So basically you make a "petcom_all follow defensive" macro and hit it when you take damage, then go back to whatever setting you like when you stop taking damage? I could see that working.
I know one thing, this ability will make Bank Heists a lot less painful for my Mastermind.
Aegis Rose, Forcefield/Energy Defender - Freedom
"Bubble up for safety!"
Yup, exactly.
Defensive works like this: Your pets will not attack mobs unless attacked first. If a foe attacks them, they retaliate. If a foe attacks YOU, all of your pets aggro on that foe and attack. If you're under fire, Bodyguard will help keep you alive while your pets neutralize the threat. If you're not under fire, YOU DON'T NEED BODYGUARD.
You know, I already can't defeat MM's, at least not mercenary.
Now, they're going to be even harder to kill. This looks like a nice buff for MM's, but if you think you suck at pvp, you should try playing a dominator for a week. You'll never complain about your MM again.
Yeah, sounds like one of the best uses for MM will be in ambush situations. The MM gets all the agro, so just put all your hencemen onto bodyguard duty and let them do their job 
Always remember, we were Heroes.
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Yup, exactly.
Defensive works like this: Your pets will not attack mobs unless attacked first. If a foe attacks them, they retaliate. If a foe attacks YOU, all of your pets aggro on that foe and attack. If you're under fire, Bodyguard will help keep you alive while your pets neutralize the threat. If you're not under fire, YOU DON'T NEED BODYGUARD.
[/ QUOTE ]But the problem for ninja is, to neutralize the threat, you have to order them around, otherwise the will go their merry way, and do whatever they want. I don't know, maybe this will fix the ninja AI, if it doesn't it's not good.
Come on devs, art guys, where is my Maid costume for my characters! 5 years now, its a simple request.
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Yup, exactly.
Defensive works like this: Your pets will not attack mobs unless attacked first. If a foe attacks them, they retaliate. If a foe attacks YOU, all of your pets aggro on that foe and attack. If you're under fire, Bodyguard will help keep you alive while your pets neutralize the threat. If you're not under fire, YOU DON'T NEED BODYGUARD.
[/ QUOTE ]But the problem for ninja is, to neutralize the threat, you have to order them around, otherwise the will go their merry way, and do whatever they want. I don't know, maybe this will fix the ninja AI, if it doesn't it's not good.
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I'm pretty sure that the Ninjas need an AI fix. I play multiple MMs, and my Ninja men also seem to have a very, very small aggro radius, like literally melee. If they were simply fixed to aggro (specifically while in defensive) to all enemy attacks, I think the problem would go away.
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So basically you make a "petcom_all follow defensive" macro and hit it when you take damage, then go back to whatever setting you like when you stop taking damage? I could see that working.
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I think this is the intended use of Bodyguard. You don't have it up ALL THE TIME, you send your henchmen out to attack your foes like you always do. Once they are engaged in combat, though, you can set them back to Follow Defensive, and even if they have to break melee to "come back" to you, they will do everything they can to continue to fight, as long as they are already engaged.
Or even more likely, you can have part of your group (ranged fighters if you have them) set to Follow Defensive while the others go forward and attack. If you need the additional protection, you switch them all to Follow Defensive and then put your main force back on Attack Aggressive when the danger is past.
As Lunar Knight said, Defensive mode basically means that any time you or your henchmen are attacked, the henchmen will fight back to protect you. If they are already IN battle, then they are obviously being attacked, and Defensive won't stop them from fighting. In fact, I've tested the "two forces" tactic I described above, and I can confirm the Defensive force WILL fire in defense of the Aggressive force when it begins to draw fire. The only time I've ever had any problem with my Defenders not firing is if I wasn't close enough, and then taking a few steps forward was usually enough to get them to join in the fray.
Unfortunately, I've never played a melee Mastermind, so I can't be sure this technique will work for them. I just know it works with range. I would suggest, however, trying two things:
1) Set some of your Ninjas (or Zombies) to Aggressive and then tell them to goto a spot right on top of a foe. See if that causes them to aggro as they should.
