Masterminding for the complete Newbie: a guide to the "figuring stuff out" part of the game.

[Sirrocco]

So... I found this game something like a week or two ago, and rapidly discovered that Mastermind is my preferred archetype.  It is what it is.  I dug around a lot and saw a lot of advice (much of it at least moderately conflicting, some of it old enough that it almost has to be partially out of date and/or possibly applying to the rulesets on other servers).  I saw a lot of build advice on primaries and secondaries and how they fit together... but most of what I saw, in retrospect, was about who you're going to be at level 50, or at least level 35.  They're talking about having access to all your powers and slotting a bunch of enhancements and hitting your defense caps and all that stuff.  You know what?  I haven't done any of that.  I've bounced around between different builds trying to figure out what I like and what works for me.  I'm currently running Thugs/Traps, Demon/Dark, and Beast/Storms.  To date, I've discarded a Beast/Cold, a Bots/FF, two different Undead/Dark, a very brief attempt at a Ninja/Trick Arrow (my goodness those Genin look stupid), and four characters who weren't masterminds and thus don't matter, and not one of them has yet even made it as far as level 20.  So I'm going to assume that you either already have or will soon read all the guides put out by people who know the game really well, and just tell you thee stuff that I've figured out on the fly that's a little more dialed in to the experience you're having right now.

 

First, this may just be a matter of personal experience, but I've found that I really can't bring myself to care about a character who doesn't have at least a bit of a personality, and one that I can like or respect.  There are decisions about which missions to take and how to complete them that basically don't have right or wrong answers, and if I can't make them in character then I'm not having nearly as much fun.  You don't need a huge backstory or anything, but there can be value in giving yourself even just a little bit of a personality to play with.

 

Second, I encourage you to try building your first few characters as "one to throw away".  There's a whole bunch of system to learn and stuff to understand, about both the game and yourself.  Better to make the kinds of decisions that are going to make your early game fun/easy/whatever to better enjoy that process than to focus on building something that will be awesomely tuned at a level 50 that you might never get to.  The rest of this doc is going to basically assume you're taking that strategy and offering insights and suggestions accordingly.

 

Third... there's going to be stuff that you just can't play because you can't play it.  I personally am limited to characters who are either huge build or who can justify ninja running.  I feel awkward playing females, the powerslide produces way too many sparkles for my taste, and both standard running and beast running just look stupid to me on the standard male model.  I refuse to constantly watch something that looks like that.  Also, the run type and the appearance and the character concept and the personality all have to fit together in my head and make sense, which makes this an actual meaningful limitation.  But that's not all!  I hate the sounds of the specters off of the Undead Primary.  Hate it.  I want to be able to play with my sound on, so if I'm playing an undead build, it has to be an undead build that can manage without primary attacks.  Maybe some day I'll master the art of replacing sound files (I know there's a help around here somewhere for that) and unlock that stuff for myself again.  Maybe not.  Regardless... you're probably going to have weird little hangups of your own, and you don't necessarily even know what they are yet.  Thankfully, there's enough flexibility out there that you can probably find at least a few good builds anyway.

 

/************/

 

So... things that matter for pre-20, and things that don't:

 

- Nothing anyone has said about enhancements matters.  I don't have a single character who's even filled in all of the enhancement slots on the powers they use most.  At low levels, enhancements just aren't that big a deal.  Eventually I intend to start hitting that invention thing, and at least get all of my slots basically filled in, and then slowly upgrade them over time.  Eventually.  For the moment, though, raising that +10% defense to a +11% or +12% just isn't that big a deal.  Discussion of stuff like "mule pets" really doesn't matter.

 

- Stamina doesn't matter... until it does.  At the very beginning of the game, it's just never going to be your most limited resource because you literally won't be able to spend it fast enough.  Once you hit level 10 or so, though, if you're sporting a lot of toggles, then you're likely to start feeling the bite.  I have to switch between my travel toggles and my combat toggles because I just don't have the recharge to run them both.  It's one of the next parts of the game that I personally need to figure out... but "figuring parts of the game out" is kind of the ride that we're on right now, you know?

 

- Matching protection strategies barely matters.  Sure, if you've got more defense, then defense is worth more, and the same on the other side for resist... but you're not going to get anything close to the cap on either regardless, so it's not as useful overall as one might prefer, unless you're somehow stacking quite a lot of it for your level.

