Daerv_EU

I assume it would do both if they had both kinds of power. In the case of the undead it increases the amount healed by their Siphon Life. If they some kind of always on regen power then it would probably affect that too.

The AI on my undead seems to prefer long range vomit. After that initial spew two out of my three zombies usually just stand there waiting for the power to recycle leaving the one brave zombie to go melee a bit. The skeleton just loves to blast. I wish they'd be more willing to charge in without being explicitly ordered and carefully positioned.

When seeking fast xp why would you kill even level minions? I wouldn't exactly call that xp farming. In order to get white minions I'd need to set the difficulty level to the lowest possible and that doesn't spawn enough mobs to make taking a mission worthwhile in the first place.

Maybe the ranged damage of the mercs is more suited to this though. Zombies and Skellingtons tend to pile on in there and get cut to piece for the cause .

I have no problems getting my ladies into melee range. A quick move command and they're all set. I personally prefer to hide them around a corner in aggressive mode and lure mobs towards them.

The only issue I've found is that sometimes with three zombies in front of a mob sometimes my skellington won't quite reach broadsword range. This is remedied by ordering your henchpersons to move behind the mob you want them to attack. This seems to encourage them to circle it nicely.

How about "Brock Stonefist", "Clay Steelballs" or... "The Duke"!?

Seraphim your build is just about the same as mine except for a bit of switching of utility powers and levels obtained. You took Group Fly instead of Neurotoxic Breath and Recall Friend instead of Antidote. Other than that they're identical.

I do like the idea of NB but I'm honestly not sure how well it works. The cone range is huge though and when the hold does land it can be quite useful.

I'm not sure about heals in the zombies either. To be honest when they get one shotted (often) or close to it (very, very often) I'm not sure the small chance that they'll use Life Drain at the right time is worth it. Especially since the chances are when they die so much you probably won't have DE on them all the time anyway.

As the mobs hit harder and harder I'm really finding Alkaloid to be quite lacking in it's ability to keep my henchmen alive. I have a feeling my life would a lot easier if I had Twilight Grasp.

But then I only just hit 20 so a lot of this is speculation. I did get a cool raggedy cloak for my pirate zombie though! Awesome fun .

then of course a reduction in xp-gain caused by "AbM" (arrest by minions) would be preferable

That implies there's actually another way for Masterminds to defeat mobs...

Oh and for anyone who thinks we're overpowered I suggest they play Necromancy vs. Sky Raiders... no lethal resistance means orange minions can do 80% damage to my minions in one shot. Everyone has their weaknesses.

The fun for me IS sitting back and letting the minions do my job for me. It certainly isn't a passive role though. I'm constantly doing something be it healing, debuffing or whatever else. It's not easy either. I have to be very careful with my pulls since the henchmen die incredibly easily and I only have a single target heal.

The Mastermind is an AT that lets me solo without needing to rely on pickup groups (I have very dismal expectations of other players...). My computer actually can't handle the volume of enemies that comes with grouping anyway. It's bad enough solo in an Archnos lab...

I wouldn't be particularly surprised if our damage got nerfed though. Personally I'd suggest raising other ATs to the same rate of levelling as the Mastermind rather than nerfing.

Are we really that much better at soloing than other ATs though?

That's one of the things getting changed in the next update. Due to the popularity of robots the drones are being replaced with skutters from Red Dwarf, protector bots are being replaced by those little walking things from Silent Running and assault bots are being replaced by those little flying found things from The Black Hole.

Ah okay. I understood the reasoning behind the choice of door, just not the effect it was having. I wonder if this is happening because of the sheer size of the robot minions?

I don't get what you're saying. By using a specific lift door your minions spawn on top of one another? Can't say I've ever seen this.

This is the build I'm planning on using. I'm 18 so far. I decided that Stamina is probably necessary after all. Most fights are okay but there're times when you get a horde of minions charging you and most boss fights have me scrambling for end. Plus having stamina would allow me to slot more recharges in Alkaloid. Besides I absolutely love Swift. The faster I can move around the better. I'm tempted to ignore Health in favour of Hurdle to be honest.

01 : Alkaloid Empty(01)
01 : Zombie Horde Empty(01)
02 : Envenom Empty(02)
04 : Weaken Empty(04)
06 : Enchant Undead Empty(06)
08 : Recall Friend Empty(08)
10 : Neurotoxic Breath Empty(10)
12 : Grave Knight Empty(12)
14 : Teleport Empty(14)
16 : Assault Empty(16)
18 : Soul Extraction Empty(18)
20 : Swift Empty(20)
22 : Health Empty(22)
24 : Stamina Empty(24)
26 : Lich Empty(26)
28 : Paralytic Poison Empty(28)
30 : Antidote Empty(30)
32 : Dark Empowerment Empty(32)
35 : Poison Trap Empty(35)
38 : Noxious Gas Empty(38)

I love my undead. I named them Denise Richards, Jessica Alba and Elisha Cuthbert. There's nothing cooler than being on the losing end of a boss fight and suddenly having the guy flat on his back from a disembowel. I tend to use aggressive when positioning my horde (alt+W for handiness) but when explicitly ordering an attack I changed the macro to put them in defensive so I can tab onto the next target and focus all my attacks. If left to their own devices I find my girls tend to pick different targets. The only problem I have with them is when I order them to a location to put them in melee sometimes my grave knight (Denise!) will get stuck behind the zombies and just go back into ranged attack mode despite only being a couple of feet out of melee range.

