Best and easiest for solo +0/+8 or higher? NO Bots/Traps

They key for new masterminds is to start with small, bite sized sandwiches.......then working up to the hoagies.

Bodyguard mode works best if you have some way of keeping yourself alive, such as good defences or a heal.

Edit: And some way of keeping aggro, like the Presence pool

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"

I'd really suggest listening what brophog02 is saying. Tankedminding is not the only way of playing, that's for sure. But there hardly are any other more survivable ways for playing MM. And in fact I believe well built and played mastermind is one of the hardest AT to kill. I understand why you are saying you dont want henchmen taking any more damage. They are quite fragile. But the most efficient way to protect your pets is directing aggro on yourself and bodyguard mode helps you survive even GM attacks with ease. As brophog02 said one of the very few problems are huge radius aoes, especially autohitting ones. Another situation I find challenging are fights where you are being attacked from multiple directions in multiple waves. It gets difficult to keep fight under control and that's pretty important for tankerminding MM.

I'll make one demonstration of BG mode: Lets say you are facing two nasty AVs. Both are using attack that does 800 points of dmg before mitigation every 2 seconds. Sounds nasty. They would be two shotting most of your henchmen and three shotting you even with resists. Lets assume you defence against their attacks is 0%, meaning 50% of their attacks are going to hit you (this would be 5% with softcapped build). 800points/second would turn into 800 points every 2 seconds. Still enough to kill you in 2 seconds without heals/mitigation in 4-6 seconds with 40% resists. Lets assume they do most common dmg type; slashing and you have picked Charged Armour and have 40% slashing resist -> now you are only being hit 480 points every 2 seconds. Still nasty isn't it. You wouldn't survive it 10 seconds (without constant use of greens). Now lets assume you are fighting in BG mode which divides damage among you and your 6 bots -> you are now taking only 68,6 points of dmg every 2 seconds. That's actually no big deal. Your bots would take 80 points of dmg every 2 second if we assume they have 30% res against sl. That's nasty but it's still something you would be able to overcome by only using Twilight Grasp. In theory you can heal roughly 2800 points of taken (400 points of heal to you and 6 bots) and BG splitted damage every 4(-8) seconds with TG, that's 700 points/second. Of course in reality it's usually not possible because of small radius of TG. But on the other hand 700 points of heals/sec is not even needed in reality. Actually it's seldom that I even have to heal my bots while fighting GM. Mainly prot bots and dark servant are healing enough.

Here are some numbers to demonstrate differet forms and combinations of damage mitigation against even lvl opponent (The number is percentage from fully unmitigated damage that you are actually taking after mitigation):
0 def, 0 resistance: 50%
0 def, 50% resistance: 25%
softcapped build, 0 resistance: 5%
softcapped build, 50% resistance: 2,5%

0 def, 0 resistance, BG mode: 7,1%
0 def, 50 resistance, BG mode: 3,6%
softcapped build, 0 resistance, BG mode: 0,7%
softcapped build, 50% resistance, BG mode: 0,36%

For the comparison:
Tanker, softcapped to every position, capped (90%) resistances to every dmg type: 0,5%

Combination of 99,3% mitigation (not counting resists) and healing ability of 700/sec (100/sec/target) corresponds ~14300 unmitigated damage/second. Pretty crazy?

Really? I wasn't aware of that. I thought anything but defensive follow shut it down. Of course, most of the guides haven't been updated in a while. Is there any way to check in-game whether a pet is in bodyguard mode or not? Short of trying to get something to shoot me?

First, Really appreciate the advice and sorry for the thread hijack.

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Originally Posted by brophog02 I can't put this nicely, but it needs to be said: You simply don't know how to play masterminds. If you're willing, however, the help is out there.

You can go farther, I really don't know how to play this game. Doesn't offend me when it's true. =) I assure you you've never seen tanks faceplant as often as mine, or blasters who can't solo, etc. I have fun, but totally lack skills. I'm not an idiot, just incompetent. I've read all the guides I can find, and I try to apply the information. I'm not very good at it.

