Just some MM ramblings

[khy]

THIS IS GOING TO BE A TL;DR POST WHERE I JUST GO ON ABOUT EVERYTHING. IT WILL BE LONG. YOU ARE WARNED.

 

 

So I'm not trying to make a point, or try to get anything changed, or even really looking for advice. I just wanna ramble a bit. Just, y'know, air some thoughts. Typing this stuff out often helps me look at stuff from different angles, or just helps me clarify stuff in my head. I'm ranking the different powersets, but not based on how good or bad they are but on how they fit ME as a player.

 

 

So I've been on a months-long quest to find the best MM combo for me. Not the best one 'period' because that's so subjective, but the one that fits me and works the best for me personally. Ever since the game became available again I've been experimenting, trying the different various builds, different pets, and so on and so forth. I have made probably 50 MM's, deleted a lot of them when they didn't work or I wanted to remake with various changes, that sort of thing.

 

 

Different people have different playstyles, right? Well mine is a 100% support playstyle. Not like the joke all-heals Emp, but like the guy who wants to keep the team up and in the fight through any means necessary. Whether that be buffing and healing them, debuffing enemies, or rezzing when things go bad. I like to be the kind of player who the team can rely on to keep an eye on them. MM is the perfect fit for me, because I can do my thing and still be contributing damage and debuffs and whatnot from my pets. So I keep trying various different builds and various different abilities, trying to find what feels 'right' to me and what I can most effectively use to help my team and my summons.

 

 

So that said, I'm gonna start by just rambling about secondaries.

 

1) Force Fields - I love FF, probably currently my favorite of the various support sets. Defense is SO much better than resist, simply because 1 missed attack is basically a 100% resist. FF has enough non-mandatory powers (Detention Field, Repulsion Field/Bomb, etc) to make it easy to work in medicine pool to support the bubbles, and with Power Boost you can get AMAZING numbers (Easily into the 40% +def range). Plus, they synergize so well with so many pets! Bots being the obvious one, but bubbles stack well with Thugs Leadership and even Beast. The downside of course is that every hit that DOES land hits HARD, plus the pool powers you use to supplement the bubbles are never as good as baked-in powers. Also it's a very passive set overall. Still it's so effective I find myself drawn to it more than the rest.

 

2) Thermal - Probably my second favorite set. It has good heals, good buffs, good debuffs, and a great rez. What's not to like? Damage resistance, that's what. DR is so mediocre compared to +def. Stack a ton of it on, and you're super effective - but by myself I can't give out more than 24% or so. And what's worse is that without positional effects you can't even count on it to help against Psi or Toxic, while +def you can. It's so frustrating because when I see people die I feel like my buffs were ineffective. I know I'm not responsible for every death, but at the same time I kind of feel like I am. The rest of the set is so amazing, that it makes the shields feel that much more disappointing, you know?

 

3) Sonic - I have a love/hate relationship with sonic. As you may realize from what I said about Thermal I don't like Damage Resistance boosts, and that's all Sonic is in terms of survivability. Which means even with everything decked out with IOs and stuff, my pets and teammates die too easily. It doesn't even have the baked in heals and rez that Thermal gets to balance out how mediocre +res feels. But then there's Siphon and Disruption - between them, I can make an enemy take a whopping 45% more damage. That's so good it's almost criminal, and how can I not love Liquefy? It's basically a reskin of Freezing Rain/Sleet, one of my favorite debuffs in the game! So frustrating to love half a set and hate half of it.

 

4) Storm - Storm's got no real buffs, but damn if the debuffs aren't great. Mostly. Gust is, of course, amazing for a T1 power. HUGE area, fast recast, if you position right you can lock down so many people; unfortunately I see a lot of people use it really, really poorly and end up causing problems scattering mobs and pulling extra when pets run after enemies into other packs. O2 boost has its uses and lets me avoid Medicine, though it feels weak compared to other single-target heals. And Freezing Rain is INCREDIBLE. A huge, incredibly potent debuff on a short-ish cooldown with an effect that looks good and satisfying. But hurricane... the -tohit is so potent yet hard to apply. Getting in the thick of things ends up scattering enemies and making them that much harder to AoE? I WANT to use it all the time but I don't want to scatter enemies and make my team frustrated in doing so. Tornado's a fun gimmick, though if you put in a KB to KD IO it gets real funny real fast, even if it doesn't feel all that effective. And while Lightning storm LOOKS good, every time I use it I feel like it's just... not as good as I wish it could be. I dunno.

 

5) Time - I really ought to do more with this. Wish it had a rez though. Still, good mix of buffs/debuffs. Heals are a bit weak compared to Thermal. I've yet to get a high-level time MM, I think that'll be my next goal. One problem I have with it is I feel like I HAVE to use PB with it to max out defense. All my max-level MM's use Scorpion, so I wanna branch out and use soul storms or sharks more. But not at the expense of losing a ton of defense to keep my pets up. So I want to level a non defense-based pet first so I can bite people's legs off with sharks.

