THE INDIVIDUAL ATTACKS
Level 1: ENTANGLING ARROW. 2.17 second animation. Unenhanced, it fires a 17.88 second magnitude 3 immobilize, that is to say it will immobilize nearly all minions and lieutenants on a single shot. It also debuffs attack speed and run speed by 10% each. Multiple hits on the same target will stack immobilization magnitude, but will not stack debuffs. Recharge time is 4 seconds before enhancement. Best of all, it comes with a free +20% accuracy right out of the box. You have to take it, anyway, but it will be one of your bread and butter attacks. Even without enhancement, you can effortlessly hold 2 minions out of melee range and in the target area for your minions' area-effect attacks; most people, for whom that's as much as they want from it, would slot it with just 1 accuracy enhancement. Slotted 2 accuracy, 3 immobilize, and 1 recharge, or with a level 25+ set of Enfeebled Operation, you can perma-immobilize 3 or 4 minions and lieutenants, almost any boss, almost any player, and even some elite bosses, stacking up to magnitude 9 to 12 immobilize on players and up to 18 on bosses.
Level 2: FLASH ARROW. 3.33 second animation. Unenhanced, it fires a 30 second 90% perception debuff and a 30 second 3.75% accuracy debuff at the target and up to 15 other targets within 35 feet of it. The unenhanced recharge time is 15 seconds, which is plenty fast enough unless you're planning on taking it as your only travel power. The perception debuff is auto-hit. The accuracy debuff is auto-hit in PvE, requires a normal accuracy check to hit players, so PvP is the only reason you would even consider putting accuracy enhancements into it. How much perception is 90% debuff? For all practical purposes, it's about equivalent to giving everybody on your side the equivalent of regular Stealth, except that it goes away if the target gets hit. Other than that, you can get within about 5 to 7 feet of an even-level target without it noticing you; if it cons above you, the perception range is a little farther. It does, of course, stack with actual stealth. And it has the nice feature of being immune to stealth suppression and to Negative Stealth. This is apparently why Cryptic doesn't think that it's such a big deal that it only gives a 3.75% accuracy debuff, or about 6% if you fully enhance it. But let me tell you: 6% is nearly nothing. Considering that your own tier 1 minions con blue (one level below you) to your enemies and are therefore at a defense debuff to start with, that 6% doesn't even bring them up to even defense with you.
I mean honestly, even the defenders cry about how weak the accuracy debuff is, and theirs starts at 6.25%, slots up to about 10%. By comparison, the accuracy debuffs from poison and dark miasma are 11.25% unenhanced, and the defense buff (not counting the regular shields) from traps and force field are 10% and 7.5% unenhanced. Heck, I grant that accuracy debuff is dark miasma's special trick, but that 11.25% is before however much accuracy debuff that can be stacked from the other powers in that set. The 90% perception debuff from Flash Arrow is sometimes nice as an unreliable travel power or for getting into position before a fight, but almost never affects the actual fight. It by no means makes up for such an incredibly weak accuracy debuff. I count this one as one of the horribly broken powers.
But what else are you going to take at level 2?
Level 4: GLUE ARROW. 2.67 second animation. You know that really annoying glue grenade attack that PPD SWAT Equalizers use? Bingo. Fires a 50' diameter glue trap at the spot where the target is standing that lasts for 30 seconds. (If that target is killed, the animation will disappear, but the glue area is still there. Notice that if the target is not killed, merely knocked off of the glue, the patch stays. It really is anchored to the ground, even though you fire it at a target.) The target must be on the ground already, but that's what Entangling Arrow is for. The arrow further prevents flight and jumping, and debuffs run speed by 90% and attack speed by 20%. In PvE it effectively slows the attack speed even more than that, because between each attack all affected targets will try to take at least a couple of steps out from the glue patch before firing again, making it the poor man's "fear." Default recharge is 60 seconds. It can, in theory, be slotted with some of the Slow collectable invention sets, but none of them seem worth taking to me. Take it, slot it with up to 3 recharge reducers, and love it. It's a set-defining power.
