have you heard of this mm strategy?

Hello again, my mastermind cohorts. First off I'd like to express gratitude for all the help and feedback I get from the boards. You guys are awesome, noobies and vets alike. You all get Beyeajus' metalfist of awesomeness-----------> \m/

Now that that's out of the way, I was reading up on mm strategies on paragon wiki, and came across an interesting one about not using your first tier pets to focus on your own moves as well as your stronger pets that aren't such lower levels below you.

Has anyone ever tried this before? Cause it sounds like a cool challenge and I may just respec my ninjas tonight to try it.

dual builds, good call! Ok, let the experiment commence! Thanks dude! As stated b4, you cats are awesome.

I would not suggest this technique for two basic reasons:

The first tier minions can do a lot of damage. The arsonist for one is a major AoE contributor, the robots have the full auto laser assault, the necros first tier like to get in melee, between you and the foes, mostly.

The second reason is bodyguard. You would lose a lot of bodyguard protection being down 3 first tier minions out of your total 6 pets.

You can try it without respeccing just by not summoning the first tier to test your playability. I have no doubt that some builds will handle paper missions and other riff raff with ease, but bosses, endless ambushes (such as longbow), and foes your mastermind set is susceptible to will show the weakness in this plan.

It's a gimmick like the petless mastermind.

lol, yah sort of an "almost petless"

I did try it on a mission after having my genin wiped, went and finished the mission with just jounin & Oni, it went smooth, but yah it was only some random papaer mish I was doing. Gonna play with it a bit, but the more I think about it, the more it starts to seem like fail. My secondary IS /pd, but with the aggro being redirected with no genin, it might now even save me. Gonna try it just w/o summoning genin just for S&G, a dual build would just have me buying SO's for something I might not even like.

EDIT: Also, I just realized now that I'd be stuck with the crappy bow and arrow moves too......eww......

Generally, it's not a good idea. You lose a lot of damage, a lot more mitigation, and yes, you'd be stuck taking the personal shooties which don't do any good. Possible benefits are not having to buff those pets constantly (that's only helpful for /ff and /thermal now that equip/upgrade buffs are AoE), and having more room to run around.

From what I remember, this idea stems from sparing teammates from dealing with robots clogging caves.

To that end, I say #&@% 'em.

Just to play devil's advocate, for a robot/ff mastermind:

* you don't need bodyguard mode to survive as much as some other masterminds
* the true key to your damage is burn patches from a fully upgraded assault bot
* without drones, protector bots can focus healing on assault bot and each other
* even when solo, battle drones can get in the way of assault bot
* now you only have half the robots to buff

Even with all of that being said, these aren't good enough reasons to devote an entire build to this strategy. Always take all pets, always six slot them. Then consider playing without drones as a change of pace.

All right, as someone who has actually done this, let me clarify a few things:

1) Most people who say that the damage of your attacks cannot match the damage of your Tier 1 pets are referring to post-32, after you have Upgrade. After this point you can do at best 20% of your overall damage. Depending on your Primary, your Tier 1 could be doing anywhere from 25% to 30% of your overall damage. In fact, it is likely that your Tier 3 is doing the LEAST damage of all your pets, again at around 20%. (This will not be true of Bots, though...)

2) Prior to level 18, when you get your third Tier 1, you can easily do more damage with your own attacks than your Tier 1. First of all you only have two Tiers, so you're doing 33% of the damage, second the Tier 1 often does less damage than the Tier 2, even with only one Tier 2 henchman, resulting in the Tier 1 doing less damage than your own. This can even hold true after 18, for some Primaries, for instance the Arsonist adds a great deal of damage to the Tier 1 of Thugs, but the third Drone doesn't really add much. (Remember, you are getting a third henchman, but he and the rest of the Tier end up a level lower)

3) There is a frustrating low point in henchman damage from about level 18 to 24. This is a very good time to have extra attacks to add a little "punch".

4) If you do take your own attacks, the disadvantage is in the number of attacks you have to take to match the damage of the Tier 1, and the Endurance that those attacks will cost. If you wish to use a "partially petless" build, I highly recommend Stamina. This, of course, also costs additional power choices.

