Auspice

I totally second the dommie. Any primary will be fine, really.

Oh man. Mercs.

I'm currently writing a mercs guide but I'll give you the short answer: Mercs sucks pretty bad. The damage is anemic compared to any other set (single target just above bots, worse than everyone else; AoE better than necro, worse than everyone else) and they take a ton more skill and knowledge to play. You have to have a very solid knowledge of how pet binds work in order to finely control your pets and keep your medic from getting out of harm's way. You also benefit a lot from heavily microing your spec ops in order to get faster than 2 minute recharges on their control powers. Lastly, mercs benefit a lot from IO slotting compared to most sets so knowing how to slot is very important.

For secondary choices, I have 2 suggestions for a newbie MM:

Don't pick TA, and don't pick Poison. Both of them are underpowered compared to the other secondary sets, and more importantly they are very micro intensive which takes away from your ability to control your pets which is very key in mercs.

If one of you is set on pain, almost any other set will do nicely. A second pain is probably a bad idea. Traps is great - the defense is awesome and acid mortar has resistance debuffs, buffing up your damage. Poison trap is also a ton of mitigation - it does a great job of stopping lots of incoming damage. Seeker drones are good at taking the edge off an initial alpha strike (you can also use FFG to do the same thing but it is harder, stealth is advised).

Dark is also a beast although the heal won't be as useful with a pain MM. The tar patch is a great resist debuff and fearsome stare completely locks down spawns. Opening with tar patch, followed by darkest night/fearsome (make sure you're in bodyguard mode) and let the bullets fly - most of the incoming attacks will miss if you've got good slotting in /dark, and the pain will just shrug off incoming damage. It gets even crazier when dark servant joins the team.

Now you're confusing mitigation with def/res - the end goal is survivability and pain adds a ton of it to your team. If you have even a little bit of extra protection or control, you'll be fine. The main issue with mercs is offense, not defense, so my vote would be a dark and either a traps or pain. I personally hate FF so I can't recommend it, but other people like it. I dunno.

In PvP, I'd recommend not doing it with mercenaries. They're okay I guess (I pvp on my mercs/psn, but poison is sex in pvp) but necro/ninjas/thugs pretty much totally eclipse mercs there.

Mercs/dark is okay for pve, not so hot for pvp, but not terrible.

As for pb weaken wrecking elude, it's actually not that big of a deal since elude does nothing in pvp anymore. It is mostly good for ruining most self heals, targeted heals, and completely ruins troller/dom mez duration. It also shuts down end drain builds pretty bad and even (amazingly) drops a ton of speed off SS, since it has a -movement enhancement component. It doesn't really matter that much but if you're teamed with someone with a lot of slow you can actually blow through superspeed.

Personal choice.

I'd generally suggest Levi for knockout blow. Powerboost is not that huge on a stormie, but it could be nice for powerboosting life drain to get big chunks of life back.

The webmace is definitely useful (literally all of my MMs either have it or the traps web grenade) so it's sort of up to what you want most. The def shield isn't bad though, and it stacks with necro/storm's -tohit debuffs.

Your enforcers should be slotted for +defense, and they should be in leadership range (30 feet) from your bruiser. You should be standing next to your bruiser, with suppress pain running. The rest of your pets should be fighting.

I run entirely common IOs on my thugs/pain and he is an absolute beast, the bruiser rarely needs ST healing, and I can run farm maps solo that are set for 8 people. I'm level 42, but I've been doing this since I hit 32, although the webmace made things a lot easier. I have 0 pet uniques.

I take alpha, typically at range, using my webmace. I don't micro my bruiser at all. I don't generally have to use nullify pain in this circumstance, as WoP + suppress pretty much covers incoming damage without me having to do anything.

Azu: I kind of feel the same way, but I kick kins without SB, tanks without mez protection, and petless masterminds based on principle. 90% of the time when I'm running a farm I have people beating down the door trying to get in, then sending tells to their friends trying to get in. It's no big deal to get someone else and honestly I don't want to support crappy play.

It's my subscription fee, and my team. I don't really care if you suck, but there's a difference between ignorance and negligence. Negligence is a lot worse.