Level 10: ICE ARROW. 3.33 second animation. Unenhanced it fires a 9.536 second magnitude 3 hold at a single target, with a recharge time of 18 seconds. See, that's the problem though: 18 plus 3.33 seconds. Compare that to the other mastermind secondaries that get single target holds, poison and dark miasma. Both of them get it on a 16 second recharge; animation times are 2.00 and 1.67 seconds respectively. That means that the single target hold from ice arrow is the same duration but at default rate of fire is 3.66 seconds slower, half of that unenhanceable animation time. For defenders, that's not crippling, because their default hold time is much longer, 11.92 seconds. For masterminds, though, with that 9.536 second default hold time, it means that unless you slot it with level 40 or above inventions, you can not perma-hold anything that cons orange or above. Yellow or above, if it has even token hold resistance. Until you slot it with level 40+ inventions, the hold time and the refire time don't overlap, so you can't even use it to briefly hold bosses or players. You're still going to take it, and you're going to six-slot it as fast as you can with 2 acc, 2 hold, and 2 recharge. (Not 3 hold and 1 recharge, or you lose precious fractions of a second to the enhancement diversification limits.) Because even if all it does is reduce the enemy to firing one shot every 16 or 17 seconds, that's still 16 or 17 seconds that that enemy isn't firing. With any luck, with most primary sets, you can kill even the most aggravating lieutenants in that 16 or 17 seconds. Oh, and lest I forget to mention, targets that aren't held are also debuffed 12.5% on movement and rate of fire, and debuffed a little more on jumping height.
This is the other bread-and-butter attack that I consider to be broken because of its numbers. If nothing else, notice that you cannot make it work properly with any of the collectable invention sets; even at level 50 something like Essence of Curare won't perma-hold.
Level 16: POISON GAS ARROW. 2.67 second animation. Applies a 20 second unenhanceable 15% damage debuff, auto-hit in PvE, to the target and up to 15 additional targets within 25 feet of it, with an unenhanced recharge time of 45 seconds. Even fully slotted for recharge, you can't quite have it up permanently, but it's a pretty nice damage debuff. It also sleeps about 66% of the minions in that area, magnitude 2 sleep with a default duration of 7.152 seconds. But considering how many AoE attacks mastermind minions fire, the sleep function is pretty nearly useless in PvE. It will almost never last longer than a second or two before it gets interrupted. On the other hand, that's also a 66% chance (if it hits) of a magnitude 2 sleep on a player, too. Most blasters, controllers, and defenders don't have sleep defense, just sleep resistance, so for them it's a detoggle if it hits. Take it, slot it with at least one recharge, use it every fight.
Level 20: ACID ARROW. 3.33 second animation. Applies a 20 second unenhanceable 15% damage resistance debuff and 15% defense debuff, auto-hit in PvE, to the target and up to 16 targets in a 25 foot radius around it, with an unenhanced basic recharge of 20 seconds. That's effectively a 15% boost to your minions' damage and for all of your teammates, roughly double the bonus you'd get from Assault in the Leadership pool. With even one recharge reducer (to make up for the animation time), that's effectively permanent. It also does a tiny imperceptible amount of damage over time, that does require an accuracy check. City of Data says that it's basic accuracy, but HeroStats was reporting about a 20% accuracy debuff. So if you care about PvP accuracy or you care about the damage over time, you're going to have to 3-slot it for accuracy if you want it to hit. Defenders care a lot about the damage output from this power and slot for that, because they have next to no damage output of their own; you have so much damage output through your primary powerset that this trivial attack isn't even perceptible. Take it for the (effective) minion and teammate damage output buff, slot it with one recharge, vaguely consider slotting it for accuracy and damage, and use it against any opponent with decent armor.