In short, my recommendation is that if you wish to go this route, use only your attacks and not your Tier 1 from levels 1 to 8. At 10 you will want to pick up Equip so you have it ready when you get your Tier 2 at 12. You should be able to level from 12 to 20 in increasing difficulty as your attacks reduce in damage. At 22 or so you can either pick up your Tier 1 to get over the hurdle, or just keep going to 26 and get your Tier 3. You will want to get your Tier 1 by level 30 at the latest. Once you hit 32 the strategy is no longer viable, and a better design would be simply to support your henchmen with your more powerful attacks.

I would definately recommend a dual build, with the other build starting out with Tier 1 like normal. This way if you get in a group that insists on the henchmen, you have them. Note that while overall damage is going to be the same, or even better in the early levels (I'm taking about pre-10) you still will have WAY more survivability with henchmen. Prior to getting your Tier 3 you will want to keep your Tier 2s in Bodyguard Mode all the time, so at least you have that much protection. This shouldn't be a problem since you are essentially being a Tankermind for them. (You're drawing aggro with your attacks)

Once you get to the 32 break point, you can have your original build pick up the Tier 1, but keep your attacks. The second build will have all three tiers as well, but less attacks. You might make it a defensive or team build that has Leadership skills or the like in it, while your attack centric build is for soloing.

Thugs is probably the best Primary for this because it simply has the most damaging attacks. Bots would probably be the worst choice, even though the Droids really have the worst damage. Mercs was not that good when I did a study of this some time ago, but it may have gotten better with changes in animation time and other tweaks that were made to the Assault Rifle. Amusingly, the damage capability of the MM himself seems to closely track that of his henchmen, so the ratios stay pretty constant even though some sets have higher damage.

For Secondary I would recommend either Dark or Traps. As mentioned earlier, you will want to pick up the damage boost power, Tar Patch for Dark or Acid Mortar for Traps, as soon as you can. This will help your henchmen as well, so it's good advice in general, but the additional damage will really help with the lower support you get from Bodyguard. Pain might also be a good choice as well, I haven't tried it, but you need only one ally to take advantage of the damage boosting capabilities of Share Pain, and Conduit of Pain can't be used on henchmen whether you have one or not.

As an alternative you can take Tier 1 and skip Tier 2, but I would NOT recommend this with Thugs. It might be workable with Mercs or Bots, although this would obviously lose you a lot of their defense.

Well my build is bots/dark, and he's lvl 50 without ever touching a second build, so my choices are wide open, and the fact that I have dark servant makes for more survivability, as well as the other goodies that secondary has. If I slot the stun blaster the mm himself has for stun duration and acc, that will help some. But no way am I exclusively playing this build, just a test build to try since I read it and since I'm a huge fane of mm's (got one of each kind =D) Any other suggestions? I also have some decent defense and more attacks that the mm can do with B-scorpion's patron

When you slot more heal in your protector bots, they heal for more, but they wait until the fellow minion requires more healing. It's counterintuitive. You may prefer to slot for defense. I think another valid slotting strategy is slotting for stun. I use the stun grenades in the mastermind build; the protector bots seekers and grenades with howling twilight all stack the stuns, which means you have a great chance of stunning lieutenants like longbow nullifiers.

How about this situation: teams with 5 or more masterminds. I would definitely consider dismissing one or two first tiers to reduce constricting tunnels and such. I would want one tier one to fill the hall/tunnel with a nice cone of full-auto laser light show.

I think taking the blaster moves for the mm and slotting 3 acc and 3 stun in photon, 2 dam, 2 acc, and 2 kb for the other blaster moves to keep mobs out of my face would be a good idea, then slotting the prot bots with at least 1 stun and 1 def. doubt i'd be able to slot a heal in there though, especially since they would wait until the amount they heal for is required as mentioned before.

that mixed with my dark powers like fearsome stare and darkest night it should be good to go. Servant makes for good heals too.

I suggest slotting as many dampened spirtis in darkest night and dark servant as you can afford. Darkest night is inarguably a big ole to hit debuff; some folks like to discuss that about the fluffy. [/threadjack]