 

- Most of what's in your secondary doesn't matter as much as you think it does.  You're going to get one of the first two.  Level four unlocks the third, level 10 the 4th, level 16 the 5th, level 20 the 6th.  numbers seven through nine may as well not exist as far as we're concerned.  Also, you're almost certainly spending the level 2 on a direct attack off of your primary (either the first or third), level 6 is your first minion skills upgrade, and level 12 is your t2 summon.  Those last two are basically hard mandatory.  You may well want more than one basic attacks off your primary, and there are also power packs to consider.  So... honestly, there's a good chance that you don't pick up very many powers off your secondary for a while.

 

- Debuffs are hard to track.  At the levels you're dealing with, enemies tend to die pretty quickly, and it can actually be really hard to tell how much any given debuff actually mattered to the fight.  Like, we can assume that they help some, because the game isn't going to just tell us lies, but did they help enough to be worth the bother?  Not always easy to be sure.  Might be better to leave "learning about effective use of debuffs" until a little later in your personal journey.

 

- What kind of powers you're dealing with matters.  PBAoE toggles are wonderfully easy to use.  you turn them on, and don't get too far from your henchlings, and they just work.  They also drain stamina, at levels that can quickly become unsupportable if you get too many.  Delightfully, the Leadership power pool is there to hand us all a few more.  On the flip side, enemy-targeting toggles are incredibly finicky.  You have to actually hit to stick the thing, or you've wasted the action and stamina, and some of those things are *slow*.  Then if that foe dies too early, the effect fades into nothing fairly quickly.  If they manage to run instead of dying, then that aoe effect hanging off of them can easily aggro others..  It's complicated to use, in a way that can get really frustrating if you're an optimization perfectionist.  Oh, and they're also basically all debuffs, to add yet another layer on.

 

- What intensity you're running at matters.  Fact is, if you're playing a mastermind and running solo missions (as I've been doing), you can afford to go at least x2/+0 and probably x2/+1, and you'll need to in order to actually develop the skills to play a mastermind right.  At the same time, if you jump in doing that from the beginning, you'll find that you're rapidly outlevelling your storylines, especially if you're on one of the double exp  servers and/or are trying to run more than one set of contacts at once.  If you care about those storylines - if you actually want to enjoy the experience of playing through the lower levels of the game as they were intended to be played, that could be a sadness.  Calibrating how fast you level vs how fast you burn through content is tricky.

 

- There's another aspect to the fact that you're beefier than your security rating would suggest.  If you're playing the hero storylines, line, they'll eventually send you to Perez Park.  They'll send you to Perez Park over and over again.  As a Mastermind?  It turns out that you can function as a solo in Perez Park, if you work at it, especially if you grab a level or two so your targets aren't conning purple anymore.  Protip on that one - if you're hunting hellions, there's some really convenient spawns of them just to the left through a little alleyway as soon as you come out the Atlas Park entrance, and if you come running back in through that alleyway, the floating robots will happily disintegrate them for you.

 

- as a further bit on "how much do you want to actually play out your lower levels", there's the P2W/T4V shop.  How much you use that thing is up to you.  I would suggest you at least get athletic/ninja/beast run and your choice of jump pack.  The run power-up makes running back and forth to various place a lot less grindy and a lot more fun, and the jump pack really simplifies certain bits about getting to rooftops and whatnot later on.

 

- Primaries: Whether your T1 minions are ranged or melee matters.  How durable they are matters.  Whether you like how they look matters.  Any "ranged" T1s are going to start as a ranged/melee hybrid until you get to level 6 and can upgrade them further.  Still, beyond that?  At this level there's surprisingly little difference between them.  Go ahead and pick your primaries based on what feels good to order around, and which one has basic attacks that you enjoy throwing.  I personally found the Thug "I shoot them with two guns and they fall down" very satisfying, and the Robot "I blast them with a weird laser and the fly backwards" very unsatisfying, but it's very much a personal thing.

 

- Secondaries: Technically you can make it through these levels without a secondary at all, but it still matters because your secondary is one of the few things you can actually do, and you might as well work it.  Whichever is the better of your two starting options is going to matter a lot, because you're going to be using it a lot, and any particularly good powers that you can access early are going to matter some.

 

- Healing: It matters, but not as much as you'd think.  Keeping your minions alive is great... but they're also really easy to resummon, especially at first.  Good, solid healing can keep fights under control.  Bad, slow healing might as well not be there.

 

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Now we move on to the breakdown in secondaries.  I'm going to be talking about what you can get out of those early levels, and, in particular, how much of a hassle it is to use.  That hassle part matters.  PBaOEs are *easy* to use.  PBAoE toggles are even easier.  single-target ally-targeting and enemy-targeting powers are pretty straightforward.  Ground-targeting AOEs and enemy-targeting cones can be a bit of a hassle.  Enemy-targeting toggles are a pain.  Eventually, I understand, we'll all learn enough that some of this will even out, but for the moment that's what's up.