2) Select a target and tell a Ninja to go Attack it, and then immediately put it back on Follow Defensive. If I understand Attack correctly, the Ninja should continue to attack that foe and no other foes until it is dead. He may try to return to you, but it's possible the Attack command overrides the Follow command. I do know it overrides all stances, you can tell a henchman to Attack while in either Aggressive, Defensive or Passive mode. All the stance does is effect his actions AFTER the foe is dead. (Aggressive he'll select another nearby foe, Defensive he'll look for a foe that has shot you, Passive he will do nothing until you specifically order him to Attack again)
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The problem I have is I have been trying out defensive/follow. Using a low level mastermind, I had two pets. Both set to defensive/follow. I walked up to a group of three yellow-con minion enemies. I could have killed them all fairly quickly, if I just ordered the pets to attack them one at a time, but I wanted to see the fight play out by using defensive to get my pets fighting.
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That's just it. You were trying to use it in a situation where you didn't need it. Bodyguard isn't supposed to be great in every situation, if it were, there'd be no use for the other MM commands. It's to fix one specific situation, where mobs attack the MM while ignoring the pets. The Defensive stance actually works quite well in this situation.
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I ended up with three enemies attacking, one of my pets fighting back, and the other one just standing there next to me NOT fighting. I had to order an attack to get them both to fight.
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If you want the initiative Attack/Aggressive is a better option. If you need someone to protect you, that's what Bodyguard is for. Try turning on Defensive and attacking foes directly yourself. Defensive works best when you have aggro on you instead of the pets.
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I also tried out the idea of ordering my pets to attack and then quickly order them back to defensive/follow mode. This is no that easy. If you do it too quickly, they never attack. But the longer you wait, you are creating a larger window of bodyguard being down. Bodyguard is starting to seem more like a gamblers power to me.
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You're looking at it the other way. You don't need to be in your shell all the time. If you did, MM's would be horrible right now, and they're really not. Play the game normally as if Bodyguard doesn't exist. Then when you get aggro and start taking direct damage, flip on Bodyguard to get your pets to protect you.
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Sounds great, and is absolutely true in PvE. Nobody really NEEDED bodyguard for PvE, however. What we need it for is PvP, and that is the area in which (from the information given so far) it is going to be sadly lacking.
I like the way the poster made an attempt to test pet responses. I think the fact that you want to dismiss his tests to be extremely nieve. Sure, he didn't NEED to use bodyguard mode, but he was doing it to TEST the reactions of his pets. The confused reactions of his pets are rather typical, as a matter of fact.
What I would suggest (and what I have been working on) is a macro or keybind that will cycle your pets through offensive and BG modes. The one I am working on accesses a text file every time I hit the key to get the next set of orders. Every set of orders takes one group of pets off of bodyguard mode and tells them to attack, simultaneously taking another group off of Attack and setting them to BG duty. This allows for semi effective use of all pets, in a civil war volley style mode of engagement. Do all pets fire at the same time? No. This cuts down the burst damage I am able to dish out, while maintaining fire from all pets and rotating them through BG duty (spreading around any absorbed damage).
Face it. Pets on BG mode are STUPID, and might as well be on passive for the most part (passive would be better in many instances, where the pets aggro and actually run out of supremacy range).
The only way to get the most out of your pets is to actively give them direction. The safest way to avoid having players swoop down and gank us in PvP will be to always maintain a bodyguard contingent of 2-3 pets. Considering the cycle rate of most pet powers, rotating them through BG mode won't adversely effect our longterm DPS, it will only limit our burst damage (which means we'll have a much harder time gettting kills, but we'll also live longer and not have to waste time summoning and buffing new pets as the Devs seem to want us to do.)
No, I'm not happy with the stated implementation of bodyguard, but I definately plan on using it to the best of my ability.
Suriyama
40 bots and bubbles
Justice
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What I would suggest (and what I have been working on) is a macro or keybind that will cycle your pets through offensive and BG modes. The one I am working on accesses a text file every time I hit the key to get the next set of orders. Every set of orders takes one group of pets off of bodyguard mode and tells them to attack, simultaneously taking another group off of Attack and setting them to BG duty. This allows for semi effective use of all pets, in a civil war volley style mode of engagement.
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I like this idea. I have a more static set-up (and honestly, for Bots you probably want to keep your Protectors as the defense team) but this is a really cool concept. I'd like to see how it works out.