Level 28: DISRUPTION ARROW. 2.67 second animation. Your first ground-targeted attack, applies a 5.25 second unenhanceable 15% damage resistance debuff every 5 seconds, auto-hit, to every target that comes within 25 feet of the spot you shoot it at for the next 30 seconds, with an unenhanced recharge time of 60 seconds. That sounds kind of nice, and against some obnoxious bosses and above it is, although even they may easily escape it. But consider this: by the time you fire your more important first five arrows, even if you don't fire Entangling Arrow more than once, the fight's been going on for 17 seconds. How often do you need to debuff enemy damage resistance another 15% that late in the fight? The answer to that question tells you whether or not you care about Disruption Arrow. I took it to experiment with, but will probably respec out of it soon. If you do take it, and want it in every fight, slot it heavily with recharge reducers.
Level 35: OIL SLICK ARROW. 2.67 second animation. Ground-targeted like Disruption Arrow, it actually fires two separate traps at the same spot on the ground, both of which last 30 seconds. One is a 50 foot diameter circle that slows enemy movement by 90% (enhanceable, but who would?) and reduces their defense by 25% (enhanceable). It also has a 5% chance, 5 times per second for the whole 30 seconds, to knock the target down. It doesn't debuff their attack speed per se, but of course any time they spend trying to get out of the oil slick and time that they spend trying to stand back up is time that they're not attacking. This by itself is reason enough to take the attack, even though its very long recharge rate (180 seconds, unenhanced) means that you'll probably only get to use it every 3 or 4 fights. However, there is some very bad news.
The other thing that it does is put a 50 foot diameter target on the ground where if either you or the enemy hits it, either with a direct attack or an AoE attack, either energy or fire, it explodes into flame and does a fairly high damage (over time) attack to anything trapped in the oil. Defenders love this attack, and think it's the greatest thing since sliced stupid people on toast because so few defender powersets get any significant damage. Unfortunately, for masterminds (especially masterminds with melee minions like zombies or ninjas) it has a huge crippling bug. The same "terror" effect that makes PvE enemies try to escape the oil also works on your minions. They will run as fast as they can at least 25 feet from the center of the oil slick, and cannot be coerced into entering it.
The last word I have is that Cryptic is aware of the bug, has some idea what's causing it, but considers it low priority because so few people are affected by it. So few people are affected by it because there are so few trick arrow masterminds. There are so few trick arrow masterminds because trick arrow has 3 bugged powers out of the 9. Catch 22.
Oil Slick does have one other use, one that isn't officially ruled an exploit (yet) even though Cryptic admits that it wasn't how they intended it to be used. The targetable part of the Oil Slick can be used as a harmless "enemy" for any enemy-targeted powers, like the Howling Twilight resurrection or various power and speed and so forth transfers from the corrupter Kinetics secondary powerset. Cryptic has admitted that this would be almost impossible for them to fix. So even though this power may cripple you (depending on which primary you take) when it lights up, it may be worth taking for the advantage it offers other players on your team. If you do take it, you probably only need to slot it for recharge reduction, although you may want to consider slotting it for defense debuff if you also expect to be using it against targets with very high defense. Probably not, though. And as with Glue Arrow it can, in theory, be slotted with some of the Slow collectible invention sets, but none of them seem worth taking to me.
