Tips for Soloing Praetoria on a Mastermind

[Apparition]

I know that soloing a Mastermind gold side is unwise.  Praetorian ambushes completely ignore your henchmen and lock right onto your Mastermind itself, leading to a very dead Mastermind.

 

Despite this, I attempted soloing all of Praetoria on a Thugs/Time Mastermind a few months ago.  Got up to level thirteen, and did the second Resistance Warden morality mission, "Mind Freedom."  I believe the difficulty was set at -1x3 IIRC.

 

Here's how that went: I chose to side with the Resistance and help Seer 1381/Katie Douglas.  I was ambushed and overwhelmed by T.E.S.T. squads.  Died.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  There were even more T.E.S.T. squads, and they came to the door.  Died.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  Ate a purple, entered the mission.  There were a whole bunch of T.E.S.T. at the door, and they aimed right at me.  Before my henchmen even finished loading into the mission (which takes about six seconds), my Mastermind was dead.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  Ate another purple, entered the mission.  Dead.  Rinse, repeat literally nine more times until I gave up and deleted the Mastermind in frustration.

 

Any suggestions of how you'd handle that situation differently?  Now, generally I'm not one to ask for help.  Never have been.  But even if I wanted to, I couldn't as this was a solo morality mission.  So that's out the window.  I could have ate a dozen more inspirations just prior to entering the mission, but even then there were so many mobs I don't even think my henchmen would have survived being spawned into that.  I figure though that I'm missing something and I know that I'm far from the best player in the game, so I'm curious.

Edited April 19, 2022 by Apparition

[desarix]

I have only played Masterminds in Praetoria so this is my advice. First never take on more mobs at lower levels. You can do +2X1 but -1X3  is bad. You pets can handle harder mobs and believe me you can handle them with Time. You will level very fast even at those settings. I notice pets can do well at lower levels against even Lt reds and purples but die to more mobs. If you find yourself dying still drop the difficulty  to +1x1

 

I think some of the damage you face in Praetoria at lower levels are ones you have little to no defense to so set your pets to bodyguard mode and only order them to attack when it is safe for you or you will die from the sustained attack of the mobs. In Bodyguard mode you can eat some damage since your pets take a share of the incoming damage. /macro BG petcom_all follow defensive

 

Also use your hold on the mobs that do AOE damage always prioritize them over other mobs. Drop your distortion field first and slot it for holds so the holds stack.

 

Buy all the Single Origins you can find even at low levels they help immensely by bumping up damage and accuracy. Use the /ah they are cheaper there. Six slot your pets first before you slot anything else because they are your damage.

Edited April 19, 2022 by desarix

[Arbegla]

Also, sometimes its ok to 'restart' missions, especially if the ambushes get too much right away. Just select a different mission, or log off for a bit (like ~5 minutes) and the instance will reset, giving you another shot at preparing without having a million ambushes trying to eat your face.

[GuardianSaint]

On 4/19/2022 at 11:44 AM, Arbegla said:

Also, sometimes its ok to 'restart' missions, especially if the ambushes get too much right away. Just select a different mission, or log off for a bit (like ~5 minutes) and the instance will reset, giving you another shot at preparing without having a million ambushes trying to eat your face.

FYI, the quickest way to do this is to enter the command /leaveteam.  

[Ukase]

On 4/18/2022 at 9:40 PM, Apparition said:

I know that soloing a Mastermind gold side is unwise.  Praetorian ambushes completely ignore your henchmen and lock right onto your Mastermind itself, leading to a very dead Mastermind.

Despite this, I attempted soloing all of Praetoria on a Thugs/Time Mastermind a few months ago.  Got up to level thirteen, and did the second Resistance Warden morality mission, "Mind Freedom."  I believe the difficulty was set at -1x3 IIRC.

 

Any suggestions of how you'd handle that situation differently?  

First, I applaud the sense of adventure. And the determination to face ignominious defeat (well, that's an exaggeration, lol) however many times your character did is creditable. 

The thing that sticks out at me is the X3 part of the equation. I'd have reduced difficulty after the 3rd defeat. 

Now, I'm off to make a Thugs/Time MM just to see how this plays out for me. Maybe I can find a tactic that would be helpful for others. Bear in mind - I have played an MM on live...but the servers shut down when it was somewhere in the teens. Made one on HC...but it had only teamed with others until the all MM team got distracted and it stopped meeting. 

So, leveling one up solo should be interesting. There's a LOT I don't know about MMs, so should be fun to be a rookie of sorts again. 

[Sovera]

Taking Hover and we be well up in the air sounds like a plan. Dunno how it would work out in practice.