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I like the way the poster made an attempt to test pet responses. I think the fact that you want to dismiss his tests to be extremely nieve. Sure, he didn't NEED to use bodyguard mode, but he was doing it to TEST the reactions of his pets. The confused reactions of his pets are rather typical, as a matter of fact.
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Thank you Solitair, that was also my reaction reading his reply to my post. I have seen many people in this thread saying things like "In defensive/follow, your pets will engage when you are attacked." Or "just order them to attack and then switch them back to def/fol."
I wanted to see how well these two ideas actually worked in practice, and I was VERY dissapointed. It sounds a LOT more effective in writing then I experianced in game.
It was just oh so nice to get attacked by three yellow cons, and see only ONE of my ninjas attack, while the other just stood there. I should also mention that the one that decided to fight back, did so by throwing shurikens. Woo hoo!
What I found was that, neither of these tactics worked very well against stupid NPC opponants. How do you think it will be against an enemy player who is out for your head? I believe that taking advantage of bodyguard, either in PvP or PvE is going to take a lot of macro work, and some very careful timing on the players part.
Not trying to discredit your research in any way but there is always the possibility of further AI upgrades for the pets to be included in the upcoming update. My suggestion is to take a wait and see approach before coming to conclusions. What you find to be true now may not be true then.
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I think the fact that you want to dismiss his tests to be extremely nieve.
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I had no intention to dismiss it as such, it was merely the way it was presented. A lot of people put their pets in Defensive and expect them to attack exactly what they want and go where they're told. It sounded like you expected them to initiate combat in Defensive mode and were disappointed with the results.
I've tossed my pets in Defensive and they don't attack. If something attacks me, however, they're usually pretty good about retaliating, especially against a single assailent. I appologize if I sounded dismissive, it simply sounded like you tried to engage in combat in Defensive mode, and were disappointed that the pets were as aggressive as when you put them in... well Aggressive mode. I'd love to hear about how the pets are reacting to a direct assault on you in Defensive mode and again, sorry if I sounded like I was dismissing your post.
The_Chad said regarding Supremacy's radius: [ QUOTE ]
I believe it's 30 meters.
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i'm going to guess you mean yards, since the US version of CoX does not use the metric system at all. That sounds a bit excessive to me either way. From what i've seen Supremacy would appear to be 20 yards at most, but then i've only played masterminds up to the low 20's. Does Supremacy radius scale up with level at all?
i'll log on one of my low level masterminds later and do some tests of Supremacy's range myself.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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Setting to Bodyguard
You can set any Mastermind Henchman to Bodyguard by selecting the Defensive Stance and the Follow Order. Your Henchmen must be within Supremacy range for this function to work.
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So, weird question:
I've got the pets out on bodyguard, and one of the various foes does some version of Nova. Does the damage mitigation from Bodyguard apply BEFORE the damage to pets, AFTER the damage to pets, or "undetermined"?
Before you think it sounds like a stupid question, imagine I've several battle damaged pets (with, say one hit point) and I'm low myself. ANY damage would kill them, and I need them as my "meat shield" - so, do they throw themselves on the grenade, or "other"? 
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The Bodyguard functions at the time of attack. Say that Nova did 100 damage and you have all 6 pets in Defense/Follow mode.
You take 25 damage. (2 parts of 8)
Each pet takes 12.5 Damage from Bodyguard (6 parts of 8 since each minion gets a part)
Each pet also takes 100 damage (minus resistances) from being in the AoE of the Nova attack.
The end result would be you took 25 damage and your henchmen all took 112.5 damage (not counting resistances).
(Fairly certain this is how it would work based on what Pos has stated so far)
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Kinda doesn't answer the question - if they pets only have 1 point left and they take their damage BEFORE I do, they then die and don't take a percentage of my damage. If -I- take the damage first, then they die from MY damage and don't take it on their own.
It's not a "Doooom!" question, I was just curious if they too OUR damage first, THEIR damage first, or "undetermined"
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AoE damage versus a MM in Bodyguard status won't be as bad as some people are making it out to be.