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The benefit is 75% damage reduction with 6 pets. Any AT in this game would kill for that kind of constant protection. You, without any pets, make a blaster look like a tank. Your pets and your ability to keep them alive through buffs/debuffs/heals is what takes you from the squishiest AT in the game to arguably the most resilient. This happens all while still doing very impressive damage.

I'll strongly argue on the impressive damage bit. My mercs are slotted for 30-ish% accuracy, 90%+damage and all three have one Lady Grey proc and I'm using both assault and tactics. They don't kill even con minions fast when all six of them are focused on it. With a few noteworthy exceptions (I love Carnies because they have no S/L resistance). Bosses got frustrating enough that I turned them off somewhere back in the low 30s. Every now and again while teaming I manage to corner a boss, and it takes forever to drop, so I know I still don't want to bother with them (made it to 49 so far). Granted, I'm using Mercs who do dot damage, but still, I can notice the speed difference when I use Patron attacks to support them against minions. I really shouldn't be able to notice that from everything I've read. Dunno what else I can do except only run Carnie missions. Everyone else seems to have disgustingly high levels of S/L resistance. If I manage to get an enemy onto Tar Patch, that helps a lot. Rarely happens though.

As far as survival, I do ok myself. Shadowfall, maneuvers, combat jumping, Patron armor, and a few decent set def bonuses, fluffy, fearsome stare, and lots of healing makes me a lot more survivable than the mercs themselves. I wish I could count darkest night in there but it always seems the target decides to run away and I have to turn it off so he doesn't aggro other groups, but it makes a difference too I'm sure for the few seconds it's working. Fluffy is a really huge part of my survivability. I love Fluffy. Fluffy is the only reason I haven't given up completely and am still trying to make this character workout.

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What it does do is make incoming damage very miniscule. Instead of an attack doing enough damage to kill you or a single pet, it spreads it out amongst all of you, making it much easier to heal/regen back.

So, DOES bodyguard take damage off of a minion and share it? From the description it looks like it only takes damage off of me. So if my commando gets nailed for 800 damage, will he be crippled or will it proliferate to myself and the others?

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The only things that really give masterminds trouble are things with a lot of AOEs, and even then we're normally talking autohit AOEs, like burn patches.

Problem is that AoE attacks includes everyone except Rikti and Arachnos with bosses turned off. The Caltrops of Artemis are doing most of their damage as AoE and I don't think they have any other AoE attack but the caltrops they are so obsessed with. Hero-side Circle of Thorns would be much easier than the Villain side for the lack of Succubus, but even then lots of the mages seem to have AoEs. Malta have their grenades and missiles, Council have an infinite supply of grenades especially from bosses and lieut's. If I turn on Bosses the Fake Nems and Warhulks can ravage my minions faster than I can get a heal off. And on and on the list goes. Either the enemy in question can't hurt my minions, or they die faster than I can heal. And that happens rather too often.

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The better choice for you is to use a defensive attack command. The benefit is that when they are done attacking they will return to bodyguard. When you get 5 or 6 pets, the best course of action is often to keep the tier 1s on defensive follow and use attack with the tier 2 and 3 pets on key targets.

Never managed to get binds to work. I always get some weird purple error message saying unrecognized command when I try to copy/paste. I tried replacing the quotes manually in-game, someone suggested that might be the problem. Dunno. So I just use the default command buttons.

Question: As a merc, wouldn't it be more effective to use the tier 1 and 3 on key targets and the spec ops on defensive, since the spec ops are total pansies when it comes to dealing damage but I think the two of them total 90% of the hit points the three soldiers total up to? I think the same would be true for Bots wouldn't it?

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Sounds like someone that doesn't use the mouse. There are people that will not use any powers with a drop target for that reason. My suggestion to anyone is to put goto on a mouse button. This makes it point and click and extremely easy to use.

