Psylenz

Ok, for my bane spider, I am building venom grenade, pulverize, shatter and poison ray which red tomax shows all four having toxic damage. Venom grenade, surveillance, shatter armor (80% -resist toxic; 60% -resist non-toxic) -- does the achilles heal -resist proc have five chances to tick in poisonous ray with each tick of toxic damage or is the -defense a one time hit?

Back to demon numbers - on a single target (hypothetical)

Sonic disruption -22.5 (controller modifiers?)
Liquefy (Achilles heal proc) -20
Sonic siphon -22.5

Lash -9.375 (cast 1.8 sec, duration is six seconds)
Crack the Whip -9.375 (cast 3 sec cast time, duration is six seconds)

Hellfire demonling -15
Hellfire Gargoyle -20

So, I am not sure of the sonic modifiers, but these are the numbers I am showing for a total in the optimal situation: 118.75

Any takers on those numbers?

I got excited thinking more about the demon summoning/sonic damage resistance. I checked out number on the red tomax city of data. The lowest tier -resistances appear to be 15% and 20% resistance debuff. I don't want to question any canonical data, but the enchant and abysmal empowerment show -200% on the hellfire demonling and hellfire gargoyle upgraded powers, albeit for five seconds. Can this be confirmed? Those are astounding numbers, especially on cone attacks.

I experimented with some EC/fire dominators. I eventually pushed my EC/elec to 50. For me I preferred the latter play-style, but EC/fire I am confident can be an effective combination. With EC/fire, I still play to endurance drain the enemy.

For starters, i am assuming you took a variety of the following powers, the first two are the MOST important: conductive aura, static field, tesla cage, flares, incinerate, chain fences, fire breath, hasten, and fire blast. Also, I will assume soloing that you are not dialing up the difficulty yet.

Early on, you cannot spam static field, so pulling will be necessary. Fire blast isn't a bad pulling tool, even though it appears flashy. Flares isn't horrible, but you generally draw more folks. As you pull back from 1, 2, hopefully not 3 too many times, hit them with the chain fences, this will thin out how many will be in melee range. If chain fences catches one of two, then tesla cage the closest one, and stand within melee range so conductive aura draws recovery and regen while you finish the one that can still attack you. If the ones you pull are close enough together, with practice you can use fire breath to do some good damage. Incinerate is your kill shot. If the last one, the closest one to is the boss, you have to keep kiting back or breaking line of sight, but tesla cage recharges quickly and you can hold the boss. Domination makes everything better. Tesla cage is a good attack, moderate damage, and will hold most bosses you encounter with two successful applications.

Static field is great for opening, sleeping minions, setting up fire breath. I keep foes in static field with chain fences, and move in quickly to drain as many as I can with conductive aura. It should be noted that most minions react to entering conductive aura with a physical reaction like knock-down or stun where they won't attack for a few moments. This lets you set up tesla cage, incinerate, or even sands of mu for vets to quickly take out some targets. Fire is good for that.

The biggest feature for danger to all Electric Control users is the first few seconds of a fight while the controls take effect. Compare it to the earth control. EC doesn't have stalagmites ( or Flashfire in the fire sets). The Electric control powers are slower in taking effect, more like earthquake. If you are on a team with a tank or brute, make sure they get a lot of the aggro nailed down so you don't take 5 or 6 attacks in reply in say chain fences.

Synergy between the sleep effect in static field and the DoT in fire powers is only problematic mostly with fire breath and combustion (which comes later, and I suggest skipping until you need it to fill you attacks). I say this mostly because fire breath is big damage, and incinerate has a longer DoT but it too is a heavy hitter. Even if fire attacks wake the targets, -end, -rech, -speed are effective controls in static field.

I would also suggest from my experience on all-defender teams, there is no such thing as too much debuff, be it tohit, defense, resistance, damage, regen, recharge, speed, etc.

I can see posts in several threads about returning players and players returning to masterminds. They really are that fun.

Adeon and anonymoose have hit the highlights. I would comment that on your endurance slotting, keep in mind, Acc/End or Dmg/End enhancements in pet damage sets won't reduce the endurance cost for non-damage Demon abilities such as heals, resistance auras, heal auras, slow auras and shiver. The player has a choice in slotting generic I/Os or frankenslotting different sets. I like the 4 slots of Pacing of the Turtle in my Demon Prince since it does include acc, dmg, slow, endurance reduction and most of the Demon Prince's abilities include a slow component and benefit as well. I agree the littlest guys are all damage so pet damage sets work great.

