Pets HP?

[Chalkarts]

What is it based on?  Can it be boosted?

 

Which pets have the most base HP?

 

I'm trying to build the biggest batch of walking bricks I can,

 

Thoughts, opinions?

[Adeon Hawkwood]

Generally speaking HP for minions is static based on your level and their rank, it doesn't vary based on power set.

 

You can buff their max HP using powers from your secondary if your secondary has powers like that (i.e. Frostwork) but it's not the most useful buff. In general keeping your pets alive is more about stacking defense or resistance based on your secondary and their inherent powers.

[Maelwys]

2 hours ago, Chalkarts said:

What is it based on?  Can it be boosted?

 

Which pets have the most base HP?

 

I'm trying to build the biggest batch of walking bricks I can,

 

Thoughts, opinions?

 

There are different base stats based on rank but you can can always boost your henchmens' HP a fair bit before it caps out (by +50% in fact... but remember that your lower tier pets spawn at -1 and -2 to you). That's part of what makes /Marine so effective on MMs.

 

They also get to cap their damage resistances out at 90%. So you can get some really tough bricks by capping out their MaxHP plus layering up their Defense and Resistance.

 

Edited May 6 by Maelwys

[tjknight]

The answer you're looking for is Marine Affinity, and possibly Nature Affinity. Marine Affinity offers several buffs that address pet squishiness, including an Absorb mechanic that functions like extra hit points for your pets. It also provides a Max HP buff through Power of the Depths.

 

One key advantage of Marine Affinity’s Barrier Reef over Nature Affinity’s Wild Bastion is that Barrier Reef refreshes its absorb effect continuously, making it effectively permanent right out of the box. Overall, Marine Affinity combines defense, resistance, and HP buffs to make pets quite sturdy. Nature Affinity can achieve similar results, but it typically requires much more expensive slotting to get there.

 

Another option to consider is pairing a Defense set like Time, Force Field or Cold , with pets who have strong inherent defense (Robots, Ninjas,  and perhaps Beats).  This can help the pets avoid damage altogether.  

Edited May 7 by tjknight

[Fira]

It's not entirely true but AFAIK for practical purposes, the TL;DR is you're stuck with your T1s having 600 HP and getting oneshot by Boss+ AoEs, unless you get good enough amounts of Resistance, or Absorbs. You can also use Rebirth or Marinestuff for Max HP but, honestly, I don't believe in it...

[Maelwys]

On 5/7/2025 at 8:56 PM, Fira said:

 AFAIK for practical purposes, the TL;DR is you're stuck with your T1s having 600 HP

576 HP in regular endgame content (Lv48+1)

+MaxHP can boost that up to 864.

 

/Marine will not only get its current HP up to 864, but also layer Absorb, Defense and Resistance on top. And many of the Primary MM powersets now get enhanceable Resistance via their T1 upgrade. Throw in the Aura IOs, ATOs, Maneuvers and Barrier Destiny/Support Hybrid and the little buggers actually become quite Tanky.

[Maelwys]

On 5/7/2025 at 4:56 AM, tjknight said:

Another option to consider is pairing a Defense set like Time, Force Field or Cold , with pets who have strong inherent defense (Robots, Ninjas,  and perhaps Beats).  This can help the pets avoid damage altogether.  

 

FWIW it's quite possible for a Primary like Bots/ to end up with softcapped personal and henchmen Defenses regardless of your Secondary powerset (and in Bots' case you only really need either Power Boost or Radial Clarion Destiny; with both being total overkill)
 

Edited May 10 by Maelwys

[Fira]

22 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

FWIW it's quite possible for a Primary like Bots/ to end up with softcapped personal and henchmen Defenses regardless of your Secondary powerset (and in Bots' case you only really need either Power Boost or Radial Clarion Destiny; with both being total overkill)

 

Why Power Boost?

You can't snapshot the Protector Bots bubble

So that works if you play like, FF, but, what else do you use it on?

[Maelwys]

3 hours ago, Fira said:

Why Power Boost?

You can't snapshot the Protector Bots bubble

 

Look here and note the "Boosts are copied to Entity" flag on the far right.

 

Then look here and note the 240s Duration and the lack of an "Ignores External Strength Boosts" flag on the top left (which is the thing that prevents "Secondary Effect Boost" from the likes of Power Boost and Radial Clarion from affecting particular long-duration buff abilities)

 

You pointed out the Radial Clarion interaction yourself in the bubble rework feedback thread. Radial Clarion applies its effect on your Henchmen directly; but last I checked Power Boost works just fine too as long as you're prepared to resummon your T2s at least once every 4 minutes.

