it work? Sure. Will you resummon alot of bots? Yeah you will. Will you be able to handle high level content? Play it like a support character. You're not there to tank, you're there to act like a corruptor only you have pets instead of blasts. If you think about it more from that perspective, then you could be like an overall tankier corruptor but still something that can die if you take the alpha from a group. 

[cohRock]

8 hours ago, TheSpiritFox said:

...

Overall it's a really active set, and like seeing if your pets are like held and clearing them actively is alot of potential micromanagement, you only have shields and heals to keep things alive. Shields are two powers instead of one which is really just old powerset bloat and power inefficiency which sucks I'd like to see them combined and a new power given that does something else like some kinda soft control but hey lots of powersets need some kinda work done on them. ...

 

Thank you for the deep comment and analysis.  The one element I partially disagree with is above, where you say having double shields is bloat.  I'm sure you remember the bad old days when shields (from thermal, FF, Ice, Sonic,, etc) were not AoE powers.  You had to cast them individually on each teammate.  Now that was bloat!  So I can handle casting 2 shields every 4 minutes, vs  potentially 14 for teammates and more for any pets.  If they were going to change the set, maybe Thaw could become either an AoE or toggle power with fairly large radius.  They could do this on just the Mastermind version of Thermal, the way Sentinel armors get tweaked for just that archetype.

 

@Coyote  and @Nyghtmaire thank you for your encouragement and sharing your experiences.  I'm going to have to look into Electrical Affinity.  I don't remember that from Live.

 

Edited August 27, 2020 by cohRock

[kiramon]

8 hours ago, cohRock said:

 

 

@Coyote  and @Nyghtmaire thank you for your encouragement and sharing your experiences.  I'm going to have to look into Electrical Affinity.  I don't remember that from Live.

 

It was made here 😛