Level 38: E.M.P. ARROW. 3.33 second animation. An unenhanced recharge time of five minutes (300 seconds) means that even if you slot the heck out of it with recharge reducers, it isn't going to be often that you get to use it much more than three or so times per mission. But it fires a fairly sweet 17.88 second (unenhanced) magnitude 3 hold, normal accuracy, at the target and up to 15 other targets within not 25 feet, but 35 feet, of the target. Better yet, half of those targets with actually get hit with a magnitude 4 hold. What that means is that fully slotted, it will apply a 30 second hold to up to 16 targets, including almost all minions and lieutenants and roughly half the bosses. And that stacks with your magnitude 3 ice arrow, which will let you at least briefly hold at least one other boss that escapes the EMP Arrow. It also applies a small endurance debuff to each target, but because of the reduction from defender values, the result is so small that it's not worth enhancing. It also does an unenhanceable roughly medium damage attack on every "robot" enemy that it holds, somewhat handy when fighting Nemesis's Jaeger bots I assume. Be warned that it hits your endurance pretty hard AND cripples your endurance recovery for 15 seconds after being fired. This is a set-defining power; if this doesn't appeal to you, I don't know what you see in trick arrows anyway. Take it, slot it with 2 accuracy, at least 2 hold, and the other 2 slots up to one more accuracy, up to one more hold, or up to two recharges. There are no obvious synergies between this and the collectable invention sets, but since you're probably going to six-slot it anyway, you may want to consider pairing it with level 40+ Essence of Curare or even something rarer. But probably not, because all of those sets trade off way too much hold time for way too much accuracy, and save their really useful set bonuses until you get at least five or six of the set so they're hard to mix and match.
(continued...)
SYNERGY WITH MASTERMIND PRIMARIES
MERCENARIES: GOOD. Mercenaries' built-in resistance to smashing and lethal damage, and the Medic's heal, render them better able to do without any healing or buffs from you than most of the mastermind primary powersets. Better yet, the Medic even occasionally heals you and applies Stimulant to provide some status defense. High damage output mixes very well with your damage resistance debuff(s) to absolutely slaughter enemies. If you can get the Spec Ops to fire them at the right time, their own web grenades and various hold powers mix even more slows, recharge drains, and holds in with your own. An excellent choice. And if they do light the oil slick (not the easiest thing to make them do even if you want them to, though), they still fight at full efficiency from outside the edges of it. Very good choice.
NECROMANCY: POOR. Most minions don't have any kind of heal until level 32, and even then it's not much of a self-heal. Their resistances aren't high enough to make up for the fact that 5 of the 6 of them do their best fighting at melee range, and that they do their best fighting at melee range eliminates almost all of the defensive potential of Entangling Arrow. They don't do energy or fire attacks, so you don't have to worry about them being the ones who light your oil slick, but if something you're fighting does, you are so screwed it's not funny because there went about half of your damage output. Bad choice.
NINJAS: EXTREMELY POOR. Has all the same problems as Necromancy, only worse. Your piddly little accuracy debuff isn't enough to stack measurably with their piddly weak innate defense bonus; their lack of either any resistances or any self-heal makes them entirely dependent on you to provide buffs and heals that this set completely lacks. Worse, not only will they flee and stop fighting the target if the oil slick ignites, but the Oni will almost certainly light the oil slick even if you try to stop him. People keep making this mistake, thinking they're supposed to take Trick Arrows with Ninjas because both get bow and arrow attacks, but trust me when I say that it's a huge, crippling mistake that does more than anything else to convince people that trick arrows is unplayable. DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE.
ROBOTICS: VERY GOOD. The Protector Bots are defenders and healers par excellance, and more than make up for the fact that you do neither one. They don't heal you the way the mercenaries' Medic does, but they do provide you with a force field bubble that's at least as useful as the Medic's very intermittent heal. They have naturally good resistances. They fight from range, so they won't care (most of the time) if the oil slick ignites, and since all of their attacks are energy or fire it's very easy to get them to ignite the oil slick if you want them to (and hard to stop them if you don't). What's more, those massive area effect slows and the occasional area effect hold do a very, very nice job of keeping enemies bunched up for those heavy overlapping area effect attacks and stacking area effect stuns. By far, the best choice to go with trick arrows.
