All round plus AV's and GM's

[Chromium Edge]

Hi all,

 

I am enjoying the playstyle of masterminds, and i have started a few different flavours of them. What I would like to know is what combinations of primaries and secondaries are the best for most content including AV's and GM's? I mainly play solo with just a little bit of teaming.

 

Currently I have Necro/Dark, Bots/Electric, Bots/Traps, Mercs/Marine, Demons/Electric. Is one of these better than the others or is another combination preferred? Or am I looking at the wrong AT all together? I like the fact that masterminds combine damage, tanking (for self at least, through bodyguard mode) and support through the secondary.

 

Any help greatly appreciated.

[Maelwys]

5 minutes ago, Chromium Edge said:

Bots/Traps, Mercs/Marine

 

Those two can each handle pretty much anything.

 

Bot/Traps outlasts GMs/AVs by completely flooring their regeneration; then debuffing their damage resistance and gradually whittling them down. They tend to dodge the bulk of incoming damage and heal/regenerate whatever makes it through.

 

Mercs/Marine simply outputs enough damage to obliterate stuff in seconds (mainly via Shifting Tide procs, but Whitecap and Tide Pool help too). Whilst it's possible to build them to withstand a lot of punishment; a single use of Serum tends to be more than long enough to down a GM/AV. 

[EnjoyTheJourney]

Maybe there's a chance to both suggest a possibility and to ask a question at the same time. 

I'm still fairly new to a necro / traps / soul MM, although all incarnates are T4 at this point. It's built for survival, but still defeats pylons with no lore pets, no hybrid active, no clicky accolades, no poison daggers, etc (all the usual rules, basically), in a little under 60 seconds. That's not even close to a record for an MM. But, is it indicative of being able to take down GMs and AVs in a reasonable time frame? And, so far every GM or AV this MM has tried to solo has felt like it went down fast. 

Maybe merc / marine blows away the necro / traps / soul build I put together for downing pylons / AVs / GMs. Not experienced enough with Mercs or marine to know and curious about how well necro / traps can compare to other MM builds for taking down GMs / AVs. 

[tidge]

The main issue that my Bots/Traps has is that I skipped Web Grenade and I have no means of applying Immobilize to AVs.  Once an AV decides to skedaddle, those fights can become either tedious or impossible (because Traps is somewhat location based for debuffs). The only place skedaddling matters for GMs is for the monsters in the level 50 zones that tend to run towards other monsters. Multiple level 50 Giant Monsters can be problematic, lower level GMs not so much (I'll include "Tentacles" in the not-so-much-if-I-am-on-my-game category).

 

^ This ^ is without the use of Lore pets. Lores speed things up for Bots/Traps, but I don't find them necessary (except in limited cases) when solo. I do think it is somewhat important to consider performance without Lores (for things like AVs and GMs) because "waiting around for 5 minutes of +DPS" can be a time-killer.

 

As noted by @Maelwys, flooring Regeneration on big sacks of HP is a big deal. One of the corner cases my Bots/Traps finds tedious solo is the Goliath War Walker, because it has a self-heal. When it begins self-healing is when I will bring out the Lores for the extra damage push. I learned the hard way that bringing the Lore out too soon can end up being a waste of DPS.

 

The one Giant Monster I think might give problems to a Merc/Marine MM would be (new) Eochai, because of Pumpkin Patch... and possibly Lusca's Tentacles (because AoE) but I suppose with some very timely application of certain secondary powers and some fine control of the henches I suspect Eochai could be overcome regularly. Otherwise I believe @Maelwys that a Mercenary zerg with all the +offense and +survival from /Marine should be able to dispatch some big things relatively quickly.

[EnjoyTheJourney]

It dawned on me that if the duration of serum is about how long it takes to take down an AV or GM then looking at City of Data to find out the duration of serum would be a good place to start to figure out how well Mercs taken down hard targets, compared to Necro minions. 

Serum lasts 60 seconds. So, perhaps the main difference between AV / GM clear times for mercs and necro minions is strongly influenced by whichever primary's pets survive noticeably better, as long as one of them has a clear advantage. With mercs often operating at range I'd guess that mercs probably tend to survive better against AVs and GMs. 