<SNIP>
Now let's bring up the AoE's damage to do an incredible 2500 damage (!) to each even-level target:
<ul type="square">Without BG:
MM 0 HP DEAD
T1 0 HP DEAD
T2 0 HP DEAD
T3 0 HP DEAD[/list]<ul type="square">With BG:
MM 74 HP
T1 0 HP DEAD
T2 0 HP DEAD
T3 0 HP DEAD[/list]Wow. Even after such a massive attack, the MM still survived thanks to BG, and he/she still has more than 10% of their health remaining!
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Only MAYBE does the MM survive the attack.. If you the pets take the damage BEFORE the MM, then the pets die, then YOU die. (This issue, everyone dies...)
But it's IF. Haven't gotten a response on how AoE will effect BodyGuard. I suspect it's going to be "situational dependant" (whose closer to ground zero)
It's not a "Doooom!" question, I was just curious if they too OUR damage first, THEIR damage first, or "undetermined"
Undetermined until we can actually test when the damage division takes place.
Best guess: It will count your bodyguards just after the to-hit check and then apply damage but I'm not fully sure how an AE power applies itself. If it applies itself in a sequential order doing subsequent to-hits and damages then moving to the next target it could cause rather varied results.
i hope follow-defensive actually recalls pets while on a team though, and stops the ai bug where they run off to the ends of the earth
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HELLO!!!!! Detoggles are being nerfed!!!!!
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HELLO!!!!! "Nerf" is not the same as "eliminated entirely".
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It wasn't me you were responding to, but I wanted to put in my 5 cents
I have 3 accuracy 1 range and 1 recharge in my forcebolt. Slotting of forcebolt isn't the issue. Please address the issue, which is the fact that Bodyguard is making FF secondary virtually useless.
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Read my SIG. My main IS a /FF mastermind, and I don't think my secondary has been rendered "virtually useless" by the advent of Bodyguard. Indeed, my bubbles mean that AoE stuff will do LESS, inherently, to my pets. Thus, I can survive LONGER against AoE's, with my pets in Bodyguard stance, than many other MMs.
See, they work together ... IF you're willing to open your MIND and EYES, and look at it from perspectives different from the one you start at.
As for me? FB is slotted 3 ACC, 3 Recharge. Fast-firing and reasonably likely to hit.
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And that's if I keep them around me, shooting their craptastic bows, and shuriken. Not sending them off to take out the threat, using their awsome melee abilities.
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You could always walk them into melee yourself. They are on Follow.
[/ QUOTE ]Hmmm, Dokunoichi stays out of melee range, poisoning her targets, while my ninja concentrate all attacks on that one target, when that one dies, I pick a target, command them to attack, poison it, and kill it. I repeat this process till my enemies are dead. I need all my ninja to be doing this, not hanging around me.
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You do realise that the pets only have to be within supremacy range for Bodyguard to work, right? Select a target , hit "attack my target", wait a second for the animations to begin, hit your "follow, defensive" button. POOF, concentrated fire and Bodyguard.
And you simply need ... well ... to be in range to hit your own minions with Alkaloid.
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Not trying to discredit your research in any way but there is always the possibility of further AI upgrades for the pets to be included in the upcoming update. My suggestion is to take a wait and see approach before coming to conclusions. What you find to be true now may not be true then.
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I desperately hope for AI upgrades with I7, however, none have been announced, so I don't expect any.
Between the horrible AI pets currently have, the depressing setup time we have upon entering a zone or recovering after death, and the difficulty in moving our pets throughout a zone, I think MMs are the most needy AT in the entire game right now. No other AT has as many gaping holes in their playability, especially for PvP.....its just too bad that no Dev has addressed any of them yet, other than Bodyguard....and look at how that has been handled so far....
Suriyama
40 bots and bubbles
Justice
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HELLO!!!!! Detoggles are being nerfed!!!!!
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HELLO!!!!! "Nerf" is not the same as "eliminated entirely".
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It wasn't me you were responding to, but I wanted to put in my 5 cents
I have 3 accuracy 1 range and 1 recharge in my forcebolt. Slotting of forcebolt isn't the issue. Please address the issue, which is the fact that Bodyguard is making FF secondary virtually useless.
