Canine

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That is my problem, i'm lacking any croud control abilities but i have found a workaround for my character, just strong debuffs (weaken, noxious breath, envenom) works wonders against Lost LT's too, that can 2 hit battle drones, but now it takes 4 if he can even get close enough. But then there are times when i miss all 3 debuffs

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TBH, I don't even bother with the web grenade any more. I just add my own damage output to that of my minions, and by the time they get close, the acid mortar has been softening them up so that the bots rip them apart, even through the acc debuff PBAoE that the SDL's run.

There's only one slight flaw in an otherwise cunning plan.

If you're seeing robots/zombies/ninja/mercs wandering around coordinating fire, then you're going to KNOW that there's a squishy mastermind nearby. After that it becomes a race between those chasing you trying to find you, and your minions whittling away their hitpoints.

New least favourite enemy group.

Scrapyarder Demolitioninsts with their ability to drop 5 burn patches in one go. As an aftereffect to the damn great explosion that takes off half your health in one shot

Plus, they don't drop Magic DO's

TBH, I'd ignore repulsion field and take at least one direct damage attack from your primary.

Force Bubble does similar things to repulsion field (I think, I ignored it on Heat Haze, as I had more interesting things to take at the time) and has less of an end drain in it. i.e. you don't take an end hit every time something gets repelled.

Just my £0.02.

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So i just happened to think about what opponent you hate the most, that cause the most Problems / minion losses etc? even your own life sometimes

My top all time "oh no" opponents are as follows:

1. Some Tsoo bosses can one-hit my robots. /hardhit
2. Spectral Demon Lords oh man, most minion losses ever.
3. Berserkers that decide to blow themself up, and take my minions with him.
4. More than one guy with a flame thrower, can you hear that? yes it's my minions melting away.
5. Gravedigger bosses caused some losses as well.
6. Ruin Mages, just downright annoying.

The winner of minion kills for me is the Demon Lord.
Fight goes like this, 3 battledrones dies : resummon, protector dies : resummon and sometimes even 2 more drones dies before it does , argh.

Edit: my build includes poison with the healing but sometimes all the heals in the world isnt enough

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Strange, I don't have problems with Spectral Demon Lords. Target them, tell bots to kill, lob web grenade, shoot it, shoot it, lob another web grenade, watch as SDL dies. If necessary, drop Triage beacon any acid mortar near bots to soften up and Spectral Knights that try to pick on my firing squad, problem solved

TBH, I don't really have problems with many things at the moment, Ruin Mages can be a pain in the backside, but TBH, they're a pain in the backside for everyone.

Arachnos Drone Controllers can be trouble, as theit AoE attacks have wiped all my drones in a couple of shots before now, but that's about it.

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Bubblegum Crisis Tokyo 2040
Whats my prize?

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Heathen!

Bubblegun Crisis and Bubblegum Crash came first! :P

And surely Mackie and Dr Raven would be better names for the Protector Bots?

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Ok, I'll have a quick *drooool* over those as well

Mind you, stacking two upgrades per bot on launch is going to take a hella long time.

Just had a horrible thought. Anyone seen Malta sappers in CoV yet and what would they do to my poor pets?

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Given that the end draining attack of the Mu Strikers seems to do naff all to my robotic minions, I'd assume not a lot, and besides, while they're draining one robot, another n-1 (where n = your current number of minions) robots will be emptying laser fire/swarm missiles etc. into them...

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My Soldiers/FF mastermind is at lvl 20. I don't intend to take the fitness pool either. I normally take an extra blue insp with me on missions and use it after I've set up my troops, and with the medic I don't need to carry as many healing insps. From the primary set I've gone with burst and slug as they help to take down mobs quickly. Slug, which has decent range, is also pretty useful as a pull to thin out large groups.

This is the first time I've ever tried the FF powerset, Force Bolt is a handy power which can push away any melee types that are coming towards me, it's also great fun to get to the top of a high building and use it on mobs
and the defensive bubbles work well, protecting my men from most kinds of damage and also gives good protection against holds, sleep and disorient.

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Since mercs, like robotics is a primarily ranged set of minions, then FF makes sense for Force bubble at 38. Of course in a team environment, force bubble can be a nightmare, but solo it can keep stuff far enough away to reduce the chances of your minions deciding to go melee.

Please note, the only toon I've got with Force bubble is my Fire/FF controller, so I'm not totally sure if Masterminds even GET force bubble, but I assume they do...

Also, TBH all the powers you REALLY need from FF are deflection shield, insulation shield and dispersion bubble. anything past that is down to personal preference, but you want those three slotted as soon as possible.

A protector in passive mode will NOT apply bubbles or heal damaged bots

I know this from experience. Use defensive stance instead, he'll still apply bubbles and heal, but shouldn't go haring off after anything.

As far as binds go, I favour focused firepower.

So, I've got /bind button5 "petcom_all attack aggressive" set up, which means I pick a target, fire off a rifle blast to get the initial strike aimed at me (cos it's easier to heal myself than a minion....), slap the forward button on the side of my MX510 mouse and watch as my firing squad starts removing the face of my designated target with their laser based friendliness

And while they're dealing with mook #1, I switch to another one, lob a web grenade at it and start softening it up in preparation for the first target to die.

On the subject of protector bot bubbles though, has anyone else noticed that the AI is a bit screwy when it comes to applying them? It'll start slapping bubbles on any pet within range, usually another Masterminds zombies/ninjas before it gets round to protecting MY minions <grrr> and it'll bubble me, but no other players on the team.

Hohum.