Edited March 18 by EnjoyTheJourney

[Frosticus]

If i were making a mm to do this (ill troller being my first pick) it would be bots/Marine. 

 

The personal attacks of bots provides ample -regen, more is not required. Marine is probably the best secondary available. 

[Hedgefund]

Cold is fantastic against those types of targets.  You need a LOT of global recharge because having Benumb perma-ish is key.  It's not just for -regen but provides a counter to heals and various T9s.  I've  paired every primary with Cold and I'd be comfortable bringing any one of them to a GM fight.

[Maelwys]

13 hours ago, Frosticus said:

If i were making a mm to do this (ill troller being my first pick) it would be bots/Marine. 

 

The personal attacks of bots provides ample -regen, more is not required. Marine is probably the best secondary available. 

Bots/Marine is definitely safer than Mercs/Marine; which in turn is safer than Demons/Marine.

Mercs has far better ST damage than Bots though; and far more on-demand survivability than Demons. So on balance I usually rate it higher than both. It also outputs more -res (due to Achilles Heel opportunities) which when combined with /Marine will be producing so much additional damage that Archvillain passive health recovery is barely a speedbump even without any -regen debuffs. GM passive regeneration might be more noticeable; depending on how lucky you get with proc activations.

That said, any /Marine MM is going to be a supercar. Agonising over which model is best in a drag race or around a track is very much splitting hairs.


...and then there's /Poison.

[Octogoat]

28 minutes ago, Maelwys said:

Bots/Marine is definitely safer than Mercs/Marine; which in turn is safer than Demons/Marine.

Mercs has far better ST damage than Bots though; and far more on-demand survivability than Demons. So on balance I usually rate it higher than both. It also outputs more -res (due to Achilles Heel opportunities) which when combined with /Marine will be producing so much additional damage that Archvillain passive health recovery is barely a speedbump even without any -regen debuffs. GM passive regeneration might be more noticeable; depending on how lucky you get with proc activations.

That said, any /Marine MM is going to be a supercar. Agonising over which model is best in a drag race or around a track is very much splitting hairs.


...and then there's /Poison.

I think mr.bean picks on that last car

[Maelwys]

15 hours ago, EnjoyTheJourney said:

Serum lasts 60 seconds.

Might be worth pointing out that Serum's buff isn't constant - it starts out at full strength but decays pretty rapidly every tick (0.132s). After 30 seconds half of it will be left; then after 60 seconds it'll finally reach zero. In practice you'll have a window of about 30 seconds before your henchmen will start taking major damage.

IMO the difference in survivability between Necro and Mercs is that Necro's migitation is more consistent (with stacking -Tohit plus regular self-healing and Panacea procs in the T2 upgrade) but Mercs has a very effective at-will panic button that lets it ignore dangerous alpha strikes and "hang in there" until the situation stabilises. And also that the Mercs henchmen will stay back rather than try to lick an AV's face off. The /Marine secondary brings a bit of synergy because you can intentionally delay activation of Power of the Depths until Serum starts wearing off (as its +MaxHP buff decays in much the same way as Serum!) and Toroidal Bubble lets them stay "capped" a bit longer whilst the odd Soothing Wave keeps them topped up.
 

Edited March 18 by Maelwys

[Frosticus]

1 hour ago, Maelwys said:

Bots/Marine is definitely safer than Mercs/Marine; which in turn is safer than Demons/Marine.

Mercs has far better ST damage than Bots though; and far more on-demand survivability than Demons. So on balance I usually rate it higher than both. It also outputs more -res (due to Achilles Heel opportunities) which when combined with /Marine will be producing so much additional damage that Archvillain passive health recovery is barely a speedbump even without any -regen debuffs. GM passive regeneration might be more noticeable; depending on how lucky you get with proc activations.

 

AVs are what they are. -regen hardly matters against them if you are a high damage build (all pet heavy builds can be). 500 pylon dps will generally kill a 54 AV in 3ish mins. At which point being able to survive the more dangerous ones is more valuable ime. 

 

I'd be surprised if Demons and mercs outdamage  bots against GMs though. 600% -regen ends up being 90-100% regen (lower lvl GMs have less debuff res) and they regen ~350hp/sec at the top end. 

 

GMs spam aoes now, often with buttloads of knockback. Standing close to them (ie demons) can be an issue. 

