Thunderforce

I wonder if I can possibly persuade you to reread what I wrote without first making the assumption that it must be a personal attack; frankly that comes as news to me, and I wrote it.

All I'm saying is you're not using a source of defense that is readily available to you and is completely free (ie, you've already taken the powers and spent whatever slots you're going to spend, and I've never met a mastermind who didn't have plenty of endurance going.)

The fact that you can get away without using it through a combination of sensible use of other powers and masterminds being just a little bit unbalanced is very nice for you, but certainly doesn't make it any less true that you're throwing away that free defence. Note specifically that I never disputed that you can clear missions like this, so you can spare me any more angry proclamations of that.

Hyperbole doesn't help either. Obviously as a mastermind you're already dropping one single-target power on each minion at the start of the mission and will be dropping two in the future.

The analogy to Stamina is also bogus, and I'm surprised you even bring it up - I certainly don't care if you take Stamina, but then I don't care if you use the single target bubbles, I'm just making an observation to the original questioner that if you can't bring yourself to use the powers that are the backbone of the powerset, it might be an idea to pick another powerset. But at that sort of level obviously Stamina is not free; it costs 3 power selections.

I'll bet there's someone out there with the blast powers from a mastermind set and nothing else, like a sort of demented corruptor. There's probably someone out there who's good enough at the game that they can clear missions like that without too much trouble. That doesn't mean that one might not ask why they are playing a mastermind in the first place.

Well, I've been thinking about this problem for a while - an adults' supergroup, that is, not utilitarianism.

The trouble is that I don't think that a supergroup is the answer; people have all sorts of other reasons for joining different supergroups and people also often have lots of characters who would fill up the group quickly if it worked well, so you'd find yourself with a coalition...

Also, frankly, the 1AT coalition is pretty good. There's a certain amount of "OMG biouxbies" on the coalition channel, but there are also a lot of perfectly nice people.

Wanting to talk to adults is a function of the player, not the character, so I'd suggest a global chat channel; however, the trouble with that is it's quite easy to use up your five channels. I'm already on Global, the LJ channel, two badge channels (and now it's too late to roll them into one non-server-specific one), and the Taskforce channel - now I could lose the last one, which no-one uses, but I'd still like to pretend to myself that people will, and I can see how other people may well just have five already which they need all of.

A "Literari" channel would need sufficient interest and sufficient trustworthy people to be elitist snobs with operator powers. I can't see that happening...

As I say, sure, you can manage. But that's more a function of MM being both quite strong relative to enemy threat levels and inherently not prone to faceplanting because bad things happen to the minions first, especially soloing.

Look at it the other way; I always have the single bubbles up on my minions, usually on my teammates (if they don't go and hide behind things when it's their turn), and often on teammates' minions. That's a lot of defence I'm getting basically for free (given that, without it, I'd be wandering around with a full blue bar like most masterminds). Obviously that's an effective use of the powerset - so having the bubbles and not using them is...

To put it bluntly, if the single bubbles aren't for you, you've got the wrong powerset. They provide the bulk of the assistance you can provide to your minions and teammates; and any MM secondary is primarily there to buff the minions.

Can you manage without them? Sure. But it might be best to pick something better suited to your playing style.

Excellent, that's exactly what I am looking for. It'll still need a rewrite of my buffing Perl script [1], but at least it'll be nice and quick once I'm done.

Can I persuade you to put this into your guide for masterminds? I'm sure I am not the only person for whom it would be useful.

[1] No, it doesn't play the game for me, T&C paranoids; it just sits there and says "one" ... "two" ... "three" at the right intervals for the team size, buff duration, and where I am in the team.

Perhaps I'm missing something hidden in plain sight, but is there a slash command or keybinding for selecting particular henchmen as my target? Getting my zombies into my bubbling rota is proving slightly tedious since it compels me to touch the mouse.

Edit: while I'm at it, a way to drop insp on them without touching the mouse wouldn't hurt, too. Somehow I suspect this question is going to become an RFE.