anonymoose

I'm trying to think of a BAD corr duo, and I'm having a hard time coming up with one. A pair of /kins would have diminishing returns so they wouldn't be spreadsheet perfect, but they'd still steamroll actual content.

I really have to finish that Field Crafter guide I was working on...

Anyway, the key to easy FC is to collect a pile of AE tickets and roll them into salvage. Now craft whatever you can with that salvage, sell or delete the IOs, and repeat.

Now you don't have to wait for salvage bids to fill, or clog your precious market slots with salvage.

The midlevel crafting badges give you extra salvage slots, do them first.

For any crafting below 50, just buy the recipe at the crafting table, you don't save enough money to make it remotely worthwhile bidding on them.

Yay, I hit lvl 50 last night.

Random thoughts and impressions:

When my contact says "be careful, there might be a hero in this mish" I was expecting Overdrive and not, say, Ms. Liberty. At +3 it was a short fight, even with EBs turned off. It was like a clinic on the limitations of bodyguard mode. Punch 1 put my genin in the red and my jounin in yellow. The second punch killed all my genin and jounin. I ran like hell, right out of the map and straight to Fateweaver. I'll have you know Ms. Liberty is still not a cakewalk at -1.

I ran 2 ITFs and a LRSF this week.

Team composition makes a big difference of course, one of those ITFs had 2 dark miasma toons and a stormie. That's a lot of free defence and resistance auras and aoe healing, my pets were sturdy as heck. It's also a lot of debuff, when Oni is exuding noxious gasses while standing in triple-stacked tar patches under a freezing rain. I'd give my toon a solid B+ for team contribution.

Even the LRSF wasn't terribad. Sure it's a hard TF and sure my pets died a lot, but I'd still grade my contribution at C+ or maybe even B-. In these incarnated times a good team can make up for the deficiencies of an underpowered build, even on relatively hard content.

But most of my time was spent solo. +3x0 is very do-able if I take things slowly and deliberately. Sometimes though you'll hit a boss or hero that just isn't possible at that diff.

I've found an opening move that really increases survivability. If I open with the slow cone and follow with an AoE immobilize, the mobs reply with a ranged alpha but seem to take a very long time before getting off a second shot. I don't know if it's the -recharge or if it just takes them a long time to figure out that there are no melee targets they can hit... either way it's great.

I ran Ramiel's arc at +0x0. The only tricky bit was the Honoree and Holtz, the Rikti portals were just starting to pop out dudes as I got there. My pets made a glorious kamikaze charge that got 3 of the portals before they were cut down.

Retreat, resummon, re-kamikaze. It took 3 more waves to get the other portals, and then lots of pulling to clear the enormous crowd of summoned Rikti. Beating down Holtz and the Honoree was routine, maybe a bit anticlimactic after all that work to get to them.

I've certainly had easier Ramiel arcs, but I got it done. Ninja/poison is hilariously gimp compared to my other MMs, but it's still a Mastermind. Skilled play will be rewarded with half-decent performance, poor play will have you admiring the floor.

Honestly, I think I'm going to incarnate this toon

Great work as always.

I'll toss in a couple of Mastermind comments, you don't need to add them to the guide but it might help someone later if the info is in the thread.

The Mastermind version of Mu Mastery's Electrifying Fences is an AoE -KB immob, admittedly the radius isn't huge.

And MMs should always slot the pet resistance and defence procs when possible. For sets like bots or ninjas that can't slot them in any primary powers, tornado is a godsend.

My ninja/poison likes to open with the slow cone and Black Scorpion's aoe immob. I'll vouch for the power of double stacked caltrops on mobs that can't get out of them!

I find I can't spare the power picks and slots for the (usually mediocre) attacks. The vet attacks are better.

I often take and slot up the patron immob and/or hold, to me those powers are more likely to win battles.

very quick comments:

Were you planning to use poison trap, or is it just a set mule?

Just so you know, poison trap is arguably the worst power in the entire game.

You've got the recharge intensive pet resistance bonus, there's another rech. int. IO with a defence bonus.

The Steadfast Protection +3 def IO is golden in Tough.

If you like to buff, there are other sets like Kin or bubbles.

