New to masterminds

Dear ladies and gents,

I rolled my first mastermind earlier being a ninja/poison build. I tried to read as much as possible on which road I should take but I was wondering which the most newcomerfriendly and safes mastermind combo is. Some say robotics are great while others advise thugs. Dilemma ;-)
All tips/pointers are greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

I would say either Thugs or Bots for pets. Both are good with an easy learning curve but have different strengths. Ninja is considered by many to be the hardest pet set to deal with.

For secondaries I would say Dark, Traps, or FF depending on your play style. I find FF boring, personally. Poison is ok, but it really shines when taking out single targets.

My Necro/Dark and Bots/Traps are both sickly over powered in their own ways and while active neither is difficult to learn.

i would say bots are prolly the easiest to learn for the primary since they dont have too much special stuff in the primary other than the bots

for secondary pain dom, traps, or ff are prolly the easiest (traps and ff have great synergy with bots)

in my experience my main toon is a ninja/dark, but i have experience using every mm primary in some form

if your new to mm, i would suggest to try bots, mercs are also decent too

Easy to learn is an inexact misnomer. What a lot of people use that phrase for is which set of pets lets the owner be the laziest.

It is usually reserved for a set of ranged pets that you can have follow you around while the owner utilizes almost no pet controls, whatsoever. It's effective due to the baseline of effectiveness being so low on a mastermind, but also the source of a great deal of conflict when teaming.

In that event, one hasn't learned to play a mastermind, but rather found a way to allow a mastermind to be played.

When you get down to actually learning to play a mastermind, they are all the same. They all take the same pet controls, utilize the same macro structure, and function the same. Some have different preferences, such as melee or ranged, and some have different quirks, but the concepts and actions of the AT doesn't fundamentally change based on pets.

Thugs is actually one of the more tricky sets to begin playing and controlling because the pets optimally work at different ranges, and therefore can require a little more management between pets to get everything to work right. Often times you'll hear people just yell at the Bruiser for "his stupidity" when they really should be looking at themselves for not placing him in the correct spot to begin with. It is one of the more powerful overall sets, however, and therefore a common selection in these kinds of threads.

Bots is similar, in that it can be a powerful set, but is also a little difficult to utilize correctly because you want to optimally account for knockback. Instead, people complain about it rather than utilizing the tools available to properly position the pets.

These are usually the most popular recommendations for "easiest to learn", but what they are really being recommended for is "easiest to make relatively strong with the least amount of work involved".

In terms of learning the AT, the choice of pets doesn't matter as much as it does learning the controls and concepts such as bodyguard. The macro guides in the guide sticky is where you want to start. My personal recommendation is Sandolphin's numpad bind due to its flexibility and logical arrangement. It isn't for everyone, but it allows you to quickly learn a control system that can be used anywhere and control any level of pet. From there, you can begin tailoring the controls for your specific needs. I highly recommend, with whatever control system you ultimately use, to put a Goto command on an extra mouse button and become accustomed to moving your pets around. Most of the problems people have, whether it is with a singular pet or an entire primary, is due to poor utilization of the Goto command. Putting it on a mouse makes the entire exercise about as difficult as playing a Scrapper.

For learning, I think something/Pain would probably be the easiest. Take your heals, take your pets and pet buffs and go to town.


While it's true that most MM play similarly once you get the macros and pet controls down, it sure can be hard to learn all that if you've chosen a difficult set to master. I think Ninja/Poison would be pretty tough, myself. I couldn't stomach Ninja/TA, too fiddly for me, and Ninjas are spastic.


I'd go Thugs/Pain for learning. Thugs is strong, and has enough weird corners that you actually will learn (the Arsonist nee sucide boy, and the melee Brute). /Pain should make it easy to concentrate on the pets, as Pain is pretty simple to learn.


Thugs/Traps is a bit more complicated but might actually be stronger once you do get the hang of masterminds. Your call. /Pain is easy to explain to a team ("I'm a healzor") whereas Traps is a little more complicated to grasp ("Do you know how the to hit and damage formula work? No? Well...").


Don't delete, just start a new one. You'll better understand what is going on with your Ninjas after playing something a bit more sedate.


Two tips: 1. When you first start, right click on the Follow button (the special MM power in your tray). Select Edit and then edit the text of the control. Remove the word "Aggressive" and replace it with "Def". Now the Follow button will use Defensive mode instead of Offensive. The result is Bodyguard and about 5 seconds of cool-down where your pets won't attack anything, but will still provide defense for you. Learn how this cool down works by playing around with it. Try to corner pull with and with out it and see how it the two differ.

2. Learn Bodyguard mode and how it functions. This works better once you have at least two pets. The button I gave will make this easier.


And finally when you think you have those two things down, check out Sandolphin's key pad bind guide. It's stickied in the MM Guides at the top of this forum. That will really help you control your pets once you learn it.

I forgot all about Sandy's binds. Those are an excellent tool for the AT.

I think Thugs is the best beginner primary, simply because it has very good early damage.

I think the easiest / best secondary to start with would be Pain or Thermal. Probably Pain is more straightforward and less tedious.