 

Cold Domination: I've played it. You start out with Ice Shield, which is delightfully easy to use (fast-cast, long-lasting, and affects all of your minions as once) and provides some real benefits to protection for most of the foes you'll be facing.  Infrigidate is a skip - it's the kind of debuff that'll make you wonder if it's doing anything at all.  Snowstorm is more of a skip, as it's the same thing but as a enemy-targeting toggle.  Glacial Shield is basically Ice Shield except for all of the things that Ice Shield doesn't cover.  So... early game, you basically get one good schtick out of the powerset, and not one you'll be using in a fight.

 

Dark Miasma: I've played it. You start with Twilight Grasp, which is a *very* solid "heal everyone" power that also happens to debuff the enemy you're shooting it at.  The rest of the stuff is various debuffs in varying degrees of "frustrating to use".  Darkest Night is particularly frustrating because that thing takes an incredibly long time to case, and then gets resisted a bunch and then that enemy falls over and very soon it drops away and it's just a hassle.  Still, it's an opportunity to learn how to use some of these ability types, and the fact is that Twilight Grasp is a hell of a flagship power.

 

Electrical Affinity: Haven't played it.  It's got a sort of funny gimmick, but it looks like its base power of Rejuvenating Circuit winds up being a "target one ally, heal yourself and most/all henchlings" power.  Honestly, that sounds pretty nice.  So you'll have something solid to work with at base, and you can try to figure out the rest of the wackiness as you go.

Empathy: Haven't played it. This one's giving you healing.  It gives you *lots* of healing, and then mixes it up with a rez.  I'd suggest starting with Healing Aura because that can heal you too (this will matter)  and involves a bit less micro.  Still, a warning - in the long game, pure heal isn't worth nearly as much as other MMORPGs might have taught you it is.  Don't get too attached.

 

Force Field: Played it briefly. This one is... basically giving you more or less the same shield setup as Cold Domination is.  The rest of it is stuff you might want to fiddle with, but not enough to pick a power set on for these early bits of experimentation.  

 

Kinetics: Haven't played it.  This one is weird.  A whole bunch of "debuff the enemy, and if you do then you buff yourself and allies", plus a repulsion field.  that becomes available at level 10.  Does this sound like fun to you?  Maybe try it.  If not, there's a lot of other options.

 

Nature Affinity: Haven't played it.  Regrowth should be your starting power.  "Ranged facing cone" sounds like a funny way to distribute healing, but not necessarily a bad one?  The bloom gimmick is the sort of thing that can matter a lot in the long game, but really doesn't matter at all now.  A lot is going to depend on how easy it is to keep Wild Growth up more or less full time without a lot of slotting, and I don't have that information.  Still, as "with this set what you get it a heal" goes, it isn't bad.

Pain Domination: Haven't played it.  This powerset is Empathy Mark 2 in general, and that's really the case for the early levels.  So if you're trying to decide between them, it should be more about theme than anything else.  Hey - theme can matter.

Poison: Haven't played it. A single-target heal to start with, and then a bunch of area-effect debuffs.  Single-target heals... aren't great.  They're certainly better than nothing healwise, because you aren't going to want to spend the time to let natural regen bring your minions up to full between fights, but it can still be an annoyingly long process, and fiddling back and forth between your two T1s when the HP is dropping on both of them isn't necessarily great.  The debuffs look interesting?  The fact that they're all AOE helps.

Radiation Emission: Haven't played it. You get two different enemy-targeting toggles, which I'm going to just shudder and ignore, but having your starter power be a PBAoE heal for yourself and your allies isn't bad at all, and Accelerate Metabolism also looks potentially shiny.

Sonic Resonance: Haven't played it.  Looks like it has the same sort of shield setup as Force Field and Cold Mastery, but this time for resists rather than Def.  There's some potential here.

Storm Summoning: I've played it.  Storm Summoning... huh.  It's got some potentially very interesting long-term stuff.  In the short-term, though, what it mostly has is a single-target heal that you can't use on yourself.  It's still useful.  I use it pretty regularly - but it's not amazing.  Beyond hat, knockback is enough of a mixed blessing (especially with melee minions) that I haven't taken that power, and I've had bad enough experiences with enemy-targeted toggles that I haven't taken *that* power either.  Steamy Mist, though?  That one has potential.  The partywide +Def is nice, to be sure, but the thing that it really does is give you concealment... which makes it a lot more possible to just walk around a bunch of the fights in a bunch of the missions.  You can basically get some of the stalker schtick without having to play a stalker.  Incidentally, both Dark and Cold offer this as well, but theirs requires higher level - Dark at 16, Cold at 20.