 

At any rate, just what I'd do as a MM. I do have an ill/Marine troller that exceeds 1k pylon dps with no -regen present. It can blow thru some, but not all GMs as their aoe spam will kill off phantasm and my spider and then it starts to stall out as you get stuck in a resummon/buff loop and tank dps. 

 

 

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, Frosticus said:

I'd be surprised if Demons and mercs outdamage  bots against GMs though. 600% -regen ends up being 90-100% regen (lower lvl GMs have less debuff res) and they regen ~350hp/sec at the top end.

GMs spam aoes now, often with buttloads of knockback. Standing close to them (ie demons) can be an issue. 

Aye it's (70679.18*0.05)/(10) = 353.3959 HP/Second for a "regular" level 50 one.
Given that the builds in question are outputting well over 3k DPS vs a pylon (close to 4k in the top run; albeit with temps out!) that's still a speedbump.

Damage resistances will definitely be a factor even with the added -res procs from Mercs (Smashing/Lethal versus mostly Energy) but the Merc and Demon Henchmen attacks deal better  basic single target damage than Bots and as the animations are a fair bit faster it'll mean more Shifting Tide proc activations. My gut says there probably won't be a huge deal of difference, but it'd be interesting to watch it played out sometime.

100% agree on the melee pets = problematic thing. Running Group Fly with Bots or Mercs makes things a lot easier for most (non /marine!) toons.

 

2 hours ago, Frosticus said:

At any rate, just what I'd do as a MM. I do have an ill/Marine troller that exceeds 1k pylon dps with no -regen present. It can blow thru some, but not all GMs as their aoe spam will kill off phantasm and my spider and then it starts to stall out as you get stuck in a resummon/buff loop and tank dps. 

One of my favourites for messing around is a Crabbermind; plenty of -res debuffs but no -regen and they peak at roughly ~1.1k if all the pets are on form, before Lores + Hybrid. Keeping the pets alive is a minigame in itself!

[Frosticus]

I may have misunderstood the thread.

I thought OP was looking to do this challenge style: no insp/amps/temps/lore kinda deal. 

 

If they are ok with the above then play whatever, temp summons and lores can probably do it with you being afk.

[Xandyr]

On 3/17/2025 at 5:29 PM, Maelwys said:

 

 

 

Mercs/Marine simply outputs enough damage to obliterate stuff in seconds (mainly via Shifting Tide procs, but Whitecap and Tide Pool help too). 

 Just curious @Maelwys, how are you slotting Shifting Tides? I think i only have 3 Posi's Blast (including the chance for energy damage) in mine. Sounds like I'm missing out?

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Xandyr said:

 Just curious @Maelwys, how are you slotting Shifting Tides? I think i only have 3 Posi's Blast (including the chance for energy damage) in mine. Sounds like I'm missing out?

 

As long as you have maximum damage aspect in it the rest doesn't really matter. The inherent Cold damage procs dealt by shifting tides is affected by Enhancements and Damage Boosts, but the power itself only activates damage proc set IO enhancements at the minimum rate so there's little point in procbombing it.

So slot it for damage, cast Tide Pool for +Dmg and Whitecap/Brine for -Res, and make as many things as possible (henchmen temp pets pseudopets players whatever) attack the target.

[Xandyr]

I've never really been a fan of them, but I have been considering a Bots/Rad MM. There'd be SO much -Regen, along with all the other debuffs Rad has (to hit debuff, -damage, - resist,etc).

Edited Saturday at 07:04 PM by Xandyr

[tjknight]

Purely subjective opinion here.. so no math facts to back it up. However, I've been leveling a Mercs/Marine MM through the Rogue isles, and she's having no trouble soloing even level elite bosses. I just finished the "Hammers of Justice" arc which has an EB in each mission, they all melted in seconds. I'm not on any crazy settings (just +0/2). I will note that while I don't have any sets slotted yet. I do have the -res ins the Special Ops and the Commando. And a "Touch of Lady Grey" proc in the soldiers. Mercs/Marine has been one the easiest to lvl MM's I've played so far. So this combo gets my vote for best all around MM for just playing and enjoying the game.  

Edited Sunday at 02:00 PM by tjknight