I use the mouse. the problem is I select the power, then try to place it and instead click on an enemy and deselect the power. So then I have to select the power again. Oops, got the enemy's foot and deselected the power again. Then I try angling the camera to get a better view of the ground. By then one or more of my mercs are dead because I'm standing like an idiot trying to click on the ground not on the enemy and fiddling with the camera angles. So I get frustrated and just put the target off to the side where it only gets one out of 4 enemies, and that one easily walks out of it. Now I've wasted my power, some of my guys are dead, and the enemy hasn't really been inconvenienced. Joy.

So I pretty much put tar patch down as a way to draw aggro, or as a location to teleport foe enemies into. If it recharges during a fight I pretend that it didn't.

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There are several sets that would get around some of these issues, if you simply couldn't use a power with a drop target. Something like a Mercs/Pain with provoke would work very well. No drop targets to my knowledge, the Mercs stay at range well, and provoke plus bodyguard plus Pain Domination makes the combination fairly resilient.

I've started and stopped so many MM's that until Going Rogue comes out I really don't want to start over again now that I finally managed to stubborn my way up to 49. When it comes out I plan to try Demons/FF. The thing is I loathe FF so much that back when I was trying a bots/FF I would suicide from time to time because the knockback made me hate my own character so much I had to get rid of it.

My Nin/Storm/Soul is nice for soloing large mobs - run into a mob and use Thunder Clap, which will combine with Oppressive Gloom to stun even the bosses. The mobs that manage to retaliate during Thunder Clap's animation will trigger your pets to attack - while they're doing so, drop Freezing Rain and Lightning Storm and let 'em do their work, putting down Smoke Bomb when appropriate (I like the Oni for it, because critting Fire Breath on multiple targets is just too much fun) Rinse, repeat.

In another vein, my Thugs/Dark/Mace also easily handles large spawns, though his method is a bit different. Between Shadow Fall, Scorpion Shield, and Maneuvers, he's sitting at about 35% S/L defense and the minions are softcapped and have solid resistances (Shadow Fall, Maneuvers from me, double-stacked Enforcer buffs, and all four of the unique pet IOs) so no one's getting hit much in the first place. Open with Darkest Night, then hit Fearsome Stare, drop Tar Patch, and then use Web Envelope. Send the Bruiser into the mob in aggressive mode. The mobs firing their opening shots when you toggle on Darkest Night will trigger the rest of your pets to attack, and all the NPCs will either be feared or be slowed and have their acc debuffed.

The Thugs/Dark is more survivable, so he's what I bring on the RSF and BSF, but the Nin/Storm is a bit less predictable (due to the nature of Storm) and in my opinion more fun.

GavinRuneblade: Reading those posts of your made me feel awful for you!

But I had similar problems when I was levelling up my bots/ff. The only reason he hit 50 and didn't get canned in the 40's was because I really wanted a VEAT (Which promptly got deleted).

It wasn't until I was 50 that I really started to understand bodyguard mode. And the most important thing about bodyguard mode is to realise that it is useless unless the mobs are firing at you. If the mobs are still shooting your pets then they will still die regardless, so you need some way of keeping aggro, and this is where the presence pool comes in handy - challenge and provoke.

Another thing that I find really useful is a patron immob power. It keeps the enemy under control and stops then running out of Tar Patch and Darkest Night.

Once you have that I would try keeping your pets in Defensive Follow and open with the patron immob to trap as many as you can, then use the taunt powers on anything that is still shooting your pets.

If you are taking all the damage then it is easy to keep the pets near you and heal both yourself and them for the small damage that comes your way.

At times you will get overwhelmed with debuffs, but it should improve things for you.

The only thing worth mentioning is that I don't think mercs are considered particularly good, so that might be one other reason you don't kill very fast.

I really hope that helps you, and if you are still having problems I will try and help as best I can (Though I don't really know merc's or /dark!)

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Originally Posted by Aggelakis PrincessDarkstar: "RAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHHHHHHHH SOMEONE IS *WRONG* ON THE INTERNET!"