RWZ Tactics for Masterminds

[Clave Dark 5]

So tonight I did my first RWZ with a mastermind.  Granted, he was only 36th level, but it was rough  at first.   Zipping from pylon to pylon, I quickly lost my pets to random aggro as they trailed behind me.  "That's OK, I can rebuild my army once we get to the mothership; meanwhile I can toss out what personal attacks I have at the pylons."  So I did that and that was fine.  Once we cleared the pylons and got to mothership, I hopped down onto an area free of Rikti (the side of the ship where the grates are) and started to summon my pets... and promptly died as the Rikti began to spawn in.  After a few seconds someone ported me to the bowl and I got rezzed and then everything went OK enough with summoning and getting going.

 

Is this just the nature of taking an MM on a RWZ?  Or do you know some good tactics for RWZ raids?  I'd love to her them, if so.

[Pherdnut]

I just ran two MSRs today, Suzy Jenkins on Everlasting is my main toon, and as an MM people seemed happy enough. Granted, my secondary is Dark Miasma which is stupid useful no matter where you go. But it probably shouldn't be surprising that when you have a massive group activity, MMs are great for all the stuff they can do to soup up their buddies, regardless of whether the buddies were summoned or just showed up.

Edit: I do recommend not summoning your tier 1s. They are typically too squishy for MSRs.

Edited August 8, 2019 by Pherdnut

[Redlynne]

9 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

Granted, he was only 36th level

Found your problem.

[ParaBruce]

When I'm there with a mastermind, I figure that my pets will die in the course of pylon burning, and once in the bowl, figure I'm doing well if I can keep the tier 3 pet up most of the time and the tier 2 ones some of the time. If I bring in the tier 1 ones, it's just because I feel masochistic and/or experimental. 🙂

 

[Apparition]

Being level 50 and Incarnated out the wazoo helps.  Yeah, my pets will die while taking down the Pylons.  Once the mothership raid proper starts though, between my Sonic Resonance buffs, Tier 4 Rebirth Radial Destiny, Tier 4 Support Core Hybrid, and everyone else's buffs, my pets only die once or twice... Except the Arsonist.  He'll go right up to U'Kon Gr'ai and breathe fire on his kneecaps.

[kelly Rocket]

My Bots/Time was able to keep out all 3 tiers of pets with only occasional resummoning during MSRs, even in his 30s. Gotta love soft-capped pets.

[StrikerFox]

What's your primary? MM ranged pets are amazing in the MSR. Just hangout in the center, set pets to aggressive and *continuously* press stay. They'll shoot anything that comes into range and get all the heals/buffs to keep them alive. When they get pushed around, set to passive-follow for a moment to get back into position, and then switch them to aggressive-stay again.

 

I've been the odd, 49th player, outside of a league, and still manage to rack up 1200 v-merits solo (Using Mercs).

[Clave Dark 5]

I think people may have misunderstood my question here or I didn't make it clear enough.  My pets were dying as they trailed behind me as I traveled from pylon to another, drawing aggro from random foes on the ground, not when I was in the bowl.  Then got kilt before I could resummon them in time to, well, not get killed.  Redlynne probably nailed at leats part of it by pointing out I was relatively low level.  Once I got to the bowl, alive, things where fine and if I lost a pet or two, I was able to comfortably resummon them before anything bad happened to myself, and as a /Nature MM, I was still indeed capable of contributing to the league.

 

I was asking if anyone knew of some plan of action to avoid that dying before the pets come out again or maybe some way to preserve them during the pylon trek.  It appears Apparition suggests waiting out the brief bomb set-up period, and then summoning once folks travel into the bowl, so I'll give that a shot next time.  It would make sense because by the time people hop down in there, there's a whole forest of green heal numbers flying about.

[Hyperstrike]

This will depend on whether or not you drag U'kon out of the bowl or gather, buff and zerg.
If you drag, wait until the league has cleared the first group or two out of the bowl.  Then summon in the bowl.
If you zerg, wait for the zerg to finish clearing.  Then summon.

[Sovera]

1 hour ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

I think people may have misunderstood my question here or I didn't make it clear enough.  My pets were dying as they trailed behind me as I traveled from pylon to another, drawing aggro from random foes on the ground, not when I was in the bowl.  Then got kilt before I could resummon them in time to, well, not get killed.  Redlynne probably nailed at leats part of it by pointing out I was relatively low level.  Once I got to the bowl, alive, things where fine and if I lost a pet or two, I was able to comfortably resummon them before anything bad happened to myself, and as a /Nature MM, I was still indeed capable of contributing to the league.

 

I was asking if anyone knew of some plan of action to avoid that dying before the pets come out again or maybe some way to preserve them during the pylon trek.  It appears Apparition suggests waiting out the brief bomb set-up period, and then summoning once folks travel into the bowl, so I'll give that a shot next time.  It would make sense because by the time people hop down in there, there's a whole forest of green heal numbers flying about.

I know you want to be useful, but considering a pylon dies in 4-5 seconds does it really matter? Plink it to get contribution and move along with the herd to the next pylon.

 

This mostly shows how the MM has fallen behind with the game's evolution. Pets don't have a travel power, so even so much as using Hover will leave them behind, and if we switch to Fly we might as well forget having them for the next pack. By the time they have arrived someone has used their T9 and there are but a few scattered mobs left.