Taken from : Zaprobo's List

Battle Drone
Auto Res Sleep, Fear, Disorient, Lethal, Cold, Psionic
Initial: Super Leap, Laser Burst, Smash
E:Heavy Laser Burst
U:Full Auto Laser

Protector Bot
Auto Res Sleep, Fear, Disorient, Lethal, Cold, Psionic
Initial: Laser Burst, Force Shield
E:Heavy Laser Burst, Repair
U:Photon Grenade, Seeker Drones

Assault Bot
Auto Res Sleep, Fear, Disorient, Lethal, Cold, Psionic
Initial: Plasma Blast, Smash
Eual Plasma Blast, Flamethrower
U:Swarm Missiles, Incendiary Swarm Missiles


So you forgot the Incendiary Swarm Missiles

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well im finding that i cant hit much anymore i was fighting a scrapper the otherday and he was hittin me but i was missin like all the time i duno wat it is shall i apply some SOs???

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OK, since you're posting in the union - heroes forum, and talking about fighting a scrapper, then I'm assuming you were in PvP, which, as other people have stated, has recently had base accuracy dropped to 50% (I hope weapon based sets still get their 5%/whatever acc buff, otherwise it's just hit them harder than non-weapon sets.)

Other options are:

a)SR scrapper. They're hard to hit, 'cos that's how they stay alive.

b) Katana Scrapper who spams Divine Avalance as much as they can. This can floor your accuracy with two stacked DA's

c) Dark Melee scrapper who keeps stacking Acc Debuffs on you.

d) Broadsword scrapper who keepd using Parry, See Divine Avalance, above.

e) SR scrapper in Elude. Bad luck.

f) Regen Scrapper in MoG. Worse luck.

g) the scrapper swallowed a couple of purple pills. (the ones with the shields on them)

There may be more options, but that's what sprang to mind as potential reasons immediately.

Slot your attacks with ACC SO's. Run Focused Accuracy 6 slotted with 3 end cost/3 acc buff. use Build Up/Aim/Rage/Whatever the hell you've got. Swallow a Yellow pill or three.

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You are probably not optimizing your build. Slot hot feet and fire cages with damage. Since you can chain hold with flashfire and cinders, any big spawn of blue minions is down with no worries.
Fire is best for large groups where you can use AoE's. It costs too much for single targets.

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I'm almost certainly not optimising my build, because frankly I see no need. I had a regular group, so I didn't need to be able to solo. And now that I'm far enough past 32, I don't need to do damage with my controls, that's what the imps and power blast are for

Oh and I didn't take hotfeet, because the concept of a PBAOE damage aura on a squishy sounded Soooooo appealing......

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Something I'd really like to try would be a Fire Control/Empath build, so that I can solo with fire's damage

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Fire has damage? After 32, maybe it does, but before that, you'll be struggling like hell to take on two white minions at a time. Or at least I was before I5 and containment came in.

Fire does however have the oh so tasty combination of Flashfire and Fire cages

Me, I went FF on my secondary, so that I can have SR psychos when I solo

I wouldn't worry too much, Quiller, Heat Haze Is still at 44.5 or so, and I wouldn't mind slowly dragging her up to 50 at some point, probably after the novelty factor of CoV wears off a bit

Slightly clearer (level adjusted) screen of the five/six (Darkshift and Night Helm both the same player) 50's at Blue Steel Here.

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What would you guys say is the best power set combination? I know it's really a matter of opinion, but just asking, as a n00b to melee combat

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Powersets are not a major issue. What you really need to do is remap Tab to target nearest, and then learn the zen art of Tab, F, mash attack buttons until target dies, Tab, F, Mash attack buttons etc. etc.

Nah, personally I got all that out of my system playing a Dwarf Mode Kheldian. Over Teamspeak?

I'm not sure if I'll be taking a Brute, but something like :

I say! My dear $target, you would appear to have raised my ire. Excuse hands.

Appeals for some reason. Raffles, the gentleman Brute

OK for those having problems getting microphones working with TS, the following may be of use.

Bring up the windows mixer, as follows:

Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Sounds and Audio -> Click the Device Volume 'Advanced' button.

Ensure that in the Playback options you have the microphone Mute checkbox ticked.

Go to the recording settings as follows.

From the playback mixer, select the Options Menu and click Properties.

Select 'Adjust volume for : recording' and click OK, making sure that the checkbox is selected to show you the controls for the microphone channel.

Select the microphone channel for recording.

These steps should stop you broadcasting in game music to everyone else on TS.

Next, you need to double check that you have plugged your microphone into the correct socket on the back/front/top/side of your PC (this depends on the PC case you have, and whether you've connected it to your sound card or use onboard sounds etc. etc.)

Next, fire up Teamspeak. but don't connect to the server yet.

PLEASE please please for the love of grud, use Push To Talk

I'm serious. most of the crosstalk/feedback issues on TS could be massively reduced if everyone used push to talk.

To be nice to other peoples ears and do this, go to the Settings menu in TS, and select Sound Input/Output Settings.

Select Push to talk as the Voice Send method, and then you need to decide on a button to use to transmit. I use Mouse button 3, on the side of my Logitech MX510 mouse. you can pick whatever you want, but make sure it does nothing in the game, otherwise you'll do that whenever you want to speak, and whilst jumping in game whenever you want to talk may be amusing, it's likely to become old really REALLY quick

Next, activate local test mode. then hold down the button you assigned to use for PTT and talk. You should hear your voice replayed back to you with a slight delay.

Hopefully something in this post will be of use, even if it's only letting you know where to find the recording mixer settings

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ok, being utterly stupid with computers
I take it the program is teamspeak 2, but which option do i pick, there seems to be 4 downloads
whats the difference between client & server on these options & I us wiindows xp
any help gratefully received
Cheers

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You want the Win32 RC2 CLIENT.

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I had a look in, but not having a mic is a bit of a downer

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Don't let that bother you, it's almost as useful to be able to hear warnings as it is to ba able to give them.