THUGS: AVERAGE. Once you get the second Enforcer, their stacking Maneuvers make up some for the fact that you have very little defense and no healing to offer them, and they do do good damage from range for the most part. But they do have some serious problems when used with trick arrows. First of all, they tend to spread out, robbing some or all of them of that Maneuvers innate bonus. But worse than that, both the Gang War posse and the Bruiser will retreat from a flaming oil slick and then panic altogether and refuse to engage at all for the rest of the fight, so do not take Oil Slick Arrow if you build a thugs/arrows mastermind, or at most use it when all your pets are down and your team needs help. This is an okay choice with trick arrows, but not as good as mercs or bots; worth considering, but frustratingly hard some of the time.
TRICK ARROWS AND THE POOL POWERS
The most important question you'll have, given how many of the secondary powers you have to take to make it work, is do you have to take Fitness, particularly Stamina, with Trick Arrows? The answer turns out to be "no." This is one area where the long animation times work in your favor. Some of the powers have room for extra slots, and it helps to stick one or more endurance reducers in those. And by the time you hit level 33 or 34 you'll have to throw extra endurance reducers in your second minion upgrade power if you want to be able to do a full setup without having to rest halfway through. But it absolutely can be done, if for no other reason than unlike many of the mastermind secondaries, it has no toggle powers.
For travel powers, really, only two stand out. You'd absolutely like to take Leaping, because as a debuffer you will draw aggro. The set doesn't weaken enemy accuracy enough to help you with that, and unlike poison it doesn't do anything to debuff their holds, immobilizes, and such. So if you don't take Combat Jumping and Acrobatics, even though you'll have to 3-slot them for endurance to run them full time, you'll keep wishing that you had. On the other hand, while you may not want to take Superspeed for your movement power, Hasten is the only reliable way to perma-hold most targets prior to level 37. And even then you'll want to use it sparingly, for the most obnoxious minions and lieutenants only, because Hasten without Stamina will do a number on your endurance burn rate.
As I said above, you would like to have at least two powers from Medicine. You might really like to have one or two powers from Concealment; I know I personally can't live without stealth, and preferably full invisibility, when traveling to many really obnoxious mission locations like Primeva. You'd probably also like Tough and Weave, from Fighting, but I pretty nearly guarantee that they won't fit into your build. As for the patron powers, there's a lot of overlap in function with powers you already have, but you probably would like to at least have the shield power available, if probably none of the others.
CONCLUSION: SHOULD YOU PLAY A TRICK ARROWS MASTERMIND?
If you are a new and inexperienced player with a low threshold for frustration, probably not. If you are determined to use ninjas or zombies for minions, absolutely not. But if you're comfortable with the game, planning on pairing it with mercs or bots or maybe thugs, understand what the debuffs do and when to use them, and want a flexible, highly strategic secondary power set where you really have to think fast on your feet and no two fights are the same, and you like a really cool high-tech look for your powers? Then very possibly yes.
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Level 2: FLASH ARROW.
I count this one as one of the horribly broken powers.
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May I take this moment to point out the ... unusual ... interaction between Flash Arrow and TP Foe? Have a look over here.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
I'd have to disagree with your opinion of Ninjas being horrible with Trick Arrows. IMO, Ninja's different mezzes and debuffs mesh very well with Trick Arrows. If you get medicine there isn't much of a problem. All you have to do is make sure you keep up with each minion. Ninja/Trick Arrow is just very hard because you need to keep a close tab on all your minions. The only problem I have with the build itself is that I didn't have room for Stamina because I like the Ghost Widow PPP's Hold. Of course, if you're one of those MMs who expect a fairly easy ride, you shouldn't even have considered Ninjas or Trick Arrows in the first place. Ninja/TA is my main MM's build so I suppose I'm bias. But I wouldn't count the ninjas out of this because of the Jounin's slows and the Oni's superb control. I would shy away from Necro because they are pure damage with a little control.
Nice guide IB. 
I agree almost wholeheartedly on all of it.
I actually like this guide, I was hoping my Ninja/TA would be great to help me with my TA/Archery but now I know it wont. Two different worlds. My Ninja/TA is just 21ish but Ill keep her just to be either cruel to myself, challenged or see if any mad fun suicidal times roll and besides i already named the pets 
. The whole pet and patch thing is a naff fault and itll be nice if they sorted it to give those people who took the set as a Mastermind more value as in playing what they paid for and being of rightful value in teams.