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Read my SIG. My main IS a /FF mastermind, and I don't think my secondary has been rendered "virtually useless" by the advent of Bodyguard. Indeed, my bubbles mean that AoE stuff will do LESS, inherently, to my pets. Thus, I can survive LONGER against AoE's, with my pets in Bodyguard stance, than many other MMs.
See, they work together ... IF you're willing to open your MIND and EYES, and look at it from perspectives different from the one you start at.
As for me? FB is slotted 3 ACC, 3 Recharge. Fast-firing and reasonably likely to hit.
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Open your own eyes! In PvP, AoE attacks are the extreme minority. It is the single target damage that kills us, and when we share that with our pets, our bubbles do NOTHING to help.
No, detoggling isn't being removed completely, but it is (paraphrasing) "being drastically reduced." This is a serious nerf for those of us who use forcebolt offensively....because its one of the very few offensive powers in the FF set, and is the only one that is commonly taken (required, yea, I know, but the others are RARELY used).
As for your slotting of forcebolt....you effectively wasted 2 recharge slots IMO. with 1 recharge Forcebolt recharges with perfect timing to hit a player who has just regained their feet. More than that and you hit them while they are still down, allowing them to regain their feet and have ample time to act before the next one lands.
Well the only possible solution to this issue is to have the henchmen affected to have their dmg resistance be taken into account after the dmg split by BG is taken. To hit checks dont make sense since they are volunteering to take the dmg for their master.
I desperately hope for AI upgrades with I7, however, none have been announced, so I don't expect any.
Positron mentioned during beta that they'd be actively trying to get the AI to be "smarter" but I don't think even if they did some minor changes that it would warrant inclusion in any of the press releases.
Open your own eyes! In PvP, AoE attacks are the extreme minority. It is the single target damage that kills us, and when we share that with our pets, our bubbles do NOTHING to help.
In the situation you describe your bubbles do nothing currently, so what exactly is the problem?
No, detoggling isn't being removed completely, but it is (paraphrasing) "being drastically reduced." This is a serious nerf for those of us who use forcebolt offensively....because its one of the very few offensive powers in the FF set
Seeing as how this entire bit is purely speculation I see no reason to actively argue about it. "Drastically reduced" can mean a great many things and until it hits test I'm going to resuggest not jumping to conclusoins based on an extremely vague phrase. Some powers could remain untouched while others see a removal entirely.
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Well the only possible solution to this issue is to have the henchmen affected to have their dmg resistance be taken into account after the dmg split by BG is taken. To hit checks dont make sense since they are volunteering to take the dmg for their master.
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It really kinda depends on how you think of the force field working. You are correct that to-hit checks wouldn't make sense if you think of it as purely a dodge maneuver, but it could make sense if you think of it as a deflection of the attack upon impact with the target.
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The problem I have is I have been trying out defensive/follow. Using a low level mastermind, I had two pets. Both set to defensive/follow. I walked up to a group of three yellow-con minion enemies. I could have killed them all fairly quickly, if I just ordered the pets to attack them one at a time, but I wanted to see the fight play out by using defensive to get my pets fighting.
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That's just it. You were trying to use it in a situation where you didn't need it. Bodyguard isn't supposed to be great in every situation, if it were, there'd be no use for the other MM commands. It's to fix one specific situation, where mobs attack the MM while ignoring the pets. The Defensive stance actually works quite well in this situation.
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I ended up with three enemies attacking, one of my pets fighting back, and the other one just standing there next to me NOT fighting. I had to order an attack to get them both to fight.
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If you want the initiative Attack/Aggressive is a better option. If you need someone to protect you, that's what Bodyguard is for. Try turning on Defensive and attacking foes directly yourself. Defensive works best when you have aggro on you instead of the pets.
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I also tried out the idea of ordering my pets to attack and then quickly order them back to defensive/follow mode. This is no that easy. If you do it too quickly, they never attack. But the longer you wait, you are creating a larger window of bodyguard being down. Bodyguard is starting to seem more like a gamblers power to me.
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You're looking at it the other way. You don't need to be in your shell all the time. If you did, MM's would be horrible right now, and they're really not. Play the game normally as if Bodyguard doesn't exist. Then when you get aggro and start taking direct damage, flip on Bodyguard to get your pets to protect you.