Lewis

Bots and Thermal. If you dont want to fall asleep on your keyboard stay away from Bots/FF. Thermal will give you a good well rounded secondary set that go's well with any AT set.

It has Def and Heals and Buffs and Debuffs and a very good O'shiz botton for saving a group from wipes.

Bots them selfs are like Thermal very well rounded but not the best at any one thing. But mixed together with some Leadership powers they do become a pve solo or group power house.

Bots/Dark was my first 50 MM, you get heals, an extra pet, and the assault bot's burn patch on your tar patch is sweeeeeet. Fear cone, anchor to-hit debuff, there's little to not love.

W/e you might start out on I strongly suggest you learn the macro's for management of your pets and not to be a burden on teammates with unnecessary aggro.(you can find the guides for macros in the mm guides section)

Pets are only as smart as their master's commands,and if not supervised properly will go chasing enemies all over a map.

All too often I have seen mm's die,get kicked from teams,and incur the wrath of teammates after a team faceplant just because they couldn't keep a leash on their pets.

In addition there ALOT of people who think that they are mm's and they are WRONG.

Learn and implement the macro's,keep an eye on your pets,and pretty soon you will be rolling through damn near anything the game can throw at you.

I started out on a bots/ff some ppl call it a lazy mm,but to me it was a nice starter mm to learn all the in's and out's of the AT.Plus,you can take other pools so it isn't "boring" my mm has leadership and the medicine pool,with acouple of the attacks in the primary as to not make it boring and to provide some support to others on the team.

I have a thugs/pain mm also and once in awhile I play him(he's 38 now) a really active build with the management of your pets and providing support for the team with /pain.

That's my 2 cents hope it helps.

First thing. Get familiar with macros and the advanced pet window. You have more than 3 buttons to direct your minions.

I've found necro to be an easy primary to learn and operate. The lich functions kind of like a dark controller, while the other pets like to operate in melee range. The easiest secondaries to use well, with relatively minimal effort devoted to learning how, are probably /dark and /traps.

I don't bother with macros; they're helpful, but still a hassle. Instead, I edit two out of the three initial pet control command buttons that show up in your power tray. I edit the "Attack" and "Follow" commands, changing "aggressive" to "defensive" for both of them. That leaves me with a "passive" command button to get pets to follow me and not attack, a "bodyguard" mode through a "defensive follow" button, and an "attack" command that shifts the pets back to bodyguard mode after the critter they're attacking has been defeated.

By default, I tend to keep my zombies on defensive follow, my lich on defensive follow, and I switch my grave knights to aggressive using the main pet control window that shows up after summoning pets.

My way of controlling necro pets is not optimal, as macros will definitely allow you to get more damage and control out of them. But, making a few small adjustments to the default controls seems to be good enough for team and solo play, and those changes are quite easy to set up.

I'll just say that I've found Sand's Numeric Keybind setup (Under Keybinds in the Guides sticky) to be incredibly intuitive and easy to use, especially when that one idiot minion decides he wants to run off to the other side of the map, then back again, dragging three groups back with him (Rare, but irritating when it does happen)

As for actual sets, they're all fairly easy to learn, but Ninjas and Zombies do tend to need a little more babysitting via the GoTo command, else they'll hang out at range and blast.

Dark is an awesome all-around debuffing set, and quite busy. Bots/Forcefield is probably the most ridiculously safe mastermind, but I've almost dozed off playing one. Traps takes a little getting used to I've found, with recharge times on things like Poison Trap, but I still love it.

I have zero experience with Poison, Storm, or Thermal, but I've watched a Thugs/Pain MM do some scary stuff.

Since you're new to Masterminds, here's a tip: one of the things I always have to get used to when I start a new Mastermind is that I'm not really expected to attack the enemy, my pets are. Veteran and Temp Powers help ease the transition, but in the 2 years that I've been playing, it's still a drastic change in playstyle for me. So, if you feel a little disoriented with this feeling that you should be doing something more in a battle, know that it's okay and should eventually pass as you get more powers and thus more things to do.

Because I have that "button mashing" mentality, I prefer sets that keep me busy. If you have a similar mentality, you may want to check out Necro/Thermal. The sets synergize well together, and with all the buffs and debuffs available in the set you will probably never run out of something to do.

Either way, I hope you find a set that works good for you. Masterminds are a fun class, especially for those of us with ADD tendencies.

If you are soloing then Ninja/Poison should be fine. Its a combonation very good at single target damage.

Ninja's are good at single target damage, if you can get them into melee. They also don't have a lot of mitigation on their own. That is not always easy especially for beginners. Ninja's do not have a lot of AoE damage, so larger spawns will give you problems. Ninja's are also run fast and aggro the next spawn before you are ready often.

Poison, is a great AV killer, but it doesn't have a lot of AoE debuffs to make your Ninja's more survivable.

The combonation you are leaning towards is one of the better AV killers, but it is not a generally great PvE build. You may find that without a lot of IO's invested it will be difficult to play and lag behind most MM's abilities.

If you really want ninja's go Dark, Traps, Force Fields. I went traps and really liked it. But I would also suggest Thugs and Bots as the intro to Mastermind powersets. Necro and Mercs would be in the middle. I would put Ninjas as the most difficult to play.