Pool Power Stupidity

[Clave Dark 5]

So some thread here was suggesting that Nature and Mercs would make a good pairing, and then somewhere I've read that the Fighting pool powers now synergize fairly well and I've gotten that chocolate into that peanut butter and decided to do both of these ideas on the same MM.  I'm planning to skip all the personal attacks in Mercs and, obviously angling towards tanker-minding, need some ideas on how to slot those fighting powers as well and tough+weave (I believe I've heard Crosspunch is the only really good one of the set?).  And Maneuvers... are the other Leadership powers outside of that and Provoke (definitely going to need that one!) worth taking or slotting with anything?

 

Also you can feel free to tell me what a Captain Gimp I'm making here.  I generally play for fun rather than number-crunching, but I mean, if this is super super stupid, he's only at 17 right now, so it wouldn't be too crazy to delete him and start over.

[Pherdnut]

Well the confusing part is that you mention other people's ideas but not sure what it is about those ideas that you like. So...

How do you want to play an MM and how can we help with that? Fun is good. What's fun for you?

 

Edited July 25, 2019 by Pherdnut

[Clave Dark 5]

Well, that should be pretty straightforward:  I heard Mercs/Nature make a godo combo and wanted to try it out.  I heard The Fighting Pool synergizes well if you take them all and wanted to try that out too.  So fun for this toon would be to tankermind with bodyguard and punch people while the army guys fire weapons. 

 

I want to know if this idea if incredibly stupid or just "not that great" (maybe this combo won't tankermind so well or something?) but mainly how to slot up the powers mentioned: Provoke, Maneuvers, Tough,  Weave, the various Fighting Powers like Crosspunch, Kick, etc.  I believe some people only bother to slot up Crosspunch for example

[Clave Dark 5]

So... no one has any theories on how to slot these?

[chigiabelo]

I've no experience with Mercs or Nature, but have recently leveled a Beasts/Thermal and have almost T4'd all my incarnate slots. I've been on the fence about respecing out of my primary attacks, at least some of them because right now, even though I do use them in my attack chain, and they server as mules for some IO set bonuses, they do such pitiful damage. If Hero Stats is to be believed, the bulk of my damage comes from my Judgement nuke, Explosive Blast from my Epic pool (not bad considering it's slotted for knockback/down), Nemesis Staff and Blackwand. I tend to build for playstyle and concept first, but I don't think I would skip all my attacks. Ranged attacks are always useful for pulling, secondary effects such as KB/KD can help extend survivability a bit, AOEs (if you can get them) do decent aggregate damage, and the primaries help flesh out the character, thematically. Getting Tough and Weave and various +Res and +Def bonuses and +health passives do really make a huge difference in survivability.

[Doctor Brainbottle]

A scrapper or a brute might look at the fighting pool and conclude that crosspunch is the "only good attack", but they are spoiled for choices and have very high standards.  Masterminds can't afford to be as picky: your other attack choices are pretty thin on the ground, so even the weakest fighting pool attack is "one of the best attacks you can get".

[Clave Dark 5]

5 hours ago, chigiabelo said:

I've been on the fence about respecing out of my primary attacks, at least some of them because right now, even though I do use them in my attack chain, and they server as mules for some IO set bonuses, they do such pitiful damage. ..

Ranged attacks are always useful for pulling, secondary effects such as KB/KD can help extend survivability a bit, AOEs (if you can get them)...

Getting Tough and Weave and various +Res and +Def bonuses and +health passives do really make a huge difference in survivability.

Good points.  I hadn't considered the set-muling issue as I don't tend to min/max my build too much, but that is a good thing to keep in the back of my head.  For the ranged attacks, I've held onto my Nem Staff (currently 28th level) and took Provoke as well.  It's not a great attack, but it's not awful either.  I've been told that if an MM focuses their attacks as well as their pets all on one target at a time, overall it all really does add up into a strong front; plus there's those various stuns, debuffs etc. that one might find within them - something I didn't think about at the time I went this path; I'll need to check that stuff.  But yeah, I don't want to skip the other powers, and was just thinking I might take the others along the way for flavor.  I am finding out however that as a Mercs MM, maybe I should just stay more to the back of my pets who often do stay at range (ish anyway), plus due to the cone nature of the heal in Nature.

 

All that said, I still haven't managed to take Crosspunch yet, I may love it when I finally get to it!  We'll see and if I change my mind, there's always respec.