Thermal Radiation: Haven't played it.  Yet another shield set, but this time you also get an AoE heal that also affects you.  Honestly, that sounds like a very solid setup for early game.  Like, if you just want something to try, and you don't know what, then maybe try this.

Time Manipulation: Haven't played it. Yet another PBAoE heal in your starter set, but this time you also get access to an "enemies get much less threatening in every way" PBAoE toggle at level 4?  That's... really very shiny.  I mean, I haven't played it yet, but I think I know what I'm playing next.

Traps: I've played it. Traps is wacky.  It doesn't play like anything else plays.  Everything else is about targeting allies or targeting enemies or putting out emanations.  Traps is about dropping stuff on the ground.  Your best starter power is caltrops.  It's slow enough on the regen that you wont' be able to use it every fight, but when you *do* use it... well, the actual practical effect is this:  You drop it under a melee enemy.  They start taking damage, drop what they were doing, and run away... while your buddies shoot them.  Then they get clear, stop taking damage, realize that they're a melee enemy, and run back... while your buddies shoot them.  Then it happens again.  It's legitimately funny.  Now, there's a lot that goes into this.  It's slow on the recovery and a bit tricky to use and whatnot, and maybe this shouldn't be your *first* set, but maybe come back around to it once you've tried a few others.  I never bothered with web grenade - it looks like a solution for a problem that you dont' have.  Triage Beacon... honestly, it's hard to tell if that thing is being useful or worthless.  Acid Mortar requires work on placement in order to have any value at all, but it does seem to do nice things to the enemy melting process when you can deploy it effectively.  Force Field Generator is very solid and very easy to keep up pretty much all the time.  Be aware, though, that if you're running on an older machine with high graphics settings the visual effects may cause your computer's processor to sit up and take notice.  I'm very happy with my traps character, but that's at least in part because he's got a nice little backstory that pleases me, and traps fits right into it.  I would *not* suggest Traps as a first secondary to play with.

Trick Arrow: I've played it... briefly.  Don't do this to yourself.  Trick Arrow is composed entirely of debuffs, with no buff or heal component, and its best lvl 1 power is the power that I never bothered getting off of Traps because why would I?  I understand that there are people who play with Trick Arrow and enjoy it and try to explain to the rest of us about how it really isn't that bad and we should all give it a try.  Maybe they're right... but for you they're not.  As far as I can tell, Trick Arrow is the worst set to try to learn the game on.  Please don't do this to yourself.

 

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Conclusions on "I have no idea what I'm doing.  Which of these should I try?":

- Dark: because having a solid party heal that's also a debuff is really very nice in practice, even if you ignore the rest of the powerset.  I often use it to pull.

- Thermal Radiation: Having a PBAoE heal is nice.  Shields are nice.  This one gets you both.

- Time Manipulation: as Thermal, but instead of getting a set of shields, you get what looks like a very solid "enemies get much less effective" PBAoE toggle.

- Whatever makes you happy.  Like, seriously.  If you look at one of these (even Trick Arrow) and something rises up within you and says "I want that." then you should go with that.  A huge chunk of the actual power of the Mastermind comes built into the chassis.  Grabbing the thing you want isn't going to going to hork you over even if it's got no value at all, and all of these have at least something you can eke out of them.

Edited January 15 by Sirrocco

[DaddyLee]

Great read. TYVM. 

[Glubba]

So, I don't play MM, and I've read a lot of guides on the forums for other ATs. This is by far the most entertaining and honest seeming guide I've read. Good show. We (those of us with major altitis) need more guides like this on the forums. Love it. I'm always creating new characters, getting them to 13 then creating more.

[Zewks]

I think this attempts to do what Ive felt has been missing for awhile in a lot of the help and guides that exist... Namely, targeting new players who are NOT level 35+, who dont have any money to twink their characters. A guide that doesnt just say "All builds are viable with the right enhancements and incarnates".

 

So I appreciate what the OP is doing, but at the same time, I have to say, there are a couple of things I disagree with.

