Dr_Brainbottle

Bots/FF is the fastest, easiest path to soft-capped defenses, for both you and your minions. Other archetypes can spend millions to soft-cap their defenses, but you can do it with perfectly ordinary off-the-shelf defense IOs, and you don't even have to wait until level 50. Heck, you could probably even do it with just SOs if you want to be really cheap. Don't forget to slot your protector bots for defense, I put two defense IOs in them at level 50.

A soft-capped Bots/FF mastermind is perfect if you have a baby to take care of, and have to always be prepared to get up and go change a diaper or something on a moment's notice. Most characters will die if you take your hands off the keyboard in the middle of a big battle, but Bots/FF hardly even notices you're gone. If you set yourself to follow a teammate in a group, even the GROUP might not notice you're gone.

Once you're soft-capped against all types of incoming damage, the only other thing you might want to improve is how fast you kill your enemies. The key to getting really insane damage with a bots mastermind is to burn your enemies with napalm patches laid down by a fully upgraded assault bot. However, enemies have an annoying tendency to run out of the napalm patches. It's like they don't WANT to die, or something! How inconsiderate!

So what you need is a way to immobilize your enemies in a napalm patch, and watch them horribly roast to death. There are two good tools for this: force bubble and electric fences.

Force bubble is part of the FF power set, and it pushes everyone away from you. If you're in a room with sharp corners, you can trap people in corners and let your napalm do it's thing. This doesn't always just happen by itself, though: you have to maneuver around to push your enemies into the corner from a good angle, and compensate for the fact that they're also moving at the same time. There is an art to it, and it gives you something to actually do during battle other than twiddle your thumbs.

If you aren't in a room with sharp corners, you need something like Electric Fences which can nail a bunch of enemies down to the floor so that your assault bot can slather them with napalm. Electric Fences (from the Sirocco patron pool) is the only immobilizing power that is immune to knockback, and if you don't have that your bots will knock your immobilized enemies out of the napalm burn patches. Electric fences has a disappointingly small radius, but it's still the best power of it's kind available to you. And once again, it gives you something to do other than twiddle your thumbs while your robots do all the work.

One more thing you can do besides twiddle your thumbs during battle is heal. Get the "aid other" power, and six-slot it for heal and recharge. It's a surprisingly good single-target heal. It's especially useful at lower levels, but even at higher levels it's occasionally nice.

Speaking of lower levels, here's a final a bit of advice for how to survive them: never forget you can run away. You're a villainous mastermind, leaving your lackeys to die while you make a cowardly getaway is part of the idiom! For extra role-playing authenticity, I recommend raising a fist in the air and shouting something like "I'll get you next time, Longbow! My triumph is inevitable! Mwah ha ha haaa!"

Doctor Brainbottle - Robots/FF
All minions have semi-random hexidecimal names like "0x00F1"

the Major-General - Mercenaries/Storms
(he uses the power of BRITISH WEATHER!)
first tier minions: Tommy, Thomas, Tom
second tier minions: Thomson and Thompson
third tier minion: Mr. Atkinson

I think the ultimate 5 man team is 5 thug masterminds. You can argue that there is no one best mastermind for all circumstances, but when you're talking about GROUPS thugs are unbeatable because enforcer auras stack across the entire group.

With 10 enforcers each giving a 12% defense bonus each, that's up to +120% defense. This gives you a comfortable margin of error above the 45% soft cap, to put it mildly. Accuracy and damage are also boosted, and damage isn't soft-capped.

As for the secondaries, that's a bit more debatable but offhand I think Pain domination has the most powers that have descriptions that begin with the crucially important phrase "all nearby allies". In particular, they have the best aoe heal a mastermind can get, "nullify pain" which heals minions and masterminds alike. It has a base recharge time of 8 seconds, which you can cut down to about 4 seconds. 5 masterminds casting that every 4 seconds behind a wall of nigh-invincible thugs would be a force to be reckoned with.

You call that on a budget? Whew! Maybe things are different on your server, but on my server the nucleolus exposures alone cost several million infamy. But other than the fact that this blows right past my idea of a "budget", I can't find much to criticize here.

About the only thing I'd do differently is the presence/tankermind strategy. As much as I love robot/ff, it's strengths don't strike me as really lending themselves to tankerminding. The thing robot/ff was designed to be good at is boosting the defense of our pets, but if you're taking all the damage as a tankermind that bypasses your pets defense entirely, nullifying the point of our signature power. On top of that, all your pets are getting an even split of damage, but you can only spot-heal them with aid other and the occasional repair.

I'm raising my thugs/pain domination mastermind as a tankermind, but that's almost completely the reverse situation: no good way to boost the defense of my pets up to the soft cap, but a fantastic aoe heal that heals me and all my pets at the same time.