And I'm a third Ninja/TA MM who has been having a blast with the combo ... because I'm using Flash Arrow and TP Foe to do extremely "unfair" things to mobs in the early levels. Rather than "wading in" with my Ninjas into the thick of things, I bring "single victims" to my Ninjas (who quickly dispatch the interloper like the rapacious melee monsters they are). Remarkably safe, if not exactly the swiftest method in the game ... but then, I'm a patient player.
It's the end. But the moment has been prepared for ...
nice work
One note: You make the comment that Defenders can handle the longer animation times (Noticably Ice Arrow) but I find that untrue -- while activating an arrow, a Defender deals zero damage except from attacks that had previously been launched. The MM can still be ordering their pets around, and imo overcomes a significant portion of TA's activation suckiness because of this.
Good stuff. I wish I would have read this sooner, but I already have my ninjas up to 26. Any suggestions on getting the oil slick fixed? I have a TA cont, and love the giant burn patch. I built this mm for a challenge, so it looks to be just that.
I have a lvl 37 Ninja/TA and while, yes, the guide is accurate, I have to disagree with saying that the two sets do not synch up. I don't use trick-arrows beyond dispersion arrow for most fights, focusing instead on the ninjas. But for EB/AV fights, then the set really becomes awesome. I have taken out enough solo w/o shivans, nukes or the like, by stacking my TA set, and as the enemy is slow to take down, the slower times are not a problem for me.
Any actual fix to oil slick arrow is going to have to come from the developers. What's more, there's reason to be optimistic that it can be fixed, considering that when I team with defenders and controllers, their oil slick arrows' burn patches don't panic my minions the way my own oil slicks do. The bad news is that they have said that even looking into this is way, way down the list of things to do "because so few people use trick arrows."
The only work-around I can offer you in the meantime, if you took trick arrows on a melee minion set, is to just plain not use it except situationally. If too many of your minions are down and you need enemies to be flopping around more than you need your remaining minions to be attacking, fire oil slick. If you need to buy time to get away and regroup, fire oil slick. You may also consider using it, with your minions on passive, to "soften up" groups before the fight starts, then send the minions in after the oil slick fire burns out and the panic effect disappears, although I'm not sure how you'd light it under those circumstances. *shrug* Or otherwise, despite the fact that it's a set-defining power, just plain skip oil slick arrow and respec into it months or years from now when the developers fix it.
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Any actual fix to oil slick arrow is going to have to come from the developers. What's more, there's reason to be optimistic that it can be fixed, considering that when I team with defenders and controllers, their oil slick arrows' burn patches don't panic my minions the way my own oil slicks do. The bad news is that they have said that even looking into this is way, way down the list of things to do "because so few people use trick arrows."
The only work-around I can offer you in the meantime, if you took trick arrows on a melee minion set, is to just plain not use it except situationally. If too many of your minions are down and you need enemies to be flopping around more than you need your remaining minions to be attacking, fire oil slick. If you need to buy time to get away and regroup, fire oil slick. You may also consider using it, with your minions on passive, to "soften up" groups before the fight starts, then send the minions in after the oil slick fire burns out and the panic effect disappears, although I'm not sure how you'd light it under those circumstances. *shrug* Or otherwise, despite the fact that it's a set-defining power, just plain skip oil slick arrow and respec into it months or years from now when the developers fix it.
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odd, reason there's no epic red ATs is cuz "not enough people have red 50s".
nice to know that broken things just stay broken and the reason broken things AREN'T fixed is because players don't want to use the broken things; but, because not a lot of players are using the broken things, that's why they don't get fixed; but, they don't get played by players because they are broken...
circular il-logic for the win.
Political correctness is a stench in the nose of God. Yes, your God(s) also.