 

6) Emp/Pain - I'm just not into the more healing-focused sets that much. Without buffs most of my T1 pets will die in 1 hit and that frustrates me, so while they're good options for other people they're just not good for me.

 

7) Cold - The variety is good and all but it lacks a good heal, and the shields can't get boosted much so they'll feel weak compared to FF or Time. Overall feels like it's not that effective compared to other options.

 

8 ) Radiation - I had a rad/rad defender back on Live that I enjoyed, and I definitely like being a rad MM. The heal's a bit weak, but it makes up for it in crazy good debuffs. Also has a rez, which is amazing. The last 3 powers in the set, though, kind of feel weak. Fallout sounds good in theory but it always feels like when someone dies it's hardly ever in a good place to use it, so in order to make it worthwhile I feel like TP is a necessity. Also those End costs are painful for an MM. Good set, but unless I'm using it with Bots I feel like the lack of buffs means my pets are way too squishy.

 

9) Poison - Honestly I feel like it's just Radiation, but with the debuffs being click, stronger, and smaller area. Same issue with pets feeling squishy without buffs. I haven't tried Bots/poison because it feels like a weird theme, but maybe sometime I'll see how well that works for survivability. Noxious Gas seems like it'd be fun, I just never got a /poison up to 38 to try it.

 

10) Nature - I mean it's a strong healing set, sure; but the buffs feel a bit lackluster to me. The big ground patch of healing/recovery is nice but needs to be moved way too often. If it were a PBAoE toggle that'd be quite a bit nicer, since you could move it around to where you need to. Honestly it feels like something that fits more in WoW or other MMOs, CoH is too active for it to be really nice.

 

11) Kinetics - I love /kin when I'm on a team, and I'm disappointed by it when I'm out solo. Honestly I'm not convinced it should be a MM set because it does very, very little for your pets survivability even if it's amazing for the rest of your team. I figured Beast would pair well with it, but the pet you WANT to have all the good buffs, your dire wolf, like to stand out of range for FS and howl for a while before getting in close.

 

 

Yeah there's other secondaries I don't mention. I'm just not into them, for whatever reasons - Dark has the utility and support but, eh, somehow it just looks really dumb to me. Nothing against it if you like it, but somehow it doesn't quite click right. Traps annoys me a bit because I feel like why would I want to constantly be killing off a pet, even to do a lot of damage? And Trick arrow.... no. No buffs, no heals, no rez, the debuff numbers don't really amaze me. It's just not for me, not even a tiny tiny tiny bit.

 

 

So I'm gonna ramble about pets now.

 

1) Bots - I wish I didn't love bots so much. Energy damage means I can fight CoT without being annoyed (CoT ghosts take much less Lethal/smashing damage), they have good AoE, they like to sit their asses down and fight from ranged more than other sets, and the protectors are amazing for survivability. The downside is they're LOUD, and some of the Assault Bot's attacks feel lackluster. Overall though  I can't help but love these guys for being so good and versatile in so many ways. Repair's pretty awful though.

 

2) Mercs - I love and hate these idiots. They do good damage and do it from safe ranges, the medic can actually heal the MM as well as the other pets (Though it's rare I ever really need it), and the Spec Ops feel stronger than a lot of other Tier 2 pets, with good snipes and good debuffs. The commando's good, but like the assault bot I sorta feel he's a bit lacking towards the end, but that's probably because nobody likes Flamethrower. If only the Tier 1 pets wouldn't just run into melee for NO REASON AT ALL! Also serum, the WORST MM unique. The damage buff it gives is pathetic (7.5%), the cooldown is ridiculous, and while the resists are high I can use the power so infrequently that they can't be counted on really.

 

3) Thugs - The Tier 1 pets are so disappointing, because they're so weak and fragile. Then the Tier 2 pets come out and boost the Tier 1, and the Tier 3 pet is exactly what I want. Big, strong, dishes out damage and does a wonderful job doing what he does. Plus, gang war. Who doesn't like gang war? If the Tier 1 pets were a bit better I'd easily use these guys over Mercs.

 

4) Beast - I love them doggies, so cute. And the lions are fantastic. But even though they're visually the best, and thematically great, somehow I always do poorly with them. They die easily, they're harder to control than other pets, they don't have good heals and their defenses feel low. I like how they can crit, but even with lots of stacks of Pack Mentality it feels like their crit rate is super low. I feel like I must not be using them well, and I wish I could get better at using them because I really love the set. I'm also not good at knowing when to use Fortify, since by the time one of my pets is in danger it's usually too late to save 'em.