With regards to poison I find that Alkaloid can keep up with most healing needs but in boss fights with lots of minions I tend to re-summon more. Weaken and Neurotoxic Breath turn mobs into [censored] cats too and Envenom is just lovely for lts and bosses.

I guess I just fail to see how being able to kill anything ~20% faster while it kills you ~20% slower is optional. Those numbers are only taking into account the things easily measured (resist debuff and damage debuff) on Envenom and Weaken. There's also the -regen, -recharge, -speed, -healing, -effects, -acc, -def.

Each to their own though. Good to know there are other ways to succeed. I'd be interested in seeing your current built if it's not top secret .

The build doesn't take Envenom, Weaken or Neurotoxic Breath. In my opinion (and I'm often wrong) that's at worst suicide and at best ignoring three very, very useful powers. The two blasts being taken instead aren't going to come close to making up the difference in damage between having Envenom on a mob.

I like the Rad snipe. Cool effects and it melts things. With regard to when you would use it... Well for the time it takes to activate it does proportionately much higher damage than Neutrino Bolt and X-Ray Beam gets skipped for being crapper than Neutrino Bolt. After that you just have Electron Haze and Irradiate, which are AEs and not always the most efficient. Yes you can get Cosmic Burst at 18 but that's well... at 18 and I think without the snipe I'd be sorely lacking single target damage prior to that. Even after that there's still going to be slots in the attack chain. I use it mid-battle all the time. Snipes that scourge on Bosses and LTs are just lovely. Each to their own and all that.

I was considering taking a Leadership power at 16 since I'm not really interested in rezzing people (I tend to mostly solo).

Looking at the numbers posted on the US board...

Maneuvres: +2.25% Defence.
Assault: +12.5% Damage.

Is that really right? +2.25% Defence? Doesn't look worth much to me. Assault looks like a much more promising idea.

I'm only 12 at the moment but I've taken Zombies, Enchant and Grave Knight from Necromancy and Alkaloid (have to), Envenom, Weaken and Neurotoxic Breath from Poison. So far it's working out really well and now I'm getting DOs it's suddenly a lot easier. I also took TP Friend so I'm on track for a travel power at 14.

Avoid the blasts since you'll be too busy healing and debuffing to use them much and their damage won't do much at all compared to your minions. I'm fairly sure Life Drain sucks horribly so I'm avoiding that.

Also make yourself a macro so you can easily tell your pets to go to a location. This is very important for getting your zombies into melee range.

I played on the middle difficulty level up until this point but since I hit 12 and got my first Knight and some DOs even that's become fairly trivial so I'm probably going to increase it.

They're all demons from Buffy/Angel? Never challenge google to a pop culture reference competition .

Edit: It also says that Balthezar was in Charmed first.

Zombies...

Bob Glover & Freddie Allen!

There's no prize for getting the reference but there's a lot of potential for comedy quoting!

I looked at this and figured it was a ranged version of Siphon Life and I remember that sucking horribly. The end cost alone was enough to make me avoid it to be honest. Maybe it could be good with 3 heal, 2 recharge and 1 end reducer? But then you'd not be slotting accuracy. It looks to me like a power that would need way more slots than is possible to make it really useful.

I'd seriously consider it if it was a ranged AE heal that worked along the same lines as Dark Regeneration. As it is... nah.

The only powers I'm planning on taking from Necromancy are the pets and the pet buffs.

Did a bit of very rough testing last night. It seems to drop a mob's damage output by approx 20%. Not something to be sniffed at but somewhat annoying that damage buffs/debuffs can't be enhanced. I've no idea what it's base accuracy debuff is but that's what I'll be slotting it for first.

As Rad/Traps I'm going to say no. With Sprint and Combat Jumping running permanently end hasn't been an issue so far. I don't really see this changing and I've not slotted any end reducers yet. There are far too many cool powers to take for me to even consider wasting three of them on the fitness pool. We'll see how it goes.

I'm loving Rad/Traps at the moment (only level 10 though). I took Neutrino Bolt, Irradiate, Proton Volley from Rad and Caltrops, Acid Mortar, Web Grenade from Traps. I love luring mobs into my caltrops and then irradiating them all while they try to escape. All the while Acid Mortar is pounding them (seems to be ~20% resistance debuff) and I'm blasting away. With a few insps I'm able to take orange bosses fairly easily and red bosses are a nice solid challenge. Increasing the difficulty level by one makes for nice big groups of minions and fast xp.

I was thinking that end may be a problem but the combination of ED overall reduction in costs allows me to run Combat Jumping and Sprint pretty much constantly while fighting.

I can't wait to get Aim and Force Field Generator.

p.s. Proton Volley is the best snipe ever. It just looks and sound much cooler than the competition.

p.p.s. My only complaint is that the check for whether a DoT scourges is based off the first damage tick so it either all crits or it doesn't at all.