 

 

[Clave Dark 5]

18 minutes ago, Sovera said:

I know you want to be useful, but considering a pylon dies in 4-5 seconds does it really matter? Plink it to get contribution and move along with the herd to the next pylon.

 

This mostly shows how the MM has fallen behind with the game's evolution. Pets don't have a travel power, so even so much as using Hover will leave them behind, and if we switch to Fly we might as well forget having them for the next pack. By the time they have arrived someone has used their T9 and there are but a few scattered mobs left.

 

 

That's a fair assumption, it did leave me feeling a tad useless for a half second, although I knew full well that yeah, the pylon evaporate in front of the usual gang of heroes going at them in the context of an MSR.  I dunno if even group fly would help, as I've never thought to give that a shot (who's got the extra power picks?!).

[Clave Dark 5]

27 minutes ago, Hyperstrike said:

This will depend on whether or not you drag U'kon out of the bowl or gather, buff and zerg.
If you drag, wait until the league has cleared the first group or two out of the bowl.  Then summon in the bowl.
If you zerg, wait for the zerg to finish clearing.  Then summon.

We always zerg.  I think I've done half a dozen raids since Homecoming popped up and I still have yet to see that guy once, that I know of.  Maybe I was on a team/league that took him down?  I mean, probably, but I really have no idea, once the zerg sets in it's all a mess of colored lights and slide-shows.

[Hedgefund]

There is no preserving minions during the pylon phase.  They're going to be -5 to -7 to most enemies and outside of your supremacy buffs or any of the +def or +res buffs from IOs that require proximity.  For pylons just play the role of the petless MM.  Once you get to 50+1, then they'll have a better chance of surviving that phase. 

[Hyperstrike]

2 hours ago, Clave Dark 5 said:

We always zerg.  I think I've done half a dozen raids since Homecoming popped up and I still have yet to see that guy once, that I know of.  Maybe I was on a team/league that took him down?  I mean, probably, but I really have no idea, once the zerg sets in it's all a mess of colored lights and slide-shows.

This is why I try to get people to gather at the top of the bowl, buff everyone into godhood, and THEN have everyone go down and whale on him.

[StrikerFox]

No really good way to save pets during the pylon phase. Babysit them, set yourself to follow a pet, and direct pets where to run to avoid enemies. It would be super slow and would always be several pylons behind. 

 

Take TP Team/Group Fly but would bother other players. Best option might taking Invisibility and stealthing your pets through while on passive, but Drones would detect them. 

 

Or if you can figure out pet max distance before auto-porting to you, have them stay, you make your way to the pylon, and pets will appear out of nowhere.

[plainguy]

On 8/8/2019 at 1:08 AM, Clave Dark 5 said:

So tonight I did my first RWZ with a mastermind.  Granted, he was only 36th level, but it was rough  at first.   Zipping from pylon to pylon, I quickly lost my pets to random aggro as they trailed behind me.  "That's OK, I can rebuild my army once we get to the mothership; meanwhile I can toss out what personal attacks I have at the pylons."  So I did that and that was fine.  Once we cleared the pylons and got to mothership, I hopped down onto an area free of Rikti (the side of the ship where the grates are) and started to summon my pets... and promptly died as the Rikti began to spawn in.  After a few seconds someone ported me to the bowl and I got rezzed and then everything went OK enough with summoning and getting going.

 

Is this just the nature of taking an MM on a RWZ?  Or do you know some good tactics for RWZ raids?  I'd love to her them, if so.

Pretty sure we were on the same one(s).

 

Had the same exact issues same exact levels.

 

I don't think there is an answer. 

 

I'm just glad that this game isn't character based critical. 

Which means if you have your core team everyone else can be a scrub as they will be doing something that causes DPS, heal, Buff or Debuff. 

 

My pets kept dying as well but it depended on the group. 

The first Raid group they did well.

2nd run many dropped off even the organizer said it might be rough with the current group and we could fail

The 3rd run was almost as good as the first. 

But the FIRST run was really good with minimal pet loss in the bowl. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Hyperstrike]

5 hours ago, plainguy said:

My pets kept dying as well but it depended on the group. 

 

Yep.  Group makeup makes a HUGE difference.
Lots of buff and heal in the Green Machine in the center?  Pets last longer.
More blast-oriented?  They tend to become detritus.

[Pale_Enchantress]

On most any sort of content where you have to jump from objectives that are far apart you are going to suffer as a mastermind. On the bright side when you're in the bowl your pets should do wonderfully. 

 

 

Sometimes you just have to wait it out a bit and since the pylons all die individually very fast there's not a lot you can do anyway with your pets there. 

[Sovera]

Speaking of I just did one. Alternated Frost Sleet with Tornado to plink at the pylons without having summoned my pets. Reached the bowl phase and alternated those again to spread out the goodness. pets were mostly fine until they kept chasing mobs so far away they would be out of range and be one shot.

[Crysis]

For almost all my MM’s, when teams are just steamrolling like that I just ignore my henchmen and focus on my secondaries and the odd personal attacks until the “main event” time comes.  Then pop them all out and go to town.  Depends on your powerset but I’m beyond softcapped to all but Psi and thus rarely lose even my lowest tier pets while in the bowl.