Play a bubbler mastermind, that'll keep your buffing fingers busy!

They're both great, I guess it's down to whether you prefer watching the arsonist kamikaze or the protector bots running into melee

At low levels my necro/dark MM spent a lot of time right in the middle of the crowd so that my big heal would cover as many pets as possible.

The temp power that increases your endurance recovery has gotten me thru a lot of boss fights at low levels.

At level 24 (iirc) you get the second grave knight, level 26 gives you the lich, and level 32 is the all-important second pet upgrade, so hopefully you can stick with it a little longer.

You're familiar with Dark Miasma but I'll spell out the basics for anyone else reading the thread-

Slot your powers for -tohit and spam them. Darkest Night on the toughest guy in the crowd, use Fearsome Stare as an opener, Tar Pit magnifies your killing power.

The DN corner pull works as well for MMs as for defs/corrs.

Field Crafter is awesome, and the extra recipe and salvage slots are also awesome.

The least annoying way to do this IME is to start with a huge pile of AE tickets. Instead of making a zillion bids on salvage, roll your tickets into low level salvage. You'll have enough ingredients to craft dozens of recipes, so craft 'em up and sell the decent ones, delete the junk IOs.

I buy recipes from the crafting table for anything less then lvl 45, you might save a bit on the market but it's not worth the running around.

Since you're not bidding for salvage on the market, you should do this on the weekend. The crafted IOs will sell faster, and for better prices.

You can make a decent profit on your way to Field Crafter, and once you earn it (and get the lvl 50 recipes memorized) it's a steady revenue stream. After running an ITF or whatever I vendor generic IO recipes but the white salvage gets crafted into marketable lvl 50 recipes for a decent profit. When you think about the hundreds and hundreds of salvage you pick up on an active toon, you might as well make a little inf.

I've been playing some other toons lately but I hit lvl 44 on my ninja/poison last night and thought I should update the thread.

I turned off AVs after Posi kicked my butt about 15 times before I finally got him. Big thumbs-up to whoever decided to put insp vendors inside the hospitals.

Playing tips and papers at +3x1 is pretty unforgiving, but the XP is worth it.

Desdemona is surprisingly challenging at +3.

I actually ran a very good TF, we could only find 4 people for a Mortimer Kal so I ran it with a stormie defender, a dark miasma corr and some melee guy. The crowds were smaller, the extra defence/mitigation kept my pets safer, and of course our debuffs were vicious. I only died maybe once the whole TF, and just for once ninja/poison pulled it's own weight on a team.

Honestly, at this point I'd say the most important /poison power is the hold. It is 6 slotted and I use it early and often. Oni throws his hold as his first or second attack, if I hold a second critter that's a really big deal at +3x1.

I'm getting closer to 50 and I'm trying to decide if I should incarnate this toon. I've had fun with this toon - the pet animations never get old. I won a costume contest and had a purple drop, I'll have 7 or 8 v-merits to roll when I hit 50 so I'll easily clear a billion inf by playing her to 50. I think playing this has made me a better MM, if you're not paying attention and using all your powers all the time it's curtains. Incidentally /poison would be a complete waste of time proliferated to corrs/defenders, it's so clicky you'd never get to attack.

OTOH I could shelve it and start over with a ninja/storm, which seems about as viable as ninja masterminds get.

Ah well no need to decide today, gotta hit 50 anyways to squeeze maximum inf from those vmerits.

Nice work.

The Mastermind forum has a thread discussing improvements to poison:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=258072

The first post is a summary of suggestions.

I'd love to see envenom and weaken merged but honestly, have they ever merged powers before?

FF is a team oriented powerset, a lot of the powers only help teammates, which of course makes it harder to solo.

FF contributes only defence buffs and no damage or offensive buff/debuff. That makes it harder to solo.

Even at 50 you'll be safe as heck solo but not exactly a legendary AE farming offensive machine.

I suggest you team, keep the blasters and scrappers alive so they can kill huge crowds and shower you with XP.

If you don't mind rerolling, you could consider a FF mastermind. All the bubbles, and the pets do decent damage.

Alternatively traps has a ton of defence and a lot more offence.