Good guide. I have a 49 Thugs/TA and can't see any reason to play him up to 50. TA needs some luvin.
"Sometimes you have to roll the Hard Six." -- Adama
Teabagging Ms. Liberty - http://kk-comics.com/allmmproject/rsf21.jpg
Just to be picky, Acid Arrow doesn't seem to have a 25 foot radius. Mid's Heroplanner says 8 feet and that looks more like it. The "acid splash" animation sure does make it look bigger, though.
Question about it: Do the debuffs have a to-hit check or is that just for the DoT? I was just wondering about it being acc slot-able. I'm pretty sure I saw it start ticking above one mob and above another say "miss".
Oh, and, thanks for the guide! Good idea doing it this way, independent of primary, since there aren't too may TA guides.
Duey
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Level 20: ACID ARROW. 3.33 second animation. Applies a 20 second unenhanceable 15% damage resistance debuff and 15% defense debuff, auto-hit in PvE, to the target and up to 16 targets in a 25 foot radius around it, with an unenhanced basic recharge of 20 seconds.
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Acid arrow requires a to-hit check and its radius is only 8.
Oil Slick Arrow fix patch notes
I was looking at TA recently and thinking about many of the things in this guide. I was about to roll one up and found your guide here, thanks for doing all the legwork man. I am definately building one now, im gonna go robotics, How do you feel about taking an attack power at lvl 2 if i took the knockback Plasma rifle instead of flash arrow?
Some good stuff in this guide, but there have been some significant TA changes, especially activation times and a partial fix to the OSA+Pet bug (which barely affects Bots in any case). I'd recommend you also look at This Guide on bots/ta, any guide to Robots, and Luminara's TA guide and combine the info.
I'd say that an attack power over Flash Arrow is definitely a valid choice, especially early. I found Flash Arrow more useful late game, stacking the -ToHit on the bots defense and letting me position my Bots before attacking for maximum carnage without worrying about being noticed.
Masterminds are not defenders.
That would go without saying, except for two things: masterminds do sort of act like defenders to their minions (and occasionally to their teammates), and mastermind secondary powersets are largely excerpted from the defender primary powersets. But there are two important differences that override those similiarities. The less important of the two is that masterminds need different things from their secondary power than a defender does. Like corrupters, masterminds are first and foremost damage dealers (and, if the player intends to do so and knows what he or she is doing, damage sponges); almost no mastermind cares as much about the secondary powersets as a defender cares about the defender primaries. But the even bigger and more important difference is that when a mastermind uses the same power as a defender, they are on average about forty percent weaker.
For some powersets, the difference between 60% and 100% is perceptible, but not major. You only heal about half as much? Heal twice as often. Your shields deflect 40% less? Sure, but the enemy lasts only half as long because you're doing twice as much damage. But for trick arrow, some of those 40% shortfalls come out in the worst possible places. That means that if you follow the defender trick arrow guides, expecting trick arrow to do for you what it does for them only less well, you will be deeply disappointed.
WHAT TRICK ARROW WILL AND WON'T DO FOR A MASTERMIND
Trick arrow will not make you "uber" in PvE. If you want to be "uber" and just steamroller all enemies, take dark miasma or force field, like everybody else. As of when I'm writing this, midway through issue 9, the five mastermind secondary powersets are not even vaguely balanced, and anybody who tells you otherwise just doesn't know what they're talking about. Trick Arrow is at best a second tier powerset, and for PvE may actually fall behind both traps and poison.
Trick arrow will not heal or buff your minions or your teammates in any way. There are no "heal arrows," no "shield arrows," no "strength boost arrows," no "resurrect arrows." Trick arrow does exactly two things, both of them moderately well. It debuffs enemies and it provides a fair amount of soft control. But if you can't stand to see your minions get hurt and stay hurt for most of the mission, if you expect to play with other players who you think will be counting on you to keep them from getting hurt and heal them after each fight, do not play trick arrow.