Re: Gypsy using specops snipe to pull - you don't need to issue a stay command, just get to 71 feet or further and passive them, then tell them to attack. When you see them start to queue the snipe, tell them to follow and be around a corner so after the snipe fires, they'll run around the corner.

Really you can do this with any ranged pet, but mercs do it best because their attacks have gigantic range. Still, you can pull with any pet - just passive all your pets, tell one of them with an 80 foot ranged attack to attack, as soon as he starts to attack, give him a follow command.

Man, I hate to double post after making a giant wall of text, but I thought I would give some more advice.

I have a 50 merc/psn. Let me tell you, it's one of the worst possible mastermind PvE builds in the game. It's pretty nice in PvP, so if you're keen on that, you'll probably like your build. However, I absolutely hated leveling merc/psn in PvE and was incredibly happy when I finally hit 50.

That being said, here's how pet controls work.

Your pets have 3 basic commands and 3 stances.

The three commands are 'attack', 'follow', and 'goto.' Technically there is also a 'stay' command. The icon and function of the command is identical to a goto command if it were issued at the pet's location.

The three stances are 'aggressive', 'defensive', and 'passive'.

The first big MM lesson is the use of bodyguard mode. You have an inherent called Supremacy that buffs your pets' tohit and damage. It is a pbaoe aura that has a 60 foot radius. Your pets will not get it if they exit this radius or if you lose line of sight with them. You can check the Supremacy status of each pet if you show buff icons in your pet window.

If a pet is in defensive stance, is NOT being issued an attack command, and has the Supremacy buff, it is eligible for bodyguard mode. While a pet is granting you bodyguard mode, it takes a share of the damage for you. The exact math for this is dmg/(2+bg) where dmg is incoming damage, and bg is the number of pets in bodyguard mode. Each pet will take one share of the damage listed dmg/(2+bg) while you will take 2(dmg/(2+bg)). With 3 pets in bodyguard mode, this is a 60% damage reduction. With 6, it's 75% damage reduction.

THE COMMANDS

The attack command tells any pets you order to go after your current target. If you try to tell them to attack a friendly or you have no target, they'll look at you weird. This command causes pets to exit bodyguard mode, and overrides any goto commands you may have issued. Therefore, if you want pets to go to a particular place and fight (typically used to set up cone damage), you are better off putting them on aggressive or getting the enemy to attack you, then your pets will retaliate.

The follow command tells your pets to follow you. For the most part, your pets will stop what they are doing and follow you, even if they are fighting. I hit this command probably 100 times a mission. After being issued a follow command, pets will stop attacking for about 10-ish seconds and will usually not engage the enemy for any reason unless told to go aggressive or given an attack order. Occasionally this does not happen. If you want to be absolutely sure that pets will return to you, use the passive stance along with the follow command to clear their AI, but keep in mind that passive stance disables bodyguard mode.

The goto command tells your pets to move to roughly a particular place - it'll give a white targeting circle like a drop patch, for your pets to move to. Melee pets hate this command. I highly recommend not using it on melee pets as they will get dumb, run out to melee something, run back to their goto location, then run back out to melee. It is highly annoying. It is however useful for ranged pets for many reasons, including lining up cone damage, keeping them at a distance, or getting them to use specific attacks (I'm looking at you, Spec Ops). Pets will -usually- obey a goto before their AI decides it wants to attack something but this is not always the case. If you absolutely want them to go somewhere without distractions, passive them.

THE STANCES

Aggressive stance is by far the worst stance ever and most MM players should only rarely use it. It tells your pets to attack anything they see, as long as it doesn't interfere with the command they've just been given - well, most of the time. Sometimes they'll ignore gotos and follow orders to run around and attack. Be very careful when using aggressive stance - I typically only use it when I am very certain that I need to be in it or my pets will contribute nothing (target switching to attack constantly keeps you from using secondary powers as effectively, etc.)

Defensive stance should be considered the default stance. Your pets should be in defensive stance 99.9% of the time. If pets are in defensive stance, they will attack any enemy that showed aggression to you or one of them in the last 30 seconds or so. If an opponent is held or feared or something for a very long time, it may drop off their hostile timer. In general, you'll want to keep pets in defensive, and take a hit to get your pets to rage on the enemies.