That being said, I assume it must work for you, so all power to you. And assuming you're going to stick with tankerminding, I can't think of a better set of powers to do it with than this.

You say you're looking for a secondary, but what about your primary? If you're stuck on ninjas for your primary, I'm sorry to say there is NOTHING that will completely make up for the fact that they're apparently made out of tissue paper.

If you want a combo that's almost death-proof, even at relatively low levels, try Bots/ff. Then slot your defensive powers early and often, especially the protector bots. That's the fastest, easiest way to become nigh-invincible.

But even with all that defense, I recommend picking up aid other from the medicine pool and six-slotting it. If you can heal the trickle of damage that gets through all your force feilds, that is the difference between being very hard to kill and being impossible to kill.

It's worth noting that if you pick electric fences as your main immobilizing power, you can still get a minor web grenade power with the Web Weaver Accolade Badge. It's only single target, and you need to periodically replenish the charges, but it will knock down fliers.

The most important thing with Bots/FF is defense, defense, defense. That's your signature power, you might as well run with it. Slot for defense early, slot for it often.

In particular, don't overlook the fact that your protector bots cast force fields. Not only do they protect you, but they cast DOUBLE force fields on the battle drones and the all-important assault bot. I'd put at least two level 50 IO defense enhancers in there as soon as you hit level 47. I'd almost recommend three, but you don't want to totally gimp other things like accuracy and damage.

With all that defense, it makes sense to round out your overall damage mitigation strategy with a little healing. Soft capped defenses can reduce the damage your minions take down to a trickle, but if you can soak up that trickle they aren't just tough, they're INVINCIBLE!

Your protector bots can heal, but they only have six precious enhancemnt slots that can be better spent on other things. Repair is good, but takes a while to recharge even when slotted for attack speed. The real key to healing your bots is "aid other" from the medicine pool. Six slot it with three healing and three attack speed, giving you a decently powerful single-target heal you can fire off every five seconds. With both aid other and repair you're a much better healer than your protector bots were ever going to be, and it gives you something to do during combat that ACTUALLY has a real strategic value.

After defense and healing, the third priority is offense. The basics pretty easy to get right, and pretty hard to improve on. As with all masterminds, get your minions and minion-upgrading powers at the first level they become available, and then six-slot your minions as soon as possible. When in doubt, fill those slots with accuracy and damage. The first tier especially needs accuracy because they are fighting at two levels lower than you.

The only special trick to getting more damage out of a robot/ff lies in trapping enemies in the burn patches created by a fully upgraded assault bot. Force bubble, force bolt, and all the assorted knockback your minions dish out are good for this purpose when you have a corner to knock enemies into, but they are useless on wide open terrain or hallways without sharp corners.

The only power you can get that reliably nails enemies down in a burn patch no matter what the terrain is electric fences from the mu mastery patron pool. I wish it had longer range and a wider radius, but it's the ONLY hold power you can get that holds up to all the knockback your minions will be dishing out. (except detention feild, but that makes the target invulnerable, which rather defeats the purpose)

Photon grenade doesn't immobilize enemies, but it does have a chance to stun, which means your enemies might wander around in a burn patch for a little longer than if they had their wits about them. Your protector bots have their own attack that does exactly the same thing, but a little more never hurts. Of all your personal attack powers, this is the one most worth getting (which isn't saying a lot, but there you are.)

The only other thing I recommend is stamina from the fitness pool. This lets you summon, equip, and buff new minions in the middle of a tough battle.

I have a build with group fly, and it looks cool, but my robots can't keep up with me. I gather this is a problem everyone has to some degree, but I think I have it especially bad because I also picked the speed boosting power from the fitness pool on my way to getting stamina. After reading the fine print, apparently it ONLY affects personal speed.

I can personally vouch that group fly totally, utterly sucks when you have the speed power from the fitness pool. Does anyone think it's managable without it? I don't want to burn a respec just to confirm it still sucks even without it.

Just to play devil's advocate, for a robot/ff mastermind:

* you don't need bodyguard mode to survive as much as some other masterminds
* the true key to your damage is burn patches from a fully upgraded assault bot
* without drones, protector bots can focus healing on assault bot and each other
* even when solo, battle drones can get in the way of assault bot
* now you only have half the robots to buff

Even with all of that being said, these aren't good enough reasons to devote an entire build to this strategy. Always take all pets, always six slot them. Then consider playing without drones as a change of pace.

I've read somewhere that this is at least true for chance-for-proc enhancements: only attacks that actually do knockback will have a chance to proc an effect from a knockback set enhancement.

It didn't occur to me when I read that to think this might also apply to basic things like accuracy, but in hindsight I suppose it might.