 

For anyone else following this: before the Robotics powerset rework, the Protector Bots bubbled each ally separately via Single Target buffs and it was far too much of a hassle to leverage this. But these days they only utilise a single AoE buff every 240s and it is very simple to force them to reapply it (all you need to do is cancel the currently active buff on yourself and they'll immediately refresh it on everyone).

- - - - - - - - - -

EDIT: Just hopped onto Brainstorm and did a quick test. Looks like despite that "Boosts are copied to Entity" flag, active buffs on the MM are not currently actually getting copied onto the Henchmen... so at present Power Boost indeed won't work for this but Clarion Radial still does.

with ED-Capped Defense


with ED-Capped Defense + Radial Clarion


with ED-Capped Defense + Resummoning Pets (with either Power Boost and/or Radial Clarion active on the Mastermind at the point of resummoning)



Last I actually ran a copy of Power Boost on a Bots was admittedly a good few years back. And double-checking the Protector Bots summoning power I see an "Ignores Enhancements and other boosts" flag there too (which isn't present on regular pets) that may well be effectively negating the other one... 🍝 💻

 
 

Edited May 10 by Maelwys

[Fira]

13 hours ago, Maelwys said:

 

-snip-
 

 

I believe "Boosts are copied to entity" refers to the enhancements slotted in the power

There is a second tag on City of Data which is "Entity has creator's modifiers" which is probably what you mean

 

Edit: Check here for example: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.assault_3.incendiary_swarm_missiles

It's quite funny, because in the reverse fashion, you're the one that taught me about that on Discord one year ago 😛

Edited Saturday at 08:54 PM by Fira

[Maelwys]

1 hour ago, Fira said:

I believe "Boosts are copied to entity" refers to the enhancements slotted in the power

There is a second tag on City of Data which is "Entity has creator's modifiers" which is probably what you mean

 

Edit: Check here for example: https://cod.uberguy.net/html/power.html?power=mastermind_pets.assault_3.incendiary_swarm_missiles

It's quite funny, because in the reverse fashion, you're the one that taught me about that on Discord one year ago 😛

"Boosts are copied to entity" = "Take a copy of whatever Boosts are currently active on the summoner and duplicate each of them onto the pet/pseudopet" (it literally takes a copy of any buff/debuff active at the time of casting and duplicates it onto the newly summoned entity; including the current remaining duration. This includes the effect of Clicky buffs and Inspirations as well as the effect of Autos/Toggles and Set Bonuses - although the remaining "current buff duration" of any Autos/Toggles/SetBonuses typically expires after a few seconds and so is usually only relevant for the first few "ticks" of a pseudopet ability). This is what lets a Fire Blaster's Rain of Fire benefit from popping Red Inspirations and Aim/Build Up.

"Entity has Creator's modifiers" = "Use the summoner's modifiers instead of the default 'pet/pseudopet' modifiers" (this is your Archetype attributes and modifiers - values such as Melee Res Dmg and Damage Smashing and Elusivity Melee - which translate into things like your Damage, Resistance and Hit Point base numbers and maximum limits). This is what lets a Fiery Aura Brute's Burn Patches cap out at 700% damage instead of 400% damage.

Whenever these two flags are present together it allows a buff to be applied onto a Pet/Pseudopet and for that Pet/Pseudopet to benefit from the summoner's higher caps. You can see this in action by comparing the Blaster version of Bonfire (which has both "Boosts are copied to entity" and "Entity has Creator's modifiers") with Rain of Fire (which only has "Boosts are copied to entity") - the former has the Blaster 500% damage cap; but the latter only has the 400% Pet damage cap.

"Ignores enhancements and other boosts" however is an odd one. It forbids the summoned entity from inheriting any boosts from its parent summoner; so in theory it should never be paired with a "Boosts are Copied to Entity" flag in the same power effect... but CoH is full of old redundant and/or spaghetti code. (IIRC it used to be that lots of power effects had this flag and/or "Ignores External Strength Boosts" on them by default because in days gone by it was possible to slot certain Hamidon-Origin enhancements into powers which resulted in boosting them in strange/unusual ways. For example, +Damage Resistance Enhancement is coded the same as +Damage Enhancement under the hood; so slotting a Damage/Range HO into Sonic Barrier would boost it by 33% instead of 20% and for a loooong time it was far more efficient to use -ToHit/-Def/End HOs in the likes of Tactics and Fortitude than +ToHit/+Def/End HOs). I can kinda-sorta understand why it'd be useful for Mastermind Henchmen summon powers to still possess this flag; as otherwise you could pop a powerful self-only buff like Rune of Protection or Surge of Power or Hoarfrost right before resummoning them.
 

Edited Saturday at 10:37 PM by Maelwys