Passive stance tells your pets not to fight or do anything unless you specifically tell them to do it. I rarely use it but it has its uses, especially in pulling or getting pets to do very specific things. For instance, you can passive spec ops, then attack from very long range to have them pull with their snipe (then tell them to follow, so they don't run in guns blazing).


HOW TO DO IT

Binding keys is pretty easy.

The command is /bind key function
So for instance you wanted to bind the numpad 0 key to send me a tell saying I'm a jerk, you could do /bind numpad0 tell @auspice, "You are a jerk."

So how does this work for you?

/bind numpad7 petcom_pow Spec attack

is a command that, when you push the number 7 on your numpad, both of your spec ops will attack. Petcom_pow tells all pets summoned by a certain power to attack. Since the only power with the word 'spec' is Spec Ops, only the spec ops will get the command. If you did

/bind numpad7 petcom_pow o attack

ALL the mercenaries pets have O in their summon power (sOldiers, spec Ops, cOmmandO) so they will all attack. There's an easier command for that, though...

/bind 7 petcom_all attack

which will make all your pets attack.

Let's get a little more tricky! My mercenaries medic name is "crazyman 2" and my spec ops are "SPEC OPS" and "SPEC POS" respectively. So I can use...

/bind numpad5 petcom_name c follow defensive

to make my spec ops and medic go into bodyguard mode. They'll now provide me with 60% damage reduction. My soldiers and commando don't have C in their names, so they will keep doing whatever it was that they were doing. This does mean you'll have to make creative naming schemes. I admit, naming a character "SPEC POS" is pretty uncreative, but fortunately, my mastermind is not a really creative person, ha.

You can combine any stances and commands in a single petcom command as above. So you can make your thugs bruiser (if you had one anyway) rush into a spawn without Hurling using petcom_pow bru goto aggressive - so he'll use Foot Stomp better.

There's a lot of nuance to it - and pets are ultimately pets that won't follow what you say exactly. You can do the best you can, though, and the tools you have give you a lot of freedom to control their actions.

Most of the rest of the advice in this thread is wrong. Sorry Gypsy, I respect you as a player, but your advice is not 100% correct.

Mastermind pets cannot be commanded to give out specific attacks. This is correct. However, mastermind pet AI prefers certain attacks. It also really likes attacking, so if it has attacks that are recharged that it cannot use, it will attempt to put itself in a situation where it can.

By this, I mean that you can predict what a mastermind pet will do. The thugs bruiser for instance, really likes knockout blow and foot stomp much more than his other attacks. He also has hurl, his only long range attack.

At the start of a battle, the thugs bruiser will begin by attacking his target with hurl since he is not yet in range of an enemy to melee. While hurl is recharging, he'll run into melee range, since he has no attacks other than hurl at a distance, and hurl is recharging. He'll knockout blow as soon as he gets into range, then he will foot stomp if there's anything in range (even if he's not in the best place to do it). Then he'll chain his other attacks, and wait for KO Blow and Foot Stomp to recharge. If enemies flee or get knocked back, he'll typically hurl, then chase them.

I'll use an example from Mercenaries. Spec Ops are highly useful pets with very nasty controls. Their controls have a range of 70 feet, while their normal attacks reach much further, 150 feet for the snipe, and 100 feet for their assault rifle bursts. Their AI is also somewhat different. If they're told to attack and are very far away from their target (> 70 feet) they'll attempt to snipe. If they're out of range of their bursts, they'll run to 100 feet or so after the snipe and start firing bursts. They'll continue to cycle bursts and snipe there - they won't attempt to get closer. This is probably due to SCAR Burst's 3 second recharge, but I'm not sure.

If they are closer than 70 feet, they'll fire controls and will not snipe at all. They typically prefer to use tear gas first if it is available, then they'll fire flash bangs and finally web grenades. After that, they'll focus on firing bursts.