[chigiabelo]

12 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

All that said, I still haven't managed to take Crosspunch yet, I may love it when I finally get to it!  We'll see and if I change my mind, there's always respec.

I compared Crosspunch to several attacks on a test MM I built on Justin. Level 35 all attacks slotted with 1ACC 3DM SO's. Using unslotted Brawl as the baseline, against an evel level Crey Infiltrator, Crosspunch did 9.02 times the damage of unslotted brawl on average (about 81.5 damage). Against that same mob, Arcane bolt did 9.49 times unslotted brawl (though against other mobs, I'v seen CP do slightly better than Arcane Bolt). None of my primary attacks did better than that, usually scoring between 5.02 and 8.86 time unslotted brawl. Spring Attack did 8.3, Flurry 6.4, etc.

 

I've played several MMs to 50 now and the best advice I can give as to playstyle is (1) binds and macros let you set up and position the pets for more effective battles, (2) against minions and LTs, let the pets scatter and do what they do but against hard hitting targets, focus them because it removes the bigger threats more quickly and keeps them grouped for buffs and heals, (3) don't ignore your survivability so add +res, +def, +HP wherever you can because between that and your pets' hitpoints you can tank for short periods.

[Clave Dark 5]

17 hours ago, chigiabelo said:

I compared Crosspunch to several attacks on a test MM I built on Justin. Level 35 all attacks slotted with 1ACC 3DM SO's. Using unslotted Brawl as the baseline, against an evel level Crey Infiltrator, Crosspunch did 9.02 times the damage of unslotted brawl on average (about 81.5 damage). Against that same mob, Arcane bolt did 9.49 times unslotted brawl (though against other mobs, I'v seen CP do slightly better than Arcane Bolt). None of my primary attacks did better than that, usually scoring between 5.02 and 8.86 time unslotted brawl. Spring Attack did 8.3, Flurry 6.4, etc.

 

I've played several MMs to 50 now and the best advice I can give as to playstyle is (1) binds and macros let you set up and position the pets for more effective battles, (2) against minions and LTs, let the pets scatter and do what they do but against hard hitting targets, focus them because it removes the bigger threats more quickly and keeps them grouped for buffs and heals, (3) don't ignore your survivability so add +res, +def, +HP wherever you can because between that and your pets' hitpoints you can tank for short periods.

You posted about your trials with CrossPunch in another thread, right?  I'm pretty sure I saw that, which was what put me on this path.  Taking that ionto consideration, then it would make sense to slot up, at least a little, Kick and Punch, right?

 

I've said it before here, I really don't want to get into binds, taking the time to get my hand off the mouse, hit a key or two and then use the mouse to direct the chosen pets is just too long, especially for a rolling team.  Plus I can even get my pets to stay sat on one wide patch of Livegiving Spores as it is.  I mean, I know people swear by binds and such positioning, but... somehow I just don't see it counting for all that much when the pets will dash around after I've GoTo'ed them just a couple of seconds ago anyway.

[chigiabelo]

The Kick and Boxing, I didn't slotting or using because they were single target and melee, though there may be useful secondary effects. If I was a /kin I might go with all melee attacks, but I find range, particularly range with knockdown, useful because I try to keep runners from aggroing nearby spawns.

 

The binds thing ... I suppose it depends on your peferred playstyle, but one of the things I like most about MMs is that you can have many complex playstyle choices. For example, you can have binds set up so you can send 3 pets left and 3 pets right while you pull down the center, or you can send two left and two right while keeping 2 with you for some added protection. You can sacrifice one by having it run around, directing it to certain points, aggroing mobs and leading them to a chokepoint where the rest of the pets wait to ambush and you hover overhead. I use a Razer Tartarus programmable keypad for my left hand, so I can have my most often used binds literally under my fingers, but there are other ways to command pets. An extra power tray can hold macro buttons and those can easily be accessed via the mouse. At minimum, you should have a way of directing them to a spot where they are passive or aggressive (goto passive and goto aggressive). I've also recently found that I can take a little $7 Arduino board, hook it up the PC via USB and program it to send keystrokes triggered by any type of switch such as a button or a footswitch, so i'll be experimenting with that and CoH a bit. I've been farming AE with my MM to level up another MM and a Brute on a second account and I'd like for my PL'd slaves to be able to do more than just suck up XP in the AE farms. I think I could trigger a complex series of events with a footswitch. I'm very new at this farming thing and am not min/maxed, but so far I have the other MM and brute each at level 25 with only about 3 and half hours of play each.