You would think that you can make up for this by taking pool powers, like Medicine and Leadership. That's not terribly likely. Unlike poison or dark miasma or force field or even traps, you really can't make a good solid trick arrow build using only 4 of the 9 powers. No, because of the relative weakness of each arrow and the long recharge times, you really are going to have to take at least 6 of the secondary powers, probably 7, and maybe all 9. Count in the 6 non-attack primary powers and that's 11 to 15 of your total 23 powers. Figure in 3 from Leaping (because it does nothing for you to protect you from status attacks, remember, so you will need Combat Jumping and Acrobatics) and that's 14 to 18 of your 23 powers used up. You'll be doing well to fit in even two pool power sets, and not very complete excerpts from all of those. You'd like to have 3 fitness, 2 leadership, 3 medicine, 3 leaping, 2 concealment, and at least 1 patron power, plus 6 primary powers and 9 secondary powers. That's 6 more powers than you can have, and at least one more power pool than you're allowed. No, this is going to be a very tight build, no matter how you customize it.
Nor is it bug-free. The numbers are just plain flat-out wrong on 2 of the 9 powers. As I'll explain below, by applying a blanket 40% reduction to the defender numbers without thinking about how that would work out, they have gimped 2 of those powers into weeping uselessness. One more has a horrible bug with no projected fix date.
Worse, there's one other number that you need to know, and that number is 26.17. 26.17 what? Twenty six point one seven seconds to fire all 9 attacks, just from the animation times. That can't be shortened at all, because animation times aren't affected by recharge rate enhancements. How many fights last 26 seconds or longer? What's more, that's 26.17 seconds that you can't move, standing there stock still aiming your arrows. How often, even for a mastermind, is it a good idea to stand still for 26.17 seconds? For most other secondaries, not only do you never really want to fire all 9 powers at once, but of the 5 or so that you might want to fire in any given fight most of them have animation times ranging from 1 second to just barely 2. Only one trick arrow attack fires in less than 2.33 seconds, and two of your most important attacks take 3.33 seconds each, with you locked down unable to move, just to fire them.
So what will trick arrow do for you if you're a mastermind?
First of all, it is a lot of fun if you like that kind of thing. 9 mostly identical combat animations, that differ only in the shape and animation of the arrow head before it fires. And long combat animations, which annoys some people but it looks very cool standing there aiming the shot "just so" before firing it. But after each shot comes a "blast" or "hit" animation and each one of those is flashy, cool looking, and different from each other. With trick arrow, you really see what the attacks look like. (That's important, because most of the attacks' effects are actually quite subtle.) And it's a very "high tech" looking secondary, much more so than say poison or dark, which suits some people's character concepts really well. And for all of the reasons I've already listed, it's a very rare secondary, so you'll gain instant cool points for being the only trick arrow mastermind your team has ever seen, practically.
More importantly, though, it is chock full of area effect attacks, and that suits masterminds very very well. When you're using a single-target debuff power set like poison (and trust me, I've run the same primaries with poison just as high), you debuff the holy heck out of one of the targets in front of you ... and their buddies pound the heck out of your minions and you. Trick arrow debuffs less than poison (and much less than dark miasma, if more attributes than dark does), but it debuffs all of them.
But the greatest thing that trick arrow does is that it is a god-send in long fights, because its strongest debuff is versus movement and attack speeds. If all attacks hit the same target, as in a boss or a player, it debuffs attack speed by 40% and run speed by 190% (that is to say, all the way down to the absolute minimum for any target that isn't immune to slows) while also turning off flight and jumping. And because of the run speed being floored, melee enemies are combat debuffed even more than that, as they try futilely to switch targets or to keep up with someone who's kiting them. Oh, and it's the almost the only mastermind secondary that comes with stacking hold attacks. Yes, I know that with careful management you can sometimes double up holds using poison or dark miasma. But with trick arrow, you just fire them.
(continued...)