GavinRuneblade

So far, I run on -1 through +1 x2 or x3. I drop to -1/x1 for bank missions. Bosses off. I still die pretty often, and when I do, my minions have all gone down before me and it was just me and fluffy waiting for the summon power to recharge and trying to stay alive through rapid healing and lots of fear. So bodyguard mode wouldn't have helped as far as I can tell.

Other than Rikti and Arachnos with bosses turned off, I can't think of any enemies that don't bring AoE's to the table. It started in Sharkhead with the Demolitionists being essentially impossible for my boys to handle, and just got worse from there on out. I have yet to find anyone but Rikti that I can handle reliably. And even then I have to turn off the bosses. Nem's are the worst since even their minions have cones.

Never beaten even one. Never seen my minions survive hits from EBs much less AVs. Last time I went up against nemesis as an EB was at the end of Scorpion's Patron Arc on the beach assault mission, difficulty set to -1/x3. I was doing ok against a group of Jaegers, then the one with, err forget the name of my anchored -acc power, but he runs off. Before I can detoggle it, he aggro's Nemesis who fires at us. Boom, soldiers all 3 dead, one spec op dead the other with a tiny sliver of life and comando deep in the red. Me knocked too far back to heal but still with over 50% life. Jaegers finished off the commando and spec op before I could get back in range to heal him. So, how would bodyguard mode help? Near as I can tell from the mechanics I'd have more life and the spec op and commando would be dead. I'm not seeing that as an advantage.

I understand what it does. I just don't understand why I want to do it. My mercs have way lower def and resist than I do. I can take 4-5 attacks from most bosses plus I have fluffy who stays near me, and my own heals going off. They crumple on 2 or 3 from lieutenants and the occasional boss can do 90% in one go, so if they're not full up it's an insta-kill. Why the hell would I want to make them even more fragile than that? If I was reliably getting killed with them still alive I would understand the concept. But since they ALWAYS die first, I just can't see the benefit unless it lets me bring the damage onto myself so I can heal it away.

I have Shadowfall, Maneuvers, Combat jumping, patron armor (Scorpion's but I'll be swapping to leviathan soon as I can get a respec), several handy set bonuses, plus fluffy, fearsome stare, and my heals. They have Maneuvers and shadowfall sometimes (even on follow passive they sometimes stray too far), one resist IO, one Def IO, whatever they come with natively, and fluffy and I can occasionally manage to heal one or two of them. the medic loves to start healing right after his buddy died. =)

There is no contest in terms of survivability. I have them beat by a long margin and I'm still getting more and better sets into my build for more and more survivability. They're almost as good as they will ever be (I am trying to get the other def IO). Unless the Uniques stop being unique and I can slot in some more resist and def.

I know the mechanic and I know the theory. But in my experience it doesn't offer what I need. My Mercs actually die more often than my ninjas ever did.

You can go farther, I really don't know how to play this game. Doesn't offend me when it's true. =) I assure you you've never seen tanks faceplant as often as mine, or blasters who can't solo, etc. I have fun, but totally lack skills. I'm not an idiot, just incompetent. I've read all the guides I can find, and I try to apply the information. I'm not very good at it.

I'll strongly argue on the impressive damage bit. My mercs are slotted for 30-ish% accuracy, 90%+damage and all three have one Lady Grey proc and I'm using both assault and tactics. They don't kill even con minions fast when all six of them are focused on it. With a few noteworthy exceptions (I love Carnies because they have no S/L resistance). Bosses got frustrating enough that I turned them off somewhere back in the low 30s. Every now and again while teaming I manage to corner a boss, and it takes forever to drop, so I know I still don't want to bother with them (made it to 49 so far). Granted, I'm using Mercs who do dot damage, but still, I can notice the speed difference when I use Patron attacks to support them against minions. I really shouldn't be able to notice that from everything I've read. Dunno what else I can do except only run Carnie missions. Everyone else seems to have disgustingly high levels of S/L resistance. If I manage to get an enemy onto Tar Patch, that helps a lot. Rarely happens though.

As far as survival, I do ok myself. Shadowfall, maneuvers, combat jumping, Patron armor, and a few decent set def bonuses, fluffy, fearsome stare, and lots of healing makes me a lot more survivable than the mercs themselves. I wish I could count darkest night in there but it always seems the target decides to run away and I have to turn it off so he doesn't aggro other groups, but it makes a difference too I'm sure for the few seconds it's working. Fluffy is a really huge part of my survivability. I love Fluffy. Fluffy is the only reason I haven't given up completely and am still trying to make this character workout.

So, DOES bodyguard take damage off of a minion and share it? From the description it looks like it only takes damage off of me. So if my commando gets nailed for 800 damage, will he be crippled or will it proliferate to myself and the others?

Problem is that AoE attacks includes everyone except Rikti and Arachnos with bosses turned off. The Caltrops of Artemis are doing most of their damage as AoE and I don't think they have any other AoE attack but the caltrops they are so obsessed with. Hero-side Circle of Thorns would be much easier than the Villain side for the lack of Succubus, but even then lots of the mages seem to have AoEs. Malta have their grenades and missiles, Council have an infinite supply of grenades especially from bosses and lieut's. If I turn on Bosses the Fake Nems and Warhulks can ravage my minions faster than I can get a heal off. And on and on the list goes. Either the enemy in question can't hurt my minions, or they die faster than I can heal. And that happens rather too often.