My first level 50 Demon mastermind went Demons/Thermal. Thermal and dark both have a lot of synergy with the pets' non-attack abilities. I recommend get at least Crack the Whip, targetted AoE -resistance is a good way to grab the aggro bodyguard style. When you are well into your groove (not the first group, not the boss group), I think it's beneficial to run in a split stance: Demon Prince and the little guys in defensive with the Tier 2's in aggressive. The three little demonlings have enough firepower to protect you from most surprises. As Adeon mentioned, I consider the fire demonling my MVP-runner up. Rarely if ever does he go into melee, and he is always 'covering my butt' just right behind my mastermind.

Because of the endurance requirements, I slot at least 3 of the 4 pet defense and resistance bonuses in Hell on Earth. Perhaps with good slotting, your damage and accuracy are high enough in the first tier to use a pet bonus in the sixth slot. I cast Hell on Earth in priority of Demon Prince first, and then, whoever does NOT have forge active on them. I rotate forge among the big three. Hell on Earth's big bonus is that is soften's the aggro on your pets and you. It really messes with your foes' AI getting smacked by so many targets.

Demon Prince is my favorite pet - ever. So many times in defensive mode, I will target the nastiest, ugliest target with crack the whip or a debuff. After this, the big foe replies to my healthy bodyguard status, and my Demon Prince's first move at range is Ice Block, the single target hold. It's more than a mag 2 hold, let me assure you. My favorite is when the nullifier gets held, but he holds other high level foes, too. In a regular story arc, mission, we were playing at +2, I on a Demons/poison and my level-pact Demons/Dark, we sccidentally split. My mastermind faced two named bosses; the two bosses wiped out all my pets except the Demon Prince. As you probably will soon find out, when big boy gets his big-butt ice sword out, it's ker-smackin' time. All told, our duo survived both full-sized groups.

Gah, flirting with TL;DR. When I start a build in mids. I boilerplate in the must have powers at the levels they becomed available, starting with primaries, then secondaries and options. Slot the must have powers the barest minimum to be effective at usual standards with SOs leading to 5 set IO bonuses. Defense epic sets help most masterminds. I really like chill mastery on my Demons/Thermal. I was pleasantly surprised that Flash Freeze is so effective. It appears that most attacks from the demons at range are single-target.

Good luck.

Actually there were answers to questions in this thread about targeted powers,(binds, but I still have trouble with cursor movement and placement), locking the power trays (a very useful reminder), and the technical aspects of how I bought a sub-standard vid card when I intended to get one compliant with ultra-mode, Going Rogue, Praetorian content, and incarnate content, which are in another thread (check the stickies). Now in the praetorian content, the new dimensional warder badge mission arc, based in Peregrine Island. I find myself in mid-sized team missions on outdoor map - Primeva style map, looking for the new Praetorian Chimera. I approach what appears to be 2 or 3 minions and suddenly find my character surrounded by 10 or so level 54 DE +5 to my supersidekicked up 49, and I don't where they came from. Has anyone dealt with this before? It reminded me of the 'sneaky freak' mission on red-side except (I am pretty sure) these vegetables are not intended to be stealthy. Is there a work-around for this problem?

Targeting has been broken since Issue 1. Click on hellion, ok there's a boss next to him, click tab and voila! You targeted the hellion 300 yds across the map meanwhile the Damned Damned is still bearing down on you. I know for certainty that this is NOT how next is calculated on powers like cinders, targeted AoE powers or Taunt that counts 15 targets to be affected in range of the target. CoH uses two different rules for 'Next' and one of them has NOTHING to do with usage of the English language.

This is good stuff, sign me up for the big cursor club.

From the wiki
Spiritual Radial Paragon
For all powers: Increases Recharge rate, Healing, Stun duration, Slow Movement, and Jump effects by 33% and To Hit Buff effects by 20%.
Two thirds of these bonuses ignore the effects of enhancement diminishing returns.

Recharge, Heal, Stun, Slow... I think Dark would CRAVE that kind of buffing

I bind shift+lbutton for petcom_all goto aggressive

So if you activate caltrops from the keyboard, how does that place the targeting circle and 'drop' it where you want? or tar patch or freezing rain or sleet or ...

Activating all the powers from the keyboard would really suck. I play support characters by preference and easily fill 5 trays with powers binds and macros. I doubt I could remember all the powers let alone the keys to activate them.

I do write binds, such as for O2 boost to target and heal 8 individual teammates or 6/7 pets from the numpad.

I need to the lock the power trays.