 

5) Demons - They're like Thermal with the whole 'little of everything' they have. Lots of different abilities and powers, different damage types. The unique is weird, sort of half serum and half gang war, but still useful. I definitely like them, but when I finally got one to 26 and got the prince... I dunno. He underwhelmed me a bit. I think it's because I like the Tier 3 pet to be a damage badass, and half his set is control.

 

Zombies and Ninjas aren't really my thing. I'm trying out Ninjas right now, but ehhhhh. I dunno, they just don't work that well for me? It's hard to put into words exactly why I don't enjoy 'em. Part of it is theme, I'm not good at making ninja-themed stuff. And for me theming is super important, if i have a stupid character with no theme I have no motivation to play 'em.

 

There's no set that is 100% my thing, but that's probably because if there WAS a set that fit me perfectly it'd probably be ridiculously overpowered. Every set has its weaknesses, and wanting a set without any weaknesses is a bit greedy of me. Doesn't stop me from wishing that there was a set that fit me a bit better. If there was a Thermal set with Defense boosts instead of Resist, it'd fit me like a glove, but c'est la vie.

 

Right now the MM's I have that I main are a Bots/FF to 50 (My main, Doctor Neurotic), a level 40 Beast/Kin, a Level 40 Mercs/Thermal, a level 38 Mercs/Storm (To blow all the shells around with the physics), and a whole huge mess of level 20-30ish MM's of varying powers. Every set usually has 1-2 things that really makes me annoyed or unhappy with the set, so I move on to a different one and try another one but am not entirely happy with it either, and the cycle continues and repeats...

 

 

Last thing I wanna mention is the power pools. Honestly, I kind of find the patron pools so much more interesting than the Ancillaries. They have better themes, better powers, and are just more interesting overall. I know people get annoyed by having to do the whole unlocking stuff, but really you can pick any of the four

 

Mace - PB is AMAZING when boosting certain things like FF bubbles or Farsight, and with a couple recharge IOs you can use it a LOT. I imagine it's great with other time effects, and I eventually wanna try out that combo. Also Scorpion's shield is definitely the best defensive power out of the 4 PPPs. The beam volley's lackluster though, but I usually don't focus on the damaging powers. I have my bots and teammates for damage, I'm here for support! When I want to pick a set more for effects, Mace is really almost always my go-to. It's just SO GOOD.

 

Soul - I gotta admit I like Soul mainly because of the visual effects. Soul Storm and the white tentacles LOOK really great to me. I'm probably stupid and hypocritical to be sitting here saying how much I want to use powers that I know are less effective based on their appearance, after having just typed out this huge-ass post complaining about the effectiveness of other powers, but honestly the PPP I feel like I can be less picky about simply because it's more supplemental, you know?

 

Leviathan - Like Soul, I enjoy it mainly because of the visuals. The sharks circling around their prey, the huge shark bite... I pick this pool when it works thematically with my character, like beast/ stuff. I do like bile spray, but I do NOT like Knockout Blow. Even if the damage is great, I'm not a brute or stalker, I'm a Mastermind - doing a silly wind-up punch just seems dumb to me!

 

Mu - My least favorite of the four, although I have no complaints about its effectiveness it just seems like it should look more interesting. Functionally it's not that much different than the other sets, but I'd like it to at least have a special look to the powers to make it more interesting to use, and not just an elec control recolor. Even then, I'd go for it if it had powers that were above and beyond like PB, but it's just... not as good as the rest.

 

 

This ended up being longer than I intended but whatever, it killed some dead time at work and lets me vocalize some of my thoughts about the class and its abilities. If anyone else here wants to just talk about MMs in general and how they feel about stuff, I'm always interested in reading about my favorite AT!

[biostem]

I, too, am very much in love with masterminds.  I only played CoX until around the time the game went F2P.  I have a good amount of experience with mercenaries, and a tiny bit less with ninja.  I couldn't get into undead, and though bots are fun, it just seemed that every other MM I ran across was playing them too.  I'm currently leveling up a demon/dark and a beast/thermal.  Dark is very good, but having to worry that your heal, fear, or other control powers may miss is quite annoying.  You can mitigate a lot of that with good acc enh's and tactics, but it still feel a little iffy in tense situations.  A lot of the powers seem to have longish recharges, too.  My beast/therm is still very young, but I like the reliability of the heals, and the shields appear to apply to everyone in a radius, which ia  great QoL improvement.  While I see your point regarding def vs DR, I still feel that the always-effective DR is a nice "security blanket".  Either way, stick to what you find fun!

[khy]

The thing is that no matter what, DR will always be less effective at mitigating damage for pets than +Def will. That's why Def-based sets (Time, FF, Cold) make pets feel much sturdier and less squishy than the Res-based sets. For a long time I went off of 'feeling' and how the Res-based sets felt like my pets were dying so much easier than Def, then when I did the math I found that yes - no matter what, Def beats Res for overall damage reduction in almost every single case.