If they are very close, within 20-30 feet, they will fire their controls, fire their bursts, and rush into melee and attempt to rifle butt. Occasionally the rifle butt outprioritizes the controls, so this is not an ideal situation unless the controls are recharging.


Now occasionally gremlins get in the pet AI. They do not follow the algorithms perfectly. Spec Ops are probably the best example of this. When I summon my spec ops fresh and give them upgrade 1 and 2, position them about 60 feet outside a spawn and tell them to attack, sometimes they shoot flashbangs or web grenades first. It -really- sucks when they shoot web grenades first, but it happens sometimes. Since I have 2 of them though, typically one of them fires an AoE control.

I usually don't give them upgrade 1 until the middle of battle for this reason - that way they don't have rifle butt or flash bang, so they almost always do tear gas and don't charge into melee. Then, I give them upgrade 1 - it doesn't really matter if they rifle butt at this point or not, since spec ops do kind of awful damage, so them using rifle butt (pretty good single target stun) is a good thing. They also will eventually get around to shooting their flash bangs. Then, after the spawn is over or typically when it's almost dead, I dismiss and resummon my spec ops. When the spawn is over, I toss upgrade 2 to a soldier (which upgrades the spec ops too), open the next spawn with tear gas and repeat the process.

Other mastermind pets have similar tendencies. The Lich prefers fearsome stare and petrifying gaze, grave knights prefer their bigger attacks instead of their quick ones. This takes a little bit of study on your part to kind of figure out their quirks.

One last thing on the medic, is that if he's out of close combat, he tends to only use his rifle and heal/stim packs. He is a pretty reliable backup healer to be honest (he doesn't stim you almost ever, which is super annoying) - but he does like to get in close quarters too much and it tends to get him in trouble.

I play control archetypes. A lot.

Farm spawns are not the same as say, EB/AV spawns or even large boss spawns. You need an aggro dump for those (or a permadom, in the case of boss spawns).

Brutes can tank. I have a /DA scrapper with over 1800hp, 200+ more than a tanker's base HP. I have 65% smashing/lethal resistance, 15 defense to all, and about 40% resistance to everything except energy. I get a full life bar every 15 seconds and I get about 3.6 endurance per second to spend ruining things. This is on a scrapper. A brute can tank at least as well, if not better.

Staalker: You play the game your way, and I'll play the game my way - however, my way involves kicking people who play your way off my team.

The bottom line - when I get a mastermind on my team, I want a mastermind. I don't want a third of a corruptor. If you fail to meet my extremely low expectations of what a party member should do, you're not welcome in a team that I lead. This means tankers without mez protection. It means kins without SB. It means sonics without shields and it definitely means MMs without pets.

I have fun in this game when I have teams that do well. Do I have to be playing the best possible builds? No. Do I have to playing a build that can go up to an average spawn on most difficulties and handle it without too much trouble? Yes. Do I have to be playing a build where I don't feel like dead weight on a team because I'm less than half of my archetype? Yes.

If I'm an employer and I'm hiring for a job that involves heavy lifting and one guy shows up with only one arm, hell yes I'm not going to hire him.

JM is pretty much 100% correct on all accounts, including thugs being the top tier farming build due to bots annoying kb.

Thugs/Pain is pretty hard on your end bar. I'd suggest skipping your blasts, unless you want the pistols for cool factors. They kind of suck.

Biff isn't a really good example since he's pretty nonthreatening and his only gimmick is that he runs away and is hard to kill. Obviously traps is better at countering that. You can't use examples that are best cases for traps. I'd use benchmarks like Posi, or better, LR - enemies that are actually dangerous, and not just based on a test of DPS. LR is a particularly good example imo since he has a lot of different hoops you need to beat him.

He's still soloable with a thugs/traps (easily, imo) but that build can solo most things anyway. A necro/storm can solo LR, but it's hard.

A better example might be the RWZ challenge (full spawn of +4 rikti, including at least 3 bosses) which can be done by a stormie (easily) but is extremely hard to do with a nin/traps. Another good example is PvP, where stormies rule, but traps are somewhat decent but not amazing (I have a 50 necro/traps, and PvPed with it a ton prior to i13 and a little after, so this statement is not made in assumption - compared to a necro/storm, of which I know two, I am far inferior).