Besides the fact that every two years, be it ultra mode or increased gaming demands of praetorian content, I can't effectively participate in the incarnate trials. It's a huge lag fest like the worst Rikti invasion ever on the hill in Talos. I thought after my recent recuperation period after eye surgery I would dive into the incarnate material. It's not happening.

1) Targetting has been borked since Issue 1.

2) Although it is advertised as having a 1.07 sec time for activation it's more like 15 seconds.
First you click the power button in the tray, look to find that targetting circle. It's gone, computer says you were dragging calrops power. Click again, you get the circle, but you move just a bit too fast too far in a hurry now, and boom the circle disappears, you moved the targetting circle so far that everything is back at square 1.

There must be some short cut after 7 years to avoid this kind of crap. (Yeah I know if I can't use the power correctly, don't take it. Well the player isn't exactly an incarnate either.)

3) I have vision problems and screen displaying problems. We did a new dimensional warder mission in an outdoor map with DE. The DE would not show up on screen, but if I clicked tab enough times I could pull up the reticle. It was a sneaky DE mission as opposed to sneaky Freaks in the Rogue Islands.

Right after that mission, we did a dimensional warden mission with the new resistance spawns. They apparently (not to my eyes) are supposed to phase in and out. Mini-rant here, even the most loathesome despicable Romulan would never fire upon an opponent while cloaked. Shooting from a phased status is pure unadulterated bull-manure.

4) Apparently doors also phase in and out. The worst are hospital doors. I literally cuss out loud if I zone into an upper floor of the hospital because I have to click 5-10 times to get the damn door open - twice, to actually exit the hospital. I feel as helpless as the skulls in their break-in ritual, except I'm a hero leaving the hospital. The other doors that are a problem are the two sets of doors into the portal room in portal corp, and God help you if someone dashes between your character and the portal elevator door and zones in the middle of you activating the preposterous clicking ritual because now, the door is off-limits to you, so you might as well try the next door.

5) The very worst thing is, the mission completes, and to my experience, I dash out of the mission first. While I am zoning back into the city zone map, like the portal room at Peregrine Island, my teammates can zone out, cross Peregrine and be in the next mission before I materialize in Portal Corp. That's the worst.

Does anyone have any short-cuts, programming or bind cheats that get you through these turmoils faster and with less hair loss? I know some TFs and story arcs, I don't even zone out of the mission, I drop an ouroportal and skip the exit mission step.

I went to the control panel. I changed the size of the pointer, colored it all black. I got back in the game, and the game defaulted to the gimp in-game pointer and size

Another aspect that wasn't mentioned is 'aggro management'. Your mastermind needs to be a bully at first. Try not to engage large groups at a time until your mastermind is higher in level and the pets have matured with greater Area of effect powers. What experienced masterminds call 'bodyguard', the mastermind takes the alpha strike from the foes and the damage is distributed over the mastermind and all the pets. This is key for pet survival at low levels.

Dark/Sonic is very viable. All the sonic blasts stack -resistance debuffs on targets in addition to tar patch's -resistance. Your other dark powers have tremendous -tohit. On teams during double xp weekend, howl away while you have a controller to keep the foes off you, or a tank to absorb the aggro.

Skippable sonic powers include shockwave, and siren's song is far more useful solo, but so-so on teams. Many defenders skip shout because of the long animation time. Shriek and scream are really good for single target dps.

I like all the dark powers except black hole. Some players don't miss it if they skip Petrifying Gaze. I always take Howling Twilight as soon as available. It is an AUTOHIT power that stuns (low mag for minions), slows, and debuffs regeneration; it's a critical tool in taking out bosses, AVs, and hard targets. Your screech power stacks stun with howling twilight to stun harder targets. Fearsome stare would be a tremendous power without any fear features; the cone tohit debuff is hard to beat.

You might consider dark mastery for more stun goodness, dark consumption to feed your endurance, and a buildup power also.

If I really had to choose, I would choose Thugs over Bots for one little reason: gang war. Access to the recharge intensive pet set unique bonuses isn't trivial. Gang war in itself can take a lot of heat off the mastermind and the pets. The other consideration would be that the arsonist is way more suicidal than any robot, but gang war is really sweet to max out the pet defense and resistances.

I do the info-mercial thing on teams sometimes, too. I do my best not to be snarky. I was on a lowbie team with a good friend on a plant/kin and I on my Kin/ice. The team was really happy with speed boost X 2 and transfusion X 2. I pointed out the lesser known stat: the team is getting a >100% boost to damage from assault and siphon power X 2 and the bosses are not two shotting us because they are debuffed by siphon power 90%. That's how lowbies are steamrolling the missions.

