When do Ninja stop getting themselves killed?

Ok, I'm posting this more on behalf of my girlfriend than myself. Anyway:

Simply put, next to my alt's Mercenaries, her Ninja are a little....lacking. Their damage output is fine (Higher, if a little more erratic, than the Mercs) but they keep getting themselves killed pretty quickly. She's holding out until the Jounin before deciding whether to continue with the Archetype, but it's quite saddening to see her get so frustrated with something she enjoyed at the start.

She's a Ninja/Trick Arrow powerset combo.

Anyone able to offer advice/words of encouragement?

Would be better if CoV could let you toggle them into range or melee so they don't run into 5 council and get alpha striked to death in melee...

meh.

If you want a survival MM, drop trick arrow and remake her with either dark or FF secondary, heck, even poison or traps would be better.

I don't want a survival MM, whatever that is, but it'd be nice if my ninja could live for more than two seconds against simple minions.

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I don't want a survival MM, whatever that is, but it'd be nice if my ninja could live for more than two seconds against simple minions.

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I don't know what level you're at, but once you can upgrade your ninja, the Genin gain a bow and arrow and then it's possible to keep them alive much longer.

By their nature they're a flimsy thing, our Genin, but only when left to their own devices. Get the mastermind advanced mappings, if you don't already have them, and practise sending the Genin in and out of battle.

You don't have a heal, so just get used to upgrading, setting to attack, sending them in to melee behind their throwing stars and arrows, letting them get a hit in, then pulling them back again. Once you get the Jounin, you can send him in and keep the Genin back, or send all together and they'll go through level mobs quickly enough that you won't have to worry about losing Genin so often.

Once you have the boys working as a team, they can be a beautiful thing, even the Genin.

Right now, survival for them probably means range so you'll have to dip them in and out of battle with GoTo and Heel commands.

Don't forget, you can feed your pets inspirations, so you can always drop a green on a Genin to keep him upright a bit longer.

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I don't want a survival MM, whatever that is, but it'd be nice if my ninja could live for more than two seconds against simple minions.

[/ QUOTE ]That's just about what I meant with a survival MM, trick arrow isn't really a good defensive set so if you want to increase your pets expectable life span you'd be better off with the other secondaries.
Of course, if you want to keep it for thematical reasons, you can propably keep them alive with tactics similiar to what Jacqueline detailed.

I'm getting tactics. In fact since I duo with a merc MM all the time we have defensive maneuvers and assault already. It doesn't help in some cases of high melee enemies. We're going to doublestack the powers, probably.

I don't see how the bow and arrow helps, I can't keep my genin at range except by using the attack command, except then one fires one and tends to run into melee. And one genin getting melee alphastriked by 5 minions tend to die fast, that's the big problem.

I'm considering getting aid other ASAP but I doubt it'll do me much good. I asked for a link to the keybinds, though from reading it I'm a little foggy on how they actually work out in combat.

If I just knew how to keep my ninjas at range so I can tell them to go into melee when they won't get meleed to death by a thick pack of mobs, this would be so much easier. Or is that what calling them back when they go to melee does? Sounds impractical if it is.

EDIT: Okay, so heel and GoTo commands... could I do something like a Stay/Agressive macro so they won't budge but will still attack everything, and thus stay ranged? Or is that not how it works? -_- all of this is very complicated.

He means tactics in the control and planning sense, rather than the CoV power sense.

There is no command that says "stay here and shoot at them" - some pets prefer melee combat and one of your Genin will be one of them (if my experience is anything to go by).

So, you can give up being a MM, you can get used to losing a pet or you can get used to something akin to using passive, mixed with goto > attack target > goto > attack target. Rinse and repeat.

It's the only way I've found, so far, to force my Genin to stay at range. Keeping the GoTo close to me and the target at distance.

I am very comfortable sending my Genin in and out of battle and, if set to passive and attack my target, they'll 99% of the time, fire from range, go into melee and club the target to the floor, then come out again, back to me, without any intervention. Sometimes, though, they don't do this and then I have to get more specific.

I have dark as my secondary, which means I get to heal my pets, but they still do a damn fine service, provided I remember one thing - I am a MasterMind, they are not.

Ok, Lets get this in perspective. You have 2 genin to control. Your using Trick Arrow.

First off, using the advanced pet binds you can get your genin to use range attacks only by staying at medium to long range (Im basing this on having used upgrade) and doing a rythmic press of keys 7 (attack) and 8 (follow). If you do that they will stand on the spot and just use ranged which at your level is up to 15 damage on a snap shot and about 10 off a shuriken. This still isnt as good as their melee though it just allows you to shoot up [censored] without agroing more.

If you use standard commands you will always find that one genin goes in for the kill and takes the whole agro and thus will die unless you can inspiration it to health or take medicine which is very good at keeping them alive.

The jounin are much much harder but obviously the mobs get harder too. Trick arrow simply requires different pool powers. Dont give up on it. just adapt.

i dont have MM experience but have Trick Arrow experience. If you get your hands on Flash Arrow you can fire this in before your pets and drastically reduce the mob accuracy, meaning that even IF your pets wade into melee, theyr gunna b ALOT safer.

Shnyet AWAY