 

The higher level you get the worse it gets, as more and more mobs get more and more AoE attacks and the attacks get strong enough to hit all your pets for half or more of their health. You can use Warmth once to bring them back up, but they'll likely take another round or two of AoEs before Warmth is ready again and you'll have to pick which one to use Cauterize to save. At least with a Def-based set, it'll likely miss most of your wolves and hopefully only hit one or two of them so you can have a much easier time spot-healing and keeping the whole pack up instead of choosing who gets to get resummoned.

[Apparition]

I like Resistance... my main is a Thugs/Sonic Resonance Mastermind... simply because, as a buff, +Resistance is much more beneficial to a team than +Defense.  Why?  Because by endgame, everyone has soft-capped defense anyway, so +defense adds very little.  Resistance on the other hand, nearly everyone can use more of.

[Chuckers]

I *love* my bots/ff MM. It's the only MM I ever took to 50 on live. The bots are so damn cute.. especially the Tier 1's clunky walk/stomp. Since the Tier 2 already bubble everyone, getting FF as a secondary only feels natural. You bubble their bubbles and the overlap is incredible for their survival. I actually like the repair power. It has come in handy when the tier 2 is too busy to repair another bot.

[grinningsphinx]

sounds like a review from someone with poor knowledge of game mechanics and IO sets tbh.

 

storm is very easy to use with some game knowledge, and is much cheaper to slot then it was in the old days. I have a controller set up with both storm and gravity and have zero issues running multiple tornado's and water spouts. Wormhole spammed as much as possible. Hurricane is always on except in instances where i know im not going to be needing it.

 

Defence is great!!!  Until you get streak break and die in one hit, or have all your pets die in one hit.  Try taking on a pylon or APEX hit with defence. I guess it depends on the content your running most often.

 

Ranged pets will always live longer then melee pets, on average. That being said, beasts have both the best defense and the best resists out of all the sets. easily verifiable by checking the numbers at lvl 50 in pines. Survivability of melee pets though is highly dependent on both set gearing and secondary/ancillary power sets. I only occasionally lose a wolf or lion even during Itrials etc as i built with layered mitigations in mind.

[khy]

I'll admit, I'm sure everything's radically different when you hit the Incarnate sections of the game. So looking at it from that aspect is going to definitely be different. But the thing is, getting to that point relies on finding a character you enjoy enough to stick with until the end and that's why I want a build that FITS me so well, that I can enjoy and stick with. If there was more endgame content and less levelling content I'd probably find myself more interested in a less-than-optimal levelling set that outperforms and excels when I get to 50 and invest millions in IOs.

 

And don't get me wrong about storm; I really love the set, but the problem I have is with my pets' survivability. When freezing rain is up the debuff helps a TON, and hurricane's -tohit is amazing but when I use hurricane to try to keep enemies from murdering my pets, it has the nasty side effect of pushing all of the enemies out to the edge and screws up their AoE. My bots/ff can attack a big pack and hit 90% of the enemies in the pack because they're clustered then survive thanks to their bubbles, if I do the same thing with Storm then without the hurricane tohit debuff the enemies have no problems landing hits on my pets and they're dead in a few seconds. Or else I jump in the middle of the pack with Hurricane on, and my pets can hit only a small fraction because now the group's debuffed me and in a big circle around me.

 

I think a big part of the problem is that I don't treat my pets as being expendable enough. With high end costs of rebuffing I always hate when I lose T1 pets and have to resummon, it's super annoying.

[kelly Rocket]

Yeah. Defense is definitely better while leveling, but at a certain point, especially if you want to be playing with the difficulty higher than just +0/x1, you're going to be hitting content that simply one-shots your pets. And at that point, defense starts to fall down.

 

Sure, Defense cuts damage to 5%, and Resist can at best cut it to 10%, but when a hit gets through the Defense it's going to be 100% of the damage for that hit, and if it's a one-shot level damage, you just lost a pet. Whereas with capped resist, the pet would only eat 10% of that hit.

 

And if you're teaming, there's almost always going to be a Time, Cold, or FF toon on the team that can provide you with Defense. Much rarer to encounter a Sonic, though Thermal's not too uncommon. But given that you can generally rely on there being someone else on the team who can provide Defense, you are often better off providing the pets with Resistance to layer with that.

 

Where Defense actually shines is in preventing the secondary effects of attacks. Can't be mezzed or debuffed if the attacks don't hit. Still, Defense is feast-or-famine. You're unstoppable right up until a Boss drops an AoE and RNG goes against you and half of your pets are wiped out instantly by that one attack.