There are times when you shoul not worry if your minions die, especially in teams. For example you may want to send your minions get he aggro for the alpha strike, so that you can activate debuffs without getting the aggro yourself.
In a team, you will then have time to "rebuild" while your team is engaging.
Also, if you have Necro/ it's a good time to use Soul Extraction.
Hello, i just had some free time so i decided to make a mastermind guide!
Ok so lets get started. First i will tell you how to make an affective solo player, then a good team player, then finally a good PVPer.
Ok so if you want to be a good soloist, you need to be able to master some tasks. First, you need to recognize that you dont have a whole lot of health. This means that you won't want to go jumping into the middle of a group and try to kill the group with your attacks. Now maybe this will work for the first few levels, but this will not work after level 5 or so. Now if you want to be able to take down a group, you will want to summon your minions, buff them with everthing you have, then send them in to grab the enemies aggro. After your minions start to attack, you will want to heal them every time their health gets down to about 75% full. This will make sure that the minions do not die and it will also make sure that you don't have to risk being stuck fighting an enemy without your minions.
If you do not have any healing powers, (for example force field secondary.) you will want to buff your minion with everything you can before the fight. This will usually keep the minions safe. Now if the minions get to very low health, send them a respite if you have one. If the minions then die in the middle of a battle, or if you do not have any respites to help them with, get ready to summon them ASAP. If you do not summon them quickly, you will be in danger.
Also DO NOT FORGET ABOUT YOUR DEBUFFS! You NEVER want to forget about your debuffs in your 2ndaries because they can save you and your minions. Debuffs can turn the whole battle around, expecially in boss/elite boss/Super Villain battles. For example, in the Dark Miasma 2ndary, you get a great amount of accuracy reducing debuffs with twilight grasp, darkest night etc... These can help a lot. Be sure to use any debuffs you have on your enemies.
Always remember that you can use inspirations on your minions, and that they can help. Giving your minions rages help them more than the rages would help you, since you normally won't be doing damage.
In some cases, you might end up being forced to do some damage. This is when one of the primary attack powers come in handy. For example, your minions died and you are waiting for them to respawn and there are 2 equal level enemy minions attacking you. You do have the choice to run away, but why run when your attack power can take the enemies down.
Sometimes you might not have a choice but to run as fast as you can from the enemy. This might happen when your minions die fighting a +2 level boss. Now, unless the boss is at very low health, it would be smart to run. Remember, it doesn't matter if you run from an enemy, you won't be humiliated, you will just be saving yourself from debt.
If you are on a team, you will want to buff your minions AND (if you can) teammates. Your teammates will love the buffs and they will most likely thank you for them. You also want to keep an extra eye on all your teammates health and buff bars so you can re-put buffs on them and if you can, heal them.
Make sure you keep an eye on your minions expecially in teams because the minions can sometimes just run into another group that you arent attacking and aggrovate the group. Then the other group that your pets aggrovated might kill your team. The minions can also get to low health quickly in teams so you want to heal them or resummon them fast.
Here is a nice macro that i like to use in teams. This macro sends your minions into an area of your choice in aggresive mode. I use this macro to send my robots into the middle of the group that my team is attacking, this manages my robots for me because the robots will just attack anything that is in the area of where you sent them and they usually won't attack anything outside of that group. The macro is
/macro Send petcom_all goto aggressive
OK now you have mastered teaming and soloing so now you can finally master PVPing. PVPing is tough because you are playing against other people either in the arena or in a PVP zone. To PVP as a mastermind is a somewhat difficult task. If you have invisibility and grant invisibility, now is when it comes into play. With these powers, you can have your minions attack other players while you remain invisible. Also, in PVP you NEED TO USE ALL BUFFS AND DEBUFFS YOU HAVE if you want to win. A strategy that i use while PVPing without invis or grant invis is to send in my minions, let them attack the enemy while i jump around using superjump. This gives me the ability to get out of the enemies range. This also helps because i can jump in, set a debuff, then jump out and do the same thing over and over again. I can also jump in and heal my minions when they get low on health with this strategy. Usually, the enemy dies fast this way unless it is a stalker or a good defensive tank. When you fight stalkers in the arena, look for all the signs of where they are when they are invisible. If you are in a water area, look in the water for their footprints because once they get assassin strike on you, thats game. Now if they dont use hide, you can just send your minions in to take them out.
Oh and a fun thing to do with your pets would be to have them use emotes like this.
/petsayall <em drumdance> OOGABOOGA!
This will make all your pets do a drumdance and say OOGABOOGA!
I hope this guide helped and if you have something to add just say it. Thanks!