 

1. Enhancements. 

 

Hitting things

 

A single Accuracy SO in each attack power/pet DOES make a difference. 33% isnt something that is trivial. Its hitting 1 time out of 3, in a situation where you would miss 100% of the time. Missing in this game just feels bad. Especially at low levels where you have so few attacks in your rotation. Hitting your targets is more important than boosting your damage. If you dont hit, you do 0 damage. At the very least, I recommend maintaining at least 1 of these SO accuracy enhancements on each power that needs to hit.

 

Another area I feel does absolutely benefit from enhancement at low levels:

 

Healing things

 

Heals benefit from 2 enhancements even at levels below 10. 

- Recharge:  Having at least one 33% recharge on a heal can make the difference of getting that clutch heal in time or getting killed. Most heals have at LEAST a 10 second cooldown, many have much longer. Reducing this recharge time by 33% is pretty huge. Even at 10 seconds, reducing it by 3 seconds means getting that heal off before another 1-2 attack hit you from just one enemy.

- Heal:  Again, being healed for more is nothing to turn away from. Means you can recover from a bigger attack better, and as a MM, this is extremely helpful with your Pets who should be taking the brunt of the damage. Much easier to heal a pet, than have to resummon and then rebuff that pet.

 

Focusing just on these 2 areas specifically for enhancements (rather than none) will greatly smooth out your play experience at lower levels.

 

2. Stamina

 

Rather than saying "Stamina doesnt matter, until it does", I think this should be focused more on giving the right tips. Stamina for many new players DOES matter right at the start, because they are doing things they dont realize arent very resourceful. IE:

- Turn off your travel power in combat 

- Turn off sprint in combat

- Dont use a toggle just because you have it, sometimes they arent even needed but will drain stamina and reduce its ability to regen.

- Dont use AoE attacks against one target (or often even 2). AoE attacks take a large amount of stamina

- If you ARE going to use a toggle power, its probably worth slotting at least one Endurance reduction enhancement on it to lower its cost by 33%. 2 is optimal, but at low levels for a new player, might not be feasible.

 

All of these things can obviously be countered later in the game, with proper enhancements to reduce stamina usage, as well as improving stamina regen. But early on for a new player, these wont be reliable solutions.

Edited February 25 by Zewks

[Freefall357]

As an MM main, this is an odd read. It is an opinion piece and I think you are fairly upfront about that. As far as a guide, I would say it is a guide for folks with the OP's exact tastes and quirks.

 

I think it does point out some frustrations people can have while new, but I don't think it then puts those people on a good path to layer game (not just endgame).

One quick example is the "pshhh, why even bother with def/res or healing when you die fast anyway and just can resummon dead pets fast."

Let's say I have a little focus on def/res, not huge, but not ignored. 1/3 of enemy attacks miss from defense and the ones that land do 1/2 damage. Now I am taking 1/3 of their total damage. If I heal, me or my pet, for 100, the enemy has to do 300 to undo that.

For an MM you can go farther and, while in bodyguard mode, your pets take some of that reduced damage for you. If you have 3 T1 and a T2, you split that damage into 6 and they take 1/6 of it each and you take 2/6 of it.

I take a 100damage hit, it drops to 30ish, then that is split and I take 12 while the minions each take 6.

If I can heal 120 then it would take 1000 damage to just undo the healing. If it is an AoE heal, then my 120, in this example, just became 600 of "my HP" healed.

 

On to the second part, resummoning.

While a pet is dead it is not tanking for you, and it is not attacking or using utility powers. It is like another AT just losing access to 2-5 powers for a bit...so you resummon.

During resummon they come in as base pets with no/fan buffs up. Assuming they don't die, or you summon them in a safe spot behind you, then you do a quick upgrade or two, then get any clicky buffs up on them. If the unsupported other minions survived then you are back up to snuff and can get back to work.

That whole time, my team and me(MM attacks have utility and do damage) has been getting heals and applying constant full damage to a debuffed enemy. The inspirations I fed them and the huge Victory Rush (leadership pool buff) are still active for our next group because they didn't die and lose the buffs.

 

...For ONE example, heh.

 

Now, that said, you CAN Summon, Upgrade, Buff, Rush into combat, Probably win the attrition fight against the group you aggro'd, fall back, repeat. CoH is NOT a hard game and that playstyle will carry you through the whole game. Teams won't like you in high level content, but that is another matter for later and outside the "guide for newbie" scope.

 

As a "guide to get you through some early pitfalls" I think this works and is easier for a new player to understand and relate to, but for later and advanced stuff (if that is their intention) they will need to unlearn a bunch of this.

 

Lastly, as you seem to be more story interested, you can disable XP gain in the options, so you can fully run entire areas without out leveling them.

Edited April 10 by Freefall357
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