My arguments for necro/dark are that dark is redundant with necro. You do not need the lich to floor an EB's tohit is my point. You just get up next to him with dark servant, toggle him, and spam powers. The main purpose of necro is to provide -tohit and cone fear but Dark already does that. I'd rather have a set that does more damage or has more survivability. Dark works really well with nin for that reason (Dark is pretty end-light when it's working well, which leaves end for smoke flashes) but it also works well with bots, which have backup mez, defense, and resists. It works well with thugs, for their ridiculous damage. Necro is just redundant.

Caramelldansen, accept no substitutes

One thing I've found really nice for /Storm controllers (or Mu epic masterminds) is to aggressively use Hurricane to force the enemy spawn into a very tiny central herd using a -kb aoe immobilize such as fire cages, frostbite, roots, or of course electric fences. Make sure to constantly reapply the immob, so that they don't get knocked back by Hurricane's random kb. The end result is a spawn tohit debuffed to hell, immune to scatter by anyone else, resistance debuffed from FR, and positioned perfectly for death by burn patches or other massive aoe.

Storm is excellent in the endgame. Any MM has the dps to deal with arachnoids, save for maybe mercenaries, and more importantly Storm has the kd, survival, slows, and res/def debuffs. It is not especially good at EB or AVs, but it is not useless and EBs are still easily soloable, as well as some AVs.

In most PvE circumstances, Storm's offense (mostly freezing rain) is better suited for battle than FF's defense, although of course getting hurricane detoggled sucks, there is no real way around that without losing storm's huge -tohit debuffs, click heal, and -res.

On top of that, Storm is excellent in PvP. Hurricane will take a stalker out of Stealth, O2 boost is an excellent source of +perception and endurance drain resistance, and tornado/LS are terrors. Combined with a slotted up gale for KB, storm is a very powerful package to deal with in PvP.

I would not suggest pairing storm with ninjas though. Smoke Flash is extremely hard on your endurance bar and you lose a ton of damage (Nin's forte) by not keeping it up. Storm is also a very endurance-heavy set. I recommend more end-light powersets with ninjas, with dark miasma one of the best in pve.

Necro on the other hand pairs well with anything. The damage of necro is much lower (no smoke flash, oni deals much better area damage, etc) but the survival in necro is amazing, especially after the lich.

Necro/Dark is sort of redundant, and melee pets don't synergize as well with a short-ranged pbaoe heal like Twilight's Grasp. Necro/Storm, Necro/Pain, Necro/Traps, Necro/Poison - all of these builds are excellent, high end PvE and PvP builds.

Storm is also a "get stam at 20, period" set.

GKs do not have smashing resistance, only zombies (and the ghost, I think?)

Speed
TP
Fitness
Medicine

Leadership is garbage unless you need perception from tactics, which you don't really.

Position yourself outside spawns and gently nudge guys. Don't scatter things everywhere.

When I lead teams I typically set ground rules - minimum standards of entry. These rules vary from team to team, but are typically (1) don't split/follow tank, (2) don't scatter mobs, (3) control pets as well as you can. I really don't care if an emp rocks the aura and puts me on follow, really. I build my characters to solo pretty much anything, so it doesn't matter to me whether my teammates are dead-ish weight.

If you're on my team and you have buffs or something, I might ask for them but most of the time I honestly don't care.

The only time I'll kick is if you violate the simple tenets of not screwing the rest of the team. If you're in my team at all, you're contributing because my spawns are bigger, so no worries about leeching. If you're doing stuff that makes it harder for me to kill things, bam. I won't ask twice for you to stop.

petcom_pow j goto aggressive

Just because they're in a street gang doesn't mean they're not into cleaning up the streets.

On your pet window, go into advanced controls and show your pet buffs.

The Supremacy icon in pet buffs shows whether or not your pets are in BG range. The shield icon in stance shows whether or not each pet is in defensive stance. Then, the crosshair icon in command shows whether or not each pet is attacking.

Crosshair icon, no shield, or no supremacy = pet not contributing to BG.