[bustacap]

Did that with my robots time, man are they are bad Aoe at low levels. They will slowly plink every mob like a cheesy grater done very slowly. 

 

Long story short lots of resummoning in the rafters dodging enemy fire. 

 

This was done prior to me having money or any idea what p2w vender was. 

 

 

Know that I know more about the game get the p2w taser and grenade and aoe everything while in Bodyguard because if you have the toggle, you're going to get mezzed so embrace the KB. Its better now than it was for me since the toggle doesn't drop like it did then. 

 

Slot OF in the t1 pets works since arsonist has aoe at those levels. 

 

Praetoria arcs also give out temp weapons. Use them. Carry purples for the elite bosses. 

[Redletter]

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

I know that soloing a Mastermind gold side is unwise.  Praetorian ambushes completely ignore your henchmen and lock right onto your Mastermind itself, leading to a very dead Mastermind.

Yes and no. If you create a macro for the pet command that will set your pets to aggressive mode, and simultainiously send them to a target location, you can set them in the path of ambushes and they will engage the hostiles on sight.  Once engaged, Ambushes with fight the things that attacked them. 

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

 

Despite this, I attempted soloing all of Praetoria on a Thugs/Time Mastermind a few months ago.  Got up to level thirteen, and did the second Resistance Warden morality mission, "Mind Freedom."  I believe the difficulty was set at -1x3 IIRC.

 

Here's how that went: I chose to side with the Resistance and help Seer 1381/Katie Douglas.  I was ambushed and overwhelmed by T.E.S.T. squads.  Died.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  There were even more T.E.S.T. squads, and they came to the door.  Died.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  Ate a purple, entered the mission.  There were a whole bunch of T.E.S.T. at the door, and they aimed right at me.  Before my henchmen even finished loading into the mission (which takes about six seconds), my Mastermind was dead.  Went to the hospital, came back to the mission.  Ate another purple, entered the mission.  Dead.  Rinse, repeat literally nine more times until I gave up and deleted the Mastermind in frustration.

This can happen with goldside missions in general, due to how the way ambushes work. If you go down, things can snowball. If it's any consolation, this can happen on NON masterminds. Even to teams of characters. All it takes is one thing going VERY wrong, for things to spiral wildly out of control and force hard resets where you just go do something else, or relog.

On 4/18/2022 at 7:40 PM, Apparition said:

Any suggestions of how you'd handle that situation differently?  Now, generally I'm not one to ask for help.  Never have been.  But even if I wanted to, I couldn't as this was a solo morality mission.  So that's out the window.  I could have ate a dozen more inspirations just prior to entering the mission, but even then there were so many mobs I don't even think my henchmen would have survived being spawned into that.  I figure though that I'm missing something and I know that I'm far from the best player in the game, so I'm curious.

 

For starters, taking Stealth would have been my first option. While yes, ambushes WILL follow you regardless, their ability to actually ENGAGE you is diminished. People have pointed out that stealth, in praetoria, can lead to funny situations where the ambush comes in and the group just runs up and their AI breaks, sending them jumping up and down, nuzzling up against your toon, but unable to effectively attack due to functionally being unable to target you. This is how Stalkers solo Goldside.

 

As for the numbers advantage over you, i would say that theyd super murder your henchman. I would have walked in with my henchies, then, left them to die at the door. Usually, Gold missions have an objective that the ambush is there to simply distract you from. B-lining to that (especially in stealth) would help immensely. Because really, it doesnt really matter how many ambushes they spawn, as long as you get the clicky or kill the dude you can click the exit button. It doesnt work in THIS case, since the mission is such that you kinda NEED to fight.

 

Thirdly, there's a 'hard' reset option. Simply relogging the toon would reset the map, and the ambushes. My goal would then be to have done that, then i would have lowered the difficult from -1x3 to -1x0. This would load the mission with the lower difficulty, with a fresh map. Depending on where you are with the mission, it may even reset your choice of objective (I can't recall if youre locked in WHEN you decide or AFTER the objective as a result of the decision is complete -- if the latter is the case, you could just choose to fight the seer instead. Her ambushes are hard coded at health intervals, so you could limit them by playing around her health bar). 

 

Thugs happens to be a rough way to play Goldside. Their single target is really nice, the arsonist even has AoE online earlier than robots, but that means you NEED to prioritize your targets, and praetorian enemies hit REMARKABLY hard even at the minion level and thugs arent the toughest bunch.

 

Finally, and im not sure if this works for morality missions, but if im right, you can just call the contact who gave you the mission and force complete a particular objective. Youcan do that once every day, give or take, so if it TRULY is just wholly insurmountable, you could long-con through and force skip through it (if it works, ive never had to do that, it may not work, but it should).