Another time, a team was considering our chances because we didn't have an empath, pain, or thermal. I was on my Forcefielder with another cold defender, and another defender (can't recall which flavor, not empathy) and we had numerous maneuvers in operation. I suggested my friend check his defenses stats: > 100% to everything. I said something like: that rad heal should be plenty (maybe it was kin ) This was of course before factoring in the -recharge from psychic blast and cold powers.

We have new players and returning players now before F2P hits. I try my best to keep the knowledge flowing. And, yes, mr./ms. new person, your hero/villain buffs/debuffs stack with mine.

I put this together in Mids emphasizing recharge bonus for EM Pulse, Conserve Power, Hasten, and Accelerated Metabolism. I also put some emphasis on mezz and psi resistance. I kept all the powers that you selected. If I had a chance I would drop Aim (since you have Tactics and Buildup) or Bitter Freeze Ray to use some different slotting and maintain current recharge bonuses.

If you wanted to purple IO out the build, just substitute a set in for a currently 5 slotted power.


Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.93
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Green Chilly: Level 50 Natural Defender
Primary Power Set: Radiation Emission
Secondary Power Set: Ice Blast
Power Pool: Speed
Power Pool: Flight
Power Pool: Leadership
Ancillary Pool: Power Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Radiant Aura -- Dct'dW-EndRdx/Rchg(A), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx(3), Dct'dW-Heal/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal/EndRdx/Rchg(7), Dct'dW-Heal(37)
Level 1: Ice Bolt -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(9), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(9), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(45)
Level 2: Radiation Infection -- LdyGrey-DefDeb(A), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg(11), LdyGrey-DefDeb/Rchg/EndRdx(11), LdyGrey-Rchg/EndRdx(21), LdyGrey-DefDeb/EndRdx(27), LdyGrey-%Dam(39)
Level 4: Ice Blast -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(13), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(13), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(17), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46)
Level 6: Hasten -- RechRdx(A), RechRdx(15), RechRdx(15)
Level 8: Fly -- Flight-I(A)
Level 10: Accelerate Metabolism -- Efficacy-EndMod(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(19), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc/Rchg(19), Efficacy-Acc/Rchg(40), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(46)
Level 12: Enervating Field -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(21)
Level 14: Aim -- AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(23), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(29), AdjTgt-ToHit(29), AdjTgt-EndRdx/Rchg(42)
Level 16: Maneuvers -- LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx(A), LkGmblr-Rchg+(25), LkGmblr-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(25)
Level 18: Assault -- EndRdx-I(A), EndRdx-I(27)
Level 20: Tactics -- AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx(23)
Level 22: Freeze Ray -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(31), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(31), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(40)
Level 24: Lingering Radiation -- Acc-I(A), Acc-I(31)
Level 26: Ice Storm -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(33), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(40), Posi-Dmg/Rng(42)
Level 28: Bitter Ice Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(34), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(34), Thundr-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(43)
Level 30: Choking Cloud -- NrncSD-Acc/EndRdx(A), Lock-Acc/Hold(34), Lock-%Hold(36), G'Wdw-Acc/EndRdx(46)
Level 32: EM Pulse -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(33), NrncSD-Acc/Hold/Rchg(36), EoCur-Acc/Hold(36)
Level 35: Bitter Freeze Ray -- BasGaze-Acc/Hold(A), BasGaze-Acc/Rchg(37), BasGaze-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(37), BasGaze-EndRdx/Rchg/Hold(43)
Level 38: Blizzard -- Posi-Acc/Dmg(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(39), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(39), Posi-Dmg/Rng(43), Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(48)
Level 41: Conserve Power -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(42)
Level 44: Power Build Up -- AdjTgt-ToHit(A), AdjTgt-ToHit/Rchg(45), AdjTgt-ToHit/EndRdx/Rchg(45)
Level 47: Temp Invulnerability -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/EndRdx(A), S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(48), S'fstPrt-ResKB(48), ImpSkn-Status(50)
Level 49: Force of Nature -- Aegis-Psi/Status(A), ImpArm-ResDam/EndRdx(50), ImpArm-ResPsi(50)
------------
Level 1: Brawl -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Sprint -- Empty(A)
Level 1: Vigilance
Level 2: Rest -- Empty(A)
Level 4: Ninja Run
Level 2: Swift -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Health -- RgnTis-Regen+(A), Mrcl-Rcvry+(5), Numna-Regen/Rcvry+(5)
Level 2: Hurdle -- Empty(A)
Level 2: Stamina -- P'Shift-End%(A), P'Shift-EndMod(3)