Never managed to get binds to work. I always get some weird purple error message saying unrecognized command when I try to copy/paste. I tried replacing the quotes manually in-game, someone suggested that might be the problem. Dunno. So I just use the default command buttons.

Question: As a merc, wouldn't it be more effective to use the tier 1 and 3 on key targets and the spec ops on defensive, since the spec ops are total pansies when it comes to dealing damage but I think the two of them total 90% of the hit points the three soldiers total up to? I think the same would be true for Bots wouldn't it?

I use the mouse. the problem is I select the power, then try to place it and instead click on an enemy and deselect the power. So then I have to select the power again. Oops, got the enemy's foot and deselected the power again. Then I try angling the camera to get a better view of the ground. By then one or more of my mercs are dead because I'm standing like an idiot trying to click on the ground not on the enemy and fiddling with the camera angles. So I get frustrated and just put the target off to the side where it only gets one out of 4 enemies, and that one easily walks out of it. Now I've wasted my power, some of my guys are dead, and the enemy hasn't really been inconvenienced. Joy.

So I pretty much put tar patch down as a way to draw aggro, or as a location to teleport foe enemies into. If it recharges during a fight I pretend that it didn't.

I've started and stopped so many MM's that until Going Rogue comes out I really don't want to start over again now that I finally managed to stubborn my way up to 49. When it comes out I plan to try Demons/FF. The thing is I loathe FF so much that back when I was trying a bots/FF I would suicide from time to time because the knockback made me hate my own character so much I had to get rid of it.

But by end-point first it would go:
I tweaked some wording and tossed in a few questions. This gives you another break to make the list more clean, and that is "stuff that goes through level 50".

Overall I think you might want to standardize on your style. For example you have IOs at level 7 only, but DOs at 12-50. It makes sense to just state the level they unlock on TOs, IOs, DOs, and SOs. Similarly anything that is an unlock, like a contact that appears at a specific level, or the Invention Tutorial, you can just state at the level it appears, I think. Then add a range only if you can outlevel it (some contacts I think work this way). Ones to add might be the unlockable contacts, for instance SlotMachine from level 30-34 (requires the Gang Buster badge), or Mu Drakhan.

Anyway, thanks for putting the work into this. Good luck with it.

If you are going for softcapping, is combat jumping really any better than hover? Neither one adds any significant defense, so the benefit would have to come from set slotting and all travel powers take essentially identical sets, or am I missing something?

The immobilization protection and need to be on the ground for Fissure is a decent reason to me, but being tight on powers doesn't make sense to me. Super Jump requires the exact same two slots as fly. If you're farming, you really don't need to travel over vast distances which is where super jump has its advantage over fly. How does being short on slots come into play?

I've only ever died, I think twice with my minions alive and I don't think I've ever fought in bodyguard mode, or if I have it was purely by accident. As far as I can tell, the "benefit" of bodyguard mode would be the absolute worst thing I could possibly inflict on myself. Unless it moves damage taken by a pet to me. That would be useful. Moving damage off me to them is exactly what I don't want. The idiots are hard enough to keep alive as it is.

I use aggressive because it lets me tell the idiots to gang up on one enemy. Other than that I have no use for commands except to tell them to run away back to me for a regroup. I tried using the goto, but I'm not coordinated enough to use it effectively while playing. I have the same issue with tar patch and all the other "set it on the ground" powers.

The only accolade I have is the one for the click power psychic defense from Rikti Raids (and some day job accolades, but those don't really count). Most of my attacks just have an SO for end reduction, but Disembowel has 4 Makos and Parry has all 6 Touch of Death (not like it was expensive to start with though). I've got 3.33/sec generation, and with Tough, Weave, FA, and Integration I consume .97/Second. So Headsplitter is still sucking down 10+, Whirling sword is 9.75, and Hack and Slice are both 7. My click heals are all costing a touch under 7 and buildup is 5 (just has two 40 IO recharges).

I've had no problems with him on a couple of characters recently. Not saying he's fixed as I don't know the specifics of the bug, but at least for my Peacebringer and Warshade I had no trouble getting missions from him at the appropriate level.

God, I wish that were true. I really want to find a MM build where I can put the pets on aggressive and then ignore them while I do my thing. Haven't found one yet.

I want a MM that plays like a fire dominator where you don't HAVE any control over the pets. So far, all the ones I've tried if you don't control your pets, you die horribly. And I think I've tried all possible combinations up to level 25-30. Yes, I know, this pretty much means masterminds are not the AT I should be playing, but I really love the idea of them and want to find one that I can at least succeed with. No luck yet.

Actually, just the opposite is true. From his first post:
From his second: Though his third he didn't say anything about PvP and did mention a demon farm. Did you maybe get the OP confused with one of the other posters who was asking questions?

It does and is has grown so much that you can level up everything through questing. Many of the sidegames they implemented to stop farmers and bots give great rewards and are fun in themselves.

RuneScape is a very, very different game than when it started out.

There's a fun treasure map minigame where you sometimes get maps as loot and you run to specific spots in the world (sometimmes talking to NPCs to answer a riddle, sometimes spawning an enemy, etc) for a treasure.

I played it originally and it was pretty sad. But after the changes it's very different. And has several million active accounts so it's not empty either. The free servers are often full. I had a lot of fun with it. You can grind if you want to, but there isn't a need for it. Just keep